Play Ball!

☛
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light…
— from "Casey at Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

Rebel Girl stands corrected. The IVC Phasers, those intrepid weekend ballplayers have never "suffered a string of losses" as she previously reported. No. Quite the contrary, the IVC Phasers were league champions last year. Which league she doesn't know but she is corrected and impressed.

Apparently, she misinterpreted the mood of the two players. No string of losses at all, merely a defeat that felt like a string of losses.

Since then, the IVC Phasers have rebounded and you can see them show their stuff on most Sundays at Harvard Park. Bring the kids.

A source who declined to go on the record claims that the Phasers have indeed signed on a former Teacher of the Year as a key player but the fella has yet to show up. Rumor has it that his absence is related to a salary dispute. Could it be?

Inquiring minds want to know.

What a lark! What a plunge!

☛
The IVC book club, which meets on Tuesday afternoons, will this week discuss Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Rebel Girl wishes she could be there but she is happy enough to know that people will be talking about this novel. Yes.

"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? But that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she never met; being laid out like a mist between people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself."

Buy some flowers for yourself. Throw a shilling in the Serpentine. Tell Sally Seton you love her.

Clinton acknowledges anti-war demonstrators in sunny Laguna Beach

☛
According to the OC Register, Senator Hillary Clinton acknowledged anti-war demonstrators during her trip yesterday to Laguna Beach. She waved to 'em. Didn't speak with 'em.

Clinton visits Laguna Beach:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a presidential candidate, made a fundraising appearance Saturday in Laguna Beach between stops in Los Angeles and Alabama…Arriving and leaving, Clinton, D-N.Y., waved at 11 protesters who yelled for an end to the Iraq war now…[P]rotesters said they were disappointed that Clinton did not stop to speak to them.

"Hillary and (Sen. Barack) Obama are the most pro-war of the candidates," Santa Ana resident Ruth Hull-Richter said.

"I was invited inside but chose to be out here with these people protesting the war."

MEANWHILE, the ranks of (living and dead) Republicans who acknowledge, at long last, that George W. Bush is a complete f*cking a**hole have swelled impressively.


I HAPPENED UPON a great old issue of the Saddleback College/Irvine Valley College Lariat. Hey, it even mentions Ann Coulter! How cool is that?!

I do believe that, at the last SOCCCD board meeting, Chancellor Mathur explained that he and trustee Williams had just returned from yet another (highly-expensive and unnecessary) trip to Orlando, FL! Those scamps!

A defiant Don Wagner

☞

ON THE AGENDA of Monday’s meeting of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees was a discussion of the “Outcome of [the] November 2006 Accreditation Progress Visits.”

Well, the outcome was that, owing largely to failings of the board and the chancellor, the colleges are yet again required to report, this time in October, efforts to address the same nasty old problems: the atmosphere of hostility and despair, trustee micromanagement, etc.

Good grief. This “micromanagement” complaint goes back ten years! C’mon!

In the case of Saddleback College, submission of their October report will be followed by yet another Accred team visit. Ouch.

At Monday’s board meeting, Chancellor Raghu Mathur stated the obvious: that the board and governance groups should get together on this. He recommended some “workshops.”

In truth, much, though not all, of what the Accreds require of us can be accomplished only by the Chancellor and the trustees. Especially the trustees. (They can start by firing Raghu’s ass.)

On Monday, TRUSTEE DON WAGNER dispensed much peevitude about this. For instance, he explained that, when the board met with the two Accrediting teams back in December (see "Boards are supposed to be nonpartisan," he said), trustees were told that the teams’ conversations with other governance groups (e.g., the Academic Senates) were off the record. This, fumed Wagner, is “selective secrecy.” It “undermines the process” and invites “abuse,” such as “score settling.”

He wasn’t finished. He next addressed what he termed “erroneous charges” contained in the Accreditation reports:

First, infamously, back in January of 2006, the board acted to refuse the colleges’ memberships in the American Library Association. Virtually all colleges are members of the ALA. Our non-membership is a great embarrassment. (See "Liberal Busybodies".)


Wagner led the charge on that action, explaining that the ALA are a bunch of “liberal busybodies.” The Accred teams cited the ALA action as an instance of board micromanagement. At Monday's meeting, Wagner called the charge “absurd.” The Accreds fail to understand the role of elected trustees, he said.

Second, the Accreds tagged the board—again, Wagner was the key player here—for the public manner in which it dressed down a certain dean during the October 2006 board meeting. (See Blow by blow.) At Monday's meeting, Wagner retorted that the Accred teams ignored the context of his action.

Further, he accused the Accreds of inconsistency. On the one hand, said Wagner, the teams object to this “public” action. On the other hand, they complain when the board does things “behind the scenes.” These positions, he said, simply can’t be reconciled.

Wagner acknowledged that the Accred teams have a right to their perspectives, but that’s all they offer: “perspectives.”

He closed by asserting, defiantly, that he will continue to raise the sorts of issues that he has raised when they deserve to be raised.

Wendy G, IVC Academic Senate President, interjected that, in fact, the senate’s remarks to the IVC Accred team occurred in a public meeting. Hence, what the senate had to say was said openly, publicly.

Responded Wagner: “They [the team] wouldn’t share it, but OK.”

SO HERE'S THE THING. Our colleges need to be accredited by the ACCJC. The ACCJC has informed us, repeatedly, what we must do to be in compliance with the accrediting standards. Among the things we must do are things that only the trustees can do, such as ceasing micromanagement.

And who decides what counts as micromanaging? Why, that would be the ACCJC.

Not Don Wagner. ❦

Listen to Don Wagner's January 2006 remarks about "liberal busybodies":

(about 4 minutes)

And for MORE laughs, go to Rachmaninov had big hands!

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: The Birds Think It's Spring

*

MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON and I see birds in the morning, flying by with their beaks full of twigs and long grasses.

It's cold today, for southern California. The ice on the windshield is thick, something to marvel at until the driver, my husband, realizes that he can't actually see through it and it isn't melting. He stops at the fire station down the hill and uses their hose.

My son and I watch the nest-building birds from the hot tub where most mornings we spend some time. It's good for the body and the family. We look at the sky, try to identify the clouds. This morning, none, just the radiant post-storm blue. We listen for the birds, the neighborhood dogs and chickens. We watch the steam rise around us. We're a kind of poem, at least for ten minutes.

It's nearly 30 years since Stephen Jama first had me read Gary Snyder's poem, "The Bath" but I have thought of the poem and my former teacher (almost certainly dead by now) nearly every morning when we open the tub and the steam escapes, the cloud of warm vapor into the cool.

In 1979, I was an 18-year-old student at El Camino College, enrolled in Jama's poetry workshop and over my head, to be sure. But I tried. I read "The New American Poetry" edited by Donald Allen. I wrote. I did my paper on Stuart Perkoff's poetry. The girl who sat next to me did her paper on rocker Patti Smith's poetry and wrote poems about her crushes on girls. My poetry was full of ashes, of cigarettes I didn't smoke and cars I didn't know how to drive. I brought sharp cheddar cheese with red wax rind to the end-of-the-semester workshop party and Jama himself asked me where I had bought it. The Italian deli on PCH in Redondo Beach where the highway curves away from the ocean. I rode my bike there. The deli is gone now too.

I have no idea how I got through that class. But part of it must have been that Jama knew what he was teaching was not the end but the beginning. Most of us would go on and be more somewhere else. He was starting us out. We were doing what we could do with what we had. So was he.

I worry that this year's birds are being premature. But there are tight tiny hard buds of new growth pushing through the tangled branches of the large unknown bush beyond the hot tub. When in bloom, the bush's white flowers smell orange. Framed by my study windows, the reddish beginnings of new growth leaf on an unnamed tree. In weeks those leaves will broaden, their flowers will fluff into pink. Spring. Maybe this year I will learn the names.

****

by Gary Snyder:

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Faculty, students want to ban prayer at college events

☹

I HAVEN'T HAD TIME to write up my notes to Monday’s SOCCCD board meeting, but I do have time for one or two quick items.

OBJECTIONS TO RELIGIOUS INVOCATIONS. Bob Cosgrove read a “resolution to ban religious invocations at college events,” passed by the Saddleback College Academic Senate (October 11). It has received the endorsement of the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate, the Faculty Association (i.e., the faculty union), and, I believe, the Associated Students of Saddleback College.

The nub of the problem with prayer, says the resolution, is that individuals have a right “to determine whether, how, when, and whom to worship” and that that right is “violated by the inclusion of a religious invocation in college events.”

As you know, legally, prayers before meetings are not permitted in the K-12 public schools, owing, I believe, to minors' impressionability. Public colleges, however, are a different matter.

The resolution “does not oppose the inclusion of a moment of silence….”

The resolution has been forwarded to the state Academic Senate. I’ve been told that the state senate is disposed to address this matter. If it takes action (probably in the form of yet another resolution), it will likely side with the Saddleback College Academic Senate resolution, more or less.

As I explained Monday night, John Williams suggested that the “invocation” question be put to the voters. Evidently, an “advisory vote” can be placed on the ballot. Williams explained that, in all but 1 of the last 14 years, invocations have been given at the start of meetings. Williams is an ardent non sequiturian. And so, having said that, he asked, “do we reflect the voters?”

The “advisory vote” idea seemed to fall stillborn from Williams' lips.


STADIUMS FOR THE COLLEGES? For some reason, Monday night, some trustees felt it necessary to advocate building new stadiums for the two colleges. While “we have basic aid” dollars, said Bill Jay, we “should pursue this.” John Williams agreed about the stadiums. So did Nancy Padberg. But why did they bring this up last night?

As I recall, in the past, Trustees Tom Fuentes and Don Wagner have expressed skepticism about building new stadiums. Maybe it was just Tom. Could be.

Dream a Little Dream

☞

REGULAR sleep patterns are finally restored and Rebel Girl has begun to dream again. Ahhh.

Dream #1: Get on the Bus!

Last night, Rebel Girl dreamt that the English department's recent proposal for Basic Skills money was funded—but with some changes. The committee decided that our meeting the needs of developmental writing students would be best met by the purchase of a tour bus. —And purchase a tour bus the committee did! It wasn't your ordinary tour bus, no: it was a replica of the Partridge Family bus. Driven by the enthusiastic English prof, K.M.—the bus also sported bunk beds and a full service kitchenette. No need to wait for the students to come to us. We will go to them!

Dream #2: Pancakes!
In this dream, Rebel Girl prepares for a colleague to visit her classroom. The colleague arrives as scheduled but instead of the usual composition classroom activity, Rebel Girl and her students are making pancakes. Rebel Girl cradles a large metal bowl filled with pancake batter and a helpful student is handing out spatulas as her colleague enters. Due to classroom shortages, Rebel Girl teaches this particular section of composition in a science lab (You know, you can teach writing anywhere!) and, that morning, she has decided to take advantage of the Bunsen burners to make pancakes.

The visiting colleague looks on with alarm.

Dream #3: When Androids Dream of Thesis Statements
As chair, Rebel Girl is supposed to visit the classrooms of part-time faculty and evaluate their performance. She doesn't do this nearly enough due to a number of factors including her own schedule and the measly 24 hours that are granted her each day. But, it seems that in her dreams, she has now begun to evaluate part-time faculty, which, even if she says so herself, is a fine use of dreamtime.

In this dream, Rebel Girl visits the classroom of a fairly new hire. The classroom is bright, the instructor energetic and challenging, the students engaged. All is well until mid-way through the session, Rebel Girl notices that the instructor is not a human, but instead a robot—or to be precise, an android. This moment occurs when the instructor bends over to pick up a board marker that has fallen to the floor; her long slit skirt falls open and Rebel Girl glimpses the gleaming hardware that is her leg. Suddenly all the other details she has noticed confirm the instructor's identity: the strangely glittering eyes, the oddly smooth pale skin, the steady, but slow pivots of her head, the synthetic quality of her dark helmet of hair.

Still, the android is a good teacher.

What is Rebel Girl to do? She wonders how she will explain to her colleagues in the department that she has hired a robot. She wonders what the contract has to say about this.

She wakes up.