There were better reasons, too. It just felt like an outmoded tactic, marginalized out of any influence by time and money and, maybe somewhere, cynical or even malevolent volition. The march I remember in DC was deeply dispiriting. It was big, and we were very certain we were right, and it was in and out of the papers in a day. Nobody cared except us and possibly Anne Fucking Coulter.

Maybe Occupy Wall Street will vanish, too. It’s cold out there, and momentum is not an easy thing to regain. But already this is very different. NY1 is talking about it right now as I type, and the guy is saying it’s two months already it’s in the news. Fait accompli, as much noted: a substantive, non-negligible redirecting of public discourse, an energizing of some dormant leftist impulse, the wide dissemination of things about class you and I and all our friends knew and considered important, and the grudging attention of the ever centripetal leftish establishment.

Making a demand is a very short process if it’s denied. This is process that resists resolution for the moment, and that’s almost entirely good. Favorite concepts of mine like “negative capability” and “sitting with the question” are in operation here, and that means we’re already off the script, off the chute from gratification to impotence.

I’ve gone a couple of times. I’ve gone to show support for something that my gut says is right despite some misgivings, and to sort out my own feelings about the whole thing. I went with a friend with whom I’d never had a political conversation, and we had one. I’ve talked to strangers, which is easy to do there, and been alienated by a few zealots, and wondered how much I will participate and what I should do.

Your fellow Whatsiteer and I went down on Saturday. We stood near the southeastern corner of Zuccotti Park and watched a charismatic young woman facilitate a basically uninteresting General Assembly that, while we were there, was focused on whether fifteen people marching to DC could and should use the name “Occupy Wall Street.” Two months in, the crowd was orderly, attentive to established process, ruly when prodded to be more attentive, and I think it’s fair to say, alive with purpose and good will.

We participated in the human microphone, the technique I’m told was devised by farm workers, and here used to sidestep the problems of amplification. The speaker’s words are echoed by the crowd, outward in enough waves to reach the edge. It is a speech act not unrelated to the lamentable three-word chant, except it’s engaging and utile. It accomplishes a number of things at once including, I daresay, shunting that need to speak that causes people to tell their life stories in the form of questions into a focusing activity rather than a diffusing one.

Repeating words that have just been thought up sidesteps the numbness that comes from what is more properly termed chanting. It didn’t feel like Yom Kippur is what I’m trying to say.

*My favorite of these is my friend S’s unintended manifesto “The history of me working for other people can be summed up in the question ‘who the hell are you to tell me what to do?’”

1.) This song “A Real Hero” by College (feat. Electric Youth) is from the movie Drive. I could not stop playing this song every day, ten times a day, for a week straight. Especially after experiencing the movie. Go ahead, see the movie and see if you do not play this song obsessively. And if you go, which I strongly recommend, know this: it has some serious violence. I felt a bit traumatized when the movie ended. But also, I felt like I had just watched something amazing. One of my favorite movies of the year. Anyone else feel the same?

Click here to view the embedded video.

2.) Berlin. While visiting that city a couple weeks ago we were struck by a few things. First, it’s a really really fun place to visit right now (ok, for a few years now, but we’re late to the party). It’s cheap. It’s energized. There is a DIY artistic entrepreneurial-ness everywhere. Except for the food–which is terrible (Such a weird defect in a world-class city. But, communism, I imagine, was not a nurturing patron of inventive cuisines. Also, as a guide book pointed out, Germany’s short-lived stint as a World Empire meant that its colonies never got a gastro-foot-hold in Berlin, unlike say, Britain’s Indian cuisine, France’s Moroccan, Dutch’ Indonesian, etc.) Another thing, a lot of people walk their dogs off-leash. And people don’t seem to care. And people walk their dogs right onto the subway. It’s a very permissive city. You can buy beer, wine, liquor at just about any corner store. And throughout the night. And you can carry it on the street. Or onto the subway. Berlin’s treatment of alcohol is fascinating. I’ve never seen people on a subway car at 10:30 in the morning enjoying a large green bottle of beer. People who look like they’re on their way to work. Perhaps other countries in the world are just as permissive, I’ve just never seen it displayed like this before. The other thing about Berlin is how it makes you confront some heavy heavy shit. You don’t get that gut-kick visiting Barcelona or Beijing. The War, the holocaust, the Wall. There are some really moving memorials and museums completed in the last few years, in particular, the holocaust memorial and the Jewish History Museum (by Daniel Libeskind). I won’t describe them here, but by themselves they would make the trip to Berlin worth the trouble.

3.) Amsterdam. Has anyone else been there recently? Is it just me, or is it just a little bit boring? For all the ground-breaking permissiveness of this city (red-lights, coffee houses, legalized outdoor sex in their public park, etc.), it felt really sleepy. Central Amsterdam–outside of the red-light district–is a gorgeous and dreamy world of canals, bridges, and 17th Century houses and is clearly inhabited by very wealthy people. It’s like visiting those tiny brownstone streets in the West Village, except with much greater acreage and more beauty, and everyone rides bikes instead of cabs, but it still feels unwelcoming, like you don’t belong there. And for a city known for its nightlife, it closes down really early. We had a hard time finding a place for dinner after ten. And it was hard to get find a decent place to have a drink after eleven. It felt at times like a movie-set that gets abandoned by night–except for that occasional bike whisking by. Maybe Summer is a lot different than October. And with a pack of friends in the know, it’s probably a lot more fun. Did we miss something? Is there a good reason to visit again soon?

4.) Occupy Wall Street. A couple days ago I came across this link to Adbusters that proposed OWS finally take up a unifying cause: The Robin Hood Tax. Why hadn’t I heard of this until now? The Robin Hood Tax video (feat. Bill Nighy) below is from February. Of 2010. I should really check my facebook more often. Regardless, the video’s pretty clever. Could this idea really work? Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have signed on. And a lot of smart economists too. Could this be the unifying rallying cry that OWS could finally manifest? Maybe. Is this the time? Adbusters proposes October 29th. The Robin Hood Global March. Torches and pitchforks. And our TGW masks. If this is for real, my fellow travelers, let’s make ourselves heard! Anyone in?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“In State Parks, the Sharpest Ax is the Budget’s.” It’s hardly surprising: states, unlike the federal government, can’t run deficits, so since tax receipts are down due to a crash in property values and a big recession, state governments have been desperately short of cash for several years. Raising taxes is apparently tantamount to infanticide. So the only thing to do is cut spending.

And here’s how some states are cutting spending: in Washington, no state parks will get any tax dollars starting July 1. Yes, zero public tax dollars for state parks. California will permanently close 70 state parks this fall. Idaho has raised user fees and started selling Frisbees to raise funds and is doing a lot of “marketing.” Parks departments are relying on volunteers and community organizations for basic maintenance tasks. Arizona and Florida are thinking about privatizing their state parks systems. In Ohio, the legislature is about to pass an “inventive” bill that would allow oil and gas drilling in state parks.

You will notice that these things are fundamentally incompatible with the traditional understanding of “public” in the phrase “public parks” or “public services.” There used to be this idea that conservatives as well as liberals accepted that there are these things economists call “public goods,” things that are difficult to maintain by private means but that benefit such a large proportion of the population that the government should step in and provide them. When you tried to explain this concept to someone who was new to economics, you’d list obvious examples, like roads, clean air, and, um, parks. Rich people don’t lack for access to lovely beaches or pristine wilderness or nice places to hike, but the rest of us need the government to step in and preserve some wild areas, maintain trails and porta-potties, hire a few rangers.

It turns out, though, that this is old-fashioned thinking. Neoliberalism is ascendant, the ideology that says private is always better (more “efficient”!) than public (except, weirdly, in fighting crime and fighting overseas enemies, which are two areas where the government has demonstrated far less competence than in, say, running an immunization program or, indeed, a parks department). So what if poor people can’t afford user fees for a beach they used to go to for free, and so what if the next time you go hiking the trail detours around an oil-shale “fracking” rig. Taxes will be low! And your better off without that bloated, inefficient government anyway.

I don’t know. It’s not like state parks are my favorite thing in the whole world, and it’s not like this is the worst consequence of the seemingly unstoppable tide of neoliberal fuckery. But somehow, this article was just exhausting. We can’t even have public parks anymore?

The Ad
First we secured the line. Then we wrote the job ad. Like most things decided by committee, it ended up a miscellany of priorities and desires—a cross between an eHarmony mash note and a letter to Santa Claus. Please, Santa, bring me the perfect colleague, someone who can teach competently in several incompatible areas, who digs underprepared students and committee work, who’s a brilliant scholar willing to live with the low paycheck, who’s cheerful and sane, who will help us all be better at our jobs. Amen.

Then we placed the ad and waited to see what would happen. Would anyone want to come to our tiny, underendowed college? Yes, it’s on a gorgeous campus in a funky college town, but really? Us? We collaborate for survival, sharing not enough space and limited resources. Sometimes I feel like I live on a boat with a hundred slightly batty fellow sailors, shipping out every August for a feverish nine-month hitch. Only in mid-May do we see dry land.

But, as inevitably as the tide, the applications came rolling in. Human Resources archived the letters and CVs more quickly than I could read them. In the end, I gave reasoned, careful consideration to over 350 hopeful Ph.D.s. One-tenth of them made the first cut.

It’s strange to be on the other side of this process, because although this is the third search committee I’ve served on since coming off the market myself, the trauma of applying for jobs remains freshly vivid in my mind. The elaborate sets of index cards to keep track of all the deadlines. The painstakingly customized self-introductions. The almost daily crushing defeat of rejection letters on pretty letterhead stationery. Oh, the stomachaches and sleepless nights. My heart hurts for each one of these bright, hopeful, folks.

The next batch of cuts presented a tougher set of decisions. It was obvious that every application in the pile represented someone who could ably fill our position. You don’t get to the second round of a search for a tenure-track job in the humanities anymore without bringing ample teaching, promising research, publications, and a killer job letter to the party. So what were we looking for? All that and a bag of chips, pretty much. And as of today, we got her.

The conference
But that’s getting ahead of the story. After a humdinger of a committee meeting, in which each one of us had to compromise and give up on someone we were championing, we settled on a list of a dozen names for in-person interviews at the MLA convention. (Making those phone calls to set up the meets is one of the only happy parts in the months-long process.) During semester break I flew across the country, setting up camp in a hotel room with a view of the rooftop pool and the L.A. Public Library. Then, for two straight days, at one-hour intervals the candidates arrived, from all over the U.S. and Canada, at great personal expense, for one of the most stressful conversations of their lives.

This time, it felt like a cross between Russian roulette and speed dating. We had only a few minutes to derive impressions of one another, but the stakes were way too high. For them: a toehold into the profession they’d been training in for probably close to a decade. For us: a daily working relationship that could last twenty, thirty years. Practically a marriage. Who can decide based on a few adrenaline-drenched moments in a hotel room? My department chair, an older, cigar-smoking guy named Joe, started having difficulty telling the candidates apart, even with his copious notes. “Tell me something,” he said wearily over drinks after the first day of interviews. “Do they all buy their suits at the same place?”

“Yeah, they do,” I said. “It’s a store called Ann Taylor.”

Unlike past years, nobody crashed and burned⎯no tears, blurted outbursts, or frank confessions of mental illness. Everyone came highly prepped, buffed to charismatic perfection. And yet a few easily rose to the top of our list. Personality-wise, they were so different from one another that only afterward did I realize what shared characteristics helped them ace the interview:

1. Being able to discuss one’s interests and strengths without sounding overly rehearsed. (Harder than you may think. Prepared-yet-spontaneous is a tough sell.)
2. The ability to seem confident without projecting arrogance or defensiveness. (Nearly impossible! Everyone felt nervous, but the best candidates seemed to diffuse the tension in the room, rather than amplify it.)
3. Expressing curiosity and some foreknowledge about our institution and our students. (You’d think this one would be a gimme, wouldn’t you? Nope.)
4. Relating to us as human beings, potential colleagues rather than inquisitors. (Kind of unfair, when you think about the crazy power differential between us. But it meant they were already thinking like professors, not as grad students.)

The campus visit
It’s a tightly choreographed dance, one you learn via folk wisdom and tripping over your own feet. In our case: airport, hotel, group dinner, overnight. Out for breakfast. On campus: meeting with president, meeting with academic dean, meeting with HR, lunch with students, job talk, group interview, teaching demonstration, tour of campus, driving tour of city, airport.

(The best advice anyone gave me about campus visits: pack granola bars in your bookbag. Eat them in the bathroom, or you’ll bonk halfway through the day. Anytime they offer you coffee, say yes.)

A typical flyback lasts about a day and a half, though I’ve witnessed both extremes. One school flew me in and out on the same sixteen-hour death march, expressing consternation that I expected to be fed a meal. Another kept me for three sybaritic nights of artisanal cuisine, house parties, and cocktail hours. My college errs on the side of abstemiousness, but we still try to show the candidate a good time. We’ve been so busy judging her; now it’s her turn to judge us. We glance around our offices and classrooms, hoping they don’t look shabby to someone accustomed to research university digs. We pick the nicest restaurants we can afford. We dress up. We set aside our conflicts and present a unified front. We hope that the bumbling president doesn’t ask her a dumbass question like, “Do you want kids?” We think, Please love us too.

Three visits, boom-boom-boom. While she’s there, each one is our favorite. It’s hard to decide. But in the end, there’s only one job. And one candidate who turns out to be everything on our wish list.

The offer
What’s that saying? ‘You can’t polish a turd?’ In this case, the turd is the starting salary. But the market is so bad that all tenure-track jobs are looking pretty good right now. That and our desirable location give this little college some serious drawing power. So we put the number out there and hope.

She calls me on my cell phone and we talk city neighborhoods for nearly an hour. This is a good sign, right?

The MLA suggests that a candidate should have two weeks to decide, but with each day that passes, I feel her slipping away. At this point I’m so emotionally invested (perhaps irrationally so) that if she rejects us, it will actually sting. But in practical terms, you know exactly what we’ll do? Move to number two on the list and make the same offer.

Eleven days into negotiations, word comes down from the dean: she said yes. Thank god. I was a nervous wreck.

So welcome aboard, new colleague. Nothing’s official until the contract comes back signed. But I think our hiring season is finally over.

Now, I don’t know anything about genetically modified crops, so I’m going to set that aside. What interested me particularly was the story within the article of Kirk Azevedo, a former Monsanto employee who claims he went to work for the company because he believed the claims of Monsanto’s CEO that GM plants would solve the problems of global hunger and environmental degradation. As he discovered that the company was engaging in bad practiced such as feeding test crops containing potentially unsafe proteins to cattle (which then entered the human food chain), “Azevedo realized he was working for ‘just another profit-oriented company,’ and all the glowing words about helping the planet were just a front.”

As we say on the internet,

It’s my understanding that a publicly held company has a legal duty to its shareholders not to run itself as a charity for “helping the planet” but as a profit-generating enterprise. And although it’s tempting to be taken in by a corporation’s image machine and allow yourself to believe it’s really trying to save the world, that’s ultimately a naive and dangerous fantasy. “Beyond Petroleum,” anyone?

All this by way of introducing some Slavoj Žižek — in cartoon form (watch it at a bigger size if you can; the animation is great):

P.S. And since the subject of billionaire charity is in the news today, I’d also point you to Pablo Eisenberg’s comments towards the end of this article about the “giving pledge”.