Detachment and Entanglement

I spent part of the week at a conference on "Engagement:"  engaging our students, engaging faculty to connect with students, engaging the academy with the community, engaging scholarship with solving "real-world" problems.  Now I don't want to go to grad school anymore.

More importantly, I thought about other senses of engagement, including romantic entanglement.

I've been choosing activities and communities that validate detachment:

1) Work.  Work, work, work.  If I'm willing to work weekends, work at night, work through crises, I'm hired.  Or not fired. 

2) Travel.  If I'm far away, I can't be expected to pick up the sick kid from daycare, etc.

3) Relocate. If I live 1000 miles away from family, I'm not expected to get entangled in day-to-day drama.

4) Head space.  If I live in my head, I can justify just about any behavior to suit my wants.

And then there's Charles.  Charles.  Charles said to me, "Karen, a significant relationship makes life experiences relevant.  We need a special person to share our lives with, to celebrate our accomplishments with." 

Damn. 

40

I just turned 40, which means I survived my thirties.

It was a good decade, and I see the beginnings of another on the horizon.

Things I learned from my thirties:

• I turned 30 in Fall 2001, in the months just after "September 11th." I was working at a Muslim school in Aurora, CO that year.  I learned a lot about Islam that year as well as the extent to which Americans can scapegoat a community.  I learned about a culture that valued teachers and that showered us with fabulous feasts.  I also learned something about myself: even though every member of my family suggested I quit working at that school, I decided to continue to work with the children, that I wouldn't make a decision based on fear for myself.
• In 2002, Kevin and I married, perhaps to make our relationship acceptable to the catholic school who had offered me a job that spring.  Perhaps not the best decision I've ever made, but certainly my relationship with Kevin and his family deeply enriched my life, and I am grateful for the many years that we were together and our continued relationships today.
• In 2003, Kevin and I divorced. And got back together, and split up and got back together again.  It took me a while to learn that lesson, and we split up for good in 2009.
• In 2004, I began my entrepreneurial years.  I started an editing business and volunteered public relations work for The Other Side Arts, a non-profit art center based in Denver. I learned a bit about managing a non-profit through order and chaos, and learned even more about how to frame my own experiences in relation to others' professional needs, ie self-promotion.  I saw myself as a contractor to the colleges where I taught, rather than as a faculty member, as I was "full-time/part-time." I also realized this freed me to think of myself as a freelancer to multiple agencies, multiple colleges.  I also took advantage of learning as much as I could through my social networks and the professional development opportunities that were available to me through the colleges and through CANPO (Colorado Association of Non-Profit Organizations). I started having monthly lunches with inspiring women entrepreneurs. It was a stimulating growth period.
• In 2006, I learned doing 'scary' things with other people makes them less scary.  Kevin and I moved to the San Luis Valley in Colorado, something I had wanted to do for a long time.  We made the big decisions involved in uprooting our lives from one area to another.  I'm grateful to him for doing that process with me; I can't speak for him, but I certainly acknowledge that I'm a better person for having made the move.  I've experienced the blessings of stability as I've grounded myself in my new community.  I think I would have been too afraid of the risk of moving as one person, with one tentative income. Thank you, Kev, for being with me during that time.
• In the five years I've been at Adams State College and in the Alamosa area I've grown so much professionally.  I've had the time and resources to research and test best practices in Developmental Education.  I've learned more about writing grants.  I've developed habits that promote my overall health including daily walking and yoga and eating healthier.  I also carve out time daily for writing and reflection.  I bought a home. I make music and spend time with dear friends.  I stopped coloring my hair.  I snowboard regularly.
• I see family on my own terms.  I'm not afraid of losing their positive regard. I'm getting better at owning my competencies, talents, gifts.  I'm getting better at listening for my 'voice.'

What I anticipate my 40s will bring:

• graduate school
• writing projects
• more memories of good times with family and friends

Dad's adoption story, radical idea #1

In 1946 my father was adopted by a family who had given him some clues about who his birth mother might be. After his parents passed away, dad began to search in earnest for his birth family.  In 1993 he tracked down his birth mother, and we all had a big family reunion. 

One of the first things my grandmother urged me to do was to write about this story.  It's been almost twenty years and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to do this.  So, today I'm starting with blog posts on different sub-stories and hoping the whole picture will eventually emerge.

Sub-story 1

Grandma (Dorothy Marie Johnson) was a nurse.  This famous V-J day photo taken in August 1945 in Times Square is part of the way she tells her story.  My dad was conceived just a few weeks after this photo was taken (though this sailor and nurse are clearly not his parents).  Grandma uses this image to explain the spirit of the time which swept her up and led events.

 According to my grandmother, the man who was my dad's father (ie the babydaddy) was a sailor stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago named Chuck Johnson.  She met him at a church bowling party in Kenosha, WI in fall 1945.  They went on a date, one thing led to another, and she became pregnant.  When she wrote to him letting him know her situation, the letter was returned unopened marked "Return to Sender: Deceased."

She was devastated, and began the process of putting the baby up for adoption.  She hid her pregnancy from her family, and spent the last months of her pregnancy in Madison, WI, where she gave birth. 

I began researching the father immediately in 1993, but was discouraged by my aunt who said if I found information that upset my grandmother it would be horrible.  [This theme of "keeping the secret," "saving face," "preserving reputations" keeps coming up]  I stopped the search for over a decade, but two years ago decided I could find the answers and then CHOOSE whether or not to share it with my grandmother.  It's my story, too.

So in 2010 I made a trip to Chicago to visit the Newberry Library genealogy stacks, the National Archives and the Great Lakes Naval Museum.  Many helpful people (I love librarians) gave me many ideas, but no conclusive answers.  I read through the accident logs from the Naval base during the months in which my dad would have been conceived, and there was no record of a Charles Johnson, or Chuck Johnson, being injured or dying.

I like pretty libraries.  And Chicago architecture.

A librarian at the Chicago Public Library turned me on to the social security death index database, which is amazing.  In it, I found 66 Charles and Chuck Johnsons, who fit the criteria I was looking for.  It also gave me date of birth and social security number for each of them. 

With this fantastic list in hand, I contacted the military personnel records archive in St Louis, MO .  I called and said "I have a list of SSNs and DOBs for Charles Johnsons.  Can you tell me which one (or two or ?) of them was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station in Fall 1945?" And the voice on the other end of the line was silent.  "No ma'am.  I cannot.  That's not the way we work."

Why not?  I know why not.  If every kid across the planet who thought their daddy was a GI could get confirmation from the US government, there'd be a lot more child support checks issued.  He wasn't going to make this easy for  me.

So here's radical idea #1.  The Armed Forces already collects DNA from entering service members.  When I joined the Army in 1989, I had many shots and blood draws over the course of my Military Entrance Processing.  If the military wanted to promote responsible behavior of its service members (insert radical paradigm shift), they could store DNA for the purpose of confirming paternity for any claims that may come in the future, and make this policy well known during the indoctrination process.  This information could also be used in criminal cases (rape or other crimes leaving DNA evidence at the scene).

I can hear the drill sergeant now:  "Alright recruits [maggot puke, etc]! Welcome to the Army [Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force].  Notice the abundance of free condoms everywhere you turn, in your meal packs, where you pick up your paycheck, in restrooms, everywhere.  Carry a handful with you.  Prevent disease; prevent pregnancy. It's the right thing to do.  And if any mothers or children of your union(s) come forward with DNA evidence confirming that you're the babydaddy, your pay will be docked to support that child.  Simple.  Want to keep more of your paycheck?  Have fewer children.  Wear condoms.  Now drop and give me twenty!"

In the mean time, I'm sending requests one at a time for each of the 66 names.

Making Mead

Saturday, October 22, 2011.  The beginning of a new tradition.

Trudi and John invited wonderful people to their home for a mead making day.  A year from now we'll gather again to taste our projects and start the next batch.

Bottles washed, honey measured.

Honey from local produces Haefli and Soffel and a variety of yeasts made the recipe.  We harvested no honey this year from our bees.  Maybe next year.  Earlier that day I winterized three strong hives though, sliding "bee cozies," two inch foam boxes, over them to insulate them from the -30 degree chill.  I also arranged straw bales in a wind break.

Contemplating the love letters...

Probably the most important 'ingredient' was the intention we set for each bottle.  Elaine, fermenter extraordinaire, writes "love letters" for each batch of kefir, kim chee, and kombucha, having read Masuro Emoto's work related to the formation of water crystals under the influence of water, pictures and music. According to Emoto, sending positive messages to water influences its symmetry of crystals and beauty.  Elaine explained that the two most beneficial sentiments to express were love and gratitude. 

Lavender from Chris Keitges' garden. Instead of using commercially prepared yeast, I added the lavender and its coating of naturally occurring local yeasts as the inoculant for my batch.  Thank you, Chris!

I have many sentiments of love and gratitude for this mead.  I'm grateful to John and Tom of Haefli Honey for welcoming the San Luis Valley WannaBeekeepers to tour their honey house facility last summer and for the bottle of honey we each received as a memento of our trip.  I am grateful to Tracy Doyle for joining me on that trip and suggesting making a lavender mead.  I'm grateful to Chris Keitges for giving me some lavender from her garden to add to the mead.  I'm grateful to Patrick O'Neill and his family's grapes and raisins which are nourishing the yeast.  And I'm deeply grateful to the friends with whom I made the mead who host our bees on their wonderful organic farm.

Lavender mead

By then end of the evening, my bottle was covered with love letters.  They included "Thank you little friends... bees and yeasties!" and "Bee Kind to your Honey!"

Time to say something

Exciting times, communication-wise.  Occupy Wall Street and elsewhere, people are finding their voices to express themselves.

This week, I've had a few opportunities to speak up.  Sometimes it is a difficult decision for me, when to say something--should I let it ride, or do I have a responsibility to speak up?  One definition for leadership from NCEE says that we need to take responsibility for what matters to us.  So, I find the courage to speak up.

A friend who is in a new romantic relationship (one month) describes how her boyfriend wants to relocate to her city and move in with her.  I hear reluctance in her voice, even as she's describing the great sex and how flattered she is that he's "willing to move for her."  Disclaimer: I'm perhaps the worst person to give relationship advice, having divorced as many times as I've married.  But perhaps I've learned a thing or two about rushing into relationships, and I felt compelled to send her a message asking "Is that what you really want?"  I hoped it wasn't too "butt-in-ski" of me, and she said it wasn't. 

The Big Potato Dig

October 1st, 2011 Big Potato Dig at Ortega farm north of Alamosa, CO

Agronomist Patrick O'Neill invited me and several others to help hand dig potatoes from his research plot north of Alamosa, CO.   He is studying the impact of different soil conditions, amendments to the soil, etc on the nutrients in the potatoes. Because the potatoes in the different conditions needed to be kept separate from each other, it required hand digging and bagging them for weight.  He was also measuring the pounds of potatoes produced per 10 foot section of row.  Most of the potatoes were grown under organic conditions, but he also used the farmer's conventionally grown potatoes as the control condition for the study.  We were delighted to find worms in the soil; apparently, that is a pretty big deal here in the sandy soils of the San Luis Valley.  Somebody did something right with compost.

Volunteers dig the potatoes by hand to record how many pounds of potatoes are produced per ten foot row in each of the experimental conditions for the study.

Yukon Golds have pink eyes. Note the bits of straw in the soil--this helps with the worm hospitability.

It was a fun morning of chatting with other organically minded, local food-ies.  I worked a row with an organic farmer with blue hair, and we talked about beekeeping and GM canola.  Genetically modified canola, which is the only kind of canola allowed to be grown in the valley due to some legal weirdness, kills bees according to Tom Haefli, local commercial beekeeper.  He won't put his bees on canola fields, but California beekeepers will.

By lunch, we had bagged several samples.

You can't get much more local than this delicious lunch comprised of a roasted pumpkin from the nearby field, as well as potatoes (surprised?), spinach and Kretsinger beef.  Old timers told stories of sling-shotting rabbits while picking potatoes for  meat-and-potatoes field lunch.

It felt good to connect with people who not only believe in organic, sustainable food production, but who are doing something about it.  I was also happy to read today about a thirty-year study in Canada that shows that "organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure." 

Old-school earthen potato storage shed

After the potatoes are harvested by hand for the study, the farmer will harvest the rest of them by machine for donation to La Puente Homeless Shelter in Alamosa/the food bank network of the San Luis Valley.  Instead of giving them thousands of pounds all at once, the farmer will store them in an old-school earthen potato storage shed and deliver potatoes throughout the winter months.

The Privilege of Stability

Privilege derives its roots from Latin, roughly a "private law" that applies to some but not all people.
Stability ... I like the fourth and fifth definitions quoted here from dictionary.com:

4.Chemistry . resistance or the degree of resistance to chemical change or disintegration.

5.resistance to change, especially sudden change or deterioration: The stability of the economy encourages investment.

Today I write about  resistance to disintegration and resilience. 

I attempt within these essays to weave together idea strands from the multiple facets of my life.  Privilege of Stability has been on my mind lately relative to my work with students with low test scores and the faculty who teach them.

Students with Low Test Scores/Developmental Education

My academic area is Developmental Education, which has also been known as remedial, pre-collegiate, college-prep, and probably other less flattering names (ie "dummy English").  The name of the discipline itself suffers from destabilization as people want new words to describe it once others realize what we're talking about and the word acquires stigma.  I am talking about students who arrive at college with low test scores in reading, writing, and/or math.  There can be many causes for these low test scores: high schools that didn't adequately prepare the students perhaps, but also being away from the subject(s) for any amount of time due to serving in the military or caring for family members or being in a career. We also have students who are English Language Learners, whose facility with English is the main barrier to understanding the directions on the tests and/or the content, many of whom are graduates of US high schools and therefore are not required to take the TOEFL for admission to college (Test of English as a Foreign Language).  We also have students with diagnosed and undiagnosed disabilities including learning disabilities like dyslexia and acalculia as well as physical, mental and cognitive disabilities.

In additional to the destabilizing forces of low preparation, changing careers/activities, struggles with the language of instruction/assessment, and/or diagnosed or undiagnosed disabilities, there may be additional destabilizing forces such as low socio-economic status, health challenges, transportation challenges, childcare challenges, off-campus jobs, family obligations, substance addiction challenges, motivational deficits, and even institutionalized discrimination related to ethnicity-race/class/gender/identity.  Perhaps you can start to see that developmental education is messy: high-need students who tend to have low course success rates, low GPAs, low graduation rates.  They also tend to have dramatic attendance challenges, to "drop off the face of the earth," and sometimes return several semesters later with amazing stories of incarceration, car accidents, family obligations, taking care of things they had to do, which were more important than completing the semester.  They want to succeed, and earnestly hope that they'll get the alfalfa harvest in by next weekend so they can come back and take those exams they missed, for example.

I feel fortunate that I graduated from high school in the same district that I started kindergarten.  I benefited from a coherent math curriculum, for example, that was planned to teach students math facts in third grade that laid a foundation for math concepts to be taught in fourth grade.  For students who experience moving from district to district, or who are out of school for long periods of time due to health problems or whatnot, they may have gaps in key concepts. Many find a good way of coping, but they are set up to struggle with math or other subjects for the rest of their education.

To compound their challenges, developmental students are often taught by the least prepared and least-supported faculty: adjunct, contingent, part-time, untenurable faculty.  90% of developmental courses in Colorado are taught by contingent faculty.  Both students and faculty are marginalized, and administrators are reluctant to dedicate resources and time to solving the big complicated challenges that have less return on investment than the college's other responsibilities.  Messy.

I must also mention the social justice impact of supporting developmental education.  Students in my classes tend to represent ethnic minority groups (70.2% in dev ed courses; the campus-wide rate is closer to 40%), tend to be first generation students whose parents haven't graduated from college (63.4%), and tend to be Pell grant eligible, indicating from low SES family/support (74%) more than non-developmental students.  There were 287 graduates in May of 2011, and 88 (30%) of them took one or more developmental courses at ASC.  If we didn't have developmental coursework as a "gentle pathway" into or back into higher education, we would have dramatically fewer college graduates.

Faculty Professional Development and Stability

The Colorado Association for Developmental Education (CoADE) is in a position to offer scholarships to faculty to attend conferences and/or the Kellogg Institute.  I was developing an application process for these scholarships last week, and recognized my bias toward "stable" faculty: one criteria for scholarship eligibility points is "Are you presenting at the conference you'll be attending?"  I'm grateful that I've worked for the same college for several years in the same discipline.  I've learned the seasons of the call for proposals for the major conferences in dev ed, and have been able to plan ahead to submit proposals several months in advance of the conference.  New faculty, faculty who are "Road Scholars" teaching at multiple schools in a region, faculty trained in other disciplines who are making ends meet by teaching dev ed courses... they sometimes receive little to no faculty orientation or resources, and not surprisingly teach for one semester and are out the next.  There are some colleges that have 100% turnover of developmental faculty from semester to semester.  There are even colleges with MORE than 100% turnover since low paid, low supported faculty sometimes have no problem leaving in the middle of a semester for a better job.  These are extreme examples, and I'm very grateful that we've had a fairly stable group of faculty at Adams State.  However, my point is that it is a blessing, a privilege, to be able to be in one place long enough to get business cards printed, a phone number that doesn't change from year to year, a mailing and email address to receive those calls for proposals for conferences that tie us into our academic communities.  It's a blessing to be in a place long enough to work on bigger projects, to develop one's vision, identity and reputation.

Stability and choices

I used to be in a destabilizing relationship.  Eventually I made the decision to leave that situation, and I've been mindful of choosing relationships that promote stability, recognizing that a lot of relationships create at worst abuse and chaos and at best "opportunities for compromise." One need not look further than the the domestic abuse shelter to see people experiencing extreme destabilization related to families and/or partnerships. Relationships can be destabilizing, but so can ending them.  Divorce is a destabilizing force.  In addition to relationship destabilization, sleep patterns, time management, balance of activities, stress, substance use/abuse and diet/exercise choices can lead to more or less stability in one's life.  This semester I've been talking with my students about "using the present to plan the future" and want to draw their attention to the types of behaviors that can lead to stable jobs, stable relationships, stable health and quality of life.

Stability and choices I don't control

There are also destabilizing forces I cannot control.  Health, for example. A friend posted on facebook about his challenges with not being able to afford health insurance.  A barrage of cruel posts from "friends" indicated they thought he was a failure for not buying health insurance, that he was a parasite on society, that he deserved any calamities he might experience. While I like to think of myself as the "master of my fate," I have to recognize destabilizing forces outside of my control.  Health insurance tied to one's employment is a dumb system.  More than half of medical bankruptcies involve people who WERE insured before they were injured or became sick, who later lost work-related insurance and racked up their astronomical bills.  Even when we make healthy lifestyle and diet choices, environmental toxins or just plain "bad luck" could lead to cancers or accidents caused by other people. 

Stability and sacrifice

If you've enjoyed the privilege of stability throughout your childhood, it probably involved the sacrifice of others.  The traditional nuclear family--mom, dad, and kids--generally required sacrifices from both parents in order to provide stability for the kids.  Generally, moms did more sacrificing behaviors to preserve the stability of marriage as well as to provide the most stable home life and schooling for the kiddos. Their career choices and types of responsibilities women are willing to take on at work are still often second priority after her family and as a consequence have real economic impact on the salaries that married women earn.  Women today face a big challenge regarding stability and sacrifice: having children, even wearing an engagement ring to a job interview, has consequences for her employability.  When a woman marries and/or has children, she's generally setting herself up to sacrifice her own ambitions for the benefit of creating stability for others.  Somebody's got to be willing to miss opportunities at work to instead take care of a sick child, or relocate to a different city for a spouse's promotion.  I'm using women in these examples, but certainly many men are also finding themselves taking care of children as stay-at-home dads or single parents or the spouse of a professional.

Yoga and Bees

Yoga promotes at least two kinds of stability: stability of muscles/balance, and discipline of mind. 

Bees... I'm so grateful to have a relationship with the owners of the organic farm which allows my bees to have a non-destabilizing diet of unpesticided nectar.  Having healthy bees in our environment promotes overall food stability.

In closing, I'm bringing before your eyes examples of privilege. I feel privileged to have a stable job, stable relationships and to some degree stable health care.  I see students and colleagues who are experiencing less stability than I have, and I'm humbled by how I could easily be in similarly destabilizing situations (a car accident, a layoff) and feel I should use my privilege to expand the privilege of stability to all.