Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: If I Had a Hammer

If Rebel Girl had a hammer, you can bet she'd hammer in the morning, in the evening, all over this campus. There is, indeed, much repair needed.

However, the inability to find the necessary tool to hammer out our particular strains of injustice and incompetence, plus the inability to generate many words continues (Week 2!), so Rebel Girl will do what some of her students sometimes do when faced with a blank page and a deadline: Quote! A lot!

It's an obvious enough strategy that she hopes will distract you enough to give her a passing grade for this week. Her offering is from Dean Young, a poet who lives part-time in Berkeley and the rest of the year where he teaches, in Iowa City. RG runs into him every other year at a summer writing conference where she serves the gods of poetry the best she can.

Hammer
BY DEAN YOUNG

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office
before the class on the comma, etc.,
there was on the desk, among
the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up
and memos about lack of funding
and the quixotic feasibility memos
and labyrinthine parking memos
and quizzes pecked by red ink
and once orange peels,
a claw hammer.
There when I came and there when I left,
it didn’t seem in anyone’s employ.
There was no room left to hang anything.
It already knew how to structure an argument.
It already knew that it was all an illusion
that everything hadn’t blown apart
because of its proximity to oblivion,
having so recently come from oblivion itself.
Its epiphyses were already closed.
It wasn’t my future that was about to break its wrist
or my past that was god knows where.
It looked used a number of times
not entirely appropriately
but its wing was clearly healed.
Down the hall was someone with a glove
instead of a right hand.
A student came by looking for who?
Hard to understand
then hard to do.
I didn’t think much of stealing it,
having so many hammers at home.
There when I came, there when I left.
Ball peen, roofing, framing, sledge, one
so small of probably only ornamental use.
That was one of my gifts,
finding hammers by sides of roads, in snow, inheriting,
one given by a stranger for a jump in the rain.
It cannot be refused, the hammer.
You take the handle, test its balance
then lift it over your head.

Leprechauns & heaviness, obeisance-wise

obeisance: acknowledgment of another's superiority or importance : HOMAGE

There are some interesting—and perhaps important—items in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed. In its “Quick Takes” section, we learn:

● While many American policy makers of late have been worrying about increased competition from India’s universities, a report in the International Herald Tribune found that outside a small number of elite Indian universities, most of the country’s higher education system is in terrible shape. “Most of the 11 million students in the 18,000 Indian colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obeisance and light on marketable skills, students, educators and business leaders say,” according to the article. [My emphasis.]

Heavy on obeisance? Imagine that!

● A former student at the Art Institute of Portland, in Oregon, says that he was suspended and then expelled, in a series of events that started when he questioned another student’s belief in leprechauns and she complained about his questions, The Portland Mercury reported. Institute officials denied that anyone could be expelled for questioning another’s belief in leprechauns and suggested that other issues were involved.

● This morning’s lead article (Fixing Higher Ed, Legislator-Style) is a description of a new report on the state of higher ed in the U.S., and it ain’t pretty:

Higher education is in crisis, in large part because of government neglect, and states must take the lead in fixing the problems, a bipartisan group of state legislators says in a new report.

“Transforming Higher Education: National Imperative — State Responsibility,” the report from a 12-member special panel of the National Conference of State Legislators, in many ways falls in line with other recent studies that have identified concerns about access to and the performance of American colleges and universities….

Like those reports, the legislators’ study (a summary of which can be found here) cites statistics showing the United States slipping on international indicators, bemoans the effect that increasing tuitions and flattening financial aid have had on college access for low and middle income students and adult learners, and notes that those problems must be addressed if the country is to provide a meaningful future for the waves of educationally underprepared Americans preparing to slam into higher education and society….

…“The American higher education system is no longer the best in the world,” the NSCL report states without equivocation. “Although the United States has some of the best institutions in the world, we do a poor job overall in our mass education production.... The American higher education system is not preparing students for the 21st century global society.... Faculty are content with the teaching methods of the past and are not changing as the world is changing.”….

● ALSO: in this morning's New York Times (Pastor Chosen to Lead Christian Coalition Steps Down in Dispute Over Agenda):

The president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, which has long served as a model for activism for the religious right, has stepped down, saying the group resisted his efforts to broaden its agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming....

Jeez, what would Jesus say?

Gee Whizzery

Looks like the OC Register has decided to toss a fuzzy little softball at IVC. Check out “Irvine Valley College to build business center” in this morning’s edition, which notes the recent groundbreaking ceremony and offers a healthy dollop of Gee-Whizzery:

"There's just no doubt with a structure like this … it's a wonderful addition for the campus," said Glenn Roquemore…."This particular building will be at the cutting edge of technology."

Aesthetically, the center will have a "high-tech look on a low budget," said Raul Villalba, SOCCCD director of facilities planning.

"I think it will motivate students," [student Tomo] Mizuno said.

Also, DON’T FORGET: this is the week in which the ACCREDS visit re Validation of the 2006 Accreditation Progress Report.