Taken from Apartheid: A Collection of Writings on South African Racism by South Africans ed. Alex La Guma

Sometimes I get to do a job that allows me to read through somewhat uncommon books. Recently, I was checking out the title above, and I encountered the following poem. To borrow words from a previous Emily, this particular entry made me "feel as if the top of my head were taken off." So I wanted to share it with you.

"Scene Near an Ethnic College"

Arthur Nortje

Gull swerves and screams sharp doubt.

The wild grass curves

back from asphalt road. The ten-ton trucks

one spraying stone the other straw

roar on. The towering red-brick buildings

assault my sight with ranks of tall blind windows

split along the glass by spying sunbeams.

Lawns continue the narrative,

scornful in their crewcts, trimmed

by some hangdog hottentot.

You hear repeatedly

the trains that chug away through thickets.

Aircraft in formation, swooping higher

possess the gift of flight, can master peril...

The jets drill distance brittle, the executives

(nordic, incompatible iwth me)

stare sedately from a ninth-floor office.

Under the arches I bow through the shadows;

a shrill bird in the air asks of the sun

o where is the sea now, o where is home?

Cape Town, 1964

Contigency, or how a bad situation for instructors and students became even worse

Way back in 2007, when I first began teaching at the community college level, there was at least a tiny sense of optimism about the future of our institution. The 2008 financial crisis had yet to hit. We were in the center of Silicon Valley, maybe five blocks from where Apple was rapidly working to make the iPhone ubiquitous. My partner worked at Apple, so I could run over to the employees’ gym after classes and hop on the elliptical and listen to Marketplace proclaim yet another record day for the NASDAQ and DOW. Once, I did find myself wondering just how long that could all go on.

I got an answer to that, fairly quickly. 

(I also got an answer to a similar half-serious train of thought, just over a decade later, when I marveled at the fact that we lived in perhaps the only time in human history when population density didn’t equate to horrific spread of disease. How much longer could that particular miracle maintain, I wondered, swapping out the laundry. There were no masks in that load, not yet, but it wouldn’t be long.) 

There are many other things I wonder. Perhaps it’s having a mind overly inclined to narrative that keeps me from a certain level of denial when it comes to considering the future. 

One thing, however, that I know: our education system is held together with duct tape, passion, and hope deferred along with loans. It’s bad at the K-12 level, though at least those institutions are far more inclined to hire full time staff and provide benefits, even if wages are subsistence-level and paid only ten months out of the year. In higher education, however, the system runs on contingent workers, adjuncts. 

Back when I was one, after I’d accrued enough seniority to be largely guaranteed work term after term, if you squinted, you could almost forget that I was second-tier. My students certainly didn’t know if I didn’t tell them. The majority of courses were taught by adjuncts; we held degrees, honors, publication lists, an intense love of teaching, remarkable classroom presence, student praise on evaluations, academic results, and whatever else it was anyone could want. 

But when the system is hell-bent on maximizing output and minimizing costs, when full time, tenured positions only open up upon retirement, despite a population explosion in California over the past fifty years, it’s a numbers game that is likely akin to certain levels of the statewide lottery. 

I left. An opportunity came up, after a couple rounds of hiring processes that didn’t go my way, to live overseas, and I took it. When we came back, I ended up working for an education publisher, snug on a team of other former instructors, salaried, benefited, the works. I missed the gestalt of the classroom; I miss it still. But it was good to be paid. 

I did go back, just once, when my daughter was very young, and the control over my time made that kind of work feasible. And then we moved out of reach of that particular school. It was only in January 2020, that I finally attended a local community college hiring event. I hoped to find a class or two for the summer or fall, just as my daughter started kindergarten.

But community college enrollment tanked with the pandemic. And that may well be all she wrote. I have no doubt that the system will creep along for a bit—duct tape and passion can do a lot, after all—but it’s a dying system all the same, sucking the life off of anyone and everyone who’s within reach. Every once in awhile I check in on the state of things; what I find is usually another article like this one, featuring near-homelessness, or suicide, or bankrupting illness and go fund mes that will only ever cover the interest. 

There is so much to be had. There are so many people ready and willing to build something new. Education in community is invaluable to any sort of sustainable future. If any gods or governments or billionaires are out there listening, this is a problem you could fix, tomorrow, with such a small portion of your budget. Give people a professional home, and watch the world they create. 

I am not a cynic. But I’m also not one to hang out in denial when it doesn't help me get things done. And my optimism in this particular corner of the world is completely rooted in what might come next, out of the ashes. 

I’m dreaming from the sidelines, no skin directly in the game any longer. But I’m dreaming of a world where people simply walk away, let it all crumble, and figure out a new way.

Work in Progress: Required Materials

(Not actually my WIP, but thematically appropriate.)

Here's to works in progress! In the near-term, the literary-mystery with the working title Required Materials will be serialized via a weekly newsletter. Fan of campus novels, the strangeness of Silicon Valley, or whodunnits? There may well be something here for you. 

Katie is a thirty-year-old adjunct professor, chronically underpaid, and now half a beat from homeless after running out on her long-term computer engineer partner. She washes up in a crumbling Silicon Valley apartment she can’t afford with a full course load to teach at her community college, a cranky orange cat, and an impending interview for a tenure-track position. Without that position, she’s as good as bankrupt and on a greyhound back east. But it’s handled, or so her mentor Maggie says. Maggie has been in the English Department for decades, and she knows how to pull hidden strings. 

But then Maggie turns up dead in a parking garage, and before Katie can get too enveloped in grief, another body hits the ground—this time, the diversity representative on the hiring committee. Someone is targeting professors, and suddenly, chasing the once-in-a-lifetime tenure-track position means risking more than her rent, her career, and her ability to buy cat food. She may be lucky to get out of the interview alive.

Weaving through a tech-driven landscape of barely-functional scarcity and obscene plenty, “Required Materials” follows Katie’s quest to net a steady gig, a reasonable place to live, and whoever took out her mentor. Not necessarily in that order.

An Exercise While Reading the News

Half full. The glass

Globes dangle uselessly—

High and dry. The switch is submerged.

The careful negotiations

Between quality and cost, between

The trappings of your childhood

And his, between pantone swatches and

That rarely-sounded piano, such a difficult

Stain of wood to match—

Engulfed. Overwhelmed.

Relentless water laps up the lists,

The receipts, the returns, the written

Proof, leaves a skim of oil and silt and

Spores spreading fingers up

All the walls.

The glass globes swing

In the half full room. 

Where, You Might Wonder, Have I Been?

And just like that, we're over halfway through 2017. I've been a less-than-diligent blogger in the past, but it's probably safe to say that I've never managed to go an entire eight months with not a word. Honest truth, though? I've been busy, and there have been a lot of words. Just not here. The date of the post previous to this is telling: 11/16/16. 

November has become the cruelest month, at least for the time being, though it's fair to say January was a close second. And so I began a completely-unplanned foray into educational resistance blogging.

You can find this new project here: smallstones.org. 

We began curating educational resources for educators in light of the election and national climate, emphasis on anti-racism, community engagement, and student empowerment. Over the summer, we began our newest project, taking oral histories from educators of all stripes about life since the election. 

Come over and check it out if you have a moment. I have projects in the works that will return to this space, or similar (as I get to know wordpress better, I come to like it more than what I've been using), and I hope to have those launched towards the end of the calendar year. In the meantime, I'll be busy with my co-founder Eva, working to curate, narrate, and educate. We'd love to have you join us.