UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton (8/27/59-6/25/06) 

Denice Denton, a mellower side 

A Beautiful Death

The first time I met Denice Denton was on the cover of the UCSC Alumni Magazine. It was an uncomfortable meeting. Looking at me from the glossy cover was the spitting image of little orphan Annie on acid: kinky red hair, fat face, and red plastic glasses, the new Chancellor of the University. I thought, "jesus, all those bull dykes have finally got their leader." But Denton had more than good looks going for her. She had a resume worthy of serious consideration. PhD in electrical engineering from MIT, faculty appointments at Zurich, Madison, Washington, publications out the wazoo, and the ability to schmooze and get people motivated. She was to initiate an engineering program and, with her commitment to inclusion and social justice, was a great match for the public university. And then on old friend sent me the note. She'd pulled a Dan Osman off the top of a hi-rise in downtown San Francisco. Now this chick really had my respect. Not only had she lived hard but she went out in a blaze of glory, 43 floors worth.

In the immediate aftermath, M and I contemplated how it all went down. We tried to grasp the particular style of the leap, how fast it went, what went through her mind in those brief seconds, how it sounded when she hit the deck. I thought of the girls of a century ago leaping out the windows of the burning Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, ass first, their dresses trailing and flapping in the wind, hands flailing and feet kicking. I thought of the grainy video images of people jumping from the burning World Trade Center. And I thought of that scene in Masters of Stone, volume V, of Dan Osman dropping vertically from the bridge, 11 mm rock climbing line around his ankles, dropping Superman style one arm fully outstretched the other tucked, perfectly vertical, resolute, a steel spike driving earthward in a gesture of resoluteness. Yeah, that's how she went.

More important than how was why. What were her motivations? She had gotten some grief for her compensation package. There was the 282,000 paycheck, the new job for her lady friend of 9 years (a 182,000 dollar "position" in UC Outreach), the 600,000 dollar renovation of the Chancellor's house, the 30,000 dollar dog run, etc. She became a target for thrifty public university kids. In the months leading up to her death, the newspapers were jingling with the scandals. She was constantly putting out spot-fires. On one occassion, students protesting the war had trailed her from one end of the campus to the other, jeering, finally circling her, making her watch a little anti-war skit of their own improvisation. Her staff were the object of scandal. She received threatening e-mails and late night visitors pounding on her door wanting to talk campus politics. And then there was the problem with her lover, but that's another matter. As for the scandals about her pay package, I find them all laughable and petty. Anybody who has been around UCSC knows how cheap a lot of the buildings are, flimsy modernist stucco crap rotting in the redwoods. The chancellor's house, perched below performing arts, hadn't been upgraded since 1966 and was no doubt filled with all that 60's burnt orange wool leisure couches and creaky T-111, like you find at the Kresge or Stevenson libraries. If the students were so concerned with corruption, I could think of a thousand better places to focus their rage.

Hers was a beautiful death. What a bold statement, riddled with paradoxes, knotted with difficulties. I'm sure there will be no small amount of hand-wringing and second guessing on the part of the faculty and students who drove her to her mad end. But I admire the gesture of it, the beauty and largeness of it, almost something Japanese about it. Its beauty consists in the mystery of the gesture and its wholeness, the absence of half-measures. In thinking it through I am lead to ask whether in her mind she was unworthy of this life or was this life, with all its imperfections, not worthy of her?

Denton's Hi-Rise (notice platform) 

Returning to "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" is famous for its framing of the problem as to how it is possible for working and middle class people to vote against their class background in an apparent show of support for the Republican party and its obvious interest in conserving the wealth of the wealthy. This is a fascinating issue and no one explanation is likely to prevail. I'd like to explore one aspect of that problem which, I think, deserves consideration. It has to do with the status of what political theorists call "reasonableness" and the moral psychology of working class and middle class people.

I once read of a study of the children of working class parents in which the question was asked, "why don't they tend to rise up out of their class?" The answer that was offered by the sociologists was that the children of working class parents are not accustomed to being reasoned with, that is, they are not offered 'reasons' as the basis of their parents decisions. They are simply told what to do, end of story. And I imagine that this is true even of the parents themselves in their respective working lives as well. They are given orders which emanate from a chain of command disappearing somewhere above or even concretely in the person of the boss and they are to execute those orders without asking "why?" The sociologist argued that the children of middle class parents were accustomed to being given reasons for their orders and, in turn, the children were allowed to question the decisions that were given to them on the overall coherence and intelligibility of those reasons. The children of the middle class, in other words, were (in the words of MacDowell) drawn into "the space of reasons" in a way that the working class children were not. Now, this is all a matter of degree of course. There are levels of critical reflection allowable and not and it is not by any means a black and white affair. At some point or another deliberation ends and the belt comes out (figuratively or literally) in all cases, only with the working class child the process of deliberation is either given short schrift or eliminated altogether and its just all belt all the time. Its no wonder these children have a difficult time questioning the reasoning of others in group settings, especially when employers or teachers are the ones setting the agenda. And its no wonder they end up at the end of the line in their careers and jobs, following orders.

I would like to say that the moral psychology of obedience to authority for its own sole sake and not for the sake of the reasons offered by that authority go a long way to explaining why somebody from a certain class background can vote against their interests. If they are accustomed to, by deeply entrenched habits, obey the directives of authority--whether those come from a suit stepping out of a limousine or a preacher in the pulpit or a boss on the shop floor, then it is going to be hard to imagine questioning the reasons of those authority figures. And, if the entire social apparatus appears to support the authority of those figures, such as when a child grows up seeing the physical infrastructure of his society and its implicit pattern of ownership--the church, the factory, the country clubs, etc.--then there may be an immediate cowering, as it were, before the numinous quality of this authority.

And, it should be noted, that this point is not lost on the Republicans. For as Cheney has said, "...its not about 'reasons'. Its about 'responses'." Indeed. Its less about reasoning and offering of good reasons and more about responses, of giving directives and making displays of authority as through an act of public dramaturgy. In this way, the appearance of propriety is maintained. The working class and middle class voter feels that his superiors have worked things out and that he can feel confident voting for them, even when he neither understands, nor would agree with their reasoning if he were to truly understand it in regards to his basic needs and interests. When it comes to assessing candidates for office, therefore, the issue is less about whether there are good reasons given by each candidate and more about which candidate made a bolder display, acted more like a boss, and otherwise made clear their seat of power in the social order. The lesson of the belt is a hard thing to unlearn.

In addition to an explanation of this phenomenon, a solution may also be offered. Political parties that find themselves at a disadvantage as a result of this dynamic could, of course, seek to imitate the successful party's ability to convey the impression of authority and power. This may be a short term political solution, but it doesn't address the fundamental issue. The culture of bosses and bossism, absentee landlord capitalist rulers, and the dogmatic, authoritative character of public education all contribute to the disempowerment of the human soul. In addition, an overly masculine culture of toughness and imperviousness to vulnerability is also to blame. In each case, what should be fostered is the ability of the human soul to imagine a better world, to take baby steps towards understanding its true condition through dialogue and research, to be treated with respect, and to be shown how a great faith in science and the humanities can cultivate genuine human progress, and, as a means and an end to all of this, to be shown through example a great respect for human reason and the need to always consider the reasons for actions. It is no suprise, though, that these good things are witheld from workers generally through the culture of work itself. A culture that honors these things is a threat to the ownership of the productive processes by the few. Far more important to that need is a "disciplined" and "disciplin-able" work force, one which is unwilling to question deeply the nature of its subservience and unwilling to articulate and mobilize against the injustice of its ownership and rule. By privatizing public goods such as education, the corporate elite are able to further control the thought of the workers and it is in their interest to do so. A robust liberal public sphere is therefore indispensable to bringing about the promise of democracy, a world of equality and ever-exanding human possibility.

Baby rabbit, killed by Tazer 

Charles "Tazer" Ward, post-kill rush 

'German Johnson' tomatoes, bradley tomatoes, sunflowers, chives, cauliflower, brocolli, oregano, plaintain, lawn mix, dandelions 

An Argument For A Blinkered View (Of Reality)

Consider Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman. Consider how you feel after having watched (or listened) to an episode of Democracy Now! For that matter, consider how you feel after having watched Fox news. Now, in each case, that is an hour of your life--of your own very life--given to feeling enraged, disempowered, miserable. And what came of it? Nothing. Nothing at all. In some respects, a blinkered view of reality is to be preferred to eyes wide open for the reason that it the semi-darkness at least you can move, if only in the direction of apparent goods, at least it is motion. And in that is to be found some small measure of self-esteem and happiness and power.

An evening meal in Cat Galaxy.  

Baked Cod with capers and lemon, potatoes and carrots in herbs, dandelion green salad with sprouted beans, cucumbers, in a tahini dressing, ice water. 

On the saying "Noone goes into teaching for the money."

The familiar saying "noone goes into teaching for the money" is an often repeated dictum given to would-be teachers, youths in college, and the like. I once heard the New York City Chancellor of Schools repeat this adage in an address in which he explained why the salaries of teachers were not higher than they were. We may reconstruct the former Chancellor's statement to mean something like, "one ought not to go into teaching for the money." Or, perhaps more forcefully, "everyone goes into teaching for none of the money".

So from (1.) "noone goes into the teaching for the money"
we infer (2.) "everyone goes into teaching for no money".
Now, this is a valid inference by obversion.

But by inferring 2 from 1 we see that 1 cannot be true because 2 cannot be true.
From the fact that "noone goes into teaching for the money", we are not thereby entitled to infer "those who teach do not need any money."

Therefore, 1., mustn't really be taken literally at all. And administrators who wave that piece of nonsense around as an explanation of why teachers shouldn't be paid more than they are deserve to be called liars, that is to say, people who tell falsehoods as though they were truths.

Dogwood

In the mirror of the stream
reflected clouds and dogwood trees
petals speaking, whispering
water syllables in flat 'G'.

Roaring over the cobbles of alluvium
an infinite resonant 'yeah':
wash clean in that creek
your gravels of Mind.

Limewhite petals, tongues,
splaying out from the Calyx saying
"men, earth, trees, streams, clouds and seas!"
Petals wither and fall in the breeze.