Only Dogs Can Hear

Loving material from other bloggers day 2

This is hilarious. 

Damned by faint praise

After making taco salads for her daughters' lunches, my friend Charlotte gets a zinger from her oldest, "Mama, thank you for lunch. It was much better than nothing!"  I think it would've been more satisfying if both girls had stuck with the gross-I-hate-it-and-will-never-eat-it-again strategy so that Charlotte could have told them to suck it up. 

I'm not sure this dirty secret is really very secret

I love this line: "GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning."  So mean and evocative.  I'm imagining all these Ph.D. students wandering sullenly in a post-industrial wasteland, ivy covered buildings dilapidated and crumbling, undergraduates scurrying fearfully from one class to another.  Some of them are wondering with deserved anxiety, when their major professor will ever let them finish up their research instead of pushing them to write more and more articles with only a 3rd, 4th or (horror) et al level credit on the byline.  However, I've met lots of very happy Ph.D. students who have stayed well over a decade on subsistence pay by choice.  The life of a student isn't all bad afterall.

The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.

 

Facebook Friday

K and I went to a DIY sushi dinner party last night.  It was so much fun, messy and tasty fun.  We've been wanting to make sushi for a long time now, but have been intimidated by the prospect.  After last night I assure you it is pretty simple, lots of fun, and of course very yummy.  Who else can't get enough pickled ginger?  Especially dipped in wasabi?  Cue contented sigh. 

Here is your weekly dose of Facebookiness.

1. Amanda says attention Jana: my third eye is bigger than your third eye.
2. Addie is making strawberry popsicles and listening to Shakira.
3. Missy is stuck on Memorial Drive and definitely needs more cowbell.
4. Jamie got his rear patted by a random stranger at Coachella.
5. Agathe is melting...it's too freakin' hot...I'm French, I have a right to complain!
6. Cam looks forward to condescending remarks from book snobs when flaunting his copy of The Lost Symbol.
7. Renee is depressed...I just graded a paper that said people in poor countries need more money so they can buy the AIDS vaccine.

Have a great weekend!

Thinking about health and fixed incomes

I don't really like to think of the current situation facing the "Big Three" car companies in Michigan as a corporate problem.  A problem of stagnant technology and collusion to block innovation (too strong an accusation?), a problem of rich, white collar suits sitting in plush Detroit offices who fly expensively to congressional hearings in DC. 

I think of the situation in Michigan as an ever increasing problem facing labor in the United States.  Michigan's auto industry is possibly the best example around because it is a remaining bastion of 'strong' union protection.  Although that strength has been increasingly eroded over the past few decades. 

I get frustrated with people who say, "let the Big Three fail".  Their failure isn't just about corporate greed or industry decline.  It's about possibly millions of people, working people, average people, who derive their income from those three companies.  Not only those who work directly for one of the companies and are members of the UAW, but those who work for companies who deliver parts, repairs, IT support and so many other services that depend on the auto industry. 

And then there's the thing that hits a little closer to home.  The retirees.  Those who took their buy-outs.  Who made sacrifices in negotiations in order to secure their lives when they would be on fixed incomes.  What exactly are we, as a nation, saying about the value we place on the working class when we expensively bail out rich bankers and then let people who have worked their whole lives MAKING SOMETHING go with nothing in their old age?

From the NY Times:

The debate about saving the U.S. auto industry is both highly contentious and, in one area, intentionally dishonest. The claims that auto worker wages are $70 per hour is patently false. Assembly line workers are paid around $26 per hour. Add in the negotiated fringe benefits specific to the worker, and the wage package is close to $50.

What also is under attack, particularly by Southern senators with foreign-owned auto manufacturers in their states, are the “legacy costs” on the corporate balance sheet today. Legacy costs are essentially that which is promised and payable to retired auto workers in the form of pensions and health insurance for the rest of their lives.

It is important to remember that these benefits are not gifts from benevolent employers. They are the product of collective bargaining and represented something of value to the negotiators at the time. Employer-based pensions and health care protection helped to stabilize the work force.

The now-retired union members contributed a significant amount of their available earnings to help pay for these benefits. Over the years workers voted to forgo portions of direct wage increases based on actual productivity gains and often traded part of their cost-of-living increases for the future benefits.

Also missing in this debate is that retirees had the promise of fully paid health insurance altered in 2005, when the companies demanded and the union agreed to have retirees pay a portion of their health insurance premiums and have deduct it from monthly pension checks.

A persistent subtext in this debate for some seems to be “to save the companies, the retirees have to lose their health care protection.” That’s an outrageous proposition. Because of the early-retirement features in the contracts and the companies’ recent tendency to push workers into retirement through buyouts, a large percentage of the retirees are not yet eligible for Medicare. Hundreds of thousands of retired auto workers and their dependents would wind up with no health care protection if the companies were relieved of this responsibility or do not fulfill the commitments they made to the union-run health care trust funds in 2010.

The irony of all this is that the U.A.W. didn’t originally want the companies to be the health care providers. The union over the early years wanted the auto companies to join with the U.A.W. in its call for a universal health care system, along the lines of the Canadian system.

The U.S. auto executives have refused even though in Canada the companies gain an approximate $1,400 per vehicle cost advantage over American production because of the national health system. The answer all along for the Big Three and our retirees is national health care legislation like Canada’s that can be found in HR 676, the Medicare for All Act.

If what some politicians and pundits are advocating happens and approximately one million retired auto worker families are without health care protection, it will just add another layer to the already existing millions of uninsured in this country. U.A.W. retirees have already paid for their benefits, but the real solution is public policy providing health care for all in America.

Psychological revolution

I was ruminating over the lyrics in the Indigo Girls song Perfect World on the treadmill today.  I kept repeating the line, 'can we learn to live another way', over and over again in my head.  I get all discouraged about that, and sometimes I think the answer is yes, most of the time no.  Then I found this while I was reading Krishnamurti this afternoon:

As one travels over the world and observes the appalling conditions of poverty and the ugliness of man's relationship to man, it becomes obvious that there must be a total revolution.  A different kind of culture must come into being.  The old culture is almost dead and yet we are clinging to it.  Those who are young revolt against it, but unfortunately have not found a way, or a means, of transforming the essential quality of the human being, which is the mind.  Unless there is a deep psychological revolution, mere reformation on the periphery will have little effect.  This psychological revolution--which I think is the only revolution--is possible through meditation.

I'm just not sure how we get to that point.  When does the revolutionary movement gain enough momentum? 

Older and wiser?

Don't mean to ruin the suspense for anyone, but thirty-two feels the same as thirty-one.  Although, having seen Alcatraz for my birthday was pretty cool.  A strange birthday outing for sure, but pretty cool.  I so thought it would be all cheesy, prison chintz or something.  Instead it was totally interesting.  Plus it was mating season for several species of sea birds who all seem to think Alcatraz is the ultimate in romantic (or swinging orgy) destinations.  Somehow seagulls seem less rat-like on Alcatraz.  How we managed to make it off that island without getting shat upon is beyond me. 

Facebook Friday

Good morning!  Today is shaping up to be a busy day.  Leaving work a bit early so we can make the four o'clock train to San Francisco!  Tomorrow will be full of farmers' markets and art galleries.  Sounds fun, eh? 

So I know the suspense has been killing you this week.  For the record I decided to include only one update referencing teabagging.  Seriously.  Here it is, Facebook Friday, only maybe a little more vindictive than usual.

1. Melissa says David Lance Arneson, co-creator of 'Dungeons&Dragons' has died.  No word yet if the funeral will be held in his Mother's Basement or if anyone will attend.
2. Alice is talking to herself on facebook, apparently.
3. Lynn is more and more dazzled by Obama's vocabulary as each day passes.  Today's word: "Prognosticating" NICE!!!
4. Janet can't believe she ate the whole thing.
5. Ellen thinks Stephanie Pratt is such a demonic twat monster.  Will she just get back on drugs already and nod herself out into oblivion...Yes I'm watching The Hills.  Shoot me.  Harumph.
6. Nick is not a prude, but doesn't like the proliferation of teabagging references in major media outlets.
7. Sandy says thanks for offering to become a fan of Heidi Montag in the sidebar, facebook.  I needed to weed out a few friends and Heidi fans pretty much get the boot.
8. Whitney is wondering why my husband's EX WIFE thinks she has the RIGHT to call my husband and ask him for money?  Like Anne said...She better find a POLE!

On that note...have a great weekend!

Thoughts of separation

My yoga teacher brought in a friend of hers to do part of our required hours (by Yoga Alliance) on philosophy and meditation.  His explanation of the non-duality of Buddhist philosophy and how it plays out in the 'eightfold path' (right speech, right livelihood, right intention, right action, etc.) was very different than I've heard before.  He said, basically, that we should not do, say, think anything that increases separation in any way.  Instead of separation I've always thought of the path in terms suffering.  I shouldn't do, say or think anything that increases the suffering of any other sentient being.  But maybe the term separation goes even further. 

We see ourselves as divided and separated from experience. We see ourselves as experiencers of “that, out there.” And when that, out there, seems to please or protect us, we call it good. Similarly, when it appears threatening or strange or terrifying, we call it evil. Thus our feeling of separateness is precisely what creates notions of good and evil in the first place.
–Steve Hagen, from Buddhism: It’s Not What You Think

A lesson in birthday surprises

A couple of weeks ago K and I went to a happy hour event with a bunch of friends in his grad program. 

One of the women near me says, hey you guys really like the Indigo Girls right?  Did you know they're performing in Sacramento next month? 

Their new album had just come out and K had been badgering me to listen to it a bunch lately, really nagging.  I turn to K (on the far side of the group) and say (meaningfully), hey did you know the Indigo Girls are coming to Sacramento next month?

This is a ridiculous question.  K gets regular updates delivered directly to his inbox on Indigo Girls' tour dates.  Of course he knows.  More to the point: why hasn't he mentioned it and why don't we already have tickets?  These are the questions that he proceeds to answer.

K heaves a big sigh turns to look at his friend and says, yeah, I did know they were coming to Sacramento.  Maybe I've already bought tickets as a surprise for SOMEONE's birthday. 

Poor girl still turns red and apologizes every time she sees me.