b l o g o s

on furloughs

The thing about being in transition between jobs is that there's a long summer when you are part of both institutions. This means JM and I get the news announcements via email from both Illinois and Penn State. Administrators at the former--the one we are leaving--have kicked up their furlough talk from chatter last year to a formal policy (they have not yet implemented that policy, just established it in the event of a budget shortfall, which there will likely be).

I have several colleagues at other schools who were already furloughed last year. The idea of a furlough is that people are issued days without pay. At a regular office job, it would work like this: you don't show up for work, and you also do not get paid for not showing up. But in a university job, it's a little different. First off, most places tell faculty to choose their non-work day for a day they don't teach. The Illinois language, I think, is something like 'assigned by your direct supervisor.' But the language for the new Illinois policy is very clear on how much university-related labor ought to be performed during a furlough day, which is, to quote the ladies from the Bronx Beat, Zero point Zero Zero: "During an assigned furlough day, employees are required not to report to work or perform duties for the University."

And yet. Where does one draw the line between performing duties for the university and getting things done? So much of the work I do these days is for national outlets, or it is research related. Both of these things bear on my standing at my university, to be sure, but the idea of not working at all is a little silly, especially since the most obvious duty for the University--teaching--is likely to happen on a nonfurlough day. I could imagine telling students "your papers will be a week later because of the furloughs." That would probably work. But are people really going to take a day away from their research, research that could possible help them get jobs at places where furloughs aren't--or aren't yet--an issue? That's doubtful. What if someone has a dissertation defense scheduled on a furlough day? What about those who are already on sabbatical? I'll be interested to see how my friends handle the furloughed days if those days come about, which I hope they don't. If it were me I would probably be tempted to simply to say "no" to enough U-related duties to add up to the amount of time my pay was getting deducted. That's not how it's supposed to work, I know, but it would be a better marker of time for dollars.

I guess this is really just another post about the leakiness of time and the untrackability of academic labor. In the end these furloughs are really pay cuts--and temporary, in that they won't carry over from year to year--but somehow it sounds better to throw in days for the pay.

it's like a goddam musical reeses cup

netflix blogging: dear nancy botwin,

Why do I root for you so? Is it because of your lustrous hair and skin, your gorgeous eyes and cute dresses and jeans? Is it the way you're always casually--and noisily--sipping some icy drink from a straw? Is it because you are white and middle class and a woman and in there mixing it up with some major drug czars, a woman who seems to not know wtf she's doing but is really often shrewd about her place in it all? Is it because all of your partners in crime are frequently good looking and also at times compelling (including, in season 4, your son Silas? when did he have time to get all buff while you were fleeing from the burning agrestic)?

And/or is there a deeper feminism at work in your show, in that it stages the desperation, heightened now by current economic conditions, of a woman who has relied on her husband for income and whose options are seemingly slim after that husband dies? Is it that once you got a taste of drug dealing you just can't quit it, and that fact that while I don't really comprehend it on some level I guess I do? Is it the constant drama presented by your work, and the charming losers with whom you are surrounded?

It's a little bit of all these things, I think. And the excellent writing for season 4 does not hurt. Not one bit.

sincerely,
debbie

p.s. given your new, ahem, business arrangement (middle of season 4), you should probably learn spanish, funny as it is that you're always just saying "hola" and using unconjugated verbs.

pps your hot son is banging the mother of the kid next door. i thought you might want to know. 

Sarah Palin's basketball analogy

When Sarah Palin resigned yesterday, she helpfully framed her resignation from her long-ago position as point guard. Here's what she said:

Let me go back quickly to a comfortable analogy for me, and that’s sports. Basketball. And I use it because you are naïve if you don’t see a full court press from the national level picking away right now. A good point guard, here’s what she does. She drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her head up because she needs to keep her eye on the basket and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And that is what I’m doing. Keeping our eye on the ball.

This jumbled analogy tells it all. The first confusing point is the language of a full-court defense "picking away." Now maybe she's using "picking" in a non-technical way, but any basketball player knows that a pick is an offensive move. It's what a teammate would do to help create room for the point guard under pressure (say); it's what Todd does for Sarah on occasion.

But the best part is the mixed message (nay, mixed metaphor) about where a point guard ought to keep her eyes. She's right of course in saying that the point guard needs to keep her head up, but in a full court press, she would be wrong to keep her eye on the basket, especially if (as Palin says in the next phrase) she's looking to pass the ball. When one is on the extreme other end of the court, one ought not care where the basket is, unless time is running out (which, hey, that could be significant for Palin's situation). But then, awesomely, she switches from keeping her head up to keeping her eye on the ball, which is exactly what she shouldn't be doing unless she is suddenly playing baseball.

This former point guard's eyes are on one thing, and one thing only: the door. She is fleeing, afraid, and what follows is not going to be pretty.

hopes for july

Lots of stuff is happening this month. I have a number of writing commitments that I need to get going on honoring, and two will dominate July. The first is a conference paper (ISHR in Montreal) that will also be the foray into my book. Ideally I would have liked to be culling that paper from a chapter draft, but moving has intervened, and I will instead be posing questions and positing theories more than I will be offering any fully-formed set of research results. Even so, it's exciting to have my head in that next book, albeit preliminarily.

The second is a piece for a collection on Burke in the Archives called (tentatively) "Historiography by Incongruity." This piece is kind of the underbelly of my recent book--stuff that I've been thinking about, like how so much fascinating archival material doesn't make it into histories we write because that material documents a darker story or some sort of failure or a research "dead end." I want to do a little reading on archive theory to get myself going on that one, and maybe poke around in some new archival material, since I am now within a mile from the KB papers.  

Then there's a course that I'm directing, a really cool new honors course that combines oral, written, visual, and digital communication. I met with the technology folks on campus to talk about the technology piece, instructional support they can offer, and available resources, and they BLEW ME AWAY. As in, they are assembling a team of technology specialists (one from the digital commons group, another from instructional design, and more) to help with this course. The its guys told me about these "whispering booths" (podcasting studios) that they have installed in labs around campus, and how some of them are mobile. Crazy. I left that meeting a) thinking I need to amp up (even more) the technology ambitions of the course, and b) knowing how glad I am to be here.

There's some other stuff I've committed to for the fall, but I can't think about that right now. Draft of conference paper in 8-10 days, and a sizable chunk of the collection contribution in 21 so that I can take it with me to Montreal, these are my hopes.