Teaching After Trump: What Is A Book?

When I teach courses on medieval literature and the environment, I know that there are issues that are going to intersect with contemporary politics that I have to navigate with caution. But yesterday, when it dawned on me in the middle of a class meeting that "What Is A Book?" is political, I was pretty well blind-sided.

The course looks at the transitions from manuscript to print and from print to digital, and tries to throw codicology, history of the book, and digital humanities in the air together to see what kinds of configurations stuff drops into. I've taught the course only once before, four years ago, so I'm still in a very fluid period of making stuff up as I go along.

Yesterday we were looking at the Appendix to Cathy Davidson's Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century. My students all know that technology is terrible because it makes us distracted, but Davidson engages with the prophets of doom and makes a good case that there are also things to value, and rather than rejecting it, we should engage with technology and figure out what it can do.

The Appendix turns out to be a good introduction to the book, and the course, because it lists "Twenty-First Century Literacies" like attention, collaboration, global consciousness, and ethics. It raises good topics for discussion and gets the students and me pretty quickly beyond the problems of how social media and mobile devices are distracting us into other issues involving the ethics and affordances of technology.

The night before class, I'd spent half an hour or so on Twitter following the new president's gag order on US scientific agencies and national parks, the scrubbing of anything that could be interpreted as related to climate science from government websites, the silencing of agencies like the USDA and the CDC. (Salmonella, anyone? Zika?)

Davidson lists sustainability and preservation near the end of the appendix. She uses "sustainability" to refer to environmental issues like the amounts of electricity needed to power computers and servers, but digital humanists use the same word to refer to the creation of digital texts and databases in forms that will outlast current hardware and software configurations and still be readable, decades or hopefully even centuries into the future.

The related issue of "preservation" has to do with keeping copies of things -- archiving materials created digitally, as well as figuring out how to keep copies of things that began their life as material objects. If something originally in book form is preserved in pdf, is that the same as the original? What if there are different copies owned by two different people who made notes in the margins? How important are those notes?

Cotton Vitellius A. xv. is the manuscript that contains the unique copy of Beowulf. It was put together, probably in the seventeenth century, out of two different collections written several hundred years before, but a couple hundred years apart from each other. It contains the Nowell Codex, a late tenth- or early eleventh-century copy manuscript of two poems, including Beowulf, and three prose texts. Is that a book? Or is a medieval collection of materials different than what we think of today as "a book"? Are photographs of the Beowulf manuscript the same as the actual manuscript? What if we could print a 3-dimensional copy, retaining the texture of every page?

People who deal with other media ask related questions. Is a CD version of a song the same as its 45 rpm vinyl original? Is a DVD copy of "Singin' in the Rain" the same as a print of the film on several reels of 35mm film?

Preservation also deals with avoiding loss of data, which was a big problem in the early days of computing but is less acute now, when storage is cheap and it's easy to store redundantly. The issue of data that lasts forever, like social media posts that haunt people hunting for a job, looms larger.

So there I was in class, talking about the relatively long life of manuscripts in comparison to things like punch cards and 5 1/4 inch floppy disks and suddenly I apprehended the enormity of the new administration's deliberate suppression and even destruction of information.

I don't know if this material is being mirrored or archived in some other country that's now freeer than the United States or if, horrifyingly, decades of data that the new regime considers to be "alternative facts" or even "a hoax" will simply be destroyed. I don't know what the consequences might be of stopping research in the sciences and humanities dead, and how quickly it might recover if (when?) we get ourselves back on a course of sanity, four years or more from now.

But there I was talking about issues that, six months ago, seemed to have nothing to do with politics in the United States. Yet even though they have nothing to do with hot-button issues like climate science or women's health care, issues of data preservation and sustainability are completely politicized.

It caught me completely by surprise. I hadn't prepared to teach a class that was politically charged, and I found myself floundering. I said that whatever anyone's politics, our classroom had to remain a space for civil discourse. I said that I grade on how persuasively students organize and present their research, not on what their opinions are, and I hoped that students would feel free to disagree, even with me.

I need to do better, though. I need to make it clear that scrubbing websites is comparable to burning books and neither has a place in democracy.

I'm thankful for tenure. I'm thankful that I teach in a university, and a state, that isn't moving to silence its faculty. And I'm deeply sobered and dismayed by the implications. Teaching with integrity used to mean not smoking or sleeping with the students. It's become far more difficult to navigate the environment of alternative realities, suppression of scientific fact, and abrogation of human rights.

I now feel a grave responsibility to step up and state clearly that these things are not right. But I have to do so in a way that maintains respect for students with different views and allows for an open classroom atmosphere, that keeps the classroom a place of inquiry and the development of critical thinking, not a lecture on the ills of the people currently in power.

Teaching just got a whole lot harder.

We Need Gun Laws. Now.

More than 355 "mass" shootings already this year. Two, just yesterday. As of today, 12,223 people have died this year from gun violence and 24,722 people have been injured. Millions of friends and family members are affected.

But the NRA has convinced millions of Americans that any amount of regulation attached to gun ownership equals "taking away our guns." They give millions of dollars to people running for government at all levels to push the ridiculous claim that any amount of regulation is too much.

Hey, you know, we manage to regulate cars and alcohol and cigarettes and Sudafed without stopping people from acquiring and using any of them.

Hunters know that there are a bunch of rules about what you can shoot and when you can shoot it. In New Hampshire, deer season this year runs from October 31 through December 6, with different time frames depending on what kind of gun you're using. In Maine, you can't hunt on Sundays. You have to have a hunting license, and there are rules about how many deer you can bring home per year. No one is taking away anyone's right to shoot at animals with a gun, but the rules help protect the safety of hunters and other people using the forests, and they keep the deer population stable.

But it seems to be open season on human beings in the USA today.

I bought a car recently. I needed the Vehicle Identification Number of the car to get my insurance, so I couldn't get that organized in advance, and my insurance company closed before the car dealership, and without proof of insurance -- current insurance on the current vehicle, not last year's policy -- I couldn't drive the car off the lot.

Some states regulate guns. California, where one of yesterday's shootings took place. New York State. But violent people can buy guns with no background check, no waiting period, no regulations at all at gun shows in Georgia. From manufacturers like Glock and Men with orders of protection against them from ex-wives or girlfriends. People with a history of violence, people with criminal records. People with drug and alcohol problems that make them more likely to act and react violently.

If you own a car, you have to pay for insurance on it in case you get in an accident. If you drink and drive, you can lose your license. If you kill someone while driving, you might go to prison. No one is screaming that the government wants to take away our cars.

How we've reached this point when it comes to guns, I don't understand. Why the NRA wants you to think that any amount of gun regulation is unacceptable, I don't understand.

But it's beyond time for change. We need to show up at the polls and vote out the politicans in the NRA's pockets. We need national legislation that eliminates unregulated gun shows and closes the other loopholes to unregulated gun ownership.

We need national laws requiring regularly renewed licenses and insurance policies for all gun owners as well as rigorous background checks and waiting periods for new buyers.

We need them now.

Just Questions

News media are saying that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is "of Chechen origin," though he was born in Kyrgysztan and lived ten or eleven of his nineteen years in the US. Wait, when Dzhokhar was a child, Kyrgysztan was a Soviet republic.

What makes identity, national or otherwise?

I guess I'm "of Prussian origin" since my mother was born there.  Hmmm, but Prussia is Poland now; it ceased to exist as a nation nearly two decades before I was born.  Also, I'm "an immigrant" as I was born in Germany.  I guess that makes me "German."  Maybe it makes me "of Nazi origin."

But I've lived in the US since I was six months old.  On my paternal grandmother's side, various ancestors came in various centuries from England, so many generations ago it's difficult to count.  (Hint: prior to the original Tea Party.)  Does that implicate me in the genocide of Penobscots and Wampanoags and Abenakis?

What shapes us, what shapes our views?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar's older brother, was born in Chechyna, but the family moved to Dagestan and then Kyrgysztan when he was a child.  He recently became a devout Muslim and gave up smoking and drinking. It's said he was a fan (if that's the right word) of an Australian-born imam who has encouraged "holy war."

I'm caucasian, and I speak English "without an accent," which is to say I sound like an east-coast American.  But, wait, I converted to Judaism twenty-odd years ago and gave up Christmas and Easter. I'm a "follower" of Arthur Waskow, a Jewish activist.

What influenced those two brothers?

Ruslan Tsarni, their uncle, has been widely quoted today: "I respect this country. I love this country. This country which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being and to just to be human being. To feel yourself human being."

As a nation, the United States certainly has demons in its past and skeletons in its closet.  Native peoples,  slavery, anti-Jewish propaganda of the 1920s, Japanese internment camps, McCarthy.  And I bet you can come up with more.

What, then, of our origins as "Americans"? What do we attend to? What do we sweep under the rug?

I only have questions.  I have no answers.  Maybe I'll go with Lennon: "Imagine...."

Fighting an Epidemic

It's clear we have a problem with gun violence: the numbers of people who die from guns, whether shot by others or as suicides, are far higher in the US than in comparable developed nations.

We can argue about the causes: is it violent movies, television shows, video games?  Is it laws that allow people to buy guns without licensing or background checks?

The gun makers, it turns out, are willing to spend money on the bet that playing violent games will encourage people to buy guns: they work with the developers of the games to make sure their guns get prominent placement.  Meanwhile, they donate lots of money to the National Rifle Association, whose leaders say the problem is violent video games, not gun ownership.  And other people say the problem is neither guns nor violent cultural artifacts, but untreated mental illness.

In short, we have an epidemic problem.  The more time we spend arguing about it, the longer it will take to arrive at a solution.

If the epidemic involved disease, and there were multiple possible transmission vectors, we'd be addressing them all, rather than arguing about which was the most important factor.

In this case, we have multiple factors that may be contributing to the problem.  Rather than arguing about which is most important, we need to address them all.

We need legislation that requires background checks and licensing, nationwide.  We need research and education about the effects of watching violent video and playing violent games.  And we need better recognition and treatment of mental illness, and a reduction in stigmatization of mental illnesses that leads people to refuse treatment.

Drug Testing and Guns

You might have to submit to a drug test if you ...

Start a new job
Apply for welfare
Play professional sports
Need financial aid to pay for college

But if you want to buy a gun, no drug test, if you're in a state with no background checks.  Also...

Convicted of violent crime? no problem.
Convicted of rape? no problem.
Convicted of selling heroin to minors? no problem
Have an order of protection against you? no problem

Gun laws won't keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding people.  Kind of like car laws don't keep people from driving.

But car laws do help limit speeding, drunk driving, and other dangers associated with car ownership.  Nationwide gun laws will not keep hunters and other recreational gun users from their pursuits.  But they will help to reduce dangers associated with guns.

How Many Deaths Will It Take?

A spontaneous urban memorial sprang up outside the convenience store where Raphael Ward was shot last month.  His friends left balls, a bat, stuffed toys, candles, flowers -- the toys of a young person not far out of childhood.  People wrote messages of grief and solidarity on the wall in sharpie, as high as people could reach, around the corner to another wall.

The wall was painted over some time yesterday.  We've cleaned "RIP Sadonte" (his nickname) off our car.  Most of the things left in his memory have been removed.  All that remains is a box, set up on its side to shield a dozen tall memorial candles from the sleet.

The incident leaves me with an ache in my heart and a chill in my bones.

I ache for Raphael's friends and family, and most of all, for his mother.  I ache for the families of the Sandy Hook children and for the family of Hadiya Pendleton. I hear that as of February 1, 1280 more people have died from gunshots in the US since the Sandy Hook shootings -- that's six weeks -- and I ache some more, and my heart starts to go numb.

I fear for my own son, who lives in a world in which a dispute among teenagers can so easily escalate into deadly confrontation instead of ending in a fistfight.

We must have an end to this plague on our nation.

Background Check

Open a bank account
Get a credit card
Rent an apartment
Buy a home
Buy a car, rent a car, lease a car
Get a job
Get a welfare check
Get admitted to college

For all of these things, you need to submit documentation and submit to a background check.

Don't want a background check?  You can get a library card... and in many states, any gun you want.

"Appropriate" Advertising?

The Offspring's teacher asked each kid to bring in an advertisement.  The only guideline: nothing inappropriate.

And so The Offspring began paging through a copy of Metro New York, and finding a non-inappropriate ad turned out to be a bit difficult.

Full-page Macy's ad?  Nope: woman in bra.  Plastic surgery? No: worse, with the before and after pictures.  Weight-loss program?  Footcare?  Yet worse: women in scanty clothing in, ummm... fetching positions.  The new NYC casino? Oh boy. Varicose vein surgery? Woman wearing dress with very high slit up the side.  Other varicose vein surgery?  Hideous leg and foot with gaping wound: he decided to pass on that one.

It's certainly not as though I've never noticed these advertisements before, but seeing them through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy is a whole new thing.

It opened up a window for a comment about the inappropriateness of a great deal of the advertising he's been seeing since he was a tiny thing, and that comment will be the start of a conversation that goes on for the next several years.

Meanwhile, we've been stopping every day -- his choice -- for a few moments of silence at an impromptu shrine to the sixteen-year-old boy shot a block from The Offspring's school, apparently over a jacket.  He's trying to wrap his head around how such a thing could have happened.

Peter Yarrow gave voice to the heartache of a parent watching a child grow into a torn world back in 1969.  Much has indeed changed since then, but there is still so much to do.

Do you ask why I'm sighing, my son?
You shall inherit what mankind has done.

Yet Yarrow found hope:

And if you take my hand my son
All will be well when the day is done.

When fathers take the hands of their children, and see through their eyes as they make decisions that can affect generations to come, then perhaps all will be well when the day is done.

Wrestling With Imagination and Realities

Walking The Offspring to school this morning, we passed a shrine.  Someone made a poster, there were several dozen memorial candles, young teenagers were adding their contributions in Sharpie on the building wall.  I hadn't heard, but The Mate said there had been a shooting -- apparently one teenager shot another for his coat.

The Offspring asked a couple of questions, and I pointed out that the life of the killer, too, is ruined.  I pointed out that the lives of both families are affected, if not ruined.  I pointed out that teenagers are particularly prone to impulsive behavior that can lead to terrible mistakes.  And I added that this is why I don't want him playing violent video games, or playing gun games with his pals.

These games seem to happen whether there are nerf- or water-gun props, or not.  A stick gets used as a gun, or just arms and hands.

Zeke was about three when he started talking about Power Rangers.  The kids at school were talking about it, and even though he'd never seen the TV shows, he seemed to have absorbed a great deal of information about it.  That seemed harmless enough.

But now it's shooting.  Shooting games, imitating machine-gun fire, dropping to the ground pretending to be dead.  It bothers me, and in the current context, it's bothering me than ever. Yet I played those games as a kid, too.

Growing up as an immigrant and an outsider in a small town, I wanted desperately to fit in, not to be different, not to stick out. I love living in New York because it absorbs people from everywhere.  I fit in as one marble among millions, each one unique, each respecting the others' differences.

And so I want The Offspring to fit in.  I don't want to wrench him from context, keep him from joining the other kid games, make him an outlier.  We're different enough with no television in the house.  I can't see forbidding gun games, and I don't think it would stop him from playing them at the playground or at other kids' homes.

So all I can do is talk to him.  Talk about real violence, real death, and my discomfort with games of violence.

Can I do more?

One Million Moms

The NRA wants you to think that gun control means you can't have a gun in your house.  But apparently, the NRA also wants you to be free to keep a rocket launcher and a cache of AK-47s in your house.

Sorry, America, the right to bear guns can exist without being an absolute right to as much firepower as anyone wants.  I'm completely tired of the NRA controlling the conversation.

Hunters don't want to think that their right to hunt is going to be threatened.  But state Fish and Game departments already control hunting rights.  Hunting is permitted only during certain times of the year, and hunters are limited in the number of animals they're allowed to kill.

In Pennsylvania, four more people were killed today, and three police officers injured while the head of the NRA was calling for schoolteachers to be armed and saying we need to regulate movies, not guns.

(I'll admit I think he has a point about the movies.  The Offspring and I have seen numerous advertisements for a TV show about a serial killer.  On the side of the NYC bus.  But movie and video game violence need to be curbed alongside -- not instead of -- limiting the availability of guns.)

In Pennsylvania, you have to have a hunting license if you want to go out and kill animals.  You can bring home one deer, two turkeys, and one bear each year.  If you want to get yourself another deer, you can get another license -- to hunt with bow and arrow instead of a gun.  The list of days when you're allowed to go out and shoot things is complex, but limited; it's here if you really want to know.

One Million Moms for Gun Control, on the other hand, wants you to be free of the threat of gun violence. Following the lead of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which a generation ago finally got lawmakers to get serious about cracking down on drunk driving, One Million Moms is building a nationwide grassroots movement to oppose the gun lobby.

And guess who pays the NRA organizers's salaries?  The people who manufacture and sell guns.  It's not your right to bear guns they particularly care to protect -- it's their right to keep selling guns, even though this country already has more guns than people.

Join One Million Moms, even if you're a dad.  Let's put real pressure on lawmakers for real change.

What If?

What if a woman, 20 years old, had shot her father and six other men, and twenty children, with dozens of rounds of ammunition?

Would that change the rhetoric around gun control?

Gloria Steinem pointed out a long time ago that the unnoticed and unmentioned feature of these mass killings is that the shooters are always male.

Women are constructed by significant segments of our society as weak.  Women are subject to male gaze, male desire, male appropriation, male violence.  What if a middle-aged woman -- a mother, maybe, a wife, a daughter, an employee -- opened fire?

If guns were associated with out-of-control estrogen instead of out-of-control testosterone, would lawmakers be scurrying to limit access?

If mentally ill women were inclined to violence, would that change access to and treatment of mental illness?

Culture of Violence

When The Offspring was a baby, I swore there would be no toy guns in the house. Nine years later, somehow he owns several water guns and nerf guns.  I caved.

We have no television, we turned off the radio when he was a baby and never really turned it back on, and we're careful about violent movies.  Yet somewhere, T.O. has learned to cock his hands and make machine-gun noises.  All summer, the neighborhood kids played "Hunger Games."  Before school started, we finally let him read the book.

The news about the shooting doesn't seem to have filtered down to the younger kids. At pick-up from school, T.O. was holding a piece of graph paper, and said he wanted to go to Staples and get a whole pad of graph paper.

"Sure, what for?"

"I'm making a death maze."

"What?!?"

"It's a really hard maze."

Then he said something I didn't catch (it's noisy among hundreds of kids who've just been freed for the weekend) about "ammo."

His imaginative world is full of weapons and violence.  It's a big feature of the books he reads -- Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl.  He's growing up in a culture where violence is constantly represented as exciting, honorable, and fun.

And that culture has been around us for millennia.  Last year, I read him The Odyssey, with all its depictions of death and destruction.  I lingered a bit over the scene where Odysseus scolds Eurycleia for her joyous reaction to the death of the suitors.  In Fagles' translation, Odysseus says: "No cries of triumph now. It's unholy to glory over the bodies of the dead" (XXII. 436-7).  Yet this is one line in a long narrative in which Odysseus' survival depends on death upon death upon death.

The anti-war hippy tunes that form our family soundtrack are lost in the winds of this culture.  Anything I've said about peace, pacifism, the wounds of war -- it's drowned in a cultural message that makes violence so much more engaging.

I don't really know, aside from moving to a remote island, how to insulate T.O. from that culture.  I can only hope that he will never find himself at the wrong end of a gun, and that at some point he'll turn aside from killing games and find other ways to express his energy and creativity.

And maybe, in my wildest dreams, he will use that energy and creativity to help to change the culture.