ENL 501 Rhetorical Theory - Final Paper

Guten Tag mein Freunden,

as 2020 is mere hours away and I have a few moments to blog, blog I shall.

What kept me from blogging for most of the semester was my Rhetorical Theory class.

So why not post my final paper for your limitless enjoyment. Who doesn't desire to read about Rhetorical Theory with 2020 breathing down your neck like a vicious god, no wait, dog, I meant dog.

ENL 501 Final Paper

Shannon Scott


The narrative of online and adult learners in the world of higher education is one
so far in the background as to be considered scenery. It is there nonetheless, and while
the arc of their story is in some ways similar to that of the traditional college student
fresh from high school sitting in an eight a.m. freshman composition, brick and mortar
classroom, in other ways it is a world apart, with adult responsibilities such as a career
in full-swing, children and all they entail, and mortgage payments and health-care costs
to make homework for their Studies In Literature course seem paltry by comparison.
As a professional advisor of primarily online and adult learners, the rhetorical
opportunities are ample, and this course has provided insight into some of the rhetorical
tools I have used by instinct and some that can now be implemented by design. This
paper is a catalogue of rhetorical tools used and those to be implemented and how they
pertain to three rhetorical categories: Audience, Genre, Invention.
AUDIENCE
According to Maurice Charland (1987), Interpellation occurs as soon as an
individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed; I interpellate online
students/adult learners, the moment I refer to them as college graduates and I do this
intentionally, as a rhetorical tool. A la Charland’s constitutive rhetoric, I place online
students/adult learners in a narrative, especially a transhistorical narrative, when I
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explain to them how their past transfer credits work toward their present program as
future UMASSD College Graduates. I reinforce the narrative of college graduate by
positing a future by looking at bls.gov and possible occupations and the expected
growth of the expected occupation, and most importantly cite statistics (especially to
first generation and educationally disadvantaged students) that they will be entering
elite company, statistically speaking. By contrasting that almost two thirds of adults don’t
possess a bachelor’s degree, their interpellation into, becoming one of, this elite “group”
of “peoples” begins.
Barbara Johnstone (2002) considers it useful to frame how people orient to their
own and others’ roles in terms of “footing”. For professional advising purposes, the
alignment adult students take up to themselves, as returning students in a new mode of
education, and the others present as expressed in the way they manage the production
or reception of an utterance (as a student ), implies a new footing. I will often suggest to
an adult student, that is also a full-time employee, full-time parent, spouse,
son/daughter, take only one or two courses in their first semester back to get their
“ footing ” in this new role as, degree seeking student.
It is hoped that placement into the transhistorical narrative of College Graduate,
in concert with a foundation of rhetorical footing, helps adult learners form an attitude of
completion, because, per Hauser (2002), attitudes are the first stage (incipient) of the
future we anticipate will occur. This is important for the professional advisor, because
retention and completion are the ultimate definitions of success not only for the
university, school or college, and all the way down to the level of department, but also
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for the student seeking a degree, and not just learning for the sake of learning.
Through the navigation of curriculum and policy choices a student might make in
any given semester, I make it a point to affirm my students’ agency when I remind them
that my job is to help them make an informed decision , but that they make the
decisions. By acknowledging and adapting to the fact that my advisees have the need
of autonomy like my own, I am showing what Johnstone (2002) refers to as, linguistic
“politeness”. Often, I can refer back to a successful decision they made when they need
encouragement or some sense of footing about a new choice they must make.
Per Hauser (2002), I attempt to get colleagues to Identify With a concept, through
sharing a vocabulary of motives, which Hauser defines as: a language for coordinating
diverse social functions. The vocabulary I invoke is: “Retention Is Everyone’s Business.”
The diverse social function is helping online students navigate all that is involved with
obtaining their degree (advising, financial aid, teaching, tutoring, billing, registrar, etc.)
The audacity of such an undertaking requires a rallying cry that unites siloed
departments and drives collaboration toward a common goal.
Under the parameters set forth by Barbara Mirel (2002), the creation of an
Advisement Report that is both easy to use and useful, should be a top priority,
especially in light of the modern, elective-heavy, curriculum, and a digital-savvy student
body. If Redish (1993) is correct, online students, like everyone else using a document,
are busy and will use the Advisement Report as a means to an end: ergo the design of
the Advisement Report with Mirel’s parameters in mind, must also be user in context
oriented.
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GENRE
As noted above, retention is everyone’s business in higher education. Retention
encapsulates not only the year to year retention, but also the graduation of students.
Thusly understood, retention is the exigence to which Genre is the Social Action, as
understood in Miller (1984). With retention the prime measure of success in higher
education, it is the exigence that, over time, has formed and shaped the discourse(s)
meant to counter the exigence. Be they promotional brochures citing ample personal
and academic resources, departmental web pages with pictures of caring faculty
peering over the shoulder of students mid-assignment, or university wide emails posting
important events, the genre is shaped by retention.
For the professional academic advisor, especially an advisor with a
predominantly online advisee load, there may be, per Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016), an
emerging “check-in” email genre to address the exigence of retention. Some possible
typifications in the genre, include:
● Timing of the email (not too near to the beginning of the semester so as to be
premature, and not too near to mid-term so as to be ignored due to workload)
● Posting of important deadlines, especially partial refund and course withdrawal
dates. These are especially important in the online realm as courses have
varying running times.
● Inclusion of interactive links to available resources, especially academic tutoring
● Interactive link to schedule an advising appointment
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Because the check-in email serves retention, and because retention is multi-faceted, it
is important to keep in mind Bazerman’s (2003) Techniques of Intertextual
Representation , when drafting. Emails too hyperlink heavy may come off as solicitous
and emails intimating text anything over a welcome paragraph in length may appear
promotional or didactic.
Intertextuality, combined with Campbell and Jamieson’s (1990) idea that
rhetorical form follows rhetorical function , can be used to shape the check-in email
specifically, and also to shape advising discourse in general. A la Fahnestock (1993),
advisors can pursue a genre shift via highlighting and omitting certain aspects within
discourse, to move from a transaction approach/genre, to a more holistic
paradigm/genre that better accommodates the retention exigence. Hence, an
understanding of extratextual - not spelled out in the discourse but supplied by context,
by assumed references the intended audience will make (Fahnestock, 1993)- will be
crucial to accommodate retention.
Lastly in regards to Genre, because Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016) noticed that
monitoring fellow rhetors catalyzed typification, the use of professional associations
such as National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) and the Online Learning
Consortium (OLC) to shape both check-in email and advising practices is intuitive.
Through these associations an advisor is better able to know the boundaries of genre in
relation to professional advising but also, and perhaps more importantly, where the
boundary is stretching and where invention, in the form of topoi, might be found.
Consider that Miller (1984) advised that, due to the intersubjective grounding of genre, it
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remains open-ended, and subject to addition. This intersubjective nature is most
explicitly plumbed through professional association conferences and peer-reviewed
discourse.
INVENTION
Metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another
(Lakoff, 1980). Argument is war, time is money, and life is a highway that I want to ride
all night long. And while my metaphor for understanding the advisement report in terms
of a map to graduation, is effective, it was probably a matter of luck to at least some
extent. To guide metaphor construction in a more reliable manner, professional advisors
(and educators at any level) can reference John Pollock’s (2015) Shortcut: How
Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas ,
specifically chapter five, How We Can Choose Better Analogies :
● Deconstruct analogies to reveal strengths and weaknesses
● Remember that humans favor coherency over accuracy
● Don’t absent-mindedly accept the framing of an idea - be more proactive and
creative about the analogies we accept, reject, and employ
● Remember that analogies are models and models help translate complex
concepts and diffuse data into discrete and potentially useful ideas
● Imagination is more important than knowledge: how we categorize knowledge
and how well we resist categorization, determines how freely our imagination can
retrieve and apply that knowledge
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Employing these guidelines to didactically use metaphor to advise students and explain
curriculum and policy not only serves the retention exigence but also the professional
mantra that advising is teaching .
Helpful, guiding metaphors and finding and then pushing the boundaries of genre
can help aid communications and discourse in professional advising and Chris
Anderson’s Style As Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction (1987), through
analyzing the works of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion, is
a reminder that style can be as much a tool as content - not just what is said but how it
is said. In this sense, style can be aligned with the aforementioned extratextuality. This
is not remotely suggesting that professional advisors emulate Tom Wolfe in their
discourse, but it does definitely suggest that professional communications can have
some style; it is not a forced dichotomy, an either/or , as style and practicality can both
be present at the same time, even in professional advising discourse. Style can serve
the argument for professional advising to a lesser extent than it does to provide a sense
of freedom for the professional advisors in their communications, so as not to become
rote, robotic and perfunctory. If Anderson is correct, and the presentations of prose
tacitly argues for values and attempt to persuade the adoption of those values, advisors
will be wise to reference some of Anderson’s Techniques for greater presence in
language:
● Repetition
● Amplification - an aggregation of all the consistent parts and topics of a
subject
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● Union of figures for a common object - piling up of several figures to
describe the same idea of image
● Accumulating sentence structures
● Present tense narration - in the “now”
Via Toulmin’s account, McPeck (Eemeren, et al 1996) contends that: Learning to
think critically requires learning the epistemology of each field. This imperative is
misguided. The main reason it is misguided, is because it is impossible. To attempt to
learn the epistemology of a field is a quintessential Sisyphean task; by the time one got
around to learning the epistemology of one field alone, the epistemology will have
changed. Given his birth date, Toulmin should have been aware of Bertrand Russell’s
Barber Paradox, and also G ö del’s incompleteness theorem - just two examples of
epistemologies rolling back down the hill like Sisyphus’ stone. Epistemologies, and
times, change. From a flat earth to geocentrism, from phrenology to spontaneous
generation, science is replete with enough superseded theories to prove that
epistemology is a process in flow.
Martin Heidegger (1962) investigated Being with a capital B and his methodology
was phenomenology. In studying Being this way, Heidegger realized that the starting
point of his investigation is a particular being in the world. His term for this starting point,
was the very pregnant: Dasein. The english translation: being there. To be, there, in the
world is to have a vantage point such that other vantage points are inaccessible.
Consider the analogy from anatomy that all humans have a blind spot - where the optic
nerve exits the eye. But for Heidegger, it goes beyond mere sensation. Because we are
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thrown into the world - the german word geworfenheit - to a time and place over which
we have no control, our vantage point, our perspective is forever restricted. Certain
knowledge, epistemologies, vantage points, are closed off because we are thrown into a
zeitgeist - spirit of the times - from which we never exit. The title of Sartre’s play is no
accident. Returning to Toulmin & McPeck, how can we possibly be expected to meet
the criteria of critical thinker? What do we do if epistemologies change and some
perspectives are permanently closed off?
For professional advising: the imperative changes. Instead of learning
(supposedly absolute) epistemologies, advisors must learn the konoi and idia (Hauser,
2002) as they relate to advising and advisees.
● Konoi topoi - applied to any subject and provide overall patterns of thought
● Idia - generated specific premises peculiar to a subject
I must learn about my advisees, at least attempt to get their perspective, by learning
their why . As in why are they doing this. The good news is that the imperative is
achievable because the more one learns, the easier it becomes to learn new things.
Like a spider web with a new thread and increased diameter, more knowledge can
connect to foundations previously gained. The more I know, the more connections I can
make, the more topoi, the more available means of persuasion, I can find to increase
advising effectiveness.
The narrative of online and adult learners necessarily invokes advisors -calls
them to action. Interpellation casts a wide net; indicts all the players and all the parts
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that make up the whole of the act. More knowledgeable about rhetoric, specifically
audience, genre, and invention, I am now more capable than ever to assist my advisees
and play a role in their ascension to college graduate, which feeds the ravenous
statistics used to influence said ascension, and those statistics will feed the narrative for
future students ad infinitum.
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Works Cited
Anderson, Chris. Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction . Southern
Illinois University Press, 1987.
Bazerman, Charles. “Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts” What Writing Does
and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices .
Bazerman, Charles, and Prior, Paul A. London: Erlbaum, 2003.
Campbell, Karlyn, Jamieson, Kathleen. Presidents Creating The Presidency: Deeds
Done In Words . University of Chicago Press. 1990.
Charland, Maurice. Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois. Quarterly
Journal Of Speech, 73 (1987), 133-150.
Eemeren, Frans H.van, Grootendorst, Rob, and Henkemans, Francisca S, et al.
Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds
and Contemporary Developments . Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1996.
Eisenhart, Christopher, Roscoe, Douglas D. (2016) The emergent genre of campaign
e-mail in the 2008 presidential nomination campaign. The Communication
Review, 19:3, 159-191, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2016.1195201 .
Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts”
The Literature of Science : Perspectives on Popular Scientific Writing . McRae,
Murdo W. University of Georgia Press. 1993.
Hauser, Gerald A. “Acting with Language” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser,
Gerald A. Waveland Press. 2002.
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Hauser, Gerald A. “Finding Ideas” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser, Gerald A.
Waveland Press. 2002.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time . Harper Collins, 1962.
Johnstone, Barbara. “Speakers, Hearers, Audiences” Discourse Analysis . Johnstone,
Barbara. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 111-135.
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By . University of Chicago
Press, 1980.
Miller, Carolyn R. Genre As Social Action. Quarterly Journal Of Speech, 70 (1984),
151-167.
Mirel, Barbara. “Advancing A Vision Of Usability” Reshaping Technical Communication:
New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century . Ed. Barbara Mirel, Ed.
Rachel Spilka. Mahwah: Routledge, 2002. 218-239.
Pollock, John. Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell
Our Greatest Ideas . Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.
Redish, Janice C. “Understanding Readers” Techniques for Technical Communicators.
Barnum, Carol, and Carliner, Saul. New York: Macmillian, 1993. 1-23.
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Stream of Disney Bar Consciousness

Hotel Bar

           at Disney

                         EXPENSIVE

There is m-o-n-e-y, there are different languages and accents I hear. And yet, there are tattoos and people that have been at the bar for "far" too long - droopy eyed and slow to turn their heads.
And yet, the chandelier hanging from the ceiling is as big as a barn, and the bartenders have vests on and you'll find not a speck of dust, dirt, or grime.
CLEAN.
Part of me wants to rail against Disney, to grab some goer and yell in his/her/cast member face: This is not normal!!...that spending soooooooooooooooo much money to get to a place to spend soooooooooo much money is, AGAIN, not normal.
And yet, my wife loves the place, and my kids, my privileged kids, love the rides and the character breakfasts and lunches, and they light up like a damn xmas tree even though it seems to me, like all of humanity inhabits Epcot and Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, so much so that you can't go five feet without pausing to let someone move left or right or "excuse me," or "sorry."
Oh lunch for four? $160...pre tip. They got you by the balls.
BUT WHY?
You came here voluntarily.
WHY?
You knew what it would cost. So, who is to say what normal is? Walter Disney? You?
Certainly not me.
Alas, it depends...on where you are, what you are, how you are, when you are, and most importantly,
WHO YOU ARE.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

https://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher

There are three truths

in the world.

There's your personal truth.

No one's gonna take that

from you.

Jesus is your savior.

Mohammed is your last prophet.

Then, there's like

a political truth.

That's just what becomes true

when it is repeated

enough times. Okay?

But then there's

the objective truth--

There's the objective truth,

which are the methods or tools

of science are invented

-and designed to establish.

-Right.

Those are true, whether or not

you believe in them.

And so, I say, "You can keep

your 6,000-year universe,

but understand that that's

a personal truth that you get

from your personal religion."

If you rise to power and have

control over laws

and legislation

in a pluralistic land,

it is a recipe for disaster

if you're going to take

your personal truths and create

laws that have to then apply

to everyone.

What if you rise to power and feel that if you don’t adhere to your personal truths,

you will burn in hell for eternity?

To which truth can you refer to help determine when a mass of biology is a person? To
which truth can you refer to help determine when the termination of that mass of biology is
murder or reproductive rights.

It is not a Stephen Jay Gould non-overlapping magisteria/Rudyard Kippling nary the two shall
meet SITUATION.

Oh and by the way, there is no objective truth. Truths are relative to culture.

How could a perspective-limited species get at objective truth?

Perhaps this is out starting point for living with each other.

Accepting relativism.

The Royal You - Perfection

The Royal You

We Asked, The Royal You answered

President Trump had a “perfect” phone call with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

What have you ever done that was perfect?

I got an A in 9th Grade Social Studies, does that count? - Ferris Algonquin, Luber

Really? - Halle Berry, Native Clevelander

Pulled out in time. - Cole Richer, Trouser Stain

Percy

Had to put my cat down and it's fucking with me.

She was with me around 19 years.

I saw her eyes when I buried her.

19 years.

It's like some cosmological constant is gone.

She scratched at the door every morning.

She slept on me.

She knew I knew how to pet her.

She lived in Athens, Jamestown, West Warwick, East Greenwich.

She couldn't have been longer than 6 inches when she walked up onto my porch in Athens and said "Look, here is how it is. I'm going to be your cat. Point me to the food bowl."

19 years.

In With Rhetoric Out With Blog

Hola amigos, it's been a while since I wrapped at ya but you know, kids, the lawn, had a bee sitch, yadi yada.

Anywhoo, wanted to let you know that like, you know, Ima be taking this stupid college course. So dumb right? But Ima be taking it and like, it will take like, a LOT of time. Stupid amount of work and soooo dumb but you know, I don't think we will, stupid, see as much of each other.

Whatever. I know. So dumb. Rhetoric. Ha ha.

But lets like get together, in December. Cool coool coool.

It's a date. Sort of.

Whatever.

Alright. These Things Happen.

Working in so called higher education has a few perks. One of which is conferences. Free conferences and free travel to and from said conference. Very perky. 

In theory. 

In practice, when you take your three-count ‘em-three kids along, perky can (and does) become pesky if not painful. 

Ima tell you what happened.

The detes:

Conference in Chicago. Never been to the windy city so...cool.
Fly out wed morning, fly back sat afternoon.

The devil in the detes:
Fly out of logan airport in, oh god, Boston, MA. Connect in LaGuardia. (Trivia question: What was LaGuardia’s first name? You did know LaGuardia was a person, right?)

First flight at, oh god, 9:30am. 

The last devil in the detail is that we are taking our three-count ‘em-three kiddos. Ages 7,5, 14...months. Oh god indeed. 

So imagine just packing for this trip (toiletries, onesies, diapers, pull-ups) and then imagine lugging all of this along with a stroller.

Ok, so we get the kids to bed tuesday night and pack and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Good start. 

Now someone in the family, not gonna say who, gets up at 4:40am every day, and was ready to go Wednesday morning to drive from god’s plan (providence) Rhode Island up to beantown but someone else in the family, not gonna say who, may or may not have lollygagged a tad. Conclusion: got on the road a little bit late. Not great.

Oh, tank is on E, so we have to get gas. No biggie, place down the road. 5 mins. Oh but then on the way to the expressway the 5 yr old says he’s gotta pee. Turn around, head back to the house. Um.

Running late. 

Alright, we got this. On a good day, a drive from god’s plan to Boston is one hour. 

Did I mention the morning commute through god’s plan is, anything but divine? 

Running later.

Did I mention the morning commute through Boston is anything but hell? 

Running latest.

In effing stop and go traffic, with the five year old getting car sick from said stop and go, we finally make it to Logan for our 9:30am flight at, oh, 9:20...ish. We, of course, have to go to the top of the parking deck, lug everything out, kids included, and try to check the bag and get through security, replete with full body cavity search and mammogram.

We miss our flight.

Like a little leaguer facing Nolan Ryan we whiff on that flight. Not even close.

Alright. These things happen. We do what you you do when you miss a flight -drink at the airport. No that’s not right, you check the next flight. You problem solve, you stay calm, and you let those tots have all the screen time they want, cuz your ass is stuck at Logan. 

We’re on standby. Not great. Our tickets, should we even get on the flight are not together. Not greater. Thinking about my five year old next to strangers is disconcerting. Thinking about some poor sap with my ball busting 7 year old is funny though. 

Good news: we get on the flight to LaGuardia. (Trivia answer: Fiorello. Please take a moment, 17 hours actually to watch the Ric Burns documentary New York - worth the time, I promise). Gooder news, a kind woman trades seats so I can sit next to my five year old and my wife was close “enough” to the 7 year old. I might add at this point that the 14 month old is just a champ through all of this. 

Ok, we get to LaGuardia and, with all due respect to Fiorello and all he did for New York as Mayor, man is this airport a shithole. That aside, we have to try and get to Chicago. My wife, stands in line for 2 hours, whilst I entertain (hands kindle to tots) the kids, to try and get us on a flight to Chicago. Nope. Not gonna happen. Two hours wasted quicker than a frat boy at a kegger. But, wait for it, we aren’t the only ones. Three flights nixed to the windy city. 

Alright. These things happen. You get on the horn and you get a hotel. Three missed flights full of people do the same thing and apparently they did it a LOT earlier than we did. Hotels full. Except for the Holiday Inn LaGuardia, and, with all due respect to Fiorello and all he did for New York as Mayor, man is this hotel a shithole. Not his fault I know. Oh and when you have a 14 month old, you make sure to ask the hotel if they have a crib. Check: Holiday Inn LaGuardia has a crib. 

Next, get on the shuttle to the Holiday Inn, with three kids. More driving. Not awesome.

The room is small. College apartment bedroom small. Studio. Two beds. We are famished so we head down to the “restaurant.” The “food” was foodish and I’m sure contained some sort of ingredients but how the meatball served to me with my “spaghetti” qualified as a meatball, I am not sure. My wife said her salad, served in a wooden bowl, was ok. The kids, pent up from all of this run around the “restaurant.” But good news, it was only 4pm so the other customer didn’t seem to mind - I think he was drunk. 

Right about now I should mention that our checked bag, the one with all those diapers and pull-ups, was on its way to Chicago. Sooooo, whist I try to manage three kids in a closet, my wife has to uber out to the nearest Target, which happens to be in oh a seven story mall, to get the bare minimum of diapers, pull-ups, boxers, deodorant, toothpaste and brushes and a change of clothes for the next day...and in the big apple, this only cost us 200 smackers. 

Alright. These things happen. 

So the little gal has to sleep between us and the boys somehow share their bed and get to sleep. We make it through the night. 

We make it through “breakfast” and we make it through the 10 mile yet hour commute back to LaGuardia. More driving. We hang out as best we can at LaGuardia for oh, just two hours and then suffer the indignity that is air travel. Again.

We get to the windy city after two hours cramped in the trunk of a 1979 Pinto, breathing air fresh out of a forsaken aquarium bubbler, and retrieve our checked bag and, wait for it, pile into another car for a 30 mile trip to the hotel. A 30 mile trip that took an hour and a half of stop and go traffic with a top speed of, I kid you not, 25MPH. ON the expressway. What the fuck is express about 25MPH? The 5 year old got car sick, again, but didn’t throw up. The little gal finally had had enough a cried up a storm while out driver said “This was the fastest way.” 

We make it to the hotel. Very nice place. Mood rises in all of us. We haven’t had a vaca in three plus years so we get club floor. So the wife and tots head out for the dessert hour whilst I get the little gal a bath and relax a little. My wife brings me back a dark and stormy. 

We strategize bedtime. I will take the 7 year old out so he doesn’t fight/play/punch/wrestle/giggle/fart with his brother when they should be going to sleep. Ok, let us go check out the pool. Get some energy out, do a little swimmin’. Concierge so nicely informs us that the pool is being serviced, but that, a mere ten blocks away, a mere 15 minute walk through the streets of Chicago, at 8pm at night, with a mere 7 year old, is a swimming pool we can use. How she kept a straight face and told me this is beyond me. I do keep the kid out long enough for his brother to be asleep by the time we get back. However, my wife tells me that our room has a connecting door and that the guest arrived and we need to be quiet. I wasn’t planning on having a rave but ok.

We get some sleep. And don’t drive or fly anywhere. Bonus.

Because she missed a conference day my wife has to be up early to check in for the conference and retrieve a poster and yadi yada and we all make it out to club floor breakfast at the ripe ole time of 6:30am. All of us. My wife departs and I head back to the room with the three kiddos and figure I will plan the morning activities. Well do you remember that we have a connecting room? Well the boys are off the wall as they usually are and our fellow traveler starts banging on the connecting door and starts turning the handle like if it were to open, he would waltz right into our room. I furrow my brow as I’m holding my 14 month old, and the banging stops...because he left his room to come around to our entry door and bang on it. “How may I help you?” I ask. He screams “Can you keep it down?” I retort: “Doing the best I can here.” Mind you, this is not a freshman dorm we are staying in here but a 23 story hotel in downtown Chicago and this cat bangs on the door and screams. Great.

Alright. These things happen. 

So I gather up three kids and get in line at the front desk to explain why we need a room change. They say they can accommodate but to check back around noon to make sure. “For future reference,” he says, “just call security.” 

We make at to Millennium park. Before 8am. I guess it’s nice that we have the place to ourselves. We check it out, we snap some pics at the bean, stroll the grounds, aaaaand, it’s 9am. Try to keep it somewhat entertaining and the Crown Fountain helps but the tots get soaked. The boys will need a change of clothes which means I have to go back to the room. We head back and because it is so damn early, we can still get some breakfast. Mollifies them a little. Try to get the little gal down for her nap, put the boys in a warm tub. Doin’ my best here. Joe Blow next door isn’t banging on the walls so I’m ok. But she’s not having it so we’re out the door again. Back to Millennium park. Now it is packed but I get to see my sister inlaw and her husband and their newborn so it works out. The boys make friends at the fountain and the little gal sleeps in her stroller. A reprieve. 

It is short lived.

Near noon so I check on the status of the room change, while the boys have trouble “waiting patiently.” i.e not punching and wrestling and hanging on the velvet ropes like rhesus monkeys. After hemming and hawing they can do the change. And guess who has a half-hour to pack up everything and move it to the new room while juggling three kiddos. Not literally. Stressful as there is schtuff everywhere and fitting it all back into the bags was, not exactly a walk in the park, more like a bear crawl in the Andes. I get it done. I don’t know what item is in what bag or where anything at all is but I get it done. 

The wife gets back and we meet up again with her sister at the navy pier. Nice enough. The kids dig the Children’s Museum and we get a little burned out near five but avoid a complete meltdown and make it to dinner back at the hotel. We split up the bed times again and get some sleep. 

We’re packed up and head to the Chicago aquarium. Half-hour drive wherein the driver, obviously at the end of a loooong shift, proceeds to fall asleep at a red light. But no worries, we woke him up when it turned green. Safety first kids! Where we have, tops, one hour but pay through the bottle nose dolphin prices. At this point it is all becoming very tiring and I haven’t even had a chance for deep dish pizza. We check out and, no need to guess it, uber back to O'hare at a mere hour-ish. At this point it is all becoming most tiring and I haven’t even seen any of the Blues Brothers sites, other than a Wacker Drive sighting, whilst [sigh] driving. 

The captain tells us that “we are waiting on the catering truck,” so we sit on the tarmac for a half hour before our two hour flight back to Logan...before our, if we’re lucky, hour drive back home. We make it back to Logan and it is about now that we deem our seven year old possessed. So many constraints and directives on this trip, in addition to ample screen time, I realize must have been really challenging for him. We get our bag aaaand trek it back to the 7th floor of central parking which feels miles away at this point aaaaand for the life of us, can’t find our car. We try two different garages. We are so spent my wife and I that we can’t remember can’t make heads for tails. So we call parking and this little old man comes and picks us all up and we load the luggage for the billionth time and he drives us across the lot and we realize we had walked right past it. Sheezuz. 

We drive out of Boston and make for home.

But the tots get thirsty so we have to pull off and get fluids. More time. And to cap it off, just as we are about to hit our town, the five year old throws up in the back up the car. A lot. 

We’ve got to lug everything out, again, get the kiddos dinner and a bath, get the little gal down, then get the puke stained car seat out of the back which only requires a thousand cuss words. 

Now in theory, I don’t suppose that the universe was speaking to us very early on in the throes of this trip, to, you know, NOT GO. In theory, I don’t suppose the universe speaks. Who has two thumbs and doesn’t like to anthropomorphize? (If you are keeping score at home, that was 5 syllables, count em’ 5) This guy. 

In practice? The universe screamed at us, slapped us hard across our face, uppercutted us in the sternum, did the sign language just in case, made a sign, a series of sings like in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, imploring us to bag it, DON’T GO!

Still, it was better than work (was it though?).

Why Plan For the End of Life When You Don't Die?

One of the benefits of rising at 4:40am everyday is getting KQED on the drive to the gym.

Michael Krasny is a great host and a better interviewer. And he's  an Ohio University graduate I might add.

This morning the topic was end of life care. You can listen here

Well this doctor, a very patient and intelligent sounding fellow, used this word I love: finite

I love that word.

He said our lives are finite.

Now most of you don't believe that shit for a second. Much less two seconds. No most of you believe that we are eternal. You equivocate on death. Yes, you. If you ask me to define death I do it thusly: the cessation of (individual) life.

I get it. Death reeks of finality. Stinks to high heaven (pun intended).

Now you'll come at me with some talk of "oh earthly death and earthly material matters and oh well all of that is fine to plan for: get a will in order, yadi yada."

But how in the name of cognitive dissonance can you plan for your death when you don't die?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. 

You might know it as John 3:16

I sense no cessation in "everlasting life."

My wife tells me that cognitive dissonance is easy to get around. You just add new beliefs. Or one can rationalize beliefs.

But my thesis is that hypocrisy is unhealthy. Equivocating in letter, spirit, action is unhealthy. Hypocrisy is insidious, it festers. I believe there are collective hypocrisy effects as well. The collective belief that we are eternal has physical, material implications.

To be continued

You Cant Always Come Back To Yourself In The Future

I am not a Luddite. Nor am I a doomsdayer. But man I had a cold shiver run through me yesterday that reeked of, if not doom, then the damn precipice of.

I was listening to Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, specifically the final chapter.

Wiki nicely sums up:

He concludes by considering how modern technology may soon end the species as we know it, as it ushers in genetic engineering, immortality, and non-organic life. Humans have, in Harari's chosen metaphor, become gods: they can create species.

And thinking about cyborg engineering and genetic engineering and how these relate to…

IDENTITY…

were what gave me the damn shivers.

Programs implanted to tell us what to want, whom to love, genes implanted for fidelity…on and on.

The way we think about ourselves…how we feel whole and complete from childhood on, how we feel autonomous…

…But Harari posits a future where this changes. And he used the word disconcerting. But it is so much more.

And it just got me thinking about the Pandora’s box “myth”, the door that once opened can’t be closed, the POINT OF NO RETURN.

And I thought about people that refuse medical treatment for ailments, and sympathy ran through me.

Did they possess the long view? Did they know what it meant for identity? Did they have the species in mind, not just the individual?

The scariest part is that it is too late. Harari points out in the book that while capitalism may have its downside(s), it is too late to turn back.

And the brooding horror, sitting in the corner like a petulant child plotting revenge, is the fact that gene editing WILL happen, Cyborg engineering WILL happen. We’ve come too far.

I’m almost fifty so I don’t have to worry too much I guess. Maybe.

Hooking For Dummies

Been making my way through The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman  and this came out:

Hooking For Dummies

His back got all kinds of broken in a fall from a tree. He was in a tree cutting service and though usually there are ample safety measure for this sort of thing, somehow he still fell from way too many feet and landed on a ground way to solid for the human frame. Mind you he was strong as a bull for his age but muscles and will have nothing to do with 200 lbs and gravity from 35 feet. Nada. So with his broken back in traction and his oldest son busting his balls about “never planned for the future,” and “should have left the fucking hewing nonsense years ago,” and “what the hell are you gonna do?” like an angry mother, he dreamed of some hot number blowing him till he came hard enough to kill him right then and there. Blown to death via fellatio. That’s how a man dies. Not with some indignant son chiding you about your career decisions and lack of this financial plan and that bimbo of the month you spent way too much on.
“Are you even listening to me?”
He did recover but the hewing nonsense was obviously a no-go after a broken back. It didn’t have to be; he could have pulled some macho shit from nowhere like an aged, washed-up quarterback trying to come out of retirement (again) for one last super bowl run. Only the oaks and maples in the burbs didn’t carry that kind of glamour. So as he recuped he tried his damndest to do a little bit of planning for a career change or something like it. But he never was one for an office job; he’d probably been the oldest dude ever to go up a tree like a damn spider monkey for a j-o-b. Jesus was he strong and agile. The recuperating took some off the edges of his muscles but once he was up and moving it was coming back in wave of glorious wave of taut, toned meat just pining for resolution. Name another 55 year old with obliques like this. Sons a bitches got nothing on me.  
Muscles: got ‘em. Income: …
Money needed to be made, bills needed to be paid. IOU’s were due and friends sighed when they opened their wallets for the umpteenth time. “Last one oleshevitz. I love ya but it doesn’t grow on trees. Oh sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. You know that.”
None taken. Especially after a few c notes.
So he did what any 55 year old, uneducated, man with oblique muscles and a huge dong would do: he prostituted.
Well, he planned on prostituting. He had no idea how to break into the…business. But what in the hell else was there?
The library was obviously not going to be a resource to help him become a male hooker. Hooking for Dummies? Prolly not. He thought about talking to some strippers he’d “befriended” over the years but as they flipped through the Rolodex of his mind he realized he owed them all money. Wasn’t that an omen of success as a male hooker though? How many dudes borrow money from strippers? Pew research didn’t run such numbers but it had to be rarefied air. He always borrowed after a romp and dammit if they didn’t always pull out a wad and throw him more than a few bones. He’d usually say something like “I could tell from your intro music that you were good people.”
Then get out.
He’d have to find a new club and some new stripper to befriend. He liked this sort of planning. Roth IRA’s, social security checks? No thanks. Gonna see what wisdom Trixie has down at Chikadees Gentlemen’s Club. As night rolled in, he entered the black light tinged, perfume sated, rock and roll infused den of Chikadees. It was early, poles barren, so the Trixies and the Tanyas were floor level with Johns and Johns. With a freshly “loaned” c note he ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks and with his eyes adjusting, scanned the clientele. And there, mixed in among the construction workers, divorced dads, and cops, was his son. His youngest son. He hadn’t seen him since he graduated college and left for grad school to study Theology at Duquesne or Duke or Dubuque. He couldn’t remember. His son caught his glance, Mona-Lisa smiled, and made his way around the bar. He looked damned strong.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “You are not becoming a hooker.”