March 21

 Write more about the kittens:

1) Early trauma creates coping strategies which make it possible to survive the trauma but difficult to connect with trustworthy others.  Relationship-phobic.  Fear of connection, loss.  Fear of getting one's heart broken, again. A numbing, a disability to display or appear to feel or feel negative emotions.  In the same way one has to manage resting bitch face, One has to manage one's emotions.  Be stoic, through challenges.  In the heat of battle, keeping a level head.  The kind of leader who numbs themselves to physical pain, psychological pain, emotional pain, hypothetical pain, excruciating pain.  No pain, no gain. And also, feel no pain so you may gain.  These are discourses about "leadership".  But back to kittens.

Many times we catch JiJi, the super freaked out kitten who also is named SuperBraveKitty for trying things like crossing the center of the room rather than slinking around the edges, stare at us constantly in fear for what appears to be his life.  Terror.  A resignation.  A look like an orphan of war, a child soldier who has accepted his fate, pain of death, whatever, I knew this day would come.

How was he terrorized?  Maybe a dog a the humane society shelter?  Or maybe something earlier?  Or maybe he was just a tiny sensitive little guy, who got climbed over and didn't get access to the teat as much as he'd have liked.  Maybe he was just born a little sensitive, maybe a trauma while in utero or during delivery?  A special kitten.  But who also had a hard time of something and is now hard baked into patterns of resistance.  It's dangerous to allow anyone too close. I'm only safe when I hide.

And he was inseparable from his brother.  Trembling, crying, if they were apart for even a moment.  Inconsolable, grieving aching.  And now that they both are free to roam around the house (rather than be isolated in the guest bedroom, together) he's fine not seeing him for hours at a time.  They still call to each other to check in, and wrestle and play a lot.  They still announce "I'm about to poop" to each other, then follow each other to the litter box (to celebrate?  to be reminded 'oh yes, I should poop now too'? to bear witness?)

Part of terror, trauma--It doesn't matter what I think or want.  I just need to survive.  It doesn't matter what my favorite treat is.  Treats are a luxury I cannot expect, even after months of living in safety in a new environment.  My wishes don't matter.  (Clearly I'm trying to work through some Karen-kitten issues here--I'm safe in my new environment and I also feel fears that seem irrational given all that I have)

SO much more to write about the kittens--how to build trust, how to build repeated positive/neutral contacts, to reward positive behavior, to extinguish negative behavior, to read the cues, to recognize when my bigness/scariness/blinders to my own privilege enable me to take more pets/purrs from then than they were offering.  How I center my needs for pets/purrs/cuddles rather than whatever the cat's needs are at the time, to assume that they enjoy the same things I enjoy with the same frequency.

Feedback I sent to Matt about his dissertation defense:

I think I see the binary between faculty/SA [university student affairs professionals: people who work in housing, extracurricular activities, advising, administrating, the "non" faculty in the binary which can also include graduate students and other non-faculty entities who also teach for the university as an additional duty or as part of their graduate assistantship to fund their education] as also a distinction between "Field knowledge" (having a PhD/expertise in ____, in Fem Theory. etc, content expert, "exhaustive knowledge of the canon, passing a comprehensive exam) versus "process/methodology"

Like the binary between "English" and "Writing", between Film Studies and Film making--any discipline where there is a "canon" to be learned versus developing the skills to create new content/meaning.

I think your work challenges the notion of faculty as content experts, as opposed to process experts, and that these Men/Masculinities classrooms are spaces of "feminist doings"--it's not about the fixed identity/meaning of "feminist" but the doing of this kind of work.

Also, that SA are process experts and concerned with the materiality of students' lives/experience, what it takes for a student's body to have what it needs to be successful.

One thing [the director of the program] omitted in his list of feminist stuff at the beginning was the focus on methodology (really Alecia's specialty) and what I think is special about your work here.  It's the doing that matters, and how the doing is being done. :)

I think Higher Ed's (one of many) crisis is that we're shifting away from recognizing content expertise toward the fungible/interchangeable cogs of "instructors" who are pulled away from their "real work" in SA, who teach process work.  This thinking is coming from my longtime teaching of writing courses, how (in my opinion) that work is some of the most important work being done in the academy and it is mostly done by contingent workforce, non-faculty (graduate students, adjunct faculty, SAs who have an additional teaching assignment on top of the "day job").  What's important is that students learn the process of things (of writing, of understanding and challenging a text or systems) rather than learning the "content" of things. (and in a world with wikipedia/the internet, the changing ways that "content" can be sought/reproduced on demand)

The word "feminist" has unspeakable power (as your interviewees who avoided the word seem to suggest).  I resist the term too because making it fixed as an identity ("I am a feminist") sets it up to be used against me by others, whereas "I think about this problem using feminist theory" describes a doing, describes how it is a tool for analysis, description, inquiry.

Rural versus Urban:  a friend of mine [JG] shared the idea that perhaps rural areas are the way they are because they have not had a civil rights reckoning the way major cities did in the 1960s.  For rural areas (which I code as agricultural areas, which were constructed as white only spaces via Homsteading Acts, Redlining, systematic exclusion of non-Whites in owning farmland), White-centric (and White supremacist) life has gone on uninterrupted for generations.  Non-white people were forcefully removed from the "rural areas" in order to make them available to exclusively White people to own and build up their built environment upon.  There *are* other subjectivities (farm workers, meat processing plant employees, for example) which are specifically discounted as rural identities by design. They aren't considered to be the owner-class, much like farm laborers/servants in Enslavement Homesteads were considered chattel, fungible, ownable, not owners. 

I've been researching the construction of Whiteness here in Milwaukee via the 1838 land agreement with the Indigenous People who had claim to this land before settlement.  By 1837, a year before settlers were allowed to move onto this land, the ENTIRE tract was already divided up by a handful of men.  I read about a town in Colorado whose platting also similarly benefitted a handful of people who had insider knowledge (where the railroad tracks were to be laid, in that case) and/or the opportunity to claim land before it was allowed to be done in a fair, recognized agreed-to way. Again, people who didn't recognize the authority of [the land office?  the agreements made with the Indigenous people?] benefitted from jumping the gun, claiming something that wasn't theirs to claim, and experiencing no negative consequence for doing so (because of racism, because of a sense of White entitlement, male entitlement, Christian entitlement (I gotta write a section below about Catholicism and the 1600s and incursions into both what would become Green Bay, WI, and Santa Fe, NM)).  Cheating/disregarding the agreed rules benefitted certain subjectivities at the expense of others.  The construct of rurality, of rural Whiteness, has been long in the making/remaking, and we're sorta overdue to address its hegemony/functions.

I also have been thinking a lot about "midwestern nice" and its relation to being in relation with others--we want everyone to get along out of a desire to be on good terms with others, which is at odds with neoliberal, capitalist and other logics which drive high achievement behaviors.  It also is in opposition to the fungibility--the need to be mobile for one's academic job--can't stay in your hometown to work.  I'm writing about self-orphaning in relation to higher education, becoming out-of-relation(s) in order to conform to the needs of the university, which aren't so much the needs of the school but of the idea of what it means to be an academic, the construct we continually re-construct with every hiring committee decision for acceptance or rejection of a job offer, for tenure committees deciding to accept or reject a candidate.  For a dissertation committee to accept or reject one's oral presentation.  

See also relation to New England Congregations requiring congregants to defend how God has called them into the community, individually, on consequence of being banished from society (and access to food/life supporting resources and networks--I wrote about this in my masters program papers, was really struck by the similarities in Colonial New England conversion narratives, abduction captivity narratives and the at the time tv show "The X Files"'s representations of alien abduction narratives--and also the process of defending one's research to a court, the way individuals in Puritan congregations had to testify to God's work in their lives via these sorts of narratives ("My cow died last winter, but I didn't die so therefore I am among "the elect" who deserve to be members of this church", "I got abducted by Indians, but I escaped and didn't die, so therefore I'm among the elect and deserve a place in this community" (basically, I'm going to interpret some hardship event in my life as evidence from God that I'm special in ways that others (ie non-Christian, non-White, etc) are not and deserve special consideration).

Being out-of-relationship is a necessary condition for an academic career.  It demands that either one appear to live like a monk or that one subdues the will of their sexual partner(s)/family to conform to the needs of the academy--leave their career/wishes/needs behind in order to follow the academic job candidate.  Self-orphaning is the means to develop the out-of-relationship condition. 

Academic Self-orphaning is related to the construction of Whiteness and separating oneself from being in relationship with land, with a reciprocal support system, with a community based on lifelong connections vs “leaving home for opportunity”

How are the 17th century (1600s) Catholics of Santa Fe like the Catholics of Green Bay? (Influence of the church on "exploration" "missionary work" "colonization" de-heathenization.  Cultivating a Sense of Entitlement to the land, to the onto-epistemology of a Christian-centric worldview, "legitimizing" creating orphans by de-legitimizing a different way of being, justifying seizure of land and other resources)

1) Missionary work is in conflict with Indigenous peoples/ways of being

2) Genocidal: goal of eradicating an ethnic group through ideological assimilation, control of ports/waterways, (establishment of "Fort Howard" which became the city of Green Bay), foodways.

3) Incursion, withdrawal, left a trace of what was, which evolved in its isolation to be more self-authoritarian in its interpretations of ritual, more localized, personalized and also possibly more hybridized with local Indigenous culture/custom with which it is blended. Mixto.  Mestiza.  (I'll have to look at history of Santa Fe/San Luis Valley stuff I read a decade ago regarding initial colonization/missionary work up the Rio Grande towards what is now Alamosa, CO, southern Colorado,  but because of the Natives pushing back during the Pueblo Revolts, the Church retreated, withdrew, and people made their own flavor of catholicism in absence of "official versions" discourses enforced by priests.  Priests only came through but once a year.  Still learning about catholicism influence in Wisconsin, the early settlement in Green Bay, Pere Marquette establishing a presence in what would become Milwaukee (namesake of Marquette Univ)

4) Colonizer.  Treaties.

Native American Tribes (Menomonee Nation and New Mexico Pueblo people not being forced to leave their ancestral lands, having uninterrupted access/control of their lands, not relocated to reservations like other tribes (Trail of Tears, 1838 treaty to move Native peoples west of the Mississippi)

Santa Fe                                                            Menomonee

Southwestern Pueblo Cultures                            No revolt/pushback in 1700?

Pueblo Revolt, pushback                                    

re-establishing hegemony

1500s-1600s

Onate

Spanish Catholic colony-building                        1600s Frech catholic colony building projects/via Canada

The questions about  "disappointment" and "disconnection" from Aaron:  I think it's related to a disconnection from mission/role.  In my diss I noted how it wasn't necessarily having a PhD in a subject which created an opportunity to teach--it's sometimes being in the right(wrong) place at the right(wrong) time, the instructor whose schedule is open during a time slot, or who needs an extra assignment to balance out the team etc.  It's part of the critique of academic meritocracy in general that the right person gets the role of teacher/Sage on the Stage, when really the academy has been systematically reducing full-time TT faculty roles and expanding precarious roles.  Like, the mission is supposed to be something like "the university uses teaching expertise to help students learn the process of [writing, thinking with feminist theory]" when really many parts seem to be operating in crisis mode--we need this work to be done--who is cheaply/readily available?  Whose precarity means they won't ask tough questions or lead a student walk-out or something? (also, the question about "is feminist too political a term?") And also another good arguement for UBI: https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/we-need-ubi-because-we-all-need-money (Santens says we need UBI to rebalance power, to build trust in ourselves/others rather than fear)

"Paralyzing" "catatonic"--wow.  Well, again, I think your work tells the story of a feminist doing, using feminist methodologies as pedagogy (Sara Ahmed), as a way to challenge structures, to deconstruct as a way of moving in the world.

Fundamental axioms of how to be: be present to each other, bear witness, 

build resiliency

Mindset of resilience and acceptance

Re-evalutae social mores of family, sexuality,

engage with each others as social beings

Want to talk about notion of orphaning

September: ancestry.com genome, too extensive to explain, but trans-Atlantic slave trade, South America West Indies, Carolinas,

Broken up reorganized at least 5 times since birth of gggggreat grandfather.  Five hundred years. 

Sold off.  Victim of rape.  Conceived on a slave farm.  

Orphaning and importance of family:  can't imagine being broken away from larger family, not knowing who father was , who mother was.

And also

Thinking about the anti-trans discourse as my one-sided monologue against the speakers of such things.  It's powerful to write words I'd like to hear from mouths that wouldn't otherwise say it.  It's also powerful to write what I'd like to say to entitled/powerful people, forcing them to listen to me, which they otherwise wouldn't do.  So below is what I'd say to lawmakers/spinners who talk about how important it is to know which of two genders a person is, based on their "biology," which is shorthand for unambiguous genital configuration. (this conversation arose as Marty and I were talking about how miserable his trans kid would have been attending a catholic school which required girls to wear those too-short pleated skirts)

"Oh, so you feel entitled to know what's between my legs?  You need to know my gender clearly, male or female, before you engage with me?  Is that because you need to figure out how to treat me--because you treat men differently from the way you treat women? 

"It's just like when entitled people ask 'where are you from?' or 'what are you?' to people who don't immediately present as White.  Because they need to know what category of "foreigner" to put that person into? To invoke whatever racialized stereotypes that person has for people from that part of the world or ethnicity?  Because that's what it seems like those people are asking about, and feel entitled to demand that sort of information.

And also, Dr Prescod-Weinstein has a new book I should probably read, and she wrote this awesome article about just wanting to do the things rather than having to do all the other things:

https://catapult.co/stories/chanda-prescod-weinstein-black-physics-professor-facing-racism-of-academic-institutions

Regarding detitling Women:  I have a doctorate.  I worked hard to get it, much personal sacrifice and all that.  But I don't work in an environment where it's appropriate to mark that distinction--I don't work in a university or as an administrator in a school district.  There are very few people who do.  A doctorate in my experience has only been used to exclude people.  I have yet to see it open doors for me.  I have seen it close doors for many people.  Rather than having an issue with people not using my title appropriately, I'm more angry about how few opportunities to use it arise.  I sat through a dissertation defense this week and listened to the director of the doctoral program talk about how important the candidate's research is, and I thought, really though?  Is it?  If it were, wouldn't there be structures in place to ensure they can continue to do this important research?  Even in your own program, there aren't sufficient funds for supporting research.  It sounded so hollow and empty, like the program is hollow and empty, like the promises of education are hollow and empty.

March 14

 Watched Nomadland--yay Frances McDermott and Chloe Zhao.  It was ethnographic, as I understand it from the way I justified my research methodology.  It reminded me of the dream of people moving about the country, the planet, as climate refugees, covid refugees.  Leaving the old way behind and moving forward with what is possible.  Building the infrastructure for welcoming the refugee into our refuge.  Dignity, belonging. Mutual aid.  Thinking about the scenes in Hulu's Handmaid's Tale of intake in Canada--everyone gets a cellphone, Debit Card, clothes, food, housing, education--they get set up with what they'll need to heal from the trauma they just escaped as well as support the basics of life.  Give people time and space and resources to heal, and they can do that and then begin to do the other things which are evidence of thriving--like making art or spending time with family or enjoying themselves with whatever hobby or inclination sparks them.

Got a covid vaccine Monday.  Feeling hopeful. 

Plant based society versus carbon-based, oil.

"In Good Faith"

curation and identity themes-- JG

Traumatized kittens

two contradictory signals (Kittens are so soft and warm and cute; will bite scratch if threatened)

The desire to control and force things is hard to see.  Marty and I had the cats contained in a bedroom for several weeks, and we would visit them when we wanted a kitten break, between phone calls, or in the evening while we worked a crossword.  We noticed that once we let them have free reign of the house they were much more scarce to us, perhaps available to us for pets and purrs for about 25% of the time they were when we were setting the terms of engagement.  Which means we were overestimated how much time they wanted to be pet by us, we wanted to engage with them 4 times as much as they now want to be engaged with by us.

give people space, a path out (cat can leave the room safely).  People need to feel not-coerced ffs.  

I don't ever want to work for assholes again.  It's a creative challenge to find wonderful people to engage with.  I feel like I am succeeding.

Corrupt relationships "sugar on top and sugar on bottom"

transactional relationships

meeting people who exchange cards/ideas but then they find out that I really can't help them, then they'll be gone.

Karening

rigidity of thought

religion

permanence

stability

always can count on

illusion or creating stratifications

set a rules you can live by but they just keep the system together

directly confronting parents with how they intentionally overlook aspects of the whole me

either you accept more of me or I will be in a little box for us to b

you're a placeholder in my own view

your wants and needs don't matter because i'm in charge

i'm just going to categorically not count you

I don't want to spend my energy trying to bring her along==not to the beloved community I envision

I'm going to build my beloved community

pour energy into reciprocation

It's okay to draw away from relationships that drown you

there are no consequences for parents who abandon their children...opposite

We should be organized like a matriarchy

should recognize that we are

the patriarch started the lineage

The intersection of things--pope going off on gay marriage, the crown, amplified waves

You don't have to listen to the pope, the queen of England, pledge of allegiance to things that are designed to have a certain blood not anyone else

They need to be in the news to be relevant--it is in their interest to have the paparazzi

IN order for a brand to have any value, it has to be recognizable...

Gives brand awareness

So what? Windsor should pay taxes, pay reparation

why regency over revolution

why did this occur--there was a vacuum of power under king George...

House of Lords--the Senate

ptsd

I read a thing ysterday about ptsd, that it’s not a disorder but a circumstance

they were not training you to be adult

seizing all the power never planning for a succession

we have a political class of old men, we are in charge and we don't want a pathway in this structure that will deny us power

civics

we are creating voters

we are creating ppl empowered in democracy

we've gotten really cynical about democracy

rush Limbaugh on--reactionary outrage culture since the 80s  culture war stuff LGBT,

white evangelical Christian  city on the hill  whiteness

we have to have a functioning society

food prep, repair, if you are connected to a society that is contributing, you should have water, house

overpopulation

of whites...

ppl don't want to have children too expensive

it's not something I could do and still stay safe

didn't want the what if and let my kid down

I couldn't even buy a home--how could I have enough $ to raise kids.

sperm counts are down...chemicals

when we have a happy ecosystem, it reproduces

there is something really broken about society,

econ...etc.

species dysfunction

Dysfunctioning species

People want servants, be taken care of

Safe protected

Doesn’t mean you get priority

“How dare you”

Seize power, make a decision, system creates reality

Everybody wants their own house—was a joke then

This is a timeline:  people lived with extended families until fucking baby boom, built white suburbs and senses of entitleme

Selfish:  I wanna stay home and not do anything

Usurping space and time and thoughts

Are humans so uncontrollable? Done something awful, knowing ly or not, so we just have to accept these faults?  Rigid, fixed

New teaching job—classroom of kids, certain manipulations you have to produce

Depends on what you’re good at?  Disrespect, abuse?

Setting high expectations, challenges, giving individuals time, fun as hell

Get good groovy feeling going and do something with it

Rigidity due to inexperienced, versus the flow of confidence

Like learning how to ride a bike to develop the vocab

Leaders don’t jump in unless shit is guaranteed

Don’t take risks unless likely to succeed

manipulating--shame, comparing students, label people, scarcity

for teachers

Mrs Frizzle at the flower shop

Enthusiasm for learning

for relating

Me to Everyone (11:56 AM)

Filmstrips

Gotta write about the kittens--softness and also needles, mixed messages, 25% of the time if up to them

I'm thinking of how these choices are presented as binaries, and you know, I gotta trouble those.  It's possible to be both childless and nurturing children/others as if they were one's biological children.  It's possible to call multiple places home.  It seems to me my focus has shifted from stuff about me personally, the Karen Lemke of the Karen Lemke brand, to a relational entanglement of who I am to different people in different contexts being [more important] (I'm also troubling whether things are important/not, good/bad) than what I think I mean to myself as some sort of fixed reality that is definable.

I follow Jenny on Twitter!  Yes, I think there's a lot to be written about age, gender, parental status, professional recognition, "legitimacy", and meaning by folks like us.  She's on my list of LU women writers in my imagined collection of essays about why or why we didn't identify with Downer Feminist Council a quarter century ago.  I've been spending a lot of time thinking/writing with Kelly Flemming ('95) about these issues, which is a bit of a bildungsroman of our evolutions as "feminists", why we resisted the term then and now, what that means, how we navigate things.

Yes, music and flowers and writing: I'm writing this week about how shifting an identity from income-focused work to the hobby or passion-work that thrills us is the direction I think we need to go--with automation and other big shifts (women being forced to "retire" by not having access to work one used to have access to, by having to quit paid work in order to manage kids' zoom schooling) to rethink who we are.  Even if we have a day job, letting go of the class marker/prestige attachments to it will liberate in other ways.

Re accumulating degrees: omg the number of young female college students who gush to me at the flower stand about how they'd love to do what I do.  Mostly I do not say "I have absolutely no formal training in this!  And neither does the owner of this shop!  Don't worry about changing your major from whatever it is, because education is not actually a pathway to this outcome.  I have a doctorate for fucks sake.  I was just in the right place at the right time, and I'm willing to work for $12/hour and not complain about it.  I couldn't have created this outcome if I tried!  We don't have control over anything!  Nothing matters!  Stay in school kids!"  I have decided I'm going to exchange contact info with them now though, because a few months ago a customer about my age and I exchanged contact info and I got her hired to help out during Valentines Day, and now she's STARTED HER OWN FLOWER BUSINESS and says that *I* inspired her to do so.  So, I'm not going to hold someone back by telling them they can't do something when clearly some people are able to do things, even if presently I feel like I am unable to do the things I thought I was going to be doing (and yet I am doing things, inspiring people, even when I don't think I have the capacity to do so).  But back to my point, she was TAKING CLASSES IN FLOWER ARRANGING, working toward a certificate (I don't have a certificate!  I don't think my boss has any sort of certificate).  Having developed curriculum and spent some time examining the politics of how new educational programs are birthed into existence, I'm a bit jaded on the value proposition of getting another certificate or degree or license, especially for women, who are now super credentialed in comparison to men and yet it doesn't translate to opportunities, jobs, prestige, recognition, legitimacy.  It looks more like exploitation, selling the dream, yet the access gate is firmly closed for some.  I rant because I'm still processing some feelings :S. I'm just a little done with paying people to give me degrees for a while.

And of course, the only way I can really hold these ideas is because I'm in a situation where my basic needs are met.  I don't have to make rent based on a regular income because I live with someone who is paying for most things.  If I didn't, I would be working a lot more hours probably doing things I don't prefer doing, and not having time to write.  So again I want to tell stories of how nice it would be for everyone to be able to choose to work, how it would upend the coercive systems in place, how it would make shitty employers behave better or perish for lack of victims of wage theft/exploitation.  How parents and other caregivers can focus on that work during the seasons of their lives when that is needed and also be able to participate in the paid economy when they're interested in engaging/re-engaging.  It's a big juicy feminist project to support :)

Self-orphaning:  this has grown more this year as a concept of analysis.  I started the Huerfano project thinking it was about forces/structures which create orphaning--the religious families of my Dad's biological parents for example, the urge to preserve/create Whiteness and respectability, reputation, access to the so-called Middle Class which being a proper person allegedly grants, the "legitimacy" that a father's acknowledgement grants.  There's still a lot of that happening, but I also have a growing section on self-orphaning, the ways that we create separation from our biological kin (in order to be college-educated, for example, needing to leave home to attend elsewhere.  In order to win an academic appointment, the willingness to uproot from family/community/religious support systems in order to wed oneself to a college community, in order to follow one's work requirements, the willingness to delay having a family, to manage one's fertility (abortion, IVF) for the convenience of others).  I self-orphaned by leaving Oconomowoc because I wanted more than what I thought would be available to me there (I left the church where I was confirmed, longtime friends, friends' parents, my parents' friends, my teachers, community activities, my siblings and cousins, the places I volunteered, etc).  It's still fuzzy.  It's about who we choose to be in relations with, which communities we choose to identify with, which communities we shun through embarrassment as we're trying to build our brand, our individual recognition of our successes as distinct and separate from the people and places who made them possible with us.  I'll pull all this together into something that looks like a chapter, or maybe a collection of essays in a section.  There's a third section now too which is the "what next?" part--how to come in from an orphaning, how to connect with others, to create reciprocal healthy family-like relations based on trust, respect, communication, recognition, autonomy, shared responsibility, accountability to each other.  Explicitly articulated values.  Hence my interest in cults, how to recognize them, when to join them, when to quit them, when to start them.

What a great image from your therapist--I'm imagining being in a river, struggling versus going with the flow.  For me the orphaning ideas lead to a lot of flailing around, crying about being rejected, unlovable, never being quite right.  There's a time for that and also a time for the "what next?" part--so yes, X person seems to have rejected me and/or what I represent to them, and so therefore, I can accept that nugget and do something with it.  Cry about it because I want it to be different and/or pay attention to/listen for/notice if there are other things going on, other people who LIKE me and/or what I represent to them, and what might happen if I pay more attention to situations where I feel good about myself because I feel recognized, appreciated, legitimized, cared for, LOVED?  What might happen then?  :)

K Lemke Consulting

Creating Beauty and Connection

Spreading my papers out, my notecards out, helps me make decisions.

It helps me see patterns.  Yes, it is like the meme with the deranged-looking guy pointing to papers taped up on the wall, with red string connecting the dots of pushpins, "Pepe Lives".  Yes also like "A Beautiful Mind" strips of paper to hold onto ideas before they slipped away in relevance.  Maybe I'll need this.  How can I see it everyday, passively, to remind me to remember it?  I'll tape it on the wall.

Today I gathered up the notecards of 2020 into a stack.  Sorting the cards.  Shuffling, Cutting the cards.  Deal them out again.  A Tarot set.  Another Tarot set.  These are sketches of ideas which could be characters, which are characters, archetypes, faces of the divine, mythological goddesses and gods and engendered deities, real deities, life energies, vibrations, sounds, quivering movements.  A heartbeat which pulses out into the world and is reflected back on every surface, changed slightly and echoed back.

Marty and I participated in an Ancient Greece trivia contest this week, and wow, Ancient Greece was super gay.  Like so supergay yes-homo that I think the early Church/Institutionalized Patriarchy said wow, it would be a radical thing to justify building a dynasty of inherited privilege based on legitimacy of male heirs.  If we could convince people they'd be able to accrue multigenerational wealth power privilege political sway for men if only they'd swear in front of the church and everybody that the male spawn of this union I'm making with a virgin female are legitimized by me, acknowledging them as my sons, which is really important.  Like because our concept of God is actually based on father-son inheritance.

We can create an androcracy! Male supremacy will be enshrined in law.  Textbooks will tell the story of the birth of western civilization with *our* origin story. Non-males can best participate as wombs, receptacles of our seed, tenders of the spawn into men stages.  We'll define citizenship as something for male participants in the landed class, and everyone else as lucky to have a role in our hegemony.  Ostracism is a choice, from our perspective.  Play nice, go along with what we say, or you're excluded from opportunities.  Cancel culture.  Everyone but these male citizens are cancelled out of that culture.

March 7

 Equality as an audit culture

Do the opposite of what intended, or perhaps the storytelling dog-pony show is what was intended

Cuomo example:

Sexual Harassment yes, and also a pattern of other bullying/coercion

LU 25 years ago asking Black alums "what should we do to increase Black student"

"Hire a black president, not head of recruiting, etc"

LU just hired a black woman president. Yay!

Examining audit culture:  

Data is the "bible" of reality

Can't validate without data

passive aggressive pushback from boss, like dealing with a split personality

WM who doesn't like the shit I'm asked to do, and yet doesn't want me to succeed in 

Not being genuine, with regards 

Contrasting episode of The Crown with King of Zamunda (Coming 2 America)

Two sovereigns who decide either to enforce "the law" versus change the law

"Managing from the bottom rather than from the top" (Obama quote) identify/groom/cultivate those not white men into positions of power

to help spawn another generation of leaders

will be able to bring other folks

Culture of exclusion versus inclusion which spawns policies/laws that take into consideration all those who have historically been excluded due to laws designed for that purpose

US Constitution, document intended for anybody to have some liberty and freedom (until you read the conditions that define those who can exercise full liberty, owning property (not women), being a citizen (not Black, Indigenous)

Rewrite the constitution

Give land back to Indigenous Sovereignty

Transform a culture of xenophobia, hate, fear to

[These are quotations from Joe Green, one of my writing partners, in response to our weekly discussion about these blog posts, mixed in with my responses to his responses--trying to figure out the citational politics of this one, wanting to share that I'm not thinking these thinks in isolation.  Kelly Dallmann is also a writing partner who has been helping me think my thinks the past several months, too.  All our books are making progress!]

Inclusivity, 

Lay no claim to land, to people

Redefine political borders, treaties, 

American Corporations/public sentiment are not ready

Artists tell this new story

Silent growing majority of young people who will not subscribe to identity politics because of multiple overlapping subjectivities--"I'm all of these things.  I care about all of these people."

[also reading about "Bespoke Feminism" a kind of White feminism which is like a suit custom tailored for the feminist, ie allows for a Karening, a type of feminism which translates to "I support feminist ideas until they impact my kids' access to their 'inherited privileges'.  Also playing with the idea that bespoke feminism is the opposite of intersectional feminism, but names it as such to name the power structures--so meta! (read Kimberle Crenshaw for the original usage of intersectional feminism; one quick summary is here: https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/)

here's link to Mona Eltahawy's Bespoke Feminism article: https://www.feministgiant.com/p/the-bespoke-feminism-of-senator-sinema]

Rewriting the constitution--people who fear it (people wed to Whiteness, Superiority, Imperialism, Corporate supremacy) will resist.  Probs with climate change, external pressures, demographic changes,

will force a transformation in how we govern ourselves.  Changing status of who is governable

Who is governable?  TFG if he had had some compassion, but (drugs?  his ego being pumped by his people?  he just got worse in the last three months, and much worse aft Nov 6), he could have won the election.  It was sort of just dumb luck that he didn't overturn the will of the majority of voters. (not sure how this answers the question of who is governable--government by consent, this fucked up electoral college situation meant to restrict whose voices participate in the selection, how to be governed by a numerical 'minority' who considers itself entitled to paternalistically decide for others.)

Wyppo don't talk about it perhaps because so much of rural America has yet to experience "the revolution".  People who have lived in urban areas (MKE, Madison, Chicago, Detroit) had some sort of experience of protests, some awareness of political unrest due to injustice--whether it was protesting the US's participation of the Vietnam war, or the racial unrest due to murders of prominent leaders peacefully working to improve lives.  Small-town America, the smaller towns of America, may have sailed through to this present moment without EVER having to reckon with injustices.  The Mayberry (Andy Griffith Show reference) towns where everyone is White and the worst thing the law enforcement has to deal with is some bucktoothed freckled redheaded kid lost a dog or something--that's the world some of these folks experienced (or thought they experienced) and what they long to return to or mourn the loss of.

Beaver Dam/Appleton: exception of Madision/MKE, never went through the 60s, the civil rights issues, Viet nam protests--didn't come through the same type of revolutionary issues.  Evolution of change which challenged how they practiced their everyday life.

How to bring the revolution to Waukesha county?  Probably involves storytelling and making art and drawing attention to my connection to and alienation from my first home.

Joe also asked me, what should be done about Cuomo?  Yeah.  Well, my answer so far is something like, yes, look at the patterns of gender-based harassment.  And also, look for other patterns which are evidence of bullying, coercion and manipulation of employees.  What that composite produces is information about the culture of that organization.  Look for repeated instances of paternalism, sense of entitlement, sense of impunity, sense that for some reason this one person cannot be questioned, that it is more important to keep the machinery of the organization churning along than to question the behavior/motives/outcomes/language of one person.  That it is more important to manage the "Brand" of that person/metonymically the organization than to have any substance behind the story of the brand. (Read my earlier work on how a brand is a story which stands in the place of a relationship, such as the branding of "local" food which is not in fact based on local food producers but the idea of being in relation with local food producers while participating in the anonymizing/orphaning commodity food model)

The sense that the ONE PERSON makes the organization, that (he) is not replaceable. I can sorta make connections to my writing about cults, what is a cult, what is not a cult, how do I know I've been in a cult, how do I know I escaped from a cult.  How do I join new cults (consciously) as I've been thinking lately.  (I'm consciously joining what I think is sorta culty, my daily deep listening practice.  "I can quit any time, really".  Ooh, I guess I might need to think through some ideas about addiction wrt to cults too)

Part of Cuomo answer:  Universal Basic Income.  If everyone is getting say $500/month, it makes it easier to walk away from shitty jobs.  If a person is working three part-time jobs, like I am, they could let go of the shittiest among them.  Therefore, shitty employers with awful manipulative cultures get sieved out.  No one wants to work for them, so they either perish as an employer or change.  Shape up or ship out.  Get their shit together. 

Feb 28

 If I witness a crime, what is my responsibility to stop it?

What is the perpetrator's responsibility to stop themselves?

What is my responsibility to prevent it from happening in the future?

What is the perpetrator's responsibility to prevent it happening in the future?

https://mobile.twitter.com/SaraNAhmed/status/1367772497983270914

"I think we need to find ways of dealing with this finding from the research: critiques of neoliberalism in the academy, audit culture, equality as audit culture, policies as policing, are not only useful to, but frequently used by, serial abusers. #complaintasfeministpedagogy"

Thinking of that nice music professor who complained about the student who was stalking her, asking if her office could be moved, if there was a way for her to feel safe at work. I think she left the next year.

Reading about the gig economy/passion economy: https://linksiwouldgchatyou.substack.com/p/the-passion-economy-is-a-ploy?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozMjY4NDg1LCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzE4MDQ4OCwiXyI6IlgvY3VqIiwiaWF0IjoxNjE0OTYxODYxLCJleHAiOjE2MTQ5NjU0NjEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi04ODI2Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.6mHQFKehd5Oh2gSRkgH-CFWFxRHnOjZp1Q6vg7n5TA8&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

Connects to my research, and my present praxis, in that the economic model is changing, and I'm seeing it change through thinking with feminist theory.

The coercion of employers, the protection of abusers within systems, all of that gets left behind when a person has autonomy to choose work engagements. That's the big scary thing for those invested in the status quo of precarity and exploitation. Better to just "let nature takes it course," let the employees leave one way or another, and are replaced by someone who hopefully doesn't encounter that same [structural] problem. 

A public scholar is a person whose adjunct contract wasn't renewed. An academic orphan. No institution which establishes legitimacy, just a dusty degree, some student evaluations and outdated letters of recommendation from an old deceased advisor.

Coach Kelly and I did a zoom session on Soccer Symphony this week:

https://www.facebook.com/fifthhouseensemble/videos/vb.102191401300/434062757862860/?type=2&theater

My big takeaway was that communicating on the soccer field or in an ensemble (or within a community) involves listening, recognizing, anticipating what others' need. That it's not just about kicking the ball away from me, getting rid of a "problem" of a defender on me, for example, but about sending it forward in a way that is useful to my teammate, that is furthering our shared goal. Maybe I can keep that defender closer to me which gives her an opportunity to break free and position herself to score a goal.

UBI and Land Back

Daanis on Land Back

https://mobile.twitter.com/gindaanis/status/1367199123468820486

"In their essay, Decolonization is not a metaphor; Eve Tuck and K Wayne Chang assert that decolonization is not interchangeable with other ideas about social justice and human rights. It’s not something we do along with accessibility and anti-racist work. It is profoundly different and asks much more from Canada and its citizens. At the core, it means restoring land and recognizing sovereignty.

We are not one of many minority groups in a nation of immigrants.We are the original people and if we existed then as independent sovereign people, then the Americas and it’s people need to reckon with what that means today. At what point did we give up our sovereignty?

I put it to you that we did not. That every treaty and agreement we made was, from our point of view, an agreement between equals in which our sovereignty, our collective independent existence, was the authority by which we made these agreements.

In a very real sense, it was we who recognized you and dealt with you, newly arrived on our lands, as if you were sovereign entities like us."

[Recognition essential, noticing, repeated positive/neutral contacts, predicting, anticipating, responding to--being in relation, becoming, a perpetual chain of choices, establishing a pattern, a blockchain of history of interaction which creates reality]

https://amkanngieser.com/work/listening-as-relation-an-invocation

Noticing nature leads to connectedness:

https://findingnature.org.uk/2021/03/05/visible-biodiversity/

"Having a strong connection to nature leads people to undertake actions that help conserve the natural world. This isn’t surprising: those who feel psychologically close to and value nature are more likely to make an effort to conserve it. Recently we wondered whether this relationship is reciprocal. That is, we wondered whether taking steps to conserve biodiversity might actually connect people more strongly to nature."  [Deep listening, Public Bees, accessible beehives, visible beehives, as on the roofs of restaurants.  I should approach the restaurants on KK about having bees on their roofs.  Publicly visible.]

(Flyer/postcard)

Would you like to have honeybee hives on the roof of your restaurant?

MKE Wannabeekeepers

Woman-owned, Veteran-owned

QR code to link to contact form

I've been beekeeping since 2004, mentoring new beekeepers since 2012.  

I want to make this work for you--if you want me to take care of the whole process, providing you with jars of your own honey, we can do that.  If you want to be totally hands-on, learning to manage your own hives and basically have me as a phone call away person who can talk you through a swarm or make house calls?  I can do that too.

I will be receiving bees mid-May 2021, and must place my equipment and queen/nuc orders by the end of April.  

Link to 2020 pricing (will be updated with 2021 soon): [google sheet budget]

Name:

Address:

Phone:

Email:

preferred method of contact, or suggest other:

When is good time to discuss: