Suspended

This view of Manhattan slung across the George Washington Bridge, taken from the Palisades Parkway this afternoon, has nothing to do with The New School and its travails. But as we await agreement on the contract for part-time faculty (I spoke too soon), things do feel similarly suspended. May the precarity prove just an optical illusion.

End in sight?

Today started close to despair, with The New School the top story in the Chronicle of Higher Education, but ends close to hope. The administration's offer, "agree[ing] to all of the union's compensation demands" and more, hasn't yet been officially accepted by the part-time faculty, but it seems likely we're close to the end of this ordeal. Too late to recover the chunk of a semester's learning students have lost, and probably too late for our president, whose lack of leadership led us into this crisis in the first place. And difficult work in rebuilding and restructuring lies ahead. But for now - cautiously - celebrate!

Deciduous

Meeting some of the students from "Religion of Trees" for a turn in Washington Square Park today, we did a double take at the dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides). A "living fossil" species considered 150 million years extinct until a survivor was found in China in the 1940s and subsequently brought back to our continent, these romantic trees - only living species in their genus - are interesting also as deciduous conifers. (Yes, not all conifers are evergreen!) This didn't really register when we met them in October, when they were dense pools of soft dark green. Today, we found bare trunks and branches, above a carpet of orange needles. A student found a last memory of green (above) as we realized these unusual trees were comforting us.

Acrimony

Our labor dispute continues and I'm afraid "acrimo-nious" just scratches the surface. Wide-spread distrust of administra-tion by faculty and students feels vindicated as official university statements dissemble and faculty are threatened. The latest is a plan to require full-time faculty to sign a weekly form attesting that we have done our instructional work, on pain of cuts in compensation and benefits like health care. If the sense of shared purpose despite differences was weak before it is gone now. Hard to imagine how it can be rebuilt when this is all over.

Strike continues...

Chatted with a few of the students from "Religion of Trees" in Washington Square Park today. It was during what would have been our class time, were the strike not continuing, and the strike was the topic of our conversation. I was moved by how fiercely these students are committed to The New School, to its faculty and progressive values, and how confused they are at an administration which seems to them not to value either. 

The trees listened politely to our grief and consternation. We're meeting in the Park again Wednesday, this time with our sketchbooks.

December

Many trees in the City still have their leaves, gold, red, and brown, but a drive along the Palisades reminded us: it is indeed December...

Dishing the gods

Among the strange wonders at "Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Mayan Art," which just opened at the Met, was this 7th-9th century platter from Mexico featuring, we're told, two young gods shooting blowguns at a supernatural bird pictured at center. Their skin is ridden with black sores, symbolic of humility and sickness, contrasting with the bird's ostentatious appearance. This story is pretty straightforward compared to another roughly contemporary dish, where the rain god Chahk emerges[es] from the dark waters of a sinkhole. Exuberant tendrils emerge from his head, terminating in personified flowers, a roaring jaguar, and a serpent while celestial beings gather above and the Maize god sprouts from the submerged rhizome of a water lily.

Final flourish

Fighting the dying of the light in the gardens of our complex.

Broken crowd

Curious artistic coincidences as my Japanese friend H visits New York for the first time in three years. I met her at the new terminal at La Guardia, which is full of art, and was particularly taken by an enormous mosaic by Rashid Johnson, "The Travelers" from his Broken Crowd series. More of the Broken Crowd met us tonight at the Metropolitan Opera, where we had another unexpected doubling: the final scene of Kevin Puts' new opera of "The Hours" circles around the words "you are not alone," as its three characters, living in separate times, step out of their times into a kind of communion of solitude in song. But just the day before, at the acclaimed revival of Sondheim's "Into the Woods" on Broadway, we'd been moved to tears by another finale, using the wonder of theater to bring some hope in the chaos and loss of the dark second act of these adult spins on fairy tales with a similar refrain: "No one is alone."

Strike continues...

New School part-time faculty have until today to vote to accept or reject the university administration's latest contract offer; their union is encouraging them to reject it, and they probably will... [image]

Halls decked

On a little stroll with a visiting friend through a Midtown alarmingly full of holiday cheer, found tentacular greenery at St. Patrick's and some spotted lanternflies in one of the Bergdorf Goodman windows

Strike-torn

Returning to school but not quite... The part-time faculty union continues its strike, as its members consider the "last, best and final" offer peremptorily made by the administration last week, and most of us full-time faculty are withholding our labor too in solidarity. The union is advising its members to vote against the offer, so classes may be suspended for a while. Not that we have a while: the fall semester ends two weeks from tomorrow! There are frenzied online discussions of how to ensure students finish the semester without "crossing the picket line," punctuated every so often by someone observing that this kind of chaos and uncertainty is precisely the intended consequence of a strike. Mitigating it through workarounds would lessen the strike's pressure - and so likely make it longer. The university leadership has been incommunicado but, finally realizing it's a crisis, is descending from the ether, the president assuring us that he is confident we can make it through any challenge so long as we stick together and avoid divisiveness. The less platitudinous provost acknowledges "We have faced a period of tumult and discord that feels to me like the fabric of our university has been torn apart, but hopefully not irreparably."

Leave time

These Freemont Cottonwood leaves from near where we stayed - the largest as big as my hand - couldn't come home with us. They're hard enough that they rattle in the wind, but bowed and brittle enough that flattening them between the pages of a book would break them.

长城

We stayed for our mini-vacation a short dramatic drive from Rocky Mountain National Park (above), just on the other side of "Devil's Backbone" (below), one, we read, of many such "hogbacks" across Colorado... The state is full of geological layers pushed skyward! 

Colorado trees

Missing shades of blue

 Vigil

One fewer tree

As we left our Airbnb for the day, our hostess came up and apologized. The arborists she'd been waiting for for a long time had shown up - they were going to take down a big tree, which she was worried might topple over in a windstorm. When we came back their work was done.

Geologic

Early winter views of Garden of the Gods. These pictures make it look a little grander and more other-worldly than it in fact was, with the paths blocked by bloated families and selfies and group shots of all kinds. Not that these sheets of stone, pushed vertical by tectonic forces, paid us any heed! 

Heading for the hills

After AAR it's the open road - a mini-holiday in Colorado. But aren't there classes this week? Usually sessions the days before Thanksgiving are so poorly attended everything needs to be repeated after, so I've got in the habit of scheduling things fun but tangential to my courses. This year, the fun tangential things were also going to be online... But as you may have heard, nothing's happening at the moment coursewise: the part-time faculty strike continues, along with solidarity work stoppages from full-time faculty like me. The contract negotiations have apparently been acrimonious and unsatisfying, and it may be a while before agreement is reached. I'll be back at school next week; whether it will be teaching or picketing isn't clear.

AAR cameos

Today was a good AAR day, perhaps because I took advanage of a recently permitted session format. There are still many panels with 20-minute presentations, respondents and Q&A (mine yesterday was one) but there are also freer form ones with a larger number of presenters, each given just five minutes or so. Since 20 minutes isn't really enough time for an in-depth account of interesting new research anyway, this seems a better use of conference time - and it's definitely more fun! I started the day with a panel which was supposed to have ten presenters, on top of the presider and respondent! Two were unable to attend but it was still a problem for a room set up for four presenters. Next came the one above, with eight presenters. Both were fireworks displays of different approaches and styles of presentation, which also left time for much more audience participation in the ensuing conversation. Intead of hearing six or eight voices, I heard more like thirty-six. Isn't that why one wants to be at a conference like AAR anyway?