Home Is Where the Heart Is

If home is where the heart is, then I must have a bipolar heart.

Most of what matters most to me is right here in Albuquerque, but there are a few things that are at my other home in DC. And days like today - days before I make that physical and psychological transition of moving home base are often topsy turvy.

The biggest challenge is always figuring out what books to bring with me. (Perhaps home is where the books is another way to describe my life?) The books for teaching are easy to figure out, and most times I have duplicate copies of those - unless, as is the case this term, I'm teaching a new course. Kindle has also made this aspect of my life easier - I've downloaded most of the western canon of philosophy onto my Kindle.

The books for research are more or less not too hard to figure out - I might leave something behind in NM, but ILL (inter-library loan) in the DC area rocks. Blogging is another story, but I do most of my research in Albuquerque anyway. What is most challenging is figuring out what books do I want to have with me for pleasure reading for the next few weeks/months?

So here's what I've lined up so far:

1. "The Enemy Gods" by Oliver La Farge - for those days when I miss the blue blue New Mexico skies. This novel was written in 1937 seven years after La Farge received the Pulitzer for his novel "Laughing Boy" - another book on my "Must Read Someday" list.

2. "Ordinary Resurrections" by Jonathan Kozol. I was going to say that Kozol is one of my favorite education writers, but really, he is one of my favorite writers, period. I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago when he came to Gallaudet University and luckier still to participate in a discussion with him and a classroom full of students. Participate is probably the wrong word - I watched and marveled and made notes of indelible ink in my head. I've reads bits and pieces of this book, but I want to work through the whole of it. Kozol's writing inspires and motivates me to do better in the classroom and with my students outside of the classroom.

3. "The Arabic Book" by Johannes Pederson (translated by Geoffrey French). A book about book production in medieval Islam. Just because.

4. "The Edward Said Reader" and "Out of Place" the memoir by Edward Said. Too many people have been asking me for my opinion on Said's work. This is probably because I'm identified as Arab-American at work and I spend a fair amount of time making sure that people don't conflate the terms Arab and Muslim, which is a pet peeve of mine. My research is very much not in post-colonial studies (I'm not opposed to it, but that's just not my area) or Middle Eastern Studies (ditto) yet I still get these questions. I've dipped into Said's work now and then (my copy of Orientalism is so worn out I should probably relegate it to the dustbin), but I don't think I know his corpus well enough to comment intelligently on it. This is my starting attempt at rectifying this.

5. "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. An old favorite that helps me remember the importance of a connection to the land. This is easy to do when I am in New Mexico - five minutes walk from my front door is the bosque - but when I am in Washington my connection to the land slips away so easily as I get caught up in work and politics. Even when I'm on the National Mall walking to a museum, I find it hard to look past the buildings and concrete and landscaped open parkland to find a connection with the land. The only place where I can do this with some regularity is on the grounds of the Museum of the American Indian (big surprise). Leopold helps remind me of this and it is why I go back to him year after year.

In looking over my list I see some common threads - New Mexico, land, the Arab world, and education. Guess I'm fairly predictable.

Sheet Metal and Mummies

I've been bopping around town more than usual - my energy level is creeping back up, though the temperature sure hasn't been.

Yesterday afternoon I ended up at the Sheet Metal Workers Union/training facility in SE Albuquerque near the airport. They've received federal stimulus money to train workers in this field - it seems that there is more demand for this kind of work given the turn to greener buildings. I sure hope some of the workers affected by the General Electric Aviation plant closure later this year will be able to take advantage of this program.

Today, Sleeping Beauty and her best friend and I made our way over to the NM Museum of Natural History. I never noticed until now, but both of my abodes are approximately the same distance from the local Natural History Museum - be it Albuquerque's Museum Row or the National Mall.

We checked out the Dynamax movie on Mummies, giving it a post-modern critique after it was finished. I commended the Rear Window Captioning (this theater and the Guild are my best bets for interesting captioned movies in Albuqeurque - we just don't have the population to support the number of captioned movies that DC has, and most of the time I'm not so crazy about the captioned movie choices in the Duke City - this week it is Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Up in the Air).

So back to the movie critique - we decided that the shoes and clothes on the women were a bit too 20th century, and that the dramatic sexy sultry walk of the queens was contrived. But the DNA stuff was cool, as was the idea that some dead guy who donated his body to science a few years ago was mummified in the Egyptian way in the course of scientific research.

Long ago I arranged for my body to be donated to science and I've always assumed this meant medical student training. I don't think they'll want to mummify me, but that would be awesome if they did.

After the movie we hung out with the dinosaurs and the Microsoft computer geeks. I like that juxtaposition.

Bill Gates and the Dinosaurs = bad rock band name?

Resolutions: DC Version

I think that it is a bit funny that I see more politicians and politicos in and around Barelas than DC, but I'm sure this is because I'm out and about more here than there. Best places to spot them on a weekday morning? Downtown Flying Star, Nob Hill Satellite, Red Ball Cafe, and of course, Barelas Coffee shop. Three of these are within walking distance of mi casa, which makes it easy.

Monday I posted my DCF blog on New Year's resolutions for Albuquerque. Today I've promised some DC-related resolutions. Some of them, like the belly dancing, work in both places.

Here goes:

1. Take a walk through a different neighborhood in the District once a month. I've been eying the Capitol Hill/Eastern Market walk for some time now, but there's also cool stuff like this Poetry Walk, Washington Walks (they've already told me they're happy to work with my FM system, which seems like no big deal, but not everyone is this enthusiastic), and the self-guided Neighborhood Heritage Trails put together by Cultural Tourism DC, which is an incredible resource.

2. Get off campus once a day. This goal is to help me achieve more balance and less workaholism in my life - sometimes I'm so immersed in work that the only time I leave campus is to go to the airport. Not a good thing, fyi.

3. Do something touristy once a month in DC and surrounding areas like Alexandria, Baltimore, Annapolis. This list is a good start.

That's it for the DC-related goals, all of which point to trying to achieve a balance between work and the rest of life, which is something I struggle with when I'm away from mi casita de Barelas.

Of Rice Pudding and Resolutions

Today's Duke City Fix post is about my Albuquerque-related New Year's resolutions. Stay tuned tomorrow for the DC version!

Why Philosophy?

Several people have sent me this article from the New York Times Career U: Making College Relevant. It is an old discussion gussied up in a new guise - should college be aimed at preparing graduates for jobs or should college be about acquiring an education? (I call false dilemma on this, BTW).

I'm struck by a few things here. First, the quantified data about what employers want - good writing skills, good speaking skills, and analytic ability - are seemingly compatible with any major, depending on how it is structured. My limited experience (16 years of teaching philosophy to graduate students and undergraduate students in a variety of environments including small liberal arts college, large state research university, small Catholic university, and Ivy League university) has taught me that there are brilliant students in any major.

What I'm more curious about (and what the article doesn't speak to directly) is this question of the 'average' student. What skills does the average business major possess? How does this compare to the skills of the average humanities major?

There's a reason I ask this, of course. My experience is that students select majors for many reasons - path to employment being one, of course. Another reason is ease of major - a major that requires, say, a 50 page senior thesis, can be seen as a deterrent or at the very least, requiring too much work.

The experience of asking a big question, identifying the issues this question presents, and writing about several possible responses to this question and then defending one's work orally seems to be a great way to improve one's analytic skills. This seems to go right to the core skills that employers are demanding, plus it shows a willingness to take on a challenging task and to persevere through a long-term project.

Students struggle with this, to be sure. Writing is mostly a solitary activity, and thinking hard about something for a sustained period of time is nowhere near as fun as hanging out with friends in the school pub. (Not to say these are mutually exclusive, but thinking time can put a damper on other activities - at least for a short while, e.g. a semester).

Maybe philosophy as a major will go the way of the dodo bird. I'm not sure what to think about this, except to hope that college graduates of schools without philosophy majors would have at least a nodding acquaintance with "great ideas" and the minds that spawned them. I dare say that many of the 'average student' business majors I have taught would probably disagree with me on grounds of relevance, but I wonder if there might be a deeper reason for their disagreement - that for a variety of reasons, philosophy is just too difficult. And that the easiest way to duck this issue is to dismiss it or to eliminate it as a requirement.

In my experience there is a high correlation between a student's ability to write and analyze and their appreciation of philosophy. Students who struggle to analyze do not appreciate a subject whose very essence is analysis and argumentation. In my opinion, a student who has not demonstrated mastery of the basic skills of analysis (and we can quibble over what that means) should not be permitted to graduate from college. One way to measure this might be to require a certain score on national standardized tests such as the GRE or GMAT, but I suspect this will never fly.

Even Plato acknowledged that a society full of philosophers was not sustainable. I'll give him that. I'm more focused on the question of analysis and inquiry. Most of the people who have brought great changes to society have mastered these skills. Philosophy is one lens through which one can study these skills, but it is not the only one - history, chemistry, economics, mathematics, literature, biology - the list goes on.

A society with fewer philosophy majors is not such a concern; a society with fewer people who are able to think deeply and analytically is a much greater concern. How sustainable would such a society be? I wonder...