September

It must be September because I haven't touched this blog in two weeks and I have that constant feeling of stress and busy-ness. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in.

Later this afternoon my most recent column will be up over on Embrocation Cycling Journal, so check that out.

In other news, I'll have a recap of the road season including race reports from GMSR and Univest.

'Cross season is here, just poke your nose out the door and sniff. Yup, it's time for that.

And call me Mr. Adjunct. In an effort to actually make a living using my degrees and also doing the things I have worked hard to become good at outside of school, I am now teaching everything I know how to do. Seriously. Mostly I'm teaching English Composition at a community college, but I am also coaching now, and even teaching guitar lessons again, which I haven't done in years.

I'll assume none of you are interested in taking English comp, but if you are interested in cycling coaching, contact me at than(removethis)ward at gmail dot com. This is a new adventure for me and I was on the fence about it for awhile, but I love bike racing, I have worked with several really good coaches over the years, I train a lot, and not for nothing but I'm a pretty damned good teacher. As I often write about here, I haven't always been an athlete, and I tend to have a lot of other irons in the fire at any given point in the year. I like to think this makes me a good coach because of the perspective I have on a variety of things, like learning to be competitive later in life, fitting in training around kids and family, and stuff like that.

And now back to it. More later in the week, thanks for reading.

Cheers,

-n

Space

Not up there, but around you, me.

"I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America"
--Charles Olson Call Me Ishmael

No surprise I find myself thinking about space given my studies of Charles Olson's poetry and essays of late. Better still, I discovered a bit of a missing link for myself between early 20th century pedagogue and guru of progressive education, John Dewey, and Olson's geographic language art borne of the individual's movement through space.

Says Dewey "The unity of all the sciences is found in geography. The significance of geography is that it presents the earth as the enduring home of the occupations of man. The world without its relationship to human activity is less than a world." - from "The School and the Society".

Also in my mind is Michele de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life particularly the essay "Walking in the city". What I think of, more so than the act of an individual moving through urban space becoming textual--the individual inscribed up on the landscape and the landscape shaping the individual--is the way I have come to relate to space through life on a bicycle. Though I suppose it's the same thing.

In many ways I feel like I didn't really know the area in which I live until I started riding bikes seriously. Things are both much nearer and much farther than I had imagined them to be, more accessible and less, too. The immediacy of the Self to art, to politics, to society at large, as experience by the pedestrian is what de Certeau is getting at. From the perspective of the cyclist, though, it is different yet again in that the physiological transformation that equates to greater fitness allows spatial relationships between geographic points to become diminished. So my world is larger as a competitive cyclist in that I can ride my bike from Albany, NY to visit my brother in Northampton, MA, for instance--a ride of roughly 85 miles--and at the same time it is smaller. Smaller in the sense that an average day's training ride has the potential to bridge a social and emotional distance, and larger because what this amounts to is a choice. And choice amounts to social mobility.

What I feel I am moving closer to, as I move closer towards completing my current degree, and as I commit myself to an ever-greater training load on the bike, is some sense of cogency of self. How do I find myself, musically, athletically, intellectually, mapped throughout the space I inhabit? And how can I move toward living some harmonious balance of these elements of self as a practice?

I have been thinking a lot about the necessity of public education as a means toward social mobility and fluidity of social roles, thanks to Dewey. And thinking, of course of space from Olson.

I sit and wonder what I want to be when I grow up, when it will make itself apparent to me, and there is some self-satisfaction in realizing a personal and developmental, as well as a sort of proto-professional connection between my bike racing and my love of/belief in education via literature.

An American

is a complex of occasions,

themselves a geometry

of a spatial nature.

I have this sense,

that I am one

with my skin

Plus this-plus this:

that forever the geography

which leans in

on me I compell

backwards I compell Gloucester

to yield, to

change

Polis

is this

--Charles Olson, from Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [Withheld]
(forgive the formatting, Blogger doesn't like the tab key)

For the cyclocross folk among you, the significance of Gloucester will not be lost. Olson's life's work was grounded in the geography of Gloucester, this poem from the perspective of Stage Fort park, where we race each October.

And it's a rest week. After 20 hours and 500+k on the road last week my body needs a little bit of rest. So this week I am mostly at home with my daughter who is on school vacation. The weather is shiite, I ride the trainer. I think the trainer is something of an antithesis to all of this mapping of self through space. It's like an intellectual and artistic vacuum.

So.

-n

Facebook in Focus: Some Thoughts on Learning how to Learn.

This will be long, and it is more musing than argument, more reflection than rhetorical performance. If that sort of thing is irksome for you, or if you like whizz-bang conclusions and "points" and stuff, well, this may not be the post (or the blog) for you.

I have been thinking a lot this week on the schism between the rhetorically celebrated, as opposed to the actually demonstrated values of American life. In particular I've been thinking about the role of education in society and the extent to which it is devalued and viewed as only a means to an end, that end being the accumulation of more dollars. Yes, of course more dollars are important, and I realize that, from some perspectives, critiquing the pursuit of wealth as an end unto itself might seem a hopelessly privileged stance. But it seems pretty clear that the accumulation of wealth hasn't given America its dream back, right? What I hope for from public education is that it can do something in the way of improving the right now--the immediate circumstances--of enough people that lasting change, critical-of-the-status-quo change, is possible. Obama seems like a good start.

It's a little bit hard to justify--in some respects, anyway--wanting to set out into the world as an English teacher. The idea of divining meaning from books and teaching writing in an increasingly digital and impersonalized world of truncated communications seems kind of quaint sometimes. And I occasionally get all insecure and think that people like my friend Marco and his f&!#$%g independent study in linear algebra (Sheesh...) are the really smart ones...because they are, but that ain't the point.

The thing that has begun to be most central to my thoughts these days regarding the importance of teaching, in the Humanities in particular, is the simple and difficult process of learning to focus. And in a sometimes indirect, sometimes not sort of way, I think that blogging, Facebook and digital socializing in general contribute to this, even as we practice these modes of communication in a distracting medium that is constantly reminding us that there is something else we could be doing, something else to watch.* Despite the fact that the default mode of communication through instantly available means--chat, Facebook, text-messaging, etc--is abbreviated, non-unique and in many ways lacks the personality of person-to-person speech, there are happenings like the recent "25 things" chain letter on Facebook that really offer an opportunity for composing one's self, literally, in an extended, written format. The opportunity to deliberate on what you write, and yet to experience the relatively instant gratification of friends' comments and such is great, and I think it is one of the things hinting at online social utilities actually beginning to live up to their name. The sense of community on Facebook has been a little more intimate this past week.

Obviously this is a choice, and OMG the reality of, like, wait brb.....ok, umm what was I saying? Oh yea, got 2 run, wcb l8r. Sure, we can do that if we want to. Or we can read one another, our profiles, pictures, notes, preferences and status updates, like we would any other text, and be changed in the process. Changed not only personally but as a member of a social group, learning collectively and from each other that there is room in our busy days to reflect, to emote, to celebrate, to compose.

The reason I think this is important, and the reason I think it belongs in a conversation about education is that the opportunities for extended reading and writing--long form written interactions--are becoming fewer and fewer in many areas of modern life. There is an "efficiency" expected of work-related communication and even social messaging that is the death of creative speech acts. And, back to focus, I really believe that the opportunity for complex, frustrating, time-consuming thought presented by textual learning is a singularly important aspect of learning to focus and to analyze. The moment of aporia, of not getting it; the experience of experiencing yourself, with a book, being confused*, is the foundation of research skill, and more complex thought. It is the initial hurdle of understanding one's self as a learner. Removing the time-consuming and sometimes frustrating parts of the process of textual learning from that process is like removing the sore muscles from weight lifting. I think there is a real danger in becoming so accustomed to understanding what we read and having our own ready answers so quickly that true understanding of complex subject matter, which takes time, is endangered.

Learning is slow, it takes time. And I think that to a certain extent the deeply ingrained strain of American anti-intellectualism points to a seemingly irreconcilable tension between the capitalist drive for efficiency and the need for the individuals learning how to function as members of that system to sit still long enough to understand their roles in society and the broader implications thereof.

I struggle all the time, in a cage match with my inner Calvinist sort of way, with the notion of thought-labor. I get restless and develop niggling, guilty inner narratives about what I ought to be doing instead of reading and writing for work as a grad student. I never felt the need to justify my labor to myself as a fry cook, or dishwasher, or day-laborer or counselor, because I was preoccupied with the business of task performance. And when engaged in the business of task performance, it is really easy to be duped into thinking you're actually up to something.

One of my favorite teacher quotations comes from Mary Rose O'Reilly in her book The Peaceable Classroom where she describes her pedagogical philosophy as having derived from the moment she asked herself the question: is it possible to teach English so that people will stop killing each other? Any attempt, sincere or theoretical to answer the question rhetorically is beside the point. The question makes meaning for each new class, each new assignment, each new act of service. I haven't found my mission statement yet, but I want to believe, in fact may be coming to believe, that teaching focus--teaching the ability to sit still with new, uncomfortable, hard-to-reconcile-with-what-you-already-know sorts of information--may in fact be one of the more direct means toward bringing a pedagogy of personal and communal reflectivity-toward-change into the world.

Thanks for reading,

-n

* Statements marked with an asterix are conceptually attributable to Richard E. Miller. Many of my thoughts on the subject of focus as an educational value, and on what Miller calls the New Humanities stem from presentations I have heard Miller give or participate in. Such is the inspirational character of conferences, when they're flowing well, that one idea gets hard to distinguish from the next. So I have attempted to credit Miller for the bits of my thoughts on these various subjects that seem more or less directly attributable.

Life Off The Bike: A return to books, late nights, and....relaxation? Maybe?

I haven't exercised in three solid weeks. I'm not even all that fat, really, just a couple of pounds heavier than I was all 'cross season. Hopefully, as I start some running and gym work this week, I'll start leaning out and feeling ready for bike riding again.

So far the off-season has been fun, but I feel almost more tired than when I'm racing. I tend to be a bit of a night-owl when left to my own devices and between holiday preparation, near constant travel, and a renewed enthusiasm for my academic life, I am on a terrible sleep schedule. I slept until 11:00am today...for the third day in a row! I haven't done that since I was a teenager.

I have a cold, and that hasn't been helping. The debacle with US Airways resulted in a near all-nighter, which resulted in a sore throat. It is nice not to have to worry about being rested to train, it's kind of relaxing. But it isn't actually recovery time, so I am going to be a good kid and take another week off of coffee and start getting to bed at a reasonable hour. This is/will be my longest stretch off the bike ever. I think it will lead to good things: increased motivation, better recovery from training, and perhaps a later onset of fitness for road season.

On Monday we--brother Pete, father George, daughter Silas, partner Charmaine, and I--are off to the British Virgin Islands for a week of bare boat charter sailing. My dad is a lifelong on-and-off sailor and we did this trip last year. It's an interesting experience to be at once in the middle of what feels like nowhere, and at the same time having a very stable, relatively safe, and entirely demographically marketed and highly socio-economically privileged experience. Nevertheless, the Ocean, she is fickle, and the objective dangers are real. Cruising, or pleasure sailing, is one of those rare experiences in modern life where through a voluntary and essentially contrived activity, you get to have an immediate relationship to your basic needs and experience actual dangers. In that respect, I suppose it isn't unlike bike racing or running or mountaineering--these are all things we get up to in order to experience a grounding of some sort, a relationship to the moment we are in that is unmediated by a graphical user interface or other technology.

Island life is such a mind warp, too, particularly for those of us who spend our time engaged in the practice critical literacy and cultural studies. On the one hand it's idyllic, and incredibly relaxing. On the other hand, it's almost an embarrassingly over-privileged sort of circumstance to find one's self in. Never will the reality of several hundred years of Euro-American colonial rule be so apparent to you as when stepping off a boat or plane on these magical little Caribbean islands and noticing, immediately, that all of the tourists are white, and all of the service personnel are brown.

And so what? Well, so awareness is all. Life is good when it is, and it's to be grateful for.
I turn to Jamaica Kincaid and she tells me,

Of course the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings. (A Small Place,80)

But any good neo-Marxist would tell you that the neo-liberal juggernaut of global, imperialist capitalism makes somewhat quaint any stable notions of the terms "Master" and "Slave". Yes, slavery is gone in its formal sense, and direct colonial rule is, for the most part, no more. But what once was of these resourceful, unique nations of indigenous people is, in large part, no more either. And the opportunities of contemporary, techno-centric capitalism have not yet arrived. What there is, then, is a service economy.

I don't feel bad about participating in my privileged role as a consumer in a service economy, but I do think it's worth thinking about, and considering how the circumstance I will find myself in has come to be. And, to borrow a pedagogical panacea from my favorite scholar, Richard E. Miller, I think it is also worth considering how it, or I, could be different--to imagine a different set of assumptions, which could result in a different set of relations of production, and therefore, in a different sort of economy.

Ahh, thinking out loud in true blogosphere fashion. I read an article this morning by my friend and neighbor (also snazzy, young Rhet-Comp scholar) Janice Wendi Fernheimer, that says a lot of neat things about the role of blogs in public discourse and classroom life. In that spirit, I offer these thoughts and hope people will feel free to contribute.

I leave you with the aforementioned Richard E. Miller's inspiring thoughts on the New Humanities.



-n

Done (a non-bicycle related post)

Thought I would talk about school for a bit this morning. This is what I get up to when I'm not on a bike. The two things, studying literature and education along with bike racing, actually overlap to a great extent for me. But that is a post for another day.

I just saw the final grade of my MA coursework. It was an (questionably deserved) A!
So now I'm done with classes, and it's on to a large stack of books for my thesis. I should post about that some time soon, and will. Basically what I'm up to is looking at the figure of the teacher as an intersection between individual and institution, trying to get at the nature of how society shapes educational institutions, institutions shape teachers, and students are burped out the other end, which seems largely incidental.

So I'll be starting with John Dewey, and working my way up to current quasi-radical rhetoric and composition texts. The interesting bit, I hope, is that I'll be using the poetry and essays of Charles Olson as one of my sources. Olson wrote on teaching quite a lot, both in the concrete and the abstract, and his Maximus figure functions in much the same way as does the trope of teacher I describe above. Plus he was influenced by Dewey and taught at Black Mountain College.

All of this is quite the catharsis for me, the Angry Young Man who refused to stay in high school.

Next time, an end of 'cross season recap, and a hearty and detailed thank you to my sponsors.

Cheers,

-n