an honest letter to the registration office.

So, after repeatedly flunking out of and withdrawing from en elective course I decided I need to retake it, ace it, and finally get rid of the one thing weighing down my GPA.  This happened, about six years ago?  I maxed out the amount of times I could take it so I called the school to see what kind of appeal process is available for a student who does not receive financial aid. 

I have to write a letter providing the following: 

1) Why, unlike the last time, I will succeed in this class 

2)that I understand that this will be my last chance to take the class 

3) that I understand tutoring is available. 

So, here it goes, an honest letter from a bad student.

Greetings and Salutations Ms./Mr. Register Person,

I'm writing to you today to request that you allow me to enroll in this course.  

I will succeed in this course primarily because I am in a different place now than I was previously.  At the time I did not know what I was going to do with my schooling and I felt the commitment weighted me to the bottom of a dark ocean.  I had an existential crisis (see multimedia attachments) which you could not understand unless you've been through one yourself.  So imagine for a moment that one day you looked around and saw yourself on a conveyor belt, moving in a direction you could not understand.  Imagine that slowly you felt the creeping sense that your entire world was artificial and one dimensional.  Imagine if you had been following the siren song to shore, and when you arrived you found that your beautiful singing maiden was a cardboard cut out that collapsed upon closer inspection.  Imagine no longer knowing who you are and you want to be.  Imagine deconstructing yourself after you lost faith, hope, and any conscious understanding of reality.  What is reality as in, what exists because of the laws of physics, what exists because of nature, and what exists because it's man made -- a product of free will.  Who are you and who made you what you are?  Why do you do the things you do, accept what you accept, and why live the way you live?  Are these conscious decisions or are you stuck on the same conveyor belt I was?  I can tell you that it felt like the atmospheric pressure of the room was out of whack.  I can tell you that I burned with questions that could not be answered and I realized no one ever really intended on answering them.  School?  What good was school to me when I realized I was asking the right questions of the wrong people.  Would you, could you, stay and suffocate beneath your disillusion and disappointment?

Imagine that you began to worship someone or something, and suddenly you found the center of your idol hollow.  

Imagine feeling complicit in a moral decay that threatened your liberalism (so pretend you are a liberal, even if you're not).  Could you stay and face the hypocrisy?  What if that empty call was replaced by the wails of the universe calling out to you, telling you that there is so much more to life than being on this conveyor belt!   

Imagine that school brought you to utter despair.  Imagine that you realized the more you learned the more your hunger grew.  Imagine that you felt both unsatisfied with the feast and guilty over gobbling away like a vampire, easily discarding what no longer interested you. 

What if your identity started to split into two, the court jester who entertains her friends and the serious woman seething with rage.  How would you reconcile the two?  Which one are you?

What if you wanted to deconstruct your identity and rebuild yourself, discarding everything you were because just-because, to finally emerge with a stronger sense of self.  What if all the disappointment and cynicism was melted and formed into a sword that you could now wield, instead of having it wielded against you.

I do not expect you to understand, though it was similar to what I felt when I was in middle school and went from losing my faith to becoming a secure atheist (with much morbid introspection poetry in between). And to paraphrase someone I heard on NPR last week, "if you start a conversation trying to convince someone you're not crazy, you've already lost," so I know this may be taken in a way I do not intend.  

. . . But the point is, I am in a different place.  I have been unmade and remade and although that does not eliminate flaws or all insecurities, it does allow me to see how I am, what I want to be, and it gives me a determination that would have been impossible to have in the past.  

Finally, I understand that this will be my last chance to take this course and I take full responsibility for the risk and the outcome.  I understand that JCC advises against it, so, if you have any doubts about letting me in please allow me to demonstrate my commitment by offering you the following:

  - I will do your laundry (and hand wash your delicates).

  - I will buy you coffee.  

  - I will lick the bottom of your shoe, seriously, I've done it before, albeit for different reasons.

  - I will let you use my back as a human coffee table at your next party or gathering!

  -  I will prank phone call your enemies.

  -  Because I hate golf (and polo shirts) more than you can ever know, I will wear one and carry your clubs  around as many holes as you want.

  -  I will send you flowers at work to make your coworkers jealous.

 -  I will make you the best peanut butter chocolate cake you ever had! 

Other services are negotiable, though you should know I'm not very good at cleaning. 

Also, I'm committed because the amount of money that will be debited from my account for this class is going to hurt.  Should my circumstances change you should know that I will live on ramen noodles, sleep on the street, and do homework at a computer in the public library next to a guy masturbating to porn, just to succeed in this class.  If it comes to it I may even sell a kidney (if it's worth anything after all that ramen).  

My grades since Spring semester of 2010, along with my current imploding relationship and unfortunate current celibacy, should give you some indication of how committed I am.  I will not let anything stand in my way. 

JCC, like Danny and Sandy, you and me are going to be summer loving all these summer nights!  

I'll wear the leather, you wear the spandex pants. 

Sincerely,

your future coffee table,

The College Dropout.

* * * * * 

Luckily for all involved I have learned something about editing from my English courses, so the revised version will look something more like this:

Dear Records and Registrations,

Please allow me to enroll in this course.  I know tutoring is available.  I know that this is my last chance to succeed in this course and that I take full responsibility for the outcome.  I will succeed in this class because I am determined to succeed and in a more stable and secure position to take this course than I was in the past.  

If you have any questions please call  (insert number here)

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

The College Dropout. 

Where art thou, Paulo?

Conservative Think Tank Seeks Michigan Prof's Emails About Wisconsin Union Battle.  

Oh, hell no.

It was one thing (one big BAD thing) when this was Wisconson we were talking about.

But in MY state?

Oh, no, no, no.

 

So it's a right to request it.  And it's rare that there are these requests.  And the request could be declined.  So. . . I'll be watching.

During the weekend I woke up with an epiphany, rather than waking up to the sound of gunshots.  Then the other night I met Paulo Freire in a dream and I woke up knowing he said something really profound.  But then I went back to sleep, forgot it, and woke up craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

I hate it when that happens.    

John Kuhn Speech at the Save Texas Schools Rally 2011

"Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom" the case of Professor Cronon

"Ideas are Bulletproof"

- V for Vendetta.

Renowned historian William (Bill) Cronon at University of Wisconsin published an Op-Ed in the New York Times about the anti-union legislation in Wisconsin. Since then, he launched a blog discussing the issue. Two days later the state government is demanding access to his emails.

He posted a lengthy response to the investigation and Salon.com posted a shorter summary and opinion of it here.

Among the many paragraphs that make up Cronon's response he lays out why this is so important:

I want to close by repeating that I support the Open Records Law and the freedom of information traditions of the United States. They are precious guardians of our democratic liberties.

But this particular request demonstrates that they also have the potential to be abused in ways that discourage dissent and undermine democracy.

Here, it’s not too much of a stretch to draw an analogy to the abuse of the subpoena power that was one of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s most dangerous tactics during the 1950s. The subpoena power too is crucial to our democracy: the criminal justice system could not work without the power to compel witnesses to testify, and Congress needs a similar power to compel testimony if its deliberations are to be properly informed. As with open records, our democracy would be far less effective if the subpoena power did not exist. The same can be said of the Fifth Amendment, which exists to protect individuals from having to give self-incriminating testimony in response to the subpoena power—but McCarthy was skilled at undermining that bulwark of American liberty as well.

When such tools are turned toward purely partisan ends, and when they are used with the express purpose of intimidating or punishing those with whom powerful people disagree, then precious institutions of democracy are deployed to subvert the very liberties we all cherish. It is for this reason that I have spent so much time trying to articulate why I don’t believe the Wisconsin Republican Party should be invoking the Open Records Law to single me out for scrutiny—and implicitly for punishment—in this way.

The consequences of this highly politicized Open Records Law request, in other words, in which one of Wisconsin’s two great political parties seeks to punish a faculty member at its state university by seeking access to that professor’s emails, seem potentially so damaging to the University, the State, and even to the Republican Party itself that my idealistic self hopes even Mr. Thompson and his Republican colleagues will see the dangers in the tactic they have deployed.

This is very different from asking an elected official or a government agency to turn over emails relating to their formal duties and their formal exercise of state power. It asks a university professor to turn over personal emails relating to the day-to-day life of an intellectual community in its “sifting and winnowing” in pursuit of truth. This would not happen at private universities like Harvard or Stanford, and I would like to think it shouldn’t happen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has played a more central role in defining and defending academic freedom than most other institutions in the United States.

If the University cannot avoid turning over my emails, then so be it. But I truly do hope that wiser heads in the Republican Party will prevail, and that this Open Records Law request will be seen for what it is: an ill-advised political intervention into traditions of academic freedom that are among the proudest legacies of this state.

This is why I support teacher tenure. Okay, I admit it, perhaps there will be some lazy teachers who are all "I GOT TENURE, NOW SUCK IT BITCHES!" (actually, I think I've had that teacher before) but, there will also be teachers who can be frank and honest and not have to censor themselves at the cost of giving students a real education and won't have to worry so much about end of semester evaluations.

What's also hilarious to me is the censorship and coddling of students, particularly K-12. A former coworker of mine was complaining that the school wanted to give her eight year old daughter a lesson on HIV and AIDS. She yanked her from it, not because she wanted to teach her herself, but because she was "too young" to know about AIDS. I said, "You do realize that there are eight year olds that have AIDS, right?" And yes, even in the United States.

One of the most defining moments in my life occurred when I saw the academic freedom of the elite. It happened in high school debate.

It is still amazing to me that I went to a school with a debate team. It is still amazing to me that we spent most of our time competing against the good schools. Perhaps if the neanderthal principal actually paid attention to debate and what was being discussed it would have disappeared, but since no one gave a shit, there was a surprising amount of freedom. Contrary to popular belief, cross-ex debate is not some unstructured free for all about any topic you wish, and it's not about how eloquent you are either. It requires thousands of pages of evidence (which you lug around on carts to every tournament) and you get to speak as fast as the micromachine man. It's kind of ridiculous to watch, but I learned more there than I ever did in any classroom.

Anyway, we always came in a bus or a tiny old car and so I saw wealth of others in the way that we're taught to recognize it by shows like MTV's Cribs. It was the cars I noticed. The suits. All the overt signs of wealth. But what I learned by competing against and talking to these people was that all that was irrelevant. It wasn't the cars I wanted, it was their intelligence. Their freedom. I was competing against kids from preparatory academies or public schools that were supported by a community with a high concentration of wealth. They had a support system and a freedom that I had never seen before. A lot of the things we discussed (like Marx, for example) would have been banned in my school. In a lot of schools. In many public schools the debate about Intelligent Design rages on. Sex ed is taboo. But there we discussed everything, Marx, Kant, Hegel, Nuclear War, overpopulation, feminism, imperialism, gay rights, critical queer studies, critical race studies, the failures of the drug war, military = bad, military = good, all these things people at my school had never heard of and would never hear of if their parents learned of it. These were teams who had major budgets to support their pursuits. It was so different from anything I had ever seen. These students were going to the ivy league. They will be the future leaders of the nation. Some of them probably don't even appreciate what they have because they don't know what it's like on the outside.

. . . meanwhile, those of us on the outside are still arguing about condoms and Catcher in the Rye (Or The Butterfly Effect, although I really can't defend unleashing Asthon Kutcher).

. . . In debate, after we learned so much from debating these competitive schools, we had to go on to districts and states with entirely different schools. With one major exception, every other small backwoods school SUCKED. But they sucked in a different way, in that difficult to argue with kind of way, because they all argued like Fox News commentators. Of course, the men were too geeky to ever actually become News Anchors, and frankly, none of the women had the Barbie Doll potential Fox News looks for. I still remember several surreal moments, like where someone tried to argue a piece of evidence I read (that discussed the Gulf War) was written in the 60's based on a quote from a historical figure at the top of the article. I had to actually respond to an attack during cross examination with, "So, are you saying my author is a psychic or a time traveler?"

And this is the sad reality of dumbing down the education system through censorship, of restraining academic freedom, and of allowing the educational process be constrained by biblical and conservative morality. Conservative politicians and strategists may pander to this demographic but it's only because it's the best way to ensure the security of their cozy positions and the forever lining of their pockets.

Forget the plight of professors, as a STUDENT I am offended and threatened by an obvious political agenda to curb academic freedom.   This is an insult to my education.  This is theft.    

I support you William Cronon, not just for your sake, but for us all.

William Cronon is the author of several books, including Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England and Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

Becoming an Educated and Intelligent Person.

I am ashamed . . . of my shame.

I am tough. I thrive on criticism, something I seek out and eagerly devour, licking my fingers and begging for more. It is nourishment. A reminder of my mother's bitter milk. It is easy. Compliments, are harder to digest. My skin is covered in steel all except for one bare patch of flesh. It is a wound of want and lust. And through this exposed underbelly a self conscious demon has burrowed it's way inside, getting fat off of my anxiety and intellectual insecurity.

What do I want? What do I lust after?

First, I want to become an Educated and Intelligent Person (TM).

The problem with school, a problem that I never have to deal with outside of school, is the close proximity in which I find myself with people who have achieved what I dream of. I idolize them in my own way, but when I do I see them as if I'm looking across the grand canyon. Or I see them and I see my inadequate reflection. Outside of school things are different. I am loved and appreciated, enjoyed, and feared. No one can bully me. Ever. And no one can bully anyone else when I'm around. No one can tell a random crazy story like I can. No one can make people laugh as much as I can. No one can beat me at Mario 3. No one can argue like I can. No one will eat fried worms and other disgusting things like I will. No one can be as drunk as I can be and still exercise such excellent judgment when it counts. No one can read as much as I can, and not as fast as I can. No one WANTS to read as much as I do. And losers let me cut in line (dummies, don't get so excited, it's just a push up bra not implants). But . . .

in school, when I come into contact with Real Intellectuals I feel . . .

at worst, a stupid child still stuck in the trailer park, and someone who should clothe her naked, shivering ambition.

At best, I feel like an awkward dork who ran into Billy Idol (yum!) at a club and couldn't close her mouth.

The second thing I want is to use writing and literature to raise students from poverty and oppression. Because to me, the greatest form of wealth is an education – a real understanding of the world – and someone who supports your limitless intellectual ambition. I want to reclaim art and literature for the masses and the marginalized. I want to eradicate the anti intellectualism that threatens to destroy the working class and poor. I want to smash the stereotypes of the working class and poor and infuse a community with a sense of intellectual pride and tradition. I want a new cultural identity for us. An identity that includes and embraces people of all sexual orientations, races, religions, and gender. I want “High Art” to include newer and traditionally disrespected voices. I want an INFORMED democracy.

I want “High Art” to be for people in low places.

So I am aware of my own sense of internalized inferiority and how this complicates my mission.

I must learn to either embrace my ungraceful awkward verbal diarrhea when I get nervous, or kill the cause of my nervousness.

I need to learn how to swallow compliments.

I need to expose my desire to the world and return to the unabashed nature of infancy.

I know I must cut out my infernal demon and fill the wound with molten steel so that I can become hard and whole. Impenetrable on the outside, and strong on the inside.

This psychic surgery must be embraced now before I let that parasite get the best of me.

Then, and only then, can I become who I want to be.

But in the meantime, I must have the courage and conviction to at least play the role, even if a part of me deviates from the script.




I am an atheist, but this song still makes my heart swell with hope.

Media: The Classroom Experiment

Absolutely loved watching this program. . .

From the BBC website: "Education theory and practice go head to head when Professor Dylan Wiliam takes over one Year 8 class to test simple ideas that he believes could improve the quality of education."

In this program Wiliam introduced a few very simple, cost effective methods to increase academic achievement. He implemented exercise in the morning, a new grading system, and getting rid of hand raising and replacing it with names being drawn at random, using whiteboards to answer questions, or using color coded cups to indicate when they need help understanding. I really would have loved having colored cups in math class when I was that age.

On the damaging practice of hand raising:


What was really interesting in this show is not only did getting rid of hand raising (eventually) lead to the increased participation of the usually less active students, it also allowed teachers to identify the weaknesses in their usually active students because suddenly they were called on to answer questions that they didn't know and wouldn't have volunteered to answer.

On traditional grades:



Unfortunately I can't find any clips that show much of his solutions, but I found this:


Wiliam discusses changing the interaction between students and teachers as well as working class vs. middle class education but that part gets cut off.

Out of everything he implemented I found the no hands up rule and the use of color coded cups in math class to be the most effective. If a student can put a red cup on their desk signaling to the teacher to come to them before moving on, it makes it a lot easier than keeping your hand raised for all 20 or so minutes it takes to get to everyone, I figure that having a red cup on my desk would have made me felt less defeated in math courses where my arm felt like it was going to fall off.

How to start a book club on ten minute break.

It helps to describe your book club as EPIC and mention that there will be cocktails. Is it really going to be epic? No, it's a book club, not a Peaches concert. But no matter, all you really need to do to start a book club in under ten minutes is to find one person who you know has been wanting to read something. After that you text Person B and tell them you and Person A have started a book club, Person C has joined and it's going to be an EPIC book club. Then you text Person C and claim Person B has already joined and it's going to be EPIC. Then they both text you back saying "I'M TOTALLY IN!!"

Then Person A picks the book which is good because the reason why you asked Person A to join was because you noticed he had FREAKONOMICS on his coffee table, and you've been meaning to read it since your Economics professor mentioned it. This way you can not only read what you wanted to read but you can also have a club you created to add to your college application under extracurricular activity. Now all you need is a cool name for the club.

I started thinking about how easy and inexpensive it would be to have an after school book club on the high school level. Maybe you could even go to book readings and events that are put on at libraries. . . but then I remembered that many books are actually controversial and maybe that's why my teachers never ran one.

Anyway, so far I am the only person in this club without a college degree. The only person with a degree in English doesn't want to read books that weren't originally written in English. That was disappointing since I've bought a bunch of translations, but I figure that you have to seduce your book club the same way you'd seduce a partner. So all I have to do is pick a mainstream, accessible, kindofwanttoread type of book, like maybe Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, and then -- when she least expects it -- I bust out the foreign novel. Maybe I'll have an extra copy that I give her with the cover ripped off so that she doesn't realize it wasn't originally written in English.

Now all I have to worry about is the food. If this was poker night I'd make nachos but for the hip (but not too hip) folks of Jackson I'll make Thai fresh spring rolls and Bhel Puri.

So, I am a little calculating. I'm okay with that. Five years ago I would have just let things happen to me. I didn't care about the classes I took or the professors I picked. I never did any sort of research in advance on who was teaching or what was going to be taught, but for the most part I was pretty lucky. But those days are over. When I came back to school for the spring semester of 2010 I had a plan in my head of exactly what I needed to accomplish before transferring. I was determined that a professor who, five years ago, offered to write me a glowing letter of recommendation would most definitely be teaching a class I could take this spring semester. I wouldn't say I was comfortable with taking the class since my last extremely vague memory of talking to the professor was me being an asshole (at least I think? What my memory is missing is bugging me more than those hours I lost after midnight on New Years, but in the latter case I have vodka, brandy, hot damn, and beer to blame) but I knew that if I took it I would perform well and get that damn letter of recommendation I should have taken years ago.

So . . . when I saw the schedule and he wasn't teaching the class all my ambivalence and anxiety melted away into frustration/anger/determination and my heart started humping the inside of my chest like a dog to a couch cushion. Fortunately, I already had a Plan B. A vague Plan B, but I'll have all spring semester to shape it into a better idea before presenting my proposal in the fall. It'll be a special project, a way to get that damn letter fair and square AND learn something.

While debating with a coworker about how important it is to create a brand for myself in my college application essay he told me I was taking it too far, going too crazy thinking about it, and that I shouldn't rack up credits that won't transfer. He's a college graduate from Michigan State and he makes as much money as I do, which isn't much, but it isn't minimum wage either. We have benefits. We work with other college graduates. I've seen college graduates get laid off. To actually consider leaving a full time job (with benefits) in this economy is a pretty scary thing. And when I transfer that's exactly what I'm going to have to do. And I like my boss. I like my coworkers. And sometimes I even like the work itself (though maybe not this month). It's also nice to work close to home (although it's a house I don't actually want to live in). So when I leave I need to have all my ducks in a row. I need a savings fund. I need to get into the best public university that I can. I need to have read a million and one books so that I can get the most out of the experience. In the meantime, I'm going to suck community college for all it's worth. I am the leach getting fat on the blood of public education, not falling off until I've gorged myself to near death.

Another reason why I am getting, as my coworker/friend said, "psycho about it" is because school is ruining/reshaping my life. My friendships, my relationship, everything. And yet. . .if I had to choose, I'd choose school. Sure, there are external factors that make it more appealing. I am utterly depressed when I look at people I know and/or am related to, the addicts and the arrested, the family and friends in abusive relationships, all the wonderful people I've known who are so hell bent on destroying themselves, and all the not so wonderful people I've met who want to destroy anyone that isn't them. Then there is the sibling who took a different path, a path of denial and mutilation, turning herself into some synthetic freakshow of suburban normalcy, and denying all her artistic dreams in favor of money and possessions -- that clearly don't satisfy her -- going from poor girl to hater of the poor, all because she hates who she was, who we were. Or maybe she doesn't remember, because if she remembered, she wouldn't sound like Ronald Reagan talking about welfare queens. I want to reach out to her, to pull her into the darkness and show her how cool it can be, how free she'll feel when she accepts who she is and where she came from. But. . . I have to focus on myself for now. I know who I am and all the skirts, suits, and uniforms I have to wear will never make me forget.

. . .And it's more than the external factors that make me love school. It's something else. Something building inside me.

To prepare for one upcoming class I've purchased a bunch of playbooks, a vocabulary builder book, a rhyming dictionary, and some other helpful tools. I decided this time around in creative writing I wouldn't bs my way through the poetry section. I'm kind of excited about it because the professor taught me for a couple weeks when I was in elementary school. So, I figured I'd better read some plays being that I don't go to any. I've decided the next friend I make will want to go to the ballet and to see plays.


Still. . .despite any increasing confidence I've developed since spring semester I can't watch the first six and a half minutes of this scene in Educating Rita without over relating and bawling my eyes out.



I cry. Every. Single. Time.

. . . Speaking of better songs to sing, I'm going to put on some Arcade Fire and do some homework.

They heard me singing and they told me to stop
Quit these pretension things and just punch the clock
These days my life, I feel it has no purpose
But late at night the feelings swim to the surface

'Cause on the surface the city lights shine
They're calling at me, come and find your kind
Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl


- Arcade Fire

Best Blogs, I

I am mentally and physically exhausted. I know I have a brain but it doesn't seem to be turned on right now, so, before I forget, AngryBlackBitch's blog entry"Communication..." is amazing and it's something I want to remember if I end up pursuing special education.

. . .now back to letting my brain turn to jello.

Project Connect, etc.

Because I've been interviewing high school teachers I've been able to hear some stories about how difficult and frustrating it can be to approve new and/or challenging lesson plans. One person I interviewed quit teaching out of frustration and another teacher has been soldiering on with over twenty years on the job, despite hating the last four years of her administration and an anti-teaching climate. So when I started to try and raise donations for Project Connect (an event for homeless and people who are at risk of becoming homeless) I remembered an assignment I had in a middle school English class. We were supposed to write letters to our favorite businesses, telling them how much we like their products, and the incentive was the idea that they might send you something for free. So I wonder how hard it would be to change an assignment like that to writing to businesses to ask for donations to charitable causes. It seems like such a small change and such an important one because as a class discussion recently reminded me, many people are completely ignorant of history and when you're ignorant of the history of activism you can be ignorant of your own political power and your own influence over the market should you choose to exercise it.

Anyway. . .
I am writing to DIVA CUP at divacup.com, the makers of the GREATEST MENSTRUAL PRODUCT EVER!!

I know, they scare some people (even me, at first) but they're wonderful and they seem like they'd be a perfect fit for someone without the money to buy tampons or pads. Over the past three or four years I've saved tons of money. I hope all my compliments and information will convince them to donate their product.

This whole event has me thinking about homelessness and poverty and how skewed the debate becomes because the discussion is so often framed in one or two stereotypes. Again, this is where stories in education are so important.

When I think of the homeless I think of . . .

- The GLBT kids in Salt Lake City that I saw in a documentary. They were squatting in abandoned buildings and homes because their parents kicked them out for their sexual orientation.

- My husband, who lived in an abusive home and was kicked out of the house before he could graduate high school. Sometimes he couch surfed, other times he squatted in abandoned buildings, crack dens, etc.

- My cousin who has been living at home and recently found herself pregnant with twins. Her mom wants her out before the babies are born. . .but this is a much longer story.

- People who are homeless because of a drug addiction.

- People who have a drug addiction BECAUSE they are homeless.

- The mentally and emotionally ill.

- The physically ill.

- People with disabilities.

- Veterans.

- Mothers, Fathers, but as the statistics for the last Project Connect tell us, mostly it's children.

- I think of my mother, my sister, and me. I think of how easily we could have been homeless after my parents divorced and how the only thing that kept our disasters from destroying the roof over our head was my mother's very supportive and wonderful parents who I owe more to than to anyone.

- I think of my uncle who was blinded from complications resulting from his premature birth. I think of how that 1950's doctor recommended he be institutionalized and I think of all the people I saw while working at the library in Ann Arbor -- many people who had been institutionalized but then were released and had no where to go. I wonder how many of them suffered the fate my Uncle could have had my grandparents not said No. I wonder if they have family or if institutionalization blunted their emotions and kept them from building normal familial bonds.

- Anyone.


There are stories that need to be told.

Where Science and the Arts meet.

. . . at a Captured! by Robots concert.

There seems to be a schism between the arts and sciences. I'm not sure if it comes from our cultural attitude that favors innate ability over hard work and the tiresome left brain/right brain identities, or perhaps it results from the financial competition between the two areas where art programs are usually first to get cut while science teachers are stuck with outdated equipment and little lab space.

Either way, some of us often embrace of one area often disregard the other, unaware of how each area can enhance or compliment the other. I was once such a student.

And I was wrong.

That's why I am totally geeked over Captured! By Robots returning to Michigan. I've seen them (Jay Vance and his robotic musicians) twice and look forward to a third time. This is a great example of combining the two worlds to create Rock God Sci-Fi Glory.

From an old SF Weekly Article

"[Vance] is not meant to be in a band with other people, he's just not," laughs Jimbo Matison, a television/Web director who does animation and commercial work with Vance and who played in a band with him called the Invincible Magnificent Heroes. "He made the robots because he can't get along with other musicians. He's just so obsessed [with music] -- but he's very honest about that."

Vance had his true epiphany while watching the members of Steel Pole Bath Tub use foot switches to activate backing tracks during a live show.

After deciding to invent his own mechanized guitar and drum players, he realized he still had one major problem: Although he had a degree in music from DePaul University in Chicago and worked as a tech for Haight Ashbury Music Center, Vance had no formal training in mechanical engineering. But, after checking out works by local robotics group Seemen, Vance was able to teach himself how to create a robot. By his own admission, the original incarnations were awful.

"I'd never built a robot before, and the first attempts were ridiculous," he says. Vance controlled his prototypes with pedals activated by his hands and feet, while simultaneously playing bass and singing into a strapped-on mike. The equipment required to make the original C!BR shows run weighed heavily on Vance, wrecking his knees and pushing him to decide to give the "musicians" more autonomy, a task that was easier imagined than done. "I have a feeling about how things work and then I build it, but there's no mathematical equations necessarily, it's all instinct," he says. "It's like experimental physics."

By the beginning of 1998, Vance had discovered a way to make his bandmates independent: He ran data cables from a computer to the robots, leaving him free to play the half-guitar/half-synthesizer instrument he'd created. His first "indie" co-conspirator was GTRBOT, a 6-foot-tall creature with steel-scrap fingers, stubby legs, bulbous eyes, and an autoharp abdomen who made music by dragging cable ties across his 12 strings. Then came DRMBOT, who had the body of a full drum kit and the mangy dreadlocked head of Medusa and who hit her kit with a kick drum pedal and three sticks attached to motors. According to Vance, both DRMBOT and GTRBOT hate humans, so they are ruthlessly nasty when they speak, humiliating and threatening to kill "JBOT" during performances. On the recent Captured! By RobotsCD, the duo makes him inhale propane, eat boogers from a homeless man's nose, and say, "JBOT is a butt-sniffing butt-licker" (to which they laugh uproariously). According to C!BR lore, Vance is at the mercy of the robots because, once he finished the pair, they planted a "biocerebral chip" in his brain that allowed them to control him by administering shocks. Vance shows his supplication by performing in shackles (with red guts spilling out of his white shirt) and a black mask that exposes only his mouth and two reddened eyes.

To balance out his hate-filled 'bots, Vance secretly built the Ape Which Hath No Name. The Ape is an oversize stuffed animal with a movable mouth and eyes that light up. When he's not shaking the tambourine attached to his head, the Ape expresses his love for Vance, complimenting him on his hair, eyes, lips, and music and making the other 'bots even more pissed. The band's newest member is AUTOMATOM, DRMBOT's baby, who is constructed of three drum toms, a China cymbal, and a black trunk with big white teeth.

Come May 3, the robots will ride!