A little humor during perilous times...

Does the name Carl Linneaus ring a bell? Remember the plant-naming aficionado from Jamaica Kincaid's "In History"?

Well, driving home from work tonight I heard a humorous piece on NPR about Linneaus and the names he came up with for plants. You might find it interesting; here's the link: NPR Radio Piece

Any thoughts on how Kincaid would react to this piece?

"Disastrous" Times?

Is it just me, or does it seem like some governor, mayor, or county board president is declaring a state of emergency in response to some disaster just about every other week these days? Don't get me wrong; I have tremendous sympathy for the victims of the recent hurricanes and the record-setting rains and flooding in the Chicagoland area. But it seems like these "declarations" are happening more and more frequently. Are we living in more "disastrous" times than a few decades ago, or is something else going on here? I wonder if witnessing the failure of government to provide adequate assistance to people who legitimately needed it (i.e. Katrina) has made us extra prone to expecting the government to step in immediately at every crisis. No politician wants to be seen as callous and inept in the face of natural disaster. And now we see huge government bailouts of irresponsible major financial firms because if they failed, it would be a disaster, and everyone would be suffering the consequences of their recklessness. So will this all just feed into a larger expectation that one of government's primary responsibilities is to somehow "rescue" us at every peril?

A Hope Grown in Peril

Here is an audio link from National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" last night.

It tells the non-dominant narrative of those who live in hurricane country. I find it an interesting display of action taken during this perilous time; rather than heeding government and evacuation warnings, the people Johnston describes instead decide to totally ignore their authorities in favor of the hope they hold. This is simply an exposure of another often overlooked school of thought. A bit of culture, if you will. What do you think?

Financial Perilous Times?

Maybe you heard yesterday about several key developments in the financial world: Lehman Brothers (an investment banking firm for over 100 years) filed for bankruptcy, and Bank of America purchased Merrill Lynch (another investment banking firm). These events come on the heels of the federal government bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just last week (two huge mortgage companies -- they hold the majority of mortgages for homes in the country). The feds essentially gave Fannie and Freddie (sounds like a couple from "Happy Days") a loan to make sure they could stay in business.

It's interesting to see how the federal government -- the authority in these perilous times -- reacts to this situation. In some instances they've bailed out companies and given help; in other instances they've let the ebb and flow of capitalism take its course and let companies go under.

Be on the watch for how people react to these perilous times. Look for how Americans see the government's role; look for how Americans deal with the financial pressures. Maybe we'll even see some Puritanical reactions?

What's OUR story?

Recently conservative commentator Peggy Noonan was caught on MSNBC saying that she thought Republican VP pick Sarah Palin was underqualified, stating, "I think they went for this, excuse me, bull—-t about narratives." (Note to politicians and commentators: Check your mic before you utter disparaging profanities on TV.) In fact, it seems this entire election has been more about personal narratives than the issues. Who's better fit to lead, and even more American? The biracial son of a single mom who was raised by his middle-class Kansas grandparents, went to Columbia and Harvard Law on student loans, and passed up a lucrative legal career to become a community organizer and public servant? The heroic POW who comes from a distinguished military family with generations of service to their country, who's spent a lifetime giving back to the country he came to so passionately love while he was languishing in a Vietnamese cell? Or how about the moose-gutting hockey mom, who courageously chose to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome and went back to governing Alaska the very next day?

I won't go into my opinions about why these personal narratives matter, but it does make me wonder about our collective narrative(s). Is there a "storyline" we like to envision when we think about our nation and its history? I think we all carry some version of it, consciously or not. Behind every policy debate there's an implicit "national narrative" that's being promoted. Perhaps that's really how people vote, by choosing the candidate whose personal narrative seems to resonate most with their own vision of the national narrative.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Here's an audio link from National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" show this morning. It details a case against a man who murdered two black nineteen-year-olds in Mississippi in 1964. The man was originally arrested in 2007 -- over thirty years after the murder -- because an elderly KKK (Ku Klux Klan) member came forward with testimony, but the case has been thrown out because a Louisiana court has ruled that the statute of limitations has expired.

Again, this artifact illustrates that "history" -- something we are sometimes tempted to think of as fixed and past -- is always connecting to our lives in the present. Or, as Faulkner argues in the quote above, history "isn't even past."

Mr. Lawler’s Saturday Morning…

Here’s an interesting site that connects with much of our first unit and the work we’ve been doing on evaluating the validity of narratives:

Article

“The Rhetoric and the Reality” tries to fact check claims made by various politicians – from both parties – in the recent Republican and Democratic conventions. In a sense, it illustrates that finding the truth (or most accurate narrative) is an exercise in evaluating claims and evidence from both sides. Check it out, but keep in mind that even this newspaper (“The New York Times”) features bias, just like all newspapers.

An "Asterisk" to School Funding in Illinois?

As we all know, yesterday we had visitors from CPS (parents, students, activists) at the Northfield Campus to protest inequities in school funding in the state of Illinois. They believe that our system of primarily funding a school's budget with property taxes is unfair, and, in essence, leads to better schools in more affluent areas while poorer areas have poorer schools.

In a recent class discussion we asked two questions that tie into this issue: 1 - is public education a right in the United States? and 2 - Is a quality education a right in the United States? We'd all probably answer "yes" to the first question (we are, after all attending and working in a public school), but the second question seems to be the most compelling. If we say "no," then how do we determine who gets the better education? If we say "yes," then how do we go about making sure this is the case?

In general, let's consider Reverend Meeks and the visitors here on Tuesday as individuals offering an alternative voice to this very important issue. Maybe their statement would read, "What to think of school funding for a person like me and all who look like me..."