Huge ethical choice: Do I sacrifice time, or a metal fork?

The other week I needed to pop into a government office downtown, so I decided to go there before my one night class I teach, since the week was hectic and stopping through then would be easiest for me.

After they scanned my backpack, though, the security guard called attention to my dinner and was like, "Please leave your fork with the guard at the front desk."

Then, he was like, "Be aware that we cannot return your fork to you when you exit the building, so if you want to keep your fork, you can go outside and leave it in your car.  Otherwise, if you choose to enter the building, we are required to confiscate it."

So, what do you think I did - prioritize my schedule, or the environment?

Really, I was put in a position where I was forced to choose between wasting time or wasting a metal fork, both of them pet peeves.

(Leave answers on comments section below and I'll eventually respond with what I chose.)

Attentive Chinese students change their visages.

In the gen ed curriculum where I teach writing, the current book we're reading is a classic of Chinese literature.

The prof says it's okay for me to contribute a few times per class period once students get their thoughts out, so the other day at 2 points during the discussion I added in a point about virtue and then another about Buddhism, and both times the 2 (female) (Chinese) students in the room seemed engaged and their eyes lit up and one even expanded on the 2nd point with another observation of hers.

Previously, the other (female) (Chinese) student had made a statement about the role of virtue in Chinese society and its relation to bureaucratic corruption, and upon her saying that, it seemed to me like she didn't seem like she was taking the class discussion seriously at all... Most people who had been speaking were unaware of that cultural context and the book that we're reading can be pretty elliptical and opaque and even more so without a major context like that, which led to a lot of bullshit, which I was sensing too, especially right around the time she decided to speak up.

After my comments later in that same discussion, however, both their appearances visibly changed towards me, both gained some kind of immediacy and lost a kind of guardedness, and though I had been taken seriously before as an authority figure, they both seemed now to look at me sympathetically and like someone they could relate to (since they assume I know something of Chinese culture?).

Really, both their faces were oddly engaged after I spoke and suddenly just became somehow unguarded and more open towards me, and the difference from how they'd looked at me previously was very striking.

In many ways, I don't respect my university students.

The other day I was thinking that I don't respect my university students in many ways - or, perhaps I should say, I don't disrespect them, but I don't automatically respect them somehow either (though I think that *they* think people respect them for their CVs of endless accomplishments, which is another topic altogether).

Overall, their experience in early ed and higher ed militates against them attaining the fullest forms of human realization as I see it, a deep and visceral concern with social issues and the body politic.

For one, their high schools train them to do charity and show on their resumes that they "get it", and many of them seem actually seem to believe the hype.  That feeds into the biggest threat to true sympathy, thinking you're sympathetic, even when you're not....  This generation loves to say they accept everyone, so they don't seem to see the many ways in which they don't (mostly on the basis of class).

For another thing, their college experience doesn't seem to challenge their complacency.  If anything, it just deepens it, by giving them an appearance of diversity and collision of viewpoints so they can say they've been challenged and improved though it's not clear how much actual challenge to who they are is going on.

I don't want to generalize, there are many nice students out there, but I doubt many of them will thrive in the ways that I think are important.

I'm talking of the kids at the university where I study, of course, not the art school kids.

Angering Oral Historians of Contemplative Nuns.

So I've been reading this new oral history of cloistered nuns and was pretty stoked at first, but then realized a lot of it was just sticking with their self-presentation without digging down into deeper issues, of which there are many since all the nuns interviewed so far as I've read seem to be kind of odd fringe conservative Catholics.

Nevertheless, I'd seen that the author had been making a documentary at the same time that she did the oral histories, which I found interesting, and I idly wondered whether I'd ever see it one day.

Then, out of nowhere, there were posters on campus about how she'd be screening documentary cuts that very night as part of a series put on by this Catholic institute on campus that trends very conservative, so I decided to go anyways, though I'd be having a long day.

I had another function, but I came as soon as I could, and got there in time to see like 15min. of footage and hear Q&A....

In the early Q&A, people were mentioning "The Nun's Story" fondly, so after I poked my neighbor and asked if the doc covered young nuns and student loan debt and he said no, I raised my hand and said 2 things.

First, as a point of fact, I said that "The Nun's Story" is a very odd part of the history of American Catholicism since it romanticizes nuns and is so mainstream culturally, yet it's the thinly fictionalized memories of the author's Belgian ex-nun lover and the author herself was into Gurdjieffian mysticism, so in so many words the beloved book-and-film's viewpoints are mediated by a reticent lesbian with fringe esoteric leanings, all of which is not taken into consideration not nearly enough.

At that, I could see people in the audience shift in their seats nervously or in discomfort.

Then, I asked the question to what degree did the community exclude young candidates w/student loan debt or older women w/healthcare costs.

Straight away, the documentarian said she's an oral historian, so she represents what people *say* about "The Nun's Story", not anything about its history.

Then, she said that student loans of a young postulant and healthcare costs of an older candidate were mentioned briefly in 2 sections of film footage, and mentioned a foundation to alleviate young postulants of debt.

Overall, she seemed a little prickly, though I wondered if it was b/c my question was repetitive despite my best attempts to make sure it wasn't.

Later, at a lull in questioning, then, I raised my hand, and she called on me again, and I asked her to what degree did she signs of lesbianism in the community during the time that she was there?

At that, she got visibly *pissed*, so I was like, "No, this is a very serious question" - and at that I heard a derisive snicker - "and there's quite a bit of social history out there on the topic, so I'm wondering what you came across in your time there."

At that, she was like, "Pardon me, but I would like to answer questions from members of the audience who have been here for the entire presentation."

Afterwards, I went up to the speaker and apologized for not being present the entire time due to another function and for perhaps asking a repetitive question, though I had asked my neighbor about it to try to head off that inconsiderate possibility.

Then, I self-identified as a historian who's taught on monasticism and celibacy and had been reading through the university library's copy of her book here and there for several weeks and was like 40 pages in, and was honestly wondering to what degree she came across signs of lesbianism in the community.

Then, I clarified that sources indicate that during the mid-20th c., the 2 major social roles available to Catholic women were motherhood or "a community of strong women", and that women who later identified as lesbians chose the 2nd option.

Then, I stated that my impression was that despite changes in the larger culture, this pattern of roles still clung to certain conservative corners of American Catholicism, so I'd guess that the same phenomena were more likely to surface in the community that she studied than in other communities of women religious.

Again, she was snippy, and was like, "I really focused on telling the stories that the women wanted to tell."

"Interesting."  I was like.  "So did anything surface anywhere, or did you get the sense of anything from talking with any of the women?"

"I wasn't looking for that," she was like, and then cut me off to talk to someone else as she abruptly turned her shoulder to me.

. . .

Overall, the oral history has really been shit, as far as I can tell - it sticks too close to its subjects' point-of-view, rather than recognizing it and moving questions to larger issues, etc.

Furthermore, the problems seem to go back to the author's decisions.

Her prizing the subjects' words means she cedes all point-of-view and larger questions to them, and even her response on larger questions of student debt and healthcare means that she only knows of the issues as they surfaced in interviews and so did not recognize leads and follow them up in further talks.

Her whole "I'm an oral historian, and so go with what people say" schtick too means that she is trying to put a quick end to any conversation with someone who knows greater contexts of which she is unaware...  I later saw that her credentials were an MFA, so that might explain her discomfort with historical and ethnographic questions.

Also, I wonder how many people in that room will think of "The Nun's Story" the same way again.

Confirmation of Shocking Bar Revelation about the Observation of Employees.

The next bar I was at was an upscale hotel bar, and I talked with the (young) (white) male bartender and told him about the camera system thing I had just learned about.

I said it sounded like bullshit and I didn't know if it was true, but he was like, "No, it's standard," then he tipped his head backwards just slightly to gesture to some camera up behind him on the ceiling towards the end of the bar.

"I'm being watched right now, the entire time I'm at work," he was like.  "They have a room full of screens in the hotel and the guards monitor us too."

He also said it was to keep employees from stealing, and that he and other employees were not allowed to patronize the bar when they were off work.

"It's kind of weird," he was like, "But whatever."

I then broached the subject of this downtown club/restaurant where I heard that people did coke in a back room to see if guards didn't watch the customers - that is, to see if the working class was watched for deference but the richer customers could do whatever they hell they wanted - but our conversation was cut short...

He had just wheedled the name of the downtown club/restaurant out of me and confirmed that he wasn't surprised (and added in the names of a couple other places where a lot of coke was done too!), but before I could move the convo in the direction I was interested in, this kind of drunk (older) (blonde) business traveller in a tight blue dress that pushed her tits up wandered over to the bar and kept trying to hit on him.

For one, he had never been to New York, so she said he could stay with her if he came.

For another, she said that being a business traveller could be lonely, and though you see a lot of the same people in the same hotels, you can be with other people and still be by yourself.

Shocking bar revelation: Observation of employees.

My latest bar discovery?

Upscale restaurants and hotel bars downtown not only have elaborate camera systems throughout, but use them to monitor employees - INCLUDING FOR DEFERENCE TO RICH CUSTOMERS.

After I got a drink one night at the bar of a newly opened steakhouse, I went to go take a piss and had to go up this ramp by the side of the restaurant, and as I started up, a uniformed (younger) (white) (male) waiter started to come down the other side, then saw me, backed up, stood aside, and made a beckoning notion for me to proceed.

"No no no," I was like.  "You go."

"No, please," he was like.

"No," I was like.  "You have know idea how much I hate hierarchy.  It makes me vomit in my mouth to do that to you."

"I understand, sir," he was like, "But no, I insist, you're a customer."

"If I'm the customer," I was like, "Then tell your manager that you came down the ramp because the customer insisted that would make him happy."

"You have no idea how much I appreciate that," the guy was like, "But cameras don't catch words, and I'd get in trouble."

He then told me about the camera system...

Everyday Signs of Our Stratifying Society:

1) Here in the city, an upscale hotel bar bartender told me that bottle service, which had been imported from NYC not too long ago, has gone bonkers over the past 5 years.

(What's bottle service?  Essentially, a group, usu. of men, buy a table at a club and get a bottle of liquor for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and then the club supplies free mixers...  These men then use the booze and the allure of $ to try to "make it" with women.)

2) In the neighborhood of the university where I go, the kinda upscale restaurant that opened has $30+ entrees. so bills can get up to a few hundred bucks for two people.  Yet, that restaurant is most frequented by *juniors* and *seniors* in college out on dates and whatnot, says my one hippie friend from Michigan, who recently started working there!

. . .

Remember, for some people, the economy is doing very well, as my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend has said.