sharp curves and time-out-of-time (TOOT!)

Sometimes, sharp conversational curves feel like precipitous cliffs. There is what I do, sometimes, which is to say something spontaneously about something that is going on within the context of a group that is within the realm of things most people have been trained not to say. This is more than a sharp curve, and it calls upon whoever is involved to exercise a deeper level of social resilience. Mental agility has to be combined with emotional savvy, too.
Sometimes, sharp conversational curves feel like precipitous cliffs. There is what I do, sometimes, which is to say something spontaneously about something that is going on within the context of a group that is within the realm of things most people have been trained not to say. This is more than a sharp curve, and it calls upon whoever is involved to exercise a deeper level of social resilience. Mental agility has to be combined with emotional savvy, too.

An Outsider in the Maelstrom

European Parliament
Strasbourg
drafted 10 February 2009

Dutch has two words for foreigner. It seems that one is a generic label (buitenlander or “alien”) and the other (vreemdelingen) emphasizes – just slightly? – the strangeness of someone from another land. If I ever develop a respectable degree of fluency, I will begin to listen for the usage … Read more...

DEBATING CORPORATE EVIL (a problematic moment)

Quoting from a Reuters article by Eric Auchard about Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, on “good, evil and monopoly fears“:

When he first joined Google as CEO seven years ago, Schmidt acknowledged thinking the “Don’t be evil” phrase was a “joke” being played on him by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Schmidt recalled sitting in Google’s offices later

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First Day: Group Dynamics

go slowSMALL.jpg

Mike reached up and patted this sign to remind me to slow down. 🙂 I’d asked the class why I’d gone off on a particular tangent….it related, but I had to pause for a moment, back up, where did I begin? How did I arrive where I was? What was the point?!
I came across the sign near the hallway … Read more...

“the literal truth”

from Earthseed (Parable of the Sower):

God is Power —
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And yet, God is Pliable —
Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change.


I met David in the department computer lab yesterday. “So, you don’t believe in authenticity, do you?”
Nice to meet you, too! 🙂
Of course I do. … Read more...

i agree: “the fierce urgency of now”

“Obama received Secret Service protection early in the campaign after unspecified threats. It is not a subject his wife likes to talk about. “She doesn’t allow herself to go there,” says Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama’s close friend, who says Michelle has not raised the subject with her. “It would paralyze her to think like that.” Michelle’s brother, Craig Robinson, who

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Careful what you ask for!

I asked my students today about the relationship(s) among appearance, identity, and authority – specifically mine. It’s part of the ongoing pedagogy project I’ve been working on with Leda about the visibility/invisibility of our actual bodies in the classroom. By the end of the discussion several students were telling me how I should have taught (!) the class all along: … Read more...

coming out: a problematic moment

I came out indirectly to my students in COM260, Public Speaking. I told them of the time I questioned Geraldine Ferraro, at the National Women’s Music Festival, about how she could address an audience of 3000 lesbians without using the word, “lesbian”. I don’t remember exactly what I said, I’m pretty sure it was implicit – I was … Read more...

same name, different person?

Funny – googled myself (as if I have nothing better to do this morning), and found this poem by another “Stephanie Kent”. Reinforces the importance of that middle “Jo”!
there’s also an alias making loads of bucks (listed by Forbes). envy?
Here’s one I hadn’t come across before, about the disableism workshop Shemaya and I did at Mt Holyoke a … Read more...