October 2004 Archives

Micheal shares this wisdom from a friend:

"In the previous 17 Presidential election cycles, if the Washington Reskins won their game the weekend before the election, the incumbent party won on Tuesday. If they lost, the incumbents lost. The Skins looked pretty awful on offense today, as they have all season, but suddenly went ahead with only about 2 minutes left. Except that they didn't; the refs called the play back with an extremely questionable penalty call and the Green Bay Packers pulled it out."

Where I want to be next Halloween, the first conference for the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters!

So, I gotta catch up with this dude to have him sign my POS (graduate plan of study; the one I was "supposed" to fill out about 2 years ago, grin).

Meanwhile, I've been hearing the "usual stories" about his teaching style. I got a bit passionate about it last night, cuz Briankle has been a bit of a puzzle to me all along (of course, he cultivates that, actively!) My current hypothesis is that he's living his theory. Maybe it's just my projection, but here's how it might work:

I dunno. I'm just wondering. Can one "hail" oneself? Can I call forth the valences in "me" that I choose, rather than those that are called forth from others? Of course, I'm pondering the whole parent- and partnerhood thang. The more distance I have (and I don't think I'm talking about the aesthetic kind!), the more able I become to disengage from the less appealing valences and personalized history that has fed them and perceive "where things went wrong" and hypothesize about why/how. And....this makes me a bit more capable of recognizing when those same valences are being triggered (silence just flips me out; it can be so aggressive and diminishing) and - while being pulled into "old" (repetitive, familiar) emotional patterns - I can imagine that maybe this silence isn't a disciplinary silence (one designed to let me know that I have transgressed some communicative/relational code) but a "silence" of another kind, for instance, of gathering one's own resources, of "dealing", of coming to terms with one's own subjective tendencies and "choices". Then again (see here comes the drift!), maybe it's just an opportunity to solidify the suppression of any residue of affection...no no no, here is the moment....I call to the better parts of my own nature and banish suspicion.

Today's google search:

A media and communication research textbook using a more generalized application of the term. James and my sense is restricted to linguistic/discursive communication. Most of our examples have been face-to-face, although I've got at least one from online CMC (computer-mediated communication).

An historical example? William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, reviewed by Phillip Gould, who notes how Bradford situates tensions in the historical denoument (?) of Puritanism as "problematic moments in interpreting providence". This might qualify as an historical example, however I don't know if he provides specifically situated instances of actual dialogic interaction.

Maya Gotz counterposes "problematic moments" with "positive" ones in children's media programming. This is definitely counter to our conception, where there is both "positive" and "negative" potential in a PM....positive implying recognition of the presence of two or more discourses and an attempt to deal with them, negative implying dialogic repression and the repeat of historical patterns.

Bonded w Fernando over chicken. He yanked me around a few times - I think I figured 'em all out by the end� Of course, he HAD to say something about me being serious all the time (!?) and PESSIMISTIC! Can you believe he called me pessimistic? The scoundrel. I said, Everytime "Everytime you try to do something new, you make a mistake." (Maybe that's just me?) :-) But I do Keep Trying. Doesn't that make me ultimately optimistic?

This could be interesting:

"here in seattle, we've organized a pretty interesting series of events that
will take place across the university of washington campus on the day before
the election (http://www.thedaybefore.org). what is interesting, to me at
least, is the diversity of supporters and the number of supporters (80 and
growing!). the idea is simple: there are 55,000 students, staff, and
faculty at UW and we think they should all vote. we expect some public
spectacles, so be sure to tune in on our web cam"

From David Silver of the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

This one really bothered me. Maybe cuz of Lisa's class and a resultant heightened awareness. First, there was forcing all the Hispanics in Atlanta to prove - for the second time - that they were U.S. citizens and therefore eligble to vote. Now comes this:

It occurs to me that I have never, ever, really paid attention to gender dynamics very much. Seems like such a het thing. I know I've been paid less than men for some work (asst. mgr. Taco Bell), but the same for other work (cable tv, interpreting, teaching)....and the discrimination that has affected me directly has always been a variant of homophobia. Anyway, I think I'm starting to see more of it around me, and wondering about what my historically subjective disengagement "means" in terms of contributions to its continuation...

I'll present on this for Max's class Monday. It pushes me to get some more serious prep in mind for this spring's small group communication class. James and Vangie have their site up now, for Chaos Management. It might be one of the best resources for group relations type info on the web. I'll check out the AKRice Institute too...undoubtedly, these are the two most significant influences upon me in this area.

Flora was in high spirits performing on her cello while Pine played the accordion and Prem bounced from one stringed instrument to another, with occasional drumming and dance lessons. My favorite was Pine's Beltana piece ~ even if it was out of season. :-)

Speaking of dancing, that "waltz" that Sarbjeet and I did was undoubtedly the highlight of the evening. Probably I "led" and Sarbjeet concentrated very hard to avoid stepping on my toes - we had our closest call when we reversed the direction of our tightly-contained spiral and Sarbjeet had to figure out to go backwards......believe it or not, he - we! - pulled it off! :-)

Sreela accused ME of not returning the Star Wars dvd....how did she know that is one of my favorite flicks? The one I saw more times than any other, ever, in the theatre (six times). However, it WASN'T me that didn't return the dvd and I hope the real culprit will confess and clear my name....

I've been getting clearer about some of the academic impulses (indoctrination?) that I've been resisting. This, from Paul Claudel on Bourdieu's principle of aesthetic distance, sums it up:

"This typically intellectualist theory of artistic perception directly contradicts the experience of the art-lovers closest to the legitimate definition; acquisition of legitimate culture by insensible familiarization within the family circle tends to favour an enchanted experience of culture which implies forgetting the acquisition. The 'eye' is a product of history reproduced by education."

This is my required question for Lisa's course on Class Cultures.
Where my head is with all of the above is the convergence among curriculum in all my classes and in my head around the mediated construction of subjectivity.

My question is influenced by the lecture given by historian Dipesh Chakrabartty at Mt. Holyoke on Thursday, 10/28. He talked about two impulses informing historical work that parallel our discussions about embodiment. One impulse is disembodied and leans toward rational, objectivizing distance - essentially (it seems to me) a variant of Bourdieu's principle of aesthetic distance. The other impulse is embodied - the desire to "inhabit" the past one is exploring, to engage the senses. His argument was that historians need to be more self-reflexive about protecting some of the necessary distance in order to employ a degree of rationality while being responsive to the embodied forms of mass media and certain forms of democracy that have produce different, non-Habermasian publics.

Stephen said something provocative last night about a realization he and Leda had come to about some tensions between their respective trainings....I've come to question most of what I learned in my formal social justice education training (I think it tended to paradoxically play into the reification of isms rather than their dissolution), yet I'm wary of more deeply-embedded biases that seem, from the non-domestic point-of-view, to characterize U.S. perceptions of how to solve/resolve questions of difference. For instance, Aihwa Ong, in the introduction to Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, argues that

Benjamin sucked me right into that trick question at his presentation today! Of course I *assumed* that if he was showing us a certain example it had to mean something. :-)

A couple of the new cohorters got right in there - but what was up with all y'all marching in late and disrupting the whole show, eh?! And did anyone besides me notice the faculty member dozing off and on throughout?

David sends this; its good with sound. :-)

Did you know:

"Dragons have been portrayed as "evil" the world over, but the Chinese see them as representing prowess, nobility and fortune."

Sarbjeet sent this article about lion and dragon dances to all of us in the class on transnationlism. Some people know I've always been partial to dragons. :-)

Hey, this site by an author of book I"m interested in looks cool ~ Action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly with participatory action research.

This article in The Nation, by William Greider, looks provocative. It takes on the "values" of capitalistic endeavor (or the lack thereof) and provides examples of people/firms doing it differently. It's grounded in labor politics in the US, so not suitable for my current project, but I wonder if one of the places I'll "end up" is being about to say something about "macro-values" (?) and real-life effects....

~ Mike, from the English Dept (Rhet/Comp) shared this with me awhile back but I hadn't followed up until now.

Class is gonna go to a lecture by him this Thursday - yeah! Field Trip! :-)

I'm checking out his recent book, wonder if it will be useful in my lit review...

Hmmm. Probably not this time around, since it is focused on India, and I'm constrained to do this project within the EU. I *am* thinking, though, that one of my sites could be Turkey, since they are in queue for membership. The difficulty I may run into though, i snot knowing enough about other examples and analyses to a) know what to look for, and b) know what lenses to apply.

All I can say is I hope Bryan is wrong! Here's his prediction:

"... friends, you heard it here first. If you thought 2000 was divisive, you ain't seen nothin' yet.... I think when all is said and done we're going to have a tie of 269-269. I know that a while back I mentioned that several analysts had noted the possibility of a tie scenario (everything from 2000 stays the same with the exception of WV and NH). This is actually quite a bit different than that....

This was a bad movie about really fascinating stuff! Too evangelistic for my taste, but a useful compendium of cutting edge theory in quantum mechanics, human biology and chemistry, and consciousness studies. I was fascinated by the whole neural net/nerve connection scenario in the brain - where repeated emotional experiences sortof install routine pathways that lead to a kind of "addiction" in which experiences that will stimulate those same pathways are sought....over time the biochemical pathways for other emotional experiences are impaired and eventually cut off. Its reparable - one can shift one's neural nets - but requires concentration, deliberation, time, and repetition.

Well, I have other work I really need to be doing but I can't concentrate until I process this, so here I go.

Of the five classes I'm involved with, I "acted out" (for lack of a better term) in three (actually, four, w ith only a mild stretch) of them this past week. Here's the "data":

Despite a few crude metaphors (!) and a gruesome story or two, I had a wonderfully relaxing evening with friends and great comfort food. The setting and company was so mellow and comfy I turned into a bit of a sleep-deprived chatterbox, just on the verge of being downright goofy. I needed that! Conversation was varied, unpressured, spontaneous....lots of laughter. I even got a warm fuzzy hearing about and watching the enactment of a happy relationship. It is possible! I've had a few sturdy pals throughout the ordeal of the last half-year but there was a quality of .... warmth?... that nurtured my soul.

Ummm hmmm! We did end up on the topic of pain....physical, mostly. I think it must have been triggered by the cramp I got in my hamstring. First one ever - am I getting older or what?! Note to self: do not neglect to do post-lifting stretches!

Besdies two entrees, there were three (count 'em, 1, 2 3!) desserts! Of course, I'm not going to divulge any details about the whipped cream...

I have not been having fun. I feel the need to say this right off the bat because I am distressed that others have felt pain due to my actions. I am also worried that my blogging will add insult to injury, and I'm not sure there is anything I can do to prevent or soften that...I hope that you will all respect that I am just trying to hold myself accountable to my own intellectual project. It is not easy.

I am going to write as vaguely as possible so as to protect anonymity, while trying to preserve the details that are salient to me. "Salience" is a judgment I'm making based on the subjective fact that I keep thinking about them.

I'm working on an intrapersonal hypothesis (more on that later, just don't want to forget).

I saw one of my former COM250 students on Wednesday, Liz. She's doing well, asked how I was and how this semester's class is going. :-) It is So Much Better because of the feedback her class gave me! I'd also seen one of those students a couple times early in the semester, Gina. Who was also doing well then, and I assume since. (I hope!) Liz suggested that maybe one of the reasons last semester didn't go as well as I'd hoped was "because of everything [I] had going on." There is no doubt in my mind that there is a correlation - all aspects of our lives interact to some extent with the other aspects - if only in the way we generate and maintain boundaries between them.

I'm thinking about the chaos of democracy....and how Stephen continually critiques the Left for "giving credit" to "the other side", of being willing to look at their own faults as perhaps part & parcel of any dynamic, even of keeping things complicated.

I noticed a pattern in one of my classes that I thought I recognized from my first AKRICE conference when I completely unwittingly and innocently played into an institutional pattern of racism. It SUCKED! Partly because it just sucks to find yourself someplace where a) you don't want to be and b) goes against your ethics. It also sucked because I had been so convinced I was "doing what I was supposed to do." It was an embarrassing and humbling experience.

This is hilarious! Thanks Becky!

Florida election ballot.

Jon Stewart's excoriation of Crossfire hosts and the whole genre of so-called political talk shows continues to generate interest. I guess I might have to start watching him! (I confess, bad comm major that I am, that the first time I saw him was when Stephen was here for the last presidential debate.)

The Red Sox trump class....this IS democracy! Now, where will the action be watching the game tonight? I have to say, I'm not sure its a night I want to be out in public.

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) is a medium sized bat. Their bodies are about 9 centimeters in length, and they weigh about 15 grams. Their ears are wide and set apart to help them find prey with echolocation. The fur color varies from dark brown to gray.

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat is widely regarded as one of the most abundant mammals in North America, and is not on any Federal lists. However, its proclivity towards roosting in large numbers in relatively few roosts makes it especially vulnerable to human disturbance and habitat destruction. Documented declines at some roosts are cause for concern. It is considered a Species of Special Concern due to declining populations and limited distribution in Utah.

Mexican free-tailed bats live in caves in the western and southern United States, Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, central Chile and Argentina. Their colonies are the largest congregations of mammals Ýin the world. The largest colony is found at Bracken Cave, north of San Antonio, Texas, with nearly 20 million bats.

When the baby bats are born, their mothers leave them behind in the cave while they go out to hunt insects. She remembers where she left her "pup" by recognizing its unique "cry" and smell.

The species is very important for the control of pest-insect populations. But its populations are in an alarming decline because of the pesticides.

Bats
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
: Mammalia
: Chiroptera
Families
Pteropodidae
Emballonuridae
Rhinopomatidae

Sam and I went for a long, quiet ride today, taking in the beauty of Vermont in the fall. We chomped on Kentucky Fried Chicken and sucked down Dunkin' Donuts Hazelnut coffee along the way. :-)

It was a slightly rainy day, but somehow the overcast sky created a gorgeous backdrop for the fall colors. There have been some amazingly flourescent oranges, bright yellows, sharp reds....and there is still a lot of green, not only the evergreens but the grasses in the fields are still quite lush.

It was a contemplative ride over to Keene, up to Walpole, over to Bellows Falls and down Route 5, with a detour along the Middle Road and East-West Road to track Route 9 (?) back into town along the West River. We really didn't speak much; it would have interfered with the mood. :-)

Sam asked about my family, as he always does, and also expressed concern about Manjeca. She's been ill and Sam hasn't heard from her in a while: does anyone have an update?

Nancy was really helpful at the front desk at Eden Park, where I have to sign a book whenever I take Sam out. She ran off to get a belt for us after we discovered that there was No Way we were going to get him into the car without one. He thought we could pull it off. What was he thinking? The dude is a foot taller than me and I won't guestimate how much he weights. Grin. But the mild leverage on the back just didn't cut it. That belt though.....whipped that dude up out of that wheelchair!

Will see him next week and update him on goings-on in here. It's been pretty quiet lately - hope you all will post comments and let him know what's going on with you.

This story from the BBC has the most currently known info about what happened when US authorities took Rackspace's harddrives for no known reason (except, as Derek McMillan points out) perhaps to shut down a vocal critic of the Bush administration).

~ from AirL listserv

arrives in every moment.

Jon Stewart takes on the hosts of Crossfire....charging "news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity."

Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America

~ thanks Sreela! via Leda. :-)

A new study demonstrates changes in brain anatomy when a second language is learned.

~ From David Krueger of DeafVermont listserv.

The Times endorsement of Kerry includes a withering critique of Bush. Finally!

A rather haunting film about the trip that transformed Che Guevera into an activist for social justice.

Besides the guy doing finger dancing in front of Ingrid and otherwise blocking her view, I think we all enjoyed it. Sarbjeet won points for suggesting it to us (circa Jose, thanks), and Catalin commented on it being so well made, with layers of fantasy laid throughout - a voyage, coming of age, physical challenges to be overcome...

Cata and Sarbjeet are due for a playoff game of Backgammon as they respectively smoked me and Ingrid in first round matches.

Some of the reasons I love my job:

Vermont State Poet Grace Paley kissed me on the check tonight after I interpreted her poem (and was introduced as Stephanie Van Kent, has a nice ring to it, don'tcha think?!) :-) She did two of the most common things that non-deaf people do when they meet Deaf folk - show off the sign language they know and comment on learning the language. But I must say that she added quite a unique twist to both of these - such that she bridged the crosscultural distance and made interpersonal contact with the Deaf members of her audience in a heartbeat.

What I will say, is that her "sign language" wasn't exactly ASL, and her reason for thinking she ought to learn it wasn't uttered in the Queen's English. She's a hoot!

Another classic Bush moment, rumors on the Internets".

~ from Alireza Doostdar on the AirL listserv.

Heard a story on NPR's All Things Considered two days ago about the speed of sound and the speed of light, which concludes that the human brain processes sound a teensy tiny bit quicker than it processes vision. I think this is evidence in support of my recent "revelation" :-) that Deaf people experience the passage of time differently than non-deaf people.

Extended coverage on Protein Key to Human Hearing. I might have to get the transcript.

Today's NYTimes editorial, Dangerous Territory, hasn't yet made the list of "most requested articles in the last 24 hours", which I find disturbing and counter to the editorial's optimistic conclusion:

"If the company is thinking about seriously changing course, it should do it quickly. Sinclair is in dangerous territory. If television companies force their local stations to campaign blatantly, it will not be long before the administrations that have the power to grant licenses begin expecting such favors as a quid pro quo. And the public will question whether it can afford to allow such concentrations of power in the hands of huge media corporations."

"The public" appears willing to overlook such concentration and misuse of power, and - given recent events with the FCC and FBI, the US government already feels entitled to grant and deny licenses wherever it sees fit.

David says, "This is absolutely frightening. There is a mounting global protest."

from http://indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml

Thursday morning, US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace
ordering them to hand over Indymedia web servers to the requesting agency.
Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at
its London facility, complied and turned over the requested servers, effectively
removing those sites from the internet.

Saw Sam for only about 10 minutes yesterday evening. He was engrossed in a tv show and I was antsy with all the things I needed to be doing, but we set up a date to go driving next Tuesday. He's already been out at least once, Bill McKim took him for a drive towards Marlboro, which Sam enjoyed very much. He was also thrilled with Phil, Lorraine, and Molly's visit. :-)

He told me he'd taken a trip to the ER recently but I couldn't get the details out of him; will on Tuesday. He's excited Jennifer is coming for Thanksgiving.

"As a communication scholar and teacher, I find the action the Sinclair Broadcast Group proposes particularly troublesome.Ý Please be aware of this practice, and learn (below) about what some counter-groups are doing in opposition.

email from Rebecca Townsend, Ph.D.

I think so. The earliest poll I saw last night (CNN?) gave the third debate 52% to 30-some% to Kerry. Stephen was maniacally flipping channels between the ball game, The Daily Show, and post-convention coverage so I don't know what we were watching when. :-) The NYTimes this morning is playing it safe...balanced....although the most frequently emailed article so far is the OpEd piece Addicted to 9/11 by Thomas L. Friedman, which favors Kerry's desire to context the war on terror as a passing historical event rather than Bush's promotion of it as an irrevocable society-changing event.

This bit about the Sinclair forced broadcast of "Stolen Honor" (the Swift Boat Vets against Kerry) seems highly problematic though, in terms of people's swayability.....not to mention voter fraud breaking out ... I've neglected those links and in a rush now, but the media and technology are both being massively mobilized, eh? and in ever more sophisticated and coordinated ways.

It's gotten a lot more difficult to post in this thread because now I know there actually are people reading along. Maybe you skip over these? Argh. It does feel important to maintain the vision I had when I started this whole thing....first, can I just complain about whoever it was that didn't remind me of the carrots in my backpack, which liquified and smeared the inputs on my brand new laptop? Which, consequently, wouldn't even turn on this morning. :-(

Here's a report from the Annenberg School on 10 Major Trends Emerging in the Internet?s First Decade of Public Use.

"I'm so tired of American parties where everyone comes for dinner, has a few polite drinks, and goes home by 11." I know the author of this statement was one of the two remaining guests when I left Raz and Catalin's party at 3 am this past Saturday night. Too bad Leda wasn't there, then maybe I wouldn't have been the last American...!

Most of the dancing had concluded by the time I arrived after my interpreting gig, and within a half-hour the guests started to leave. (Hmmmm.......!)

I did get several dances in, though, including lessons in....what were those dances again? The Punjabi music was pretty much fun, as was the interethnic (?) squabbling. ;-) I was also severely challenged for not knowing who Dave Chapelle is: "What's wrong with you white people?"

"I don't know, bitch!" (A word Chapelle has - apparently - made famous (?) by imitation. Who actually says it? Does it matter? I don't know who he is either!)

Uh oh. Now there are expectations (fears? hopes? HA! Don't I wish!) that I might blog about folk at any moment. :-) Sut's jam for MoveOn.org at the Media Education Foundation was cool. The Vote for Change finale concert was a blast, although the crowd was too mellow for my tastes. I thought there was potential for rowdiness when folks applauded the first few songs, but that was as much energy as we could collectively muster - no dancing. Wah!

Some good lines:

James Taylor was asked what he tells undecided voters. "Look at the two candidates very carefully, check 'em out. Then vote for the smart one."

He also had one about that saying, "don't switch horses in midstream". "But if your horse doesn't know how to swim and you're in over your head....and you didn't want to cross the stream in the first place....!"

The Dixie Chicks had a good one too - I dunno the lead singer's name, but she said we needed to "get rid of mad cowboy disease."

Some COM folk wandered in, around, and out. Some got pelted with grapes, others were not so fortunate. The flicks were both good, so I heard. I opted for music and inspiration tonight.

I can hardly wait to check out Bruce Springsteen at Sut's tonight....this house party idea is rocking!

I think the Times is now pitching for Kerry. They offer quite a critique on the Bush campaign's miscalculations in the first debate, comparing it with Nixon-Kennedy.

And then there's the long feature in the Sunday magazine, Kerry's Undeclared War:

"Kerry, a former prosecutor, was suggesting that the war, if one could call it that, was, if not winnable, then at least controllable. If mobsters could be chased into the back rooms of seedy clubs, then so, too, could terrorists be sent scurrying for their lives into remote caves where they wouldn't harm us. Bush had continually cast himself as the optimist in the race, asserting that he alone saw the liberating potential of American might, and yet his dark vision of unending war suddenly seemed far less hopeful than Kerry's notion that all of this horror -- planes flying into buildings, anxiety about suicide bombers and chemicals in the subway -- could somehow be made to recede until it was barely in our thoughts."

"Briankle will be sad." So said one of my colleagues at a party last night. Donna got the news out via email...

Here is a brief announcement.

Hmm, here's another one. They characterize deconstruction quite differently!

This slightly longer piece from The Guardian is better.

This from the mouth of Sam:

Hi,

I just signed a petition demanding to know how George Bush plans to avoid drafting a generation of young people to fight in Iraq.

George Bush is already drafting some people -- he is forcing soldiers to stay active beyond their commitments and ripping apart families by sending unprecedented numbers of National Guard and Reserves to occupy a foreign country.

He has been misleading us on Iraq from the beginning -- about nuclear weapons, about the cost, and about the progress being made. George Bush has some explaining to do about how he will fix the mess he's made without asking this generation to make the sacrifice he dodged.
Join me and demand some answers:

Thanks!

We actually had a very focused and serious discussion in DRP last week, reminiscent of a class with Briankle. ;-) However, Joanna was plagued by a fly for most of the session, Donna brough donuts - we agreed to save the only plain one for Bryan - who Stephen surmised did not have a crisis at work but either a) simply didn't want to miss Game 2 (Congrats, by the way, for winning the playoffs!) of b) was afraid of radical feminism. Stephen complained about having to work with "any moron who walks through the door" and Scott played spin-the-bottle to identify the moron in the class. Later, Scott was pegged as "a fertile void." Leda (in all seriousness) confided "the question of [her] life": how one can reconcile the interaction aspect of communication (in making meaning, enacting democracy) with attempts at creativity ~ because when one is creative people often react as if you're a freak. Or, I'd modify, have the plague. Makes me wonder about forms of xenophobia...

Bush's personability definitely came out tonight, he got a handful of laughs. Kerry didn't smile once while giving responses, did he? :-( and his Red Sox joke fell flat.

The CNN commentators seem rather evenly divided in support of Kerry and Bush; I note it as a difference from before, when Stephen argued that the media wouldn't let Kerry win. Perhaps its "just" rhetoric (!), but the conviction is not mediated by doubt (as it was last time).

I was really disturbed by the frequent use of the word, "kill." It's presence at all is a concern, but to be deployed so deliberately....an ideology of violence? It's hard to see a better future under these premises.

Split-screen effects from the first debate....

Split Decision discusses spatial and perceptual effects of attending to multiple features of interaction.

Stephen suggested that the debate rules for the vice-preseidential slugfest required seated performances because Cheney on his feet would have looked even more stolid and inanimate compared to a freely moving, uncontained Edwards. (My paraphrase.)

Class (as in our group of students and professor, smile) seemed more energetic last night than prevously. We've had good discussions all along, but last nght we got into some moments of...debate...(?)...I'm not sure how to characterize it. Lisa pushed me pretty hard, I guess she thinks I can take it. ;-) Lynn too cautioned about conflation - generalizing statements about one (socioeconomic) class to others. It's definitely an area I need to work on - articulating (verbally) my intuitions about how things "go together" (articulate, smile) in a more precise manner. Lisa thought I was getting too abstract at one point; in my mind, I was trying to pinpoint how an embodied subject (me, or you, grin) might notice - capture? - themselves in a moment of acting out a particular class subjectivity, perpetuating the on-going formation of class in terms of the status quo.

Cheney the Grim vs Edwards the Snide (so Matt pegged Edwards on the split screen reactions).

OUCH! That's my first reaction. If that wasn't hatred and vitriole from Cheney and disdain from Edwards......plenty of substance too, eh?

These poll results show significant gains for Kerry, some steady-state, and some drops fro Mr. Bush. It concludes that it's "too early to tell" whether Kerry's victory in the first debate is a "turning point" or not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/opinion/05tue2.html?oref=login&th

Apparently several members of the Studente Government at UMass thought it would be amusing to fool around with KKK symbology at a party. Someone took photographs. There's a rally tomorrow at noon; I'll be on my way to a job so can't go. Trying to think about how to incorporate something about it into my class.....it crosses a line that one would think folks would understand is inappropriate to developing relationships (assuming there is a desire to make such connections to begin with). How can I integrate it into a lesson on interpersonal communication?

This piece by Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism, is amazing. My mind was spinning with thoughts about Critical Link 4 and Mette Rudvin's presentation and paper (that I referenced in my submission to the Proceedings). (Many links cite him; here's one of interest.)

He says professionalization is the penultimate triumph of the "Mid-Victorians" exerting control over personal and social life, by circumscribing specific areas of knowledge which bestowed the knowers with a kind of magical power in a vertically-oriented society, always looking up for self-advancement. "The autonomy of a professional person derived from a claim upon powers existing beyond the reach or understanding of ordinary humans" (p. 93-94).

~ from ros to the air-l listserv:

"PoliticsMatters is a collective blog launching October 5th on PoliticaOnline.it

The approaching US elections seem to promise a new push for political
attention and participation as an affirmative answer to a polarized
ideological battle. Not only because of its worldwide effects and high
stakes, but also due to a resurgence of grassroots activism using new
collaborative technologies."

The cab driver who took me to the airport yesterday, Mr. Hailey, has driven a cab in DC for 46 years! What stories he could tell, eh? I asked him what had changed the most, and he said concerns for his own safety. That's sad, eh? He used to go to all places in the city, even those with a reputation for being dangerous. Now, he steers clear of them, concentrating on the airports because the folks flying in/out are usually (95% of the time, in his estimation) engaged in some kind of business, trying to get to a meeting or get home from one.

~ from Camille's email in response to Stephen's challenge:

"Can't a differend be how
the central dems try and erase the differences between progressive dems and/or
greens from dems. What do people think about the tactic by dems to keep Nader
off the ballot (and I want to mention that many greens support that as well.)
((I understand that these aren't the differends that she is talking about but
my argument would be that in addition to the racialized and sexualized body, I
would argue for a green differend.))

Also as a structural reform for democracy I believe we need a third party. I of
course believe it should be a green party since many peace, green & anti-
capitalist voices aren't represented with the current dems and repubs.
Bryan are you and if so why are you against a third party and/or what about
representation by third party candidates?"

Stephen, again (!): "Many good questions were raised--I am thinking in particular of Shannon's "How do we valorize the political?" and Camille's on social change--that we should, as intellectuals, engage."

Stephen says", I am sorry to see it come to an abrupt end, particularly given the way many commentators seem to imply that Bryan doesn't "belong" in the category of the political right. There is much ground to explore here."

Per Stephen:

"Raz contributed recently with a blog from one of his students that, among other things, raises interesting questions about democratic ways of communicating. I.e., is it merely raising one's voice/ opinion or might we also have to consider audience? The student challenges all of us how to respond to a case study, and one where many of our instincts would be to dismiss him."

I needed to escape the CIT conference for awhile and recharge my soul. I went to the new American Indian Museum, which includes/covers all the Nations of South, Central, and North America. On my way there, I was sitting outside waiting for the subway, and a freight train rumbled by on the other side of the tracks. I guess because I was anticipating where I was going, I was attentive to the sensation of the train. Before I heard it's arrival, I had been listening to the birds and the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. Then a disturbance in the air, which grew louder and Louder and LOUDER until the earth started to vibrate. The train wasn't even in view yet! It came around a curve and the roar was, while not deafening, louder than anything natural except perhaps an avalanche or a tornado. It lingered too...fading slowly, as if its passing had left an indelible mark in the atmosphere. I could imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like for those first trains to careen across the continent, rending the rhythm of the world.

"Teaching people how to create is the antidote to oppression."

After I eavesdropped on a long conversation about knitting (!) I gave my card to these folk because I knew I was going to blog about them. :-)

I bailed on the conference this afternoon; went into DC to spend some time at the new National Museum of the American Indian. I got on the Metro going the wrong way (!) and two amazing things happened.

First, I met a "road engineer" (if I remember his title correctly), who I'd name but....don't wanna get him in trouble (if there's any chance of that). It's a pretty high-up job in the hierarchy of train engineers, he troubleshoots on the tracks themselves. We're sitting there on the bench, and start chatting.

Carolyn Ball ends her tenure as CIT President, replaced by Annette Miner at the business meeting this afternoon. I don't know either one of them so I can't say much, except that when Carolyn flexed her muscles during the Opening on Wednesday night...well, I stayed out of her way. ;-)

Marian Yoder won the Mary Stotler Award, and the audience was disappointed she wasn't here to receive the honor in person. :-(

Was quite an entertaining group at the Closing Banquet tonight. Let me just say, on my way down in the elevator, I met Carol Patrie (dressed to the nine's), without her nametag because "that would spoil the look." So said Sharon Neumann-Solow, who apparently wasn't the one who told me my workshop at RID last year had got everyone's "knickers in a twist" - but she was ready to take credit for it! (I'll remember who it was, one of these days.)

Table 17 had some symmetry going on from the get-go.

Folks, this is such an awesome technology! Kellie, you deserve a medal for getting this all set up. I hope people get jazzed about it, because its potential to promote professional development and enhance the field is incredible. :-)

Of course, I had to go to the practice session to figure out how the heck to Get In! The main trick is to Login (Member's Login, 2nd link left-hand side), which takes you through the membership database. Select "Bulletin Board" and then register (yes, again). After one registers for the Bulletin Board, then you can login (yes, again!)

I attended part of Robyn's workshop on observation supervision, and can see immediately why so many people have told me to check out her work. There are definitely many overlaps. :-)

Demands are, simply, those tasks required of the job itself. Controls are the decisions one takes/makes to manage the delivery of these tasks.

Controls sound a lot like regulation in the Vygotskian sense (see previous post). Robyn described them as "decisions, actions, and attitudes - even recognizing a demand is a control" (not necessarily an exact quote, smile). There seems to be an implication that these controls are conscious? Since I don't know the whole theory, I may be speculating way "out of turn" (surprise!), but it seems like putting the two approaches into dialogue with each other might be really productive. For instance, does demand-control theory itself recognize that some controls are unconscious (meaning habitual or reactive)?

Between the process mediation workshop and Betty's poster session on self-regulation, I finally have a conceptual understanding of inhibiting) one's own desires.

When Patty N. said this to me yesterday, I knew it was a joke (no one has ever known me for my fashion-sense)! It suppose it might have been a reflection of her official role interpreting for the conference: if she was dressed down, like me, then she would have been a participant. (Anyone have other possible interpretations?) ;-)

Patty G. has been a great roommate. She comes in each evening and regales me with the humorous anecdote of the day. First it was Lynn's debacle with the subway on the way to Mongolian barbeque (which I understand was yummy), and then it was a friend's kid, a firstgrader who reads at the graduate level. Can you imagine having a kid that reads better than you? I had to wonder what that means.....in my 3rd year of grad school I'm realizing that even though I *thought* I understood what I've been reading for the past two years, there were more layers and dimensions to it of which I had no awareness at all! How can someone with so little life experience comprehend reading at that level? Personally, I think it makes the case for reincarnation.

I have collected more data on my hypothesis that the silence factor is only a symptom of a deeper, phenomenological difference between Deaf and non-deaf (a.k.a. "hearing") people. I say phenomenological because I think it goes deeper even than culture, it is a constitutive mode of perception that shapes cognition.

During the process mediation workshop yesterday, Bob talked about his processing time, using phrases like, "Hurry up, it's been 10 seconds", and that he felt "frantic". These statements refer not to the silence itself, but to the sensation, knowledge, or awareness of time passing. Later, during my poster session, I asked Eileen if Deaf people feel time passing like that, and she laughed, "No! We don't feel that way!" My read of her reaction was that it was almost inconceivable.

Dang! I could have seen Bonnie Raitt last night!

"Bruce Springsteen began stumping the swing states [in Philadelphia] tonight to support Senator John Kerry. "We're here tonight to fight for a government that is open, rational, forward-looking and humane, and we plan to rock the joint while doing so," he said at the beginning of the concert he was headlining at the Wachovia Center. The concert, which also featured R.E.M., was one of six simultaneous concerts in Pennsylvania for the Vote for Change tour, a week of benefit concerts in battleground states."

The whole story is in the NYTimes.

Kerry gains the upper hand in a debate as significant for its substance as for what it revealed about Bush.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal for salon.com.

After months of flawless execution in a well-orchestrated campaign, President Bush had to stand alone in an unpredictable debate. He had traveled the country, appearing before adoring preselected crowds; delivered a carefully crafted acceptance speech at his convention; and approved tens of millions of dollars in TV attack commercials to belittle his opponent. His much-touted charisma was a reflection of the anxiety and wishful thinking of the people since Sept. 11. In the lead, Bush believed he had only to assert his superiority to end the contest once and for all.

But onstage the incumbent president ran out of programmed talking points. Unable to explain the logic for his policies, or think on his feet, he was thrown back on the raw elements of his personality and leadership, and he revealed even more profound issues than the policies being debated.

Every time he was confronted with ambivalence, his impulse was to sweep it aside. He claimed he must be followed because he is the leader. Fate in the form of Sept. 11 had placed authority in his hands as a man of destiny.

I am worn out from the stimulation. ;-) Got some clarity tonight in Betty's session on Vygotsky. Lots to mull over and refine in my interpersonal class. Also, the notion of scaffolding groups....that's more where I see myself in relation to what(ever) my "contribution" might be to the profession. That's the work on group dynamics and group discourses that I presented today at my poster session. So many things happening here! I got to attend 1/2 of Laurie and Wendy's session on peer mentoring, and half of Betty and Company's session on process mediation. I love interpreters! We are so committed to self-knowledge and the development of interpersonal communication skills. ;-)

Last night I was part of a spirited group discussion providing feedback on the proposed "Code of Professional Rights and Responsibilities." Todd got us started by questioning the differences between Tenet 4 & 5 ñ didnít they say the same thing? Until we clarified that they really are speaking to two different relationships: the one interpreters have with each other (#5) and the one interpreters have with interlocutors (#4). David kept us laughing with his enumeration of what principle 4.2 meant by ìchoicesî: ìI can sit here or stand there. In the hall isnít an option.î ìYou can have chocolate or vanilla. Strawberryís not on the menu.î Cid kept generously reminding us of what the intent of the wording probably was, and all of us asked questions of each other and challenged each otherís assumptions and understandings. Respectfully ñ although I think David has a guilty conscience because while I was giving an example using the sign ìFINISHî he thought I was telling him to knock it off. :-0 Anna (there are a lot of Annaís here) and Joanna (variation on the theme?!) both had concerns about whether feedback could be specified as a requirement of mentoringÖ.after some discussion we decided that mentoring is a practice still coming-into-being, and therefore couldnít be so clearly specified. They were frustrated though, by not receiving enough during some of their internships.

"Interpreters demonstrate respect for all consumers and their diversity."

I understand that the term ìrespectî is intended to convey obligation to ìall consumersî, but I was hoping that the committee working on this revision would address clearly the notions of impartiality, fairness, and/or reciprocity as an ethical stance on behalf of the organization as a whole. I suggest that it really matters that we use one of these terms ñ problematic as they are! ñ in order to move the practice of interpreting away from being a testing ground for deaf empowerment and toward a more consistently enacted relational event among the interlocutors. Without a clear institutional stance from RID/NAD, the issues of power, oppression and empowerment are ìlocked inî to the microsocial dynamic between deaf interlocutors and non-deaf interpreters.

In my mind, this is the single most pressing issue that this revision can, should, and needs to address; instead, the current draft exacerbates the problem with principle 4.2: