Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

We just had another school shooting in Nashville. Someone with anger in their heart legally purchased weapons with what I think of as a military capacity for killing many people in a short amount of time. The shooter did not make their own assault rifle, etc. but rather purchased it. My naive layperson understanding is that many legislatures have passed laws excluding any legal responsibility by a gun seller, distributor, or manufacturer for the actions taken by a gun purchaser.  When selling weapons with military capabilities beyond any reasonable definition of self-defense this clearly puts society at risk. A starting point in dealing with this completely evitable ongoing tragedy in our country and none other would be to publicize such laws and demand their repeal or some explanation as to how they serve the public good. It really, really hurts us all on so many levels that we have traveled this path since the repeal of the Assault Weapons Ban, imperfect as it was. The before and...

I was thinking the other day of a scene from the film Battle of Algiers, about the revolution to drive the French out of Algeria; after a cafe has been bombed a group of French civilians find a young Arab boy, a street vendor standing nearby, and start punching and kicking him. It is the ambiguity of the film that children participated in the revolt against the French, but we have not seen this child do anything but be there. The group of ostensibly civilized Europeans see an Arab boy and try to kick him to death. (A French policeman pulls his unconscious body away from the mob.) What drives a mob to try to kill a small boy for no other reason than being Arab in the vicinity of a terrorist act?  It is clear from the racial slurs that they yell during the assault that they would not have tried to kill a French boy. The older I get the more I see fear as the source of the evil in my small part of the world and apparently the world at large. Fear of the other in particular seems to ju...

I'm attending two conferences this month. The one I went to last week was a regional association that I've been part of for 35 years. I don't know everyone but it definitely feels like an extended family to me and I greatly look forward to the meetings. The first one after COVID was truly joyous, not just for me but for many other senior members and so the joy was shared and magnified. I am currently attending a conference on using technology in teaching mathematics. I attend every four or five years to keep up with the latest, but it doesn't move so quickly that I need to attend every year. Usually other department members attend and we grab a meal together but it is far less tribal. This time no one else from my department is here and I may go the entire conference without seeing someone I know well enough to say hi. It's a good conference and it serves its purpose but the feel is very different. It's good for me to articulate what I value from last week's...

I could just post links to my friend Michael Covington's blog daily but I restrain myself. This post was particularly good: https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2303/index.html#x230311

The word patience carries different kinds of emotional baggage depending on the context.  A few months ago I heard a homily from a Catholic priest asking for patience with the Catholic church in its struggle with LGBTQIA+ issues. I didn't take it well---it resonated with my understanding of the history of the civil rights movement, wherein people who were not used to treating people of color as fully human would constantly ask more patience of the folk being discriminated against. Change doesn't happen overnight but perhaps faster than decades and centuries would be more appropriate. Since then I've tried to analyze my feelings about the experience, because they were stronger and more lasting than I expected them to be. I'm still working on it but a few things that I feel represent who I am: 1) I am very privileged in my life and need to show patience to others more than they need to show it to me about 99.99% of the time.  2) Patience is sacrifice; when the powerful as...

For better or worse I was raised to feel shame at the drop of a hat; if I ever fell short of my parents' standards I was so encouraged, and I continue to do so as an adult. The things that cause me shame are different as my life has changed. My standards, my self-expectations, are mediated by my growths and declines in various areas. I'm not sure if I would want to be different. If I were different, I wouldn't be me on a fundamental level. One of the constants in my life is that I am obsessively punctual. I do not like to have my time wasted, so if I commit to being somewhere for someone then I project that they will feel the same. Consequently I am perceived by others by and large as being responsible (which has a different emotional baggage than shame). I bring this up because I am teaching a first-year course that is required as part of our core curriculum where a number of students are not showing up.  I missed a couple of classes in university for illness and we do liv...