Happy Saint Patrick's Day

To honor the date, here I am in a hollow tree in Ireland.... a v-e-r-y long time ago.

Free Speech

Camille Paglia's in the news for speaking out against even the suggestion that the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated, though the chances of that actually happening may be pretty slim.

"I don't get it," she says in this audio clip from a radio interview on New York's "The Mark Simone Show."

"The essence of the 1960's, my generation, was about free speech," says Paglia. "That's what Lenny Bruce was about. It was about the free speech movement, for heaven's sake, at Berkeley. What are my fellow Democrats doing?"

Maybe it's an old lady thing.

I was born in the same year as Paglia, and I remember the free speech movement. What happened to it?

You can be given the cold shoulder, fired, thrown out, divorced, or excommunicated for saying the wrong thing. There was a time when you could stand on a soapbox in a public square and rant at length, but public space is diminishing and free speech rights don't apply in private space.

Campuses are considered semi-public. In the interest of safety, campus officials may restrict free speech.

Even then, expressing an unpopular opinion can get sticky. Campus safety felt they needed to protect one speaker this past January , and the student paper itself objected to the same speaker's message last year.

To better manage possible conflict, Fullerton College's free speech area has been shrunk from the entire quad to a postage-stamp sized bit of lawn, and speakers must reserve a time-slot in advance (see AP5550).

That's better than the strategy at Yuba Community College which not only required a reservation to speak in a sharply defined area, but made even that option available for only two hours a week. That landed them in court.

So is it an old lady thing, this taste for free thought and outrageous opinion? Or is there still room left in the world for a little political incorrectness in the interest of diversity?

Taking Classes vs. Learning

Yesterday I asked a member of the science faculty for help with an audio project on the Asian citrus psyllid, and his first answer was that he's too busy teaching classes to keep up with the topic -- that topic, plant pests, being his specialty, you understand.

I sympathize completely. School really can get in the way of learning, whether you're teaching the classes or taking them.

It is one of the great blessings of not being a serious student -- that is, I'm not going for a degree or a certificate or even for a grade -- that I can concentrate on learning what really matters.

I take only classes that meet my specific need to learn, and I concentrate on those parts of the coursework that I care about and just don't worry about the rest. It's amazing how much I'm learning this way, but it's also sad how much school tries to get in the way -- how much I'm supposed to read that isn't particularly useful, or how many topics I'm supposed to cover that aren't important to me, or how many topics are important but aren't given enough weight in class.

I guess being older and really focused gives me a different perspective. I haven't got time to worry about details that are, in all senses of the word, academic. I'm too busy on a grand adventure.

Thoreau wrote, "If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets."

I take that to mean, don't sweat the small stuff. It works for me. You just need to be sure what stuff is small and what's big.

By the way, the science guy ended up being a big help. :)

Photo Credit: David Hall,
USDA. Agricultural Research Service

SDS Lives!

The first time I went to a community college, in the late sixties, Students for a Democratic Society was a big deal. They were organized and exciting and protesting the war for all they were worth. In those days it was the Viet Nam war.

And now they're back!

Last Friday I attended a "student rally" at Pasadena City College. Originally designed to protest budget cuts, the event became a last-minute thank you to legislators who'd just surprised everyone by passing next year's budget several months early, and surprised community colleges by being very kind to them.

I put "student rally" in quotes because the rally was organized by a community college public relations group. It had sponsors and VIP seating and began with an opening address by the president of Pasadena City College.

That's not the way I remember the student rallies of my youth. In the old days there were blockades designed to keep students out and shut down the school. At this new-style rally students were bused in, and there were uniformed police cadets politely pointing the way.

But guess what? A little background research turned up the cool fact that SDS has been resurrected and students are still taking to the streets.

Need to see it to believe it? Check out the video: Funk the War

Ho`omaika`i

It means "congratulations" in Hawaiian, where Larry Buckley, Fullerton College's Dean of Instruction, earned his advanced degrees.

I never learned the whole story, but apparently his job was in some jeopardy but has been salvaged. I've never met the man, but I've heard only good things about him, so I guess it's a good thing that he's still among us.

Get a Room -- A Locker Room

Did you know that cops sometimes wear garters that hold their socks up by attaching them to their shirts?

I know because I see police academy students dressing on the roof of the campus parking structure. No nudity, you understand. Just the occasional unexpected man in boxers. One of them said this is where they've been told to change. Before the structure was built, they got ready for class in a parking lot.

I'm not going to tell you which parking structure or when, but it's been going on for a while, and it's taken me a while to figure out what I think about it.

Finally I realized that coming around the back of my van and finding a guy reaching into his open fly to adjust... well, whatever it is guys do adjust ... pisses me off.

No, I'm not mad at the guy. I'm pretty sure it wasn't his idea. He's just going along to get along.

And I wasn't shocked or embarrassed or titillated. Just pissed off.

I'm way too old for this.

I'm too old to put up with second-class treatment just because I'm a student. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? I mean, the guys who are changing are students and the people who park in the structure are students. Someone has decided that behavior that wouldn't be tolerated in another public place is perfectly ok if it's just a bunch of students who are affected.

I don't think the practice shows much respect for me or for the students who are changing their clothes in public.

Have I got this wrong? Is stripping to your boxers while standing next to your car in a parking lot pretty much routine these days? What do you think?

California's Budget - How Long Will It Last?

California legislators finally pulled it all together and passed a budget last week, but it may come unraveled -- again! -- and pretty quickly at that.

This year's budget, which covers from June 2008 through June 2009, wasn't approved till September, a jaw-grinding 85 days late, and then it fell swiftly apart. By December it was so out of balance the governor called a fiscal state of emergency and convened a special session of the legislature... which then haggled till last week when it finally approved a plan covering the rest of this fiscal year and next year as well.

But will it last? Is the California budget in good shape for the next year-and-a-half?

Maybe not so much. There's been no real long-term fix. The state is depending on borrowed money, more stimulus money than the Department of Finance says we're likely to get, and a sale of bonds that depends on voter approval in May.

And even if we can borrow everything we want, get all the economic recovery money we need, and sell those bonds, those are all short-term fixes. We're still at sea in a leaky boat, bailing for all we're worth.

Fred Williams, finance guru at the Chancellor's office, uses terms like "smoke and mirrors" and "house of cards" and "How long can they keep this up?" when explaining the budget.

Sooner or later we need to head for dry dock and fix the damn boat.

Here's a good source of information: The California Budget Project.