too much higher education?

This week, the Chronicle posted a forum which explored the question: Are Too Many Students Going to College? You can read the forum and accompanying reader comments here. You can also read NY Times' reader comments about the issue at the Choice Blog.

I have a seemingly endless collection of thoughts about all of this, but too many to sort out at this moment. Since so many of you reading this blog are my cc colleagues, I'm wondering what you think, particularly in terms of our continual budget cuts. Some specific questions I'd love to hear your thoughts about:

• How do we encourage continuation of the social contract that allows open access to education?
• Assuming the continued reality of budget cuts, do we strive for open enrollment with perhaps lesser (cheaper) forms of instructional delivery or do we impose caps to preserve quality of education?
• What do you think about the basic questions--do too many students go to college?

I'm going to write about this more later, once I get my thoughts sorted and coherent, but I look forward to hearing what you think.

Miracle Cure Confirmed

Throughout my many years of voice problems, while everyone is promoting herbal teas and honey and lemon juice and whatever else is supposed to cure me, the only folk cure that I've found any solace in is chocolate milk. If my voice is really terrible and my vocal chords horribly inflamed, the only non-pharmaceutical remedy that works is chocolate milk. Somehow the chocolate milk just soothed my throat and cleared things up for a while, allowing my non-existent voice to gain some sound and clarity.

People have always looked at me askance when I tell them about my chocolate milk cure. But I know what I know.

And now today--vindication! Check out this research summary which suggests that chocolate milk may reduce inflammation. They are actually talking about athersclerosis, but inflammation is inflammation right? And my voice issue is ultimately about inflamed vocal chords. So there, doubters. Chocolate milk is a miracle cure.

Homesick

This morning, I idly clicked on a RadioWest podcast because I saw it was about Doug Snow, an artist I admire, an artist who has captured the landscapes of Southern Utah better than anyone I've seen. As the interview was introduced, Doug Fabrizio mentioned that it was a rebroadcast of a 2004 interview and that Douglas Snow had died. Nothing could have made me sadder. Or more homesick.

When I was twenty, my dad took me on a backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon. Climbing deep into the canyon, watching layers of rock overlapping each other to seemingly endless depths along the horizon, I fell absolutely in love with the canyon country. These places became, and will always be, home for me. There was something astounding in that landscape--the deep sky of stars I felt I could slide right into against the folds of walls and canyons.

There is something ineffable about that landscape. It is hard to capture in words and images and no matter how many times you find yourself in in, it is always surprising. For me, Doug Snow is the only artist whose really come close to conveying the truth of these landscapes I love. In his 2004 interview, he talked about how he looked for honesty in art, for perspectives that move beyond what he already knows. He commented that he found much of the art of the red rock country "reduced [the landscape] to a series of formulas." This is what I like about Snow, that his paintings of the red rock country move far beyond the confines of the representational landscape and yet they always elicit the emotion and the essence of the landscape. His paintings startle and move me in the same way the landscape does.

This is something Snow wrote in a journal, a sentiment that was included in his eulogy:

"To be in this country; to live in it much of your life; to understand its geology, its history, to see it in all its seasons, and still, ultimately, to know nothing that can summarize it. All you can do is have faith in the strength of the experience, paint, 'not knowing,' but with conviction in the significance of those feelings."

I have so many projects that involve trying to characterize red rock landscapes, complicated stories about my family and my life. It's such a challenge. And in Snow's comments, I find good advice and comfort. There is nothing that can summarize that landscape. But I can have faith in the strength of my experiences.

why i'll be seeing Amelia even though i detest biopics

I was reading Go Fug Yourself yesterday, and they were rightly commenting that the new Amelia movie looks like a real snoozer. Of course it's going to be a snoozer. All biopics are snoozers. I hate them. All of them. But I'm going to see Amelia. In fact, when I saw the trailer, I was excited. Not just intellectually excited, but all tingly in my belly excited.

I don't actually want to see the movie because I truly have never met a biopic that I like. I don't even think Mira Nair, a director whose sensibilities I normally quite like, can save the biopic from its lameness. But the thing is I love Amelia Earhart. She and Teddy Roosevelt were my childhood heroes. And when I say I love her, it's partly because of her feats of daring and her independence. But it's also because of her--her height, her style, the sound of her voice, her hair. My love of her is overcoming my distaste for biopics, and if that ain't love, I don't know what is.

So while the GFY girls are complaining about the movie's snooze factor and about the state of Hillary Swank's Amelia hair, I will probably be ordering tickets in advance while wondering, "Maybe I should get that hair cut!"

things i'm thinking about

i'm just listening to this radiolab podcast about how infants respond to sensory input, that even though their senses function, they don't function in the way that we expect them to, in a way that we would describe as conscious. Sights don't necessarily register in the vision center of the brain, transforming them into who knows what--data, but not necessarily meaningful data. Babies that stare may just be experiencing a brain glitch, unable to move their gaze away rather than presenting a keen interest in a specific object or individual. But our reactions, as adults, assume that the infant is seeing, hearing, gazing, etc. and that assumption helps the infant to learn how to make sense of all of that sensory input.

This pregnancy thing has me thinking about lots of things, wondering how we humans work.

A friend asked me the other day whether I would find out the sex of the baby. I don't care, either way. I'm not going to make a big deal of trying not to find out, but I wouldn't really care if I didn't know. She said it was nice to find out, because then you could start bonding with the baby. And I wondered why the baby's sex makes a difference in the bonding. Do I need to know the baby's sex in order to think of the baby as a real entity, someone who will be part of my life? I do know, though, that seeing an ultrasound picture of my baby--the sort of picture I've never really gotten excited about (or understood) when someone else showed me--made me feel instantly attached to and protective of this new person. What are the things--sex, image, voice, etc.--that allow us to envision and embody human life, to make it real and meaningful for us.

And the other thing I am wondering about. I find it perfectly normal, this idea of a fetus growing inside of me, this person who is totally dependent on me yet totally independent--already with its own heartbeat and blood type. It doesn't seem odd or unusual, and yet the other day when I thought about while this baby growing hair while still in the womb, I sort of freaked out. I try not to think about the hair because it does truly disturb me. So, why does the whole process not freak me out, yet hair does? Will was tormenting me last night with stories about the baby and its Don King hairdo.

People are funny and I think pregnancy may be one of those things that reveals our strangeness more than anything else.

new developments

ok, just one new development. This is our new little pookie, set to arrive at the beginning of March. I am in love with it already and could probably stare at this picture full-time. We're hoping that the winter weather will have mellowed before its arrival so that our little Canuck won't freeze solid.

amen

jimmy carter on the rights of women: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/12/jimmy-carter-womens-rights-equality

if it weren't so early in the morning, I would have some commentary on this, but all I can muster is amen! to have such a publicly religious and well-respected man step away from his church because of a disagreement on the treatment and rights of women is truly impressive to me.