Overheard conversation at a (repeat) bar...

...that I went back to in a rich neighborhood, since the name for the downstairs bar changed to something different than the upstairs restaurant (though I vaguely remember maybe stopping through the downstairs bar as well before, for the name change, maybe):

A(n early 40s) (white) (female) rich person, to a vaguely similar guy:  [something something, something] "no, I haven't been to Amalfi yet, last time I was in Italy I went to [something something, something]

. . .

...it was like some sort of "in the know" thing, where people talked of a certain set of places where everybody went to in Italy... so weird...

Bob Seger and white nationalism.

It was super funky going to a Bob Seger concert.

Because I bought my ticket later than my friend, we sat in different sections, so before the concert started, I kept myself occupied by trying to spot someone in the stadium who didn't look white.

I couldn't find anyone like that, though I kept through faces in the crowd for like 5-8 minutes.

The whole thing was really trippy, and it seemed to dovetail into white nationalism.

Before the concert, I was noticing how a lot of the t-shirts at the merchandise booth had bald eagles and flags on them.

Also, the lyrics!

"Old Time Rock and Roll" is anti-disco (read: anti-queer and anti-brown and black) ("Don't try to take me to a disco"), and the whole conception of rock and roll seems whitewashed and disconnected from much of its roots (e.g. that Ike Turner song that supposedly was the first rock-and-roll song ever).

Also, it seems very "I'm this way and I know everything," like an in-your-face know-it-all Texan (it's almost like, "Just go and dare to try and take me to a disco").

After the concert, too, I was reading through the lyrics of "Like a Rock," and the whole thing was quasi-fascistic, with its idolization of young muscular bodies and a nostalgic commonsense morality where you just instinctually knew what's right, not to mention its romanticizing "working for peanuts" (which feeds into blaming immigrants for low wages, rather than the bossman?).

Very, very odd.

It seems that the seeds of white nationalism have been latent in our culture for a long time, just sitting there, gestating.

I really need to get to know Bruce Springsteen's work more, and see how he treats similar shit from white culture.

A new barbershop in my neighborhood.

So, I switched barbers after like a decade.

Rather than going to my standard salon near my old university, I decided to find a new place, since my good stylist left and I couldn't make the discount days, and plus on the days that I *could* make due to my work schedule, they started not having any men's hair stylists on shift.

So, the other Saturday when I was home, I googled barbers in my neighborhood, and I found a place like five blocks north of me that's tucked away on a side street and has been around a long time, and that people really like and speak highly of.

The name is basically two stereotypically Italian male nicknames, and when I get there, there's photos on the wall of stills from "Raging Bull" and the "Godfather," and a big picture of Elvis (?), and a huge poster of some Italian soccer team from some year back years ago that won the World Cup.

Overall, it was otherwise just normal, and very pleasant.

I read a magazine for a bit, then I got in as a walk-in, and on my way out I took a small styrofoam cup of coffee for the road, as well as a small bit of coffee cake that they had cut up in small squares and out on a paper towel on a small tray next to the coffee maker.

It was like a lazy Saturday afternoon, with all the time in the world.

I need to get back to that mentality.

Anecdote of a bank employee...:

The other month when I was at a local bank on a Saturday morning setting up an account, I was chit-chatting with the one (hispanic) (female) teller I had been working with, and after she was saying that I looked tired (which I was!), she mentioned that she used to work at a branch up near a major party college in a different part of the city.

"Saturday morning was a trip," she was like.

She said it'd usually be a bunch of college kids, a lot of times girls in their pajamas, coming in to cancel their credit and debit cards, since they didn't have them and weren't really sure where they were.

"I think they still have it?", was like stuff they used to say.

Image from a Dream:

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm looking at (a white) someone's hands, I think a woman's, and they have bits of corn silk cut into a small pile of neatly-cut pieces like 2-inches long, and as I hear them saying that I should be saving the corn silk for this, I look at a needle lying out on their upturned right palm, and then they start showing me how they bundle the corn silk together to thread the needle.

. . .

Community College Tutoring (2 of 2): Professor Flux.

So, way back at the beginning of term, my one student at one community college said that it had taken a couple weeks for them to get a professor for her remedial comp class.

Now, the professor dropped out, just after midterms, so the school is having a fill-in for a couple sessions until they can find a new one.

I find that just sick.

Pay is so low and there's so little commitment to employees, there's a revolving door of professors even during the term, and the students suffer.

It shouldn't have to be like this.

On the other hand, my student said that she was learning more from working an hour a week with me than from the six hours weekly in class, so that was a very satisfying teaching moment.

Community College Tutoring (1 of 2): Reaction to Difficult Material.

The other week when I was tutoring at the one community college where I work at, the student who I'm working on research papers with had a week with no homework, so we did this "analyze song lyrics" bonus session, to practice brainstorming and paper analysis skills, so she could continue learning, even apart from class material.

But, as it turns out, she hadn't worked on a literature paper in forever, and couldn't even really remember how that worked in high school from a few years ago, so she balked.

In fact, after hitting her first road block, she was like, "Do you have a poem or something?, I don't get this."

I found that a very interesting reaction that I'd never seen in a student before, the impulse to abandon a project rather than grapple with it.

My hunch is, is that this particular student wants to be in control of all material, so she'd rather give up on a project than face an uncertain feeling of being challenged and not knowing where her thoughts are going.

In fact, I noticed that in her brainstorming outline, she wanted to exclude what didn't belong in the categories that she set up, rather than reason through it.

Very, very interesting.  I sure am learning a lot, pedagogically!