The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
• Community College Offers Students a Guarantee: a Job or Your Money Back (Chronicle of HE) ... The offer applies to only four programs: pharmacy technician, customer-service call-center workers, certified quality inspectors, and home-technology-integration technicians.... • Bolivia to launch satellite into space (Guardian) ... The impoverished South American country, famed more for llamas and Andean peaks than technology, has created a space agency to build and launch a satellite with Chinese help.... • Stunning arial 9-11 photos (Daily News) ... Good Lord, they're for sale!
Another great band, early 80s:
Another band from roughly the same era--perhaps 4 years earlier: Gang of Four. My favorite song of theirs is “I found that essence rare.”
I couldn’t find a decent YouTube video of that song, but you can listen to it here:
Aim for the body rare, you'll see it on TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the Bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini
She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb
For the H-Bomb!
I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for....
Professor No-It-All Gets Attitudinous! Answering Questions That You Never Actually Asked, Yet Ever So Helpfully!
Today’s lecture: I See Dead People. I See Dumb People (And Hear Them, Too)
Gotta love those otherwise intuitively skeptical, pro-liberation listeners to KPFK (90.7 FM), the non-corporate alternative Pacifica network community radio station which features the BiblioFella on his modest weekly books show. The station is just now fundraising to stay on the air as the singular independent, reality-based community arts and public affairs media outlet in Southern California. Most KPFK supporters seem to at least try, heroically, to stay on that reality-based track, even as status quotidians, mystics, hucksters, New Agers and conspiracy theory types hoe their own row on the rest of the dial and NPR struggles to become a “mainstream” news source, abandoning its original premise of 1970s citizen-owned corrective to the media monopoly.
KPFK plays hours and hours of lectures and talks by — and interviews of — Noam Chomsky, Martin King, Harold Myerson, Arundhati Roy, David Corn, Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich, all practitioners of critical thinking — as against so much of the nonsense offered by the commercial news machine.
Still, as if fated with flying monkeys stuck on their backs, even some KPFK listeners cannot shake the ideological weight of the “spiritual” and the religious, especially in language and metaphor. The credulous — religious believers, “truthers,” miracle health cure disciples, positive thinkers — have little room in their brains or conversation for more than one metaphor, more than one book, their Book or construction or theory. This figurative language-based ideology — often expressed in the assumption of a supernatural — shapes their vernacular and so, their thinking. Unthinking. All can be explained, if only we ignore, well, everything else and embrace some phrase, some rhetorical paradigm, usually exactly the opposite of what we mean.
Time, then, for some intellectual self-defense. (Don't say I never gave you anything!) The tyranny of monotheism and other exclusivist thinking is the easiest controlling metaphor to hear, if only we will listen for it and talk back, interrupt — politely of course. But nobody talks back. Here’s your chance. Next time a religionist or spiritualist tells you he or she admires representative democracy, embracing it while they live here on Earth (about 78 years, average), ask them how we can believe them. Ask them, politely, how we can trust their commitment to representative democracy since they aspire to dwell after death in a place called Eternity (a lot longer!) not as voters or activists in a democracy but as subjects in a monarchy, with a lord and king telling them what to do. Hard to reconcile, no?
Yes, actually. Very hard. Meanwhile, back at KPFK, on Monday afternoon a caller to “Reality Check with Harrison,” a funny news and commentary show, reported that she’d learned Professor Howard Zinn (1922-2010) had died. But, no, she didn’t actually say that. Instead, she offered that he’d “left the planet.” Left the planet? In fact, he’d had a heart attack. It happens, to all of us, and I mourn his death.
Professor No-it-allovich’s favorite anecdotal aside: At a memorial service for his friend the poet Allen Ginsberg, the late Kurt Vonnegut began his remarks with this wonderfully droll and humane caution to his audience: “Please, please, please. Nobody else die!” Funny. (And, no Vonnegut is not so much late himself now as he is dead. See actual photo, above!)
So: Howard Zinn did not leave the planet. He is not visiting faraway galaxies, did not go to heaven, and will not come back as an animal or a spirit or a king. He lived, he struggled, and he was a really smart, empathetic and brave person. And then his body stopped living. I miss him.
Yuri, Alan, Valentina, John, Neil and Buzz “left the planet,” via the Vostok and Mercury and Apollo programs, but they came back. They were cosmonauts and astronauts. Howard Zinn? He was a radical historian. He was not an astronaut, and neither are you, friend. Next week: Herbal Tea Partiers.
Earlier today, a reader offered these observations and memories of Congressman James B. Utt, the man for whom the Saddleback College LIBRARY was named:
I am not aware that Congressman Utt was a bigot.* Most who knew him personally thought he was a soft-spoken, mild-mannered country gentleman. He was not the typical politician who talked out of both sides of his mouth. One always knew where she/he stood with Utt – what you saw is what you got. He was respected by all who came in contact with him, agree with him or not.
True, he, like many other conservatives, felt that membership in the U.N. did not serve the best interests of the U.S.
In February 1970, just a couple of weeks before his death on March 1, Utt attended the three-year anniversary celebration of the founding of the Saddleback [Community College District]. On a long walk around the campus, he and Vogel discussed the future of the district. It was at that time Vogel told Utt that the trustees had decided to name the first permanent structure – the library – in his honor. Upon hearing this he was quite humble and expressed his gratitude. He was, obviously, very pleased.
Upon hearing of his death, the trustees were happy that he had become aware of the honor that they were going to bestow upon him.
Be kind, please. Leave it be. He died 40 years ago, ten days short of his 71st birthday.
*According to the OC Almanac, in 1963, “U.S. Congressman James B. Utt [made] national news by suggesting that ‘a large contingent of barefooted Africans’ might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the U.S.” See also here.
The press release doesn't offer news, really, since Bucher has long supported Wagner. But faculty and classified will find some of Don’s rhetoric pretty interesting:
Mark Bucher Endorses Conservative Wagner
Mark Bucher, one of California’s leading conservative activists, has announced his support of Don Wagner, Republican candidate for the 70th Assembly District and president of the South Orange County Community College Board of Trustees.
"On the Community College Board, Conservative Don Wagner has been a consistent vote for fiscal accountability and educational excellence. He's never been afraid to go toe-to-toe with the public employee unions if those unions weren't putting students and education first."
Bucher has been a vocal critic of the power and influence of labor unions in California, which led him to found the Education Alliance, a group dedicated to assisting school board candidates who are independent of education unions. He has been instrumental in landmark ballot initiatives like Proposition 226, which would have required unions to receive permission to use their members’ dues for political purposes; Propositions 174 and 38 promoting school choice; and Proposition 22, the Defense of Marriage Initiative.
“No one has done more for education reform than Mark Bucher and I am grateful to him for dedicating himself to fighting the unions’ corrosive impact on education in California,” said Wagner. “We have worked together at the South Orange County Community Colleges to minimize the influence of the unions and I plan to continue that fight as a member of the State Assembly. The public employee unions are destroying our state and we need to rein them in.”….
Boy, this is quite a place to spend your professional life.
For instance, over here, we’ve got an elephant-footed, hardball-playing trustee who, when he isn’t taking the lowest of roads (stationing guards at polling places, nixing study-abroad programs to punish critics, etc.), he’s praying to the Lord or calling insufficiently pure Republicans “whores.”
Lovely.
He’s got a team of sorts, including a lawyer. A big fat card on his Rolodex is dedicated to one Phil Greer, attorney to the right-wing OC stars, such as the ethically challenged OC Treasurer, Chriss Street, the junket-loving and incompetent OC Guardian/Administrator, John Williams, all but one of the brainless OC Supes, and—well, Raghu P. Mathur.
I’ve been assured by a reliable source that the SOCCCD recently paid the fellow $25,000. What for? Well, for participating in that heart-warming endeavor called the “Mathur settlement,” aka the Twilight Zonean saga of Mathur playing every desperate card up his sleeve (and one or two cards that he only imagines) while determined former admirers hustle him forcefully out the door, and for good.
But wait! This Phil Greer fella must be a pretty good lawyer, right?
Dunno about that. I’m more interested in his ethics. Now, what manner of ethics do you suppose the fellow has? HINT: he’s Fuentes’ go-to lawyer. He represents Street, Williams, Mathur, and their pals.
That’s right. NONE.
Here’s what the LA Times had to say about him a couple of years ago:
Janet Nguyen was barely losing the February election for county supervisor. When she decided to ask for the recount that would eventually put her ahead, she did what many Orange County Republicans do when they need election law advice. She hired Phillip Greer.
. . . Despite his status as an advisor to Orange County Republicans, the State Bar of California has disciplined Greer twice in the last 11 years and ordered him each time to take ethics courses. His advice to Nguyen that she set up a secret defense fund, which was later ruled illegal, led state election officials to rebuke the supervisor. When Greer returned the donations, which had been sent to one of his accounts, at least one of the checks bounced.
. . .
This month, Nguyen agreed to pay $5,000 in fines to settle investigations into the fundraising scheme. The county supervisor has said she acted on Greer's advice. Nguyen did not return phone calls seeking comment for this article.
. . . [The Times goes into the details; check 'em out.]
According to state bar records, Greer represented a Georgia firm in one lawsuit at the same time he was suing the firm in another case in 2002. The state bar investigation found that Greer's representation of both parties was a "willful violation of Rules of Professional Conduct."
In the earlier disciplinary action, Greer settled a client's personal injury lawsuit for $5,000 in 1990, withholding $1,634 to pay her medical bills. The money should have been kept in Greer's client trust account.
In 1991, the client asked Greer for the remainder of the money because her insurance had paid the bills, records show. Greer did not pay her for three years, and when he did he used a cashier's check instead of one from his client trust account. According to the state bar's findings, his trust account daily balances "consistently fell below $1,634," the amount that should have always been in the account.
Greer blamed his office manager, saying the employee had removed client files, which he discovered after closing his Long Beach office. The state bar said Greer's failure to supervise the office manager prevented him from properly representing the client.
Greer was required to take ethics courses in both cases.
There were also apparent problems in repayment of at least one $5,000 contribution made to Greer's client trust account for Nguyen's defense fund. The refund check was written from Greer's office account to Townsend Public Affairs, a lobbying firm based in Irvine, and marked "Nguyen refund." The check was dated April 15, 2007, but the firm did not receive it until June 7, according to sources familiar with the transaction. It bounced June 12. Eight days later a firm official wrote Greer, asking him to mail another check. It did not arrive until Oct. 18, sources said. This appears to conflict with the finding that Nguyen returned the donations within a month of receiving them.
In an e-mail to The Times, Greer wrote, "I have no idea as to why the April check was not tendered till June, and it is my understanding that they were made good as soon as we were informed there was a problem."….
What a freakin' creep. C’mon. Aren’t you sick and tired of the district being saddled with the likes of Tom Fuentes and his creep brigade—Chriss Street, Mike Carona, Raghu Mathur, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Adam Probolsky, Jack the Ripper, Phil Greer, Arlene Greer, Rosy Greer, and Pam Grier?*
I don’t care how many times the guy prays to the Lord and rolls his eyes to Heaven. He’s a creep. And our district is up to its eye balls in his rotting, sulphurous creepitude, mixed with various exotic other varieties of appalling, epic creepulescence: Mathur-creep, Gensler-creep, Fennel-creep, Sherry-creep, “sorry, Roy, but I’ve got to play the game to protect my program”-creep, “It’s a new era of trust!”-creep, “how-come-you-didn’t-hire-our-favorite-adjunct?”-creep, and all the other f*cking creeps.
Our district will now move forward with a chancellor search. (And, after that, there will be other hires.) Given our district's record with such hires. I'm worried.
I have no doubt that Board President Wagner is a better man than Mr. Fuentes. I’m not even gonna call him a creep. But better-than-Fuentes creepitude is not good enough.
I want some freakin’ decency. At long last!
This aging Eagle Scout is dedicating himself to one thing. I want honest hiring processes. I don’t care who we hire. I’m beyond caring about that. For me, it’s simple. I wanna work at a place where, fundamentally, decency and honesty prevails. That means that there’s no FIX. Not to any degree—and, yes, this admits of degrees, and you know it. They can hire Nixon’s corpse for all I care. They can hire Dr. Laura or Michelle Maulkin. I DON’T CARE, as long as she’s the best hire, straight up.
Yes!
There was a time when more of us than now stood together and said “NO WAY” to hinky hires, including the kind where “good” people get to know each other and depend on each other and, hey, even do good work together—and, so, naturally, they make damned sure that the “right” person ends up with the right job.
Nope.
I don’t give a shit anymore. I don’t care how good the person is. I don’t care how freakin’ wonderful it would be if they got the job. Unless the process is clean, it’s flat wrong and there’s no way we’ll ever get healthy around here with that stuff in the background, like the miasma of rotting pools of bubbling moral rot.
Enough!
*OK, I don't really have anything against these last two "greers."
COMMENTS:
Anonymous said...: Since Chriss Street spells his first name with two S's, it seems natural to me to pronounce Chriss with an emphasis on the "iss," so that it rhymes with "hiss." He is a snake, after all. ~ 8:56 PM, February 10, 2010 Anonymous said...: It's true that their creepy attitude has spread throughout the district -- little matters to folks anymore, even the ones who make the nicey-nice speeches. Sigh. Everyone is just out for their own. ~ 9:35 PM Anonymous said...: No fix! I'm with you Roy but I think we're outnumbered. ~ 9:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Pam Grier is great. (Do you know something we don't know, Roy?) ~ 9:47 PM
B. von Traven said...: See the asterisk? Yeah, she's great. I just wanted to write "Pam Grier." ~ 9:48 PM Anonymous said...: When you're kids, everyone wants you to be good little boy or girl scouts -- then when you grow up they want you to forget all about it and do the expedient thing, to sell out, yourself and others. ~ 9:51 PM
Anonymous said...: I think it will come down to two choices for replacing Raghu. Glenn or Tod. With the current Board hiring policy it seems they could find a drunk bum passed out in front of the "Ronald Reagan Board of Trustees Room" and pick him/her (assuming they have the proper conservative credentials). That's one hiring committee I wouldn't want to be on. It would be a total waste of time. ~ 11:14 PM Anonymous said...: I like it when Roy gets all idealistic. ~ 6:40 AM, February 11, 2010 Anonymous said...: I'm with you. $25000! ~ 8:56 AM
Philosophers Push Campaign Against Limits on Hiring Gay Professors
Calvin College has become the first institution covered by a new rule of the American Philosophical Association of requiring any college that violates any part of the association's anti-bias policy to have job listings with the association flagged. The rule was adopted late last year in response to the concerns of many philosophers about having their association list jobs from institutions that do not hire gay professors. One aim of the policy, proponents said, was to then be able to lobby colleges to change their policies. Some philosophers are now trying to do just that with a petition urging the college to accept gay professors. "One might puzzle over a form of Christianity that is committed to the inequality of people, and in particular of job applicants for positions in philosophy. More disturbing, however, is the stigma Calvin College feels entitled to place upon those who are doubly exposed: as lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgendered in a society that has yet to accept them, and as people seeking jobs during difficult economic times," the petition says….
Campus Disruptions of Israelis' Speeches Criticized
The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday issued a statement denouncing Monday night's disruptions at the University of California at Irvine of a speech by Israel's ambassador and suggested that a pattern was emerging of "undemocratic, bullying, confrontational tactics" to block Israeli views from being heard. At Irvine, students were arrested for repeatedly interrupting the ambassador's talk. Michael Drake, Irvine's chancellor, on Tuesday issued a statement on the disruptions, which he called "intolerable." Drake said: "Freedom of speech is among the most fundamental, and among the most cherished of the bedrock values our nation is built upon. A great university depends on the free exchange of ideas. This is non-negotiable. Those who attempt to suppress the rights of others violate core principles that are the foundation of any learning community. We cannot and do not allow such behavior."….
In response to student complaints that a health-science professor at Fresno City College makes overtly religious and anti-gay statements in his lectures, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the college today demanding that it ensure that all its health-science classes teach unbiased and medically accurate information. The letter also advises the college that it is legally required to prevent the professor from engaging in religious indoctrination in his classes. The college's president, Cynthia E. Azari, told The Fresno Bee that an internal investigagion was under way.
Rebel Girl is still on the lookout for the ideal Valentine's Day poem but until then here is another about teaching, learning, writing, being.
A poem by D. Nurske, from his book The Rules of Paradise.
This first appeared in the August 1990 issue of Poetry.
First Grade Homework
The child’s assignment: “What is a city?” All dusk she sucks her pencil while cars swish by like ghosts, neighbors’ radios forecast rain, high clouds, diminishing winds: at last she writes: “The city is everyone.” Now it’s time for math, borrowing and exchanging, the long discipleship to zero, the stranger, the force that makes us what we study: father and child, writing in separate books, infinite and alone.
