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Current Issue: Volume 26, No. 6 , Week of February 26, 2006

Love Is Still About Sharing Memories

jeanne's first version of love is about sharing memories

From far away
from long ago
Memories that never fade

NEWS and Announcements Site Map
News and Announcements from the Department of Criminal Justice, UWP
News and Announcements from the Department of Sociology, CSUDH

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WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: February 26, 2006
Latest Update: February 26, 2006
E-Mail Icon jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week:

Love Is Still About Sharing Memories
I was so touched by a story that appeared in the New York Times today that I needed to share it with you: Now I Need a Place to Hide Away by Ann Hood, February 26, 2006. At p.11 of the Sunday Styles Section. Backup. Saddened, I looked up through my tears and saw a photo on the ledge above.

The photo is of a love not lost. A child I knew before she was even born. Susan's child. I remember Hans banging on our hotel door in the Hilton in San Francisco, early one morning. Susan, pregnant and exhausted, was not ready for the plaintive "Do something." I no longer remember what he wanted us to do; only that it mattered desperately to the future of sociology, so we were to wake up and quickly. "Do something."

I guess we did. Sociology is still around, though I've retired, and Susan's gone on to chair the Criminal Justice Department she established at UWP, and Hans is no longer with us. Odd, how that one framed picture brings back so many memories. Of Hans, who was then executive director of the ASA (American Sociological Association), of the crazy risks we used to take of starting up new programs, new adventures, in the name of making education real and inclusive. Of the insanity of having it all. Real education to which we were really committted. Real families with real family values and real crises we had right in the middle of all that other real stuff.

Susan always took the time to use real snail mail to send me pictures, so that I could share in what went on. So here now are all those memories flooding back. Even the frame is so Susan. Large rose blossoms and buds surrounding that child so rudely disturbed in her mother's womb to calls of "Do something," from the corridors of another piece of our lives.

Backup of drawing by David Chelsea for article in New York Times by Ann Hood, February 26, 2006, at p. ST 11.
Drawing by David Chelsea, New York Times.

I hurt for Ann Hood's loss. I think David Chelsea captured that pain so delicately in the window open onto a love that prompts "a grieving woman to believe that a mother's love is so strong that the child she lost can still hear her singing a lullaby." That was what drew me to the piece on Sunday morning. I pray that one day Ann Hood will be able to unpack the Beatle memories, and with them all the bitter sweet memories of the love that was.

We're making memories every moment. Take the time every now and then to reflect on those memories. The loves we still have. The loves we've lost. The loves that have morphed over the years to new forms and meanings. The loves that make up the real stuff of life.

How on earth did I get to here from No Child Left Behind and all the social and criminal justice issues that involves? Freud say love as the primary force/drive in nature (according to Jonathan Lear's Love and Its Place in Nature). Some of us accept the concept of "drives." Others see different drives or forces that motivate us, move us to get up in the wee hours of the morning when someone implores us to "do something." All of the issues we are exploring, whether we see love as one factor or the major factor in the relationships we build with Others, all of these issues turn on how we define "respect for Others," and how we constrain the Other as we choose or refuse to include Him/Her.

References

  • Modern Love: Loved and Lost? It's O.K., Especially if You Win By Veronica Chambers, Sunday Styles, the New York Times, February 19, 2006. Backup On memories of boyfriends past and the fun and the pain of loves found and lost and growing up.

  • Brenda enlarged her definition of "child" so beautifully in Message No. 10186 on transform_dom:
    "A child can be 79 years old; I am not leaving her behind . . ."

    In a world in which love is alive, no one is left behind.

    love and peace, jeanne

    NEWS, Announcements, and

    Current Events Discussion Topics:

  • Joining Discussion and Learning Records Groups on Yahoo:

  • Grade Corrections, Fall 2005:

    We processed lots of grades, removing the Incompletes on Wednesday. It'll take them a few days to go through the channels and get posted. I haven't picked up the new messages on learning records yet. Will try to get to these tomorrow.

    These incompletes were the resulto of my inability to pick up your messages from transform_dom when we hit almost 10,000 messages. I need you to post them on learning records jeanne January 25, 2006.

    Note that jeanne's e-mail is not functioning properly. That's jeannecurran@habermaas.org Reach me at tranform_dom until I can get it fixed.

  • Grade Corrections, Fall 2005:

    We processed lots of grades, removing the Incompletes on Wednesday. It'll take them a few days to go through the channels and get posted. I haven't picked up the new messages on learning records yet. Will try to get to these tomorrow.

    These incompletes came about because I couldn't find your posts when we hit almost 10,000 posts. I need you to post the numbers of your posts or just submit another copy of them to learning records, so that I can post them on the site for your future access. This was a computer glitch that occurred when we had to use Yahoo for our listserv. Please don't give me a printed version. I can't possibly retype those. From learning records, I can cut and paste them to our learning records. jeanne January 25, 2006.

  • Learning Records, Fall 2005:

  • New Office

    Our office is across the hall from where we used to be, SBS -B325. They moved us out of SBS B326 during the last week of classes, while I was having a reaction to the radiation therapy. All our stuff got moved across the hall, but it's in no condition for immediate use. We hope to get moved in by late January. jeanne

  • Syllabi for Spring 2006

    Syllabus for Sociology 395_01: No Child Left Behind Undergraduate Section. In Room SAC 3162, in the Old High School Buildings parallel to the Gym buildings.

    Please use the undergraduate syllabus until I can get the Graduate syllabus up. Quite enough there for you to start with. Friday, February 3, 2006. jeanne

  • Sites You Might Want to Check Out:

    http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html Quackwatch, a website maintained by Stephen Barrett, M.D.

    "Quackwatch, Inc. . . . is a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, and fallacies. Its primary focus is on quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. Founded by Dr. Stephen Barrett in 1969 as the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud, it was incorporated in 1970. In 1997, it assumed its current name and began developing a worldwide network of volunteers and expert advisors. . . . "

  • Call for Papers
    Casazine - Online Magazine for members of Casa. "CASA offers a platform for people to discuss and combine efforts and information working towards social transformation. For more information on CASA 2005 Borders, Markets, Movements and to find out about the summer meeting CASA 2006: Constructing Social Change go to http://www.casa.manifestor.org/." Jeanne joined this group a couple of years ago, though she couldn't make their summer meeting. I think our goals fit. Some of you should consider following this. I think their summer meeting this year might be in Montreal. Check out the site. Contribute a paper to CASAZINE.

  • Conference in June 2006

    Please check out the proposal I submitted on Christmas Eve. If you want to go, we need to start thinking about money NOW!

  • The Ecstasy Exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art through February 20. Just a few weeks left. jeanne
    "Ecstasy" is the trippy, messy, highly entertaining survey put together by Paul Schimmel of the Museum of Contemporary Art here. It sprawls through the Geffen Contemporary, the museum's cavernous warehouse in Little Tokyo, which too often begs for attention but is now jammed with blissed-out mobs.

Visual Sociology

    jeanne's imaginary of The Culture of Denial: Villon, 15th Century, Courbet, 19th Century

    The Culture of Denial: Villon, 15th Century, Courbet, 19th Century
    The Ballad of the Hanged - Ballade des Pendus
    by François Villon (1431 - 14-?)
    Around the time of Jeanne d"Arc

  • In the computer image above I was trying to capture the the culture of modernism, and perhaps of postmodernism as well, that came to accept images of horror, like the dead rabbits, deer, chickens, etc. or the skulls, that were often a part of still life scenes along side a bowl of fruit. I borrowed the bowl of fruit from Courbet, but it hardly looks like his, as the links will show you. Then I called it the Culture of Denial.

    I think what I had in mind about five years ago, when I did that image, was the crazy juxtaposition (postmodernity) that we came face to face with as we realized that the enlightenment wasn't all we had thought it would be. I think I meant, or at least I can reinterpret today the cognitive dissonance of old ideas of gross cruelty nestled contentedly next to ideas of peace and respect for mother earth.

    This interpretation, along with a card featuring the computer image, would be an excellent favor to offer a stranger with whom you would like to talk about this strange juxtaposition of violence and peace.

    And then there are the beautiful lines,

    Frères humains qui après nous vivez, n'ayez les coeurs contre nous endurcis . . .
    (frair u men' ki apray noo' vi vay, nay yay lay ker' cone tra noo' on dure see . . . ) transliteration - the French sounded out roughly

    Human Bros who live long after we have gone,
    let not your hearts be hardened against us . . .

Lectures, Notes, and Texts

Academic Resources

  • SquiggleResource Literacy

    • Urban Legends Reference Pages. They post rumors and scams and phony e-mails circulating, to offer you a quick check. It worked for me. I entered "Fat Boy" as a google seacrch, and when I saw the Snopes.com link, I knew it would help, and it did. To not check your sources is as grievous as to plagiarize someone else's information and writing. A Page from Urban Legends As an Example.

    • the-artists.org Good quick reference site with many of the artists, art schools, and visual approaches to present social issue that we discuss. Added April 8, 2005.

    • Plagiarism Watch www.streetgangs.com site. The intelligent and effective use of resources means that you have to be careful not to plagiarize other people's material. We have several files on plagiarism, but I think the one that might make the most sense to you is this complaint on streetgangs.com. They give you samples of sites that have taken their material without citation, even at colleges, and they also give you examples of sites that have used their material with proper attribution. I find the irony poetic, and hope that their message will get through to you the importance of attribution. Dr. O'Connor on his Mega Criminal Justice site led me to streetgangs.com and noted that others frequently hack into the site. For that reason I have created a backup copy for your use in case you cannot access the actual site. Please be sure to attribute any citation to streetgangs.com. jeanne Backup.

      You might want to consider also the information on Dr.Woo Suk Hwang of South Korea:

      "Therapeutic Cloning Was a Fraud"
      By Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD | Related entries in Genetic Engineering

      One of the year’s biggest stories in bioscience appears to have been make-believe. In May, scientists in South Korea announced they’d been able to clone eleven embryonic stem cell lines containing the DNA of patients who suffered from diseases such as Parkinson’s, diabetes, and spinal cord injury. The hope was that the cloned stem cells could be used therapeutically via transplantation without fear of rejection.

      Now Dr. Woo Suk Hwang has admitted to fabricating the results. Nine of the 11 colonies of stem cells featured in the study published in the journal Science apparently don’t exist and the other two may not have been real either. The researchers involved have asked Science to retract their paper." From geneticsandhealth.com, consulted on December 26, 2005.

    Using Academic Language Effectively

    Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

    and Careers

    • Resumes:

    • Letters of Recommendation:

      • Letters of Recommendation: How to get me to respond to your request. Many of you need letters. If you will follow this format, I can do them quickly and make them good.
      • Dog Letters If you do not give me adequate information, but do manage to get my attention, you may end up with a dog letter. That is a letter that says that you work well with people, that you are enthusiastic, that you persist at getting things done, and that everyone likes you. Of course, my dog gets along well with people, brings his ball to them, is enthusiastic, and persists at getting them to take his ball. Everyone likes my dog. That's a dog letter. It's so general it could be about my dog. jeanne

    • Career Options You Might Not Have Considered

      • visual media and their interdependence with other means of knowing to understand that we are not totally rational creatures deciding things apart from our feelings and values. Wolfowitz (new President of the World Bank to aid developing countries AND principle advocate of the Iraq War) might feel very differently when he is exposed to visual and aural images of the poor developing countries that have not before been his primary concern. So we want to know how best to present those developing countries visually. And we might find that we can have a career doing that sort of thing, so it does reflect on us as individuals. Added April 2, 2005.

    That Was Fun! Sneaky Strokes and Flying Good Dogs

    Flying Dog is also a painting by Zhang Kai. Best I've ever come across to illustrate our site with magic numbers and unicorns and whipped cream cats and now, flying dogs, oh, and Faupel's Flying Fish.:

    • Icons and acronyms and what they mean in Internet Speak

    • Index of Nice Things We've Said to Each Other

      • I Was Scared of Statistics

      • It Feels Good to Make a Difference

      • The Site Goes On - You're Always Welcome Back
        • From Angelique Hawley on December 16, 2005: Message No. 9072 on transform_dom.
          Merry Christmas! Jeannne and Pat and all the marvelous students at CSUDH that has shared in "Naked Space"

          I wish I had a lot of money so that I could reward all of you properly. Transform_domDigest is so wonderful.

          I can recall when being one of the first users in 2004 and I see we are at digest 594. my how time flies when we are learning and having fun.

          Jeanne you and Pat are the bomb!

          I continue to read the digest although I am not taking any of your classes now. The digests have been more informative than the school paper. Please continue to keep it going.

          Get rest ! I hope to see you .

    • Flying Good Dogs: Whenever something happens in this or any other class that works out well, that inspires you, that helps in studying, whatever, take a few minutes to send us an e-mail. We'll post it where all of us can learn from it, including other teachers.