Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

I found my self paraphrasing these to my daughter out of context and realized that they are not as well known as they should be. This version of the laws is copied from  here : According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are  three great virtues of a programmer ; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris Laziness : The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Impatience : The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hubris : The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.

I present as an older white male faculty member at my university.  Through my entire life folk have listened to my counsel and allowed me to exercise power by default aside from my qualifications and competencies because of this accident of birth; this has only increased with age. Because I am the beneficiary of a power imbalance long in the making I bear some responsibilities: I must encourage the younger, the non-white, the non-male to take the spotlight whenever possible. I have already had more than my share of the spotlight. When a risk needs to be taken in my community, after a due pause to see if anyone else wants to take it on, I should put my neck on the line rather than play it safe. I have more power and as Stan Lee wrote, with great power comes great responsibility. Or to quote William Sloane-Coffin, what's the point of having tenure if not to use it to fight for justice? Because silence in the face of bigotry leads to more bigotry, I must never be silent when I witness...

I have a short gap at home between travels. My wife and daughter did laundry right before leaving our family visit and so I didn't really unpack so much as repack upon our return. I don't feel much enthusiasm for any tasks requiring deep thought. In many ways my mind has already departed. I'm feeling ruthless with my to-do list, moving many tasks to the day after I return. New tasks keep arriving via email; I am performing triage. I frequently encounter folk who live their lives this way as a rule. I prefer having a firmer foundation from which to build toward my dreams. But, I have been working hard in the same trenches for a while. It will be good for me to immerse myself in my next two trips (one after another) and try to shake loose a bit, see what new ideas I bring back with me. No cooking this weekend.

Yeah, I read the Thomas Wolfe novel for a high school class. I think the title is all I retained. My wife and I are back in PA visiting my mother, siblings, and their families. Our daughter will be joining us. The building has been sold, so if home is the building I grew up in, then yeah, going home again would be trespassing. Long before the building was sold it was renovated multiple times so as to be nearly unrecognizable. Traces of my occupancy have been long gone. So if the surroundings were home, that ship sailed a while ago. No, of course home is the people. But I left home roughly four decades ago, so the people both are and aren't the people I grew up with. My mother suffers from memory loss and my siblings have found their destinies by and large since I left home. I love my birth family, but home is with my wife and my children and the folk I work with. Being with them is being at the home that I created since I left PA four decades ago.

I've been asked to serve as a Title IX advisor. For all kinds of reasons I can't discuss the details.  It is an ad hoc responsibility; I do not know the duration but it is not a permanent addition to my job description. A lot of what I do in my job is service that is not explicitly in my job description, but is done in consultation with folk who supervise me. I do not often get explicit additional compensation. There is an indeterminate connection to my merit pay raises. By virtue of my seniority I get approached to do some things; other times I see a niche and volunteer for it. What I do this year is mightily different from what I did decades ago. The job is fluid in a way that keeps it interesting. Some parts don't change; I have my courses that I'm good at teaching (not all of them, there's room for growth). I serve on departmental job searches as they occur as well as task forces. Some gigs are long; most of my service as chair of something or other averages aro...

Years ago I subbed for my yoga instructor when she was in the hospital. We went over goals for each class and I felt mostly prepared. What caught me off-guard happened during final relaxation, as folk were encouraged to go deep into meditation. Regularly a fraction of the class would begin weeping. My instructor confirmed that this happened frequently. Often meditation affords us the room to grieve pains too deep for us to deal with on the surface. As I have dealt with some tragedies over the years I have found this to be true of myself. The grief is not vanquished but it is less to be feared when confronted and acknowledged.

I noticed as a child that we spent a lot of time waving flags and having picnics on July 4th each year. There were parades sometimes, television specials, lots of talk about how special we as a nation were. The word "free" was used an awful lot. I also noticed that particularly at this time of year no one ever wanted to talk about what the word "free" meant. Asking about it made my elders uneasy and prompted rejoinders not to spoil the celebration. Now I'm one of the elders in my family, and I do spend a good deal of time discussing what the word free means. There are some basics:  if you are a slave you are not free. Our country started with slavery in place, with slaves counted as 3/5 of a person (in the Constitution before it was amended) for apportionment of Representatives, etc., but not for anything resembling citizenship.  So, the word "free" means something very different to folk descended from slaves and/or still bearing the burden of institut...