OK, School's Out, Now to the Hard Stuff...

What do about the oil spill? Or more to the point, since apparently nothing can be done about the oil spill, what to do about BP?

The position of the Cocktail Party is that BP, as a company, is finished. This is not the first time they have been caught violating maintenance safety regulations in the interest of more profit, but it should definitely be the last. Now their bankroll has a lot of bills to pay—not just the clean-up operations, which will take years, or damages due to the families of the men killed on the oil rig, but damages, unemployment benefits, relocation, job training and job placement services for all those folks who can no longer make a living in fishing and tourist industries along the Gulf Coast. And when they get done with that, they can support conservation efforts to re-establish the marine and marshland species that are probably going to be driven extinct.

However, the people now in charge of BP should probably not be trusted to oversee these projects. Some responsible non-profit needs to take over the administration of the funds, while those guys do some jail time and then start over with entry-level jobs in retail.

Wheee!

Yesterday Mrs. D. graded the last term paper, and then she went online and put in all the grades, just a few days overdue. Then she checked her email and there was this one from a guy who just got a "D," sending her all his missing assigments, or some of them anyway, and explaining how they were late because his Internet connection was down, and she just laughed.

Then my brother came over and we went to the little-dog park. My brother ran around and chased girl dogs, since he is really into that kind of thing. I met my dog park friend and fellow-eunuch Bobo the poodle and we sat in the sun together. Then we all took a little walk and went back to my house and sat around and barked at stuff from the windows.

Today Mrs.D. and I are going for two walks, in the morning and again in the afternoon. I love summer.

Sun Moon

Sun Moon, Dyad Moon, are names for the Full Moon that falls in Gemini. (Incidentally, the "moon falling in Gemini" is a different matter from the Moon being "in Gemini" in an astrological chart. When I talk about the Full Moon that falls in Gemini, I mean the Full Moon that falls sometime from May 21 to June 21.) The Dyad Moon will be full on Thursday, May 27.

It's a time when opposites attract; magically good for working on relationships. It's a time when differences can turn from a liability to an asset.

I think this applies more to personal differences than political ones. The Moon is not very political.

But we can hope for the energies of the night to lend themselves to some less than deadly resolution to the differences on the Korean Peninsula.

Guns

I've been musing about the Cocktail Party platform for a few days. I made the mistake of starting with the hard stuff, like war and the economy, but have realized that those issues will take awhile. Both of these debacles could easily have been prevented if I had been consulted earlier, but the people in charge rarely think to do that.

Guns, I think, will be an easy issue. They seem to be very important to a lot of the Tea Party folks, so they could be a handy bargaining chip. I used to believe in gun control, but that was before I did a stint teaching drug smugglers out at my local federal prison, where I learned more than I had previously known or really even wanted to know about the extent and resources of the criminal underworld. Guns are probably one of those things like mind-altering substances and abortions, which can't be stopped with laws. Prohibition just creates inconveniences for the affluent, dangers the poor, and a lot of income for outlaw profiteers.

So, it's a deal. In the cause of freedom, we will have legal abortions, legal marijuana, gay marriage, and no state religion. They can keep their guns.

Cocktail Party

A good friend of mine has been going to Coffee Parties, and last night I Googled the topic. It seems to be a rational response to the Tea Party, but the more I think about it, the more I'm for polarization. Being reasonable sometimes does little but honor your opponents with more seriousness than they deserve.

A Cocktail Party sounds like more fun. A wide selection of colorful mixed drinks, a shifting cast of characters, more or less intelligent conversation, well-oiled laughter and the faint possibility of things getting a bit wild.

Maybe the Cocktail Party is kind of socialist. However, the fact is that we have been living in a socialist country for quite some time now. Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor. And this system has recently written some of the biggest welfare checks for some of the biggest welfare frauds in history. But let's leave aside the word "socialism," since it seems to upset everybody. Maybe all we need is free enterprise for the rich and compassion for the poor. Or maybe it's a bit more complicated than that. The party is far from over.

However, freedom and compassion will be the starting premises. Stand by for planks in the platform.

Term Papers

They are in, at least the ones that are in on time, in a heap that will dominate my life for the next week. The students are (theoretically) advanced English language learners who can take the freshman comp transfer course next semester if they pass mine.

This moment at the end of the semester always reveals my teaching mission in its full array, sublime to ridiculous. I teach immigrant kids who have spent a few years in Oakland high schools, learning very little except how to text, how to highlight, copy and paste from the Internet, and how to be rude to teachers. Also rich kids who have washed up in the academic systems of their native countries, whose parents send them to America with the idea that if at least they can learn English, they will be employable at something. ("I call home, my father ask me how is your English?" wrote one, poignantly, in the first paper of the year, the personal experience assignment. "I say, good enough get a job in China, can I come home now?") Some of these actually turn out to be late bloomers or kids with learning disabilities who blossom in the more flexible and forgiving environment of an American community college.

I also teach people who will be in graduate school at UC five years from now, Japanese journalists seeking out a gritty, authentic American setting in which to hone their English, Tibetan monks so they can minister to California Buddhists, and the people who may one day be running Burma, if the democratic change of government they hope for allows them to return.

One of the lows this semester is the kid who turned up for his student-teacher conference with a "draft" of his final paper that I could see at first glance was copied from somewhere, and Googling the first sentence found to be from the Huffington Post. We talked about what he might have enough interest in to write his own paper about, and came up with basketball. My office mate, overhearing us and moved with sympathy, found and printed out an interesting article about how cultural differences affect basketball and the U.S. in China. My student and I agreed that he could find some more information and write a paper about that. At a second conference a week later, he hadn't been able to find anything. Setting our sights lower, since time was getting short, I suggested just finding out about the Chinese players in the NBA. This morning, the due date of the paper, I clicked open my email at 7:25 to find an email from this student, sent at 12:20 a.m.; since he hasn't been able to find any information about Chinese players in the NBA, he proposes to write his paper about "Animosity between China and Taiwan." It wasn't one of the papers that came in today, but the title was copied and pasted from somewhere, retaining its original font, so I am not very optimistic.

But then I have the student from (former Soviet) Georgia who connects current American approaches to education to their philosphical roots, Hirsch and his Core Knowledge curriculum to Locke's empiricism, the intentional learning movement to Plato's dialogues, in prose that is all the more charming for its occasional quaintness of word order. And a paper dear to my heart, I didn't tell this student my opinions on the matter, honest and truly, about how high-stakes standardized testing encourages dishonesty at all levels of an educational system, arguments backed up by research and some entertaining Chinese anecdotes.

So now, to work.

Things to Do With a Ball

When my brother comes to play, here’s what we do.

Make Mrs. D. throw the ball and see who can catch it first.
The dog who catches it brings it back and gets kibble.
While he’s busy eating, the other dog grabs the ball and makes her throw it.
Repeat steps 1-3.
Sometimes we hide the ball and bark so she has to come get it. Here are some good places:
a) In the magazine rack
b) In one of her shoes
c) In the kitchen wastebasket
d) Get into the bag of recycling and find a good box, so you can hide the ball in that. Spread all the other paper and cardboard across the kitchen floor.
Find another ball and get two games going at once.
Settle down and chew on the balls for while.
When that gets boring, start all over again.
If skateboarders go by outside, stop everything, jump up the sofa where you can see them, and see which one of you can go more completely berserk.

Astute Pagan followers might have noticed that Beltane went by without comment on this page. This is because my job grows more voracious with budget cuts that do not threaten my tenured position, but load it with work that used to be part of other people's job descriptions. The Job ate up Yule long ago, since Yule is right about when fall semester grades are due, and until they are in there is nothing to even think about celebrating. Now the semester endgame seems to have eaten Beltane. There is also a certain vagueness about how tired, overworked old people should best celebrate this particular festival.

There was a delicious breakfast at a friend's after the the Morris Dancers danced up the sun on Inspiration Point in Tilden, and later the short, sweet, darkness of the Witches' Sabbat. Then the next day, some of us had a somewhat less than delicious brunch at Denny's (affordable and convenient, don't ask) and paid a visit to the free book exchange, a suitable mark of deference to the flowing of the Air Tide.

The fire tide began to ebb at the Spring Equinox. This has been the sowing season, when seeds have been planted physically, spiritually and emotionally. When the air tide flows, it brings the Time of Change, when the new plants must be nurtured and protected while miracles of growth and transformation take place. It is also the time when the Goddess and God come together in love, and humankind should do them honor by following suit-- either with one another or in solitary fashion, uniting the powers of the Goddess and the God within the self. It is well to begin this season with the wholeness and balance of this union, since the Time of Change is an unsettled and unpredictable time, when seedlings are tender and vulnerable, and things can go one way or another as the wind blows. It is not a season responsive to the works of magic; it is a time when the outcomes of our efforts are subject to the winds chance, to the flights of marauding birds and the whims of otherworld sprits. The veils between the worlds which opened at Beltane still remain thin. Connections are loose. All things are possible.

The Lady and Lord, locked in passionate embrace and wholly occupied with each other, leave their human children to shift for themselves.The most important work of this time is not work at all. Seek out the pleasures of the season and take joy in them; in lovemaking, in song and dance, in the joys of all unions and the joys of the mind and spirit. Take advantage of the vagaries of fate to which you are subject, seeking pleasure and new knowledge wherever they take you. In this season, honor the Lady and the Lord in the beauty of the world around you, and honor them in others and within yourself.

Malcolm X Day

I work at the college where the Black Panthers got started. Well, technically, the college where the Black Panthers got started was then moved by the District from the border of Oakland to Berkeley to the Oakland Hills, in an attempt to calm things down. There it has languished from low energy and enrollment ever since, while the radicals just moved down 880 to my college instead.

When I tell people in other parts of the world that we have a Malcolm X holiday, they roll their eyes--how Berkeley can you get. However, Malcolm had the good foresight to be born just before finals week, when a long weekend endears him to students and staff alike, and gives me time to post to my blog.