Straight Outta V-Town

Where geography is concerned, I've always been inclined to find the diamond in the coal mine. If I could find something positive about living in central Prince George's County in the early 1980s, my instinct for redemption must be pretty special. But I recently turned to Kim and said, "You know, we used to live in a really violent place." She proceeded to chronicle the absurd -- warning, I'm going to use one of those excessively intellectual George W. Bush words here -- litany of death and destruction that transpired within five blocks of our home at 617 Napa Street. I realized that, even though I miss Joe, the waterfront, Lil' Ed's ice cream, and elections where the Democratic candidate always wins, I'm very glad not to be living in a place where every trip to the corner liquor store feels like a thrill ride that hasn't been inspected in decades.

Yesterday, the San Francisco Bay Area papers were reporting the strange tale of a couple whose jet ski had run aground in the bay, leading them to spend a cold, wet night outdoors before finally being rescued. The woman had died, presumably of hypothermia. But something about the story didn't add up. Although I couldn't put my finger on it the way Philip Marlowe might have, I was half-waiting for a revision to the narrative. And today it came:

A 35-year-old Vallejo man was arrested Thursday night on charges of murdering his wife, who died in a jet skiing mishap mysterious on San Pablo Bay. Preliminary autopsy findings showed that Jennifer Easterling, whose maiden name was Jevarian, had injuries consistent with having been the victim of an assault, said Sgt. Steve Freitas, of the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department. Corbin Easterling was then arrested outside a friend's house in Vallejo and booked into Sonoma County jail. He is being held without bail.

Add it to the litany. I think I'll keep my once-prized V-Town baseball caps on that shelf in the garage. Turns out E-40 had the right idea, moving to Blackhawk. Anytime the best thing you can say about the place you live is that it's easy to get to other places you like from there, you know you have a problem.

Notes on Teaching Self-Consciousness

Primarily through the herculean labors of Geoff Sauer, Elisabeth Hurst, and Joe Lockard, Bad Subjects has finally finished making the transition to its new "plone" architecture. The site is still a work in progress. We're figuring out what to foreground at different levels. But it's far easier to navigate than before. And, because it's organized like a relational database, we can add new features with out recoding every piece.

In honor of this auspicious event, I'm linking once more to the first piece I ever wrote for Bad Subjects , "Notes on Teaching Self-Consciousness," only this time in its "plone" incarnation. Here's a sample paragraph:

Our second task as teachers is to always remind ourselves that the breaking of old ideological habits does not necessarily entail the formation of new ones. Indeed, how many of our own teachers and peers have made it painfully clear to us that they are conscious of what they should not do, but have no idea what should be done? Initially, then, we cannot expect much better of our students. When our students start to become more self-conscious, they may well be able to break most of their old ideological habits, only to succumb to this sort of despairing paralysis that prevents them from forming new ways of actively engaging with the world. We will surely be able to recall similarly paralytic experiences. It is paramount that we both share these experiences with our students and offer them encouragement by telling how we worked or are working through them. It will be difficult to keep our students from backsliding into their old ideological habits while they are in the throes of this 'paralysis of self-consciousness'; we as teachers need to avoid becoming discouraged by recognizing in these throes the birth of something revolutionary.

As I noted the last time I linked to this piece, I still stand behind the basic argument. And, though I'm sometimes shocked by the confidence of my tone, I don't feel particularly embarrassed by anything in it. It's nice to see the piece, not to mention the rest of Bad Subjects, in a new light.