My California Trip
Even for me, I haven't been posting much - it's been busy for reasons I'll write about in a sec. I've also been posting to the new fabulous blog created by on-line smart guy and EMU media star Steve Krause, EMU Talk. Steve's blog became the site for information about the recent faculty unpleasantness at EMU. He wanted to move on - understandably. But there was so much momentum for talk about EMU, he made the new site. It apparently has many subscribers already. Very, very smart... actual conversation among subscribers, who seem to come from all walks of EMU life - students, faculty, etc.
So apart from posting to EMU Talk, which I've done a couple of times now, I haven't written much here because I'm in California doing research for the not-as-OMB (but it will start appearing a lot more now). I'm in the San Francisco/East Bay area, conducting interviews and shadowing a community organizer. I've talked to some very, very, veryveryveryvery smaaaaart people thus far. Here are a couple of thoughts from among the many, maybe not so coherent because I'm very tired!
*Building relationships is key (or alliances) - but the relationships have to come about around issues that arise from the interests of everyone _in_ the alliances. This is important - it means that I need to re-think the way I've defined the work involved with this change stuff I'm thinking about in some ways... rather than define the issues we might/could/should work on, the issues need to come up from the allies. And who are these allies? I can think about this on several levels: people in WPs, sure. People outside? They should be. Can we do that around/through some boundaries, though? I'm thinking about that... and I'll talk to people about it tomorrow, too.
*Framing is a really useful strategy, but sometimes it's presented as an end. If that's the end, what does it do?
There's more, too - and I will write about it later, when I'm not quite so tired (and The Colbert Report isn't blasting through my brother's many TV speakers).
One more thing about California, though - well, two.
1. The weather? It is faaaabbbbuuuullllooouuuuss. Fabulous. Beautiful, sunny, spectacular. This is a very beautiful place. The only problem is that if you (or I) want to go anywhere, it takes a lot of driving.
2. There's a lot of really, really, really good food here. On the Krause tastiness-ambience-cost scale, I've had nothing but 10-10-10s - even tonight, when we went to a burger place. But really gooood burgers - cheap, and we sat outside. How cool is that?
So apart from posting to EMU Talk, which I've done a couple of times now, I haven't written much here because I'm in California doing research for the not-as-OMB (but it will start appearing a lot more now). I'm in the San Francisco/East Bay area, conducting interviews and shadowing a community organizer. I've talked to some very, very, veryveryveryvery smaaaaart people thus far. Here are a couple of thoughts from among the many, maybe not so coherent because I'm very tired!
*Building relationships is key (or alliances) - but the relationships have to come about around issues that arise from the interests of everyone _in_ the alliances. This is important - it means that I need to re-think the way I've defined the work involved with this change stuff I'm thinking about in some ways... rather than define the issues we might/could/should work on, the issues need to come up from the allies. And who are these allies? I can think about this on several levels: people in WPs, sure. People outside? They should be. Can we do that around/through some boundaries, though? I'm thinking about that... and I'll talk to people about it tomorrow, too.
*Framing is a really useful strategy, but sometimes it's presented as an end. If that's the end, what does it do?
There's more, too - and I will write about it later, when I'm not quite so tired (and The Colbert Report isn't blasting through my brother's many TV speakers).
One more thing about California, though - well, two.
1. The weather? It is faaaabbbbuuuullllooouuuuss. Fabulous. Beautiful, sunny, spectacular. This is a very beautiful place. The only problem is that if you (or I) want to go anywhere, it takes a lot of driving.
2. There's a lot of really, really, really good food here. On the Krause tastiness-ambience-cost scale, I've had nothing but 10-10-10s - even tonight, when we went to a burger place. But really gooood burgers - cheap, and we sat outside. How cool is that?
posted by Linda Adler-Kassner at 8:39 PM
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