Steven D. Brewer's blog

Recently, a 2008-2010 work/life study by UMass faculty that included findings about about contingent faculty got some new play at Inside Higher Ed. When this got tweeted around, I posted Balancing Interests: Tenure System Faculty, Contract Faculty, and the Administration at UMass Amherst which are the remarks I made at an AAUP conference in 2009.

Since then, the join faculty union of UMass Amherst and UMass Boston has continued to make significant progress to improve the circumstances of contingent faculty. In the previous two contracts, we negotiated several really key enhancements. In the first one, most of the benefits went to UMass Amherst faculty and in the second, most of those benefits were extended to UMass Boston faculty.

The largest benefit was to transition faculty from fixed-term contracts to a state of "continuing employment". Upon renewal of the second one-year contract, faculty receive a two-year contract and there is an evaluation process after the first year of this contract. Faculty that fail this review have the second years of the contract as a terminal year. Otherwise, faculty move to "continuing employment" where they are no longer subject to fixed length contracts. For this reason, we have moved from calling contingent faculty "contract faculty" and now use the term non-tenure-track (NTT).

Another benefit was to ensure and verify that departments actually evaluate NTT faculty for merit. It had become clear that a number of departments didn't even consider NTT faculty. Now, in addition to improved directions to personnel committees, there is a committee that looks at the data and investigates departments that don't fairly compensate NTT faculty.

Some progress has been made toward workload, working conditions, and other concerns as well, including the formalization that a 3-credit class can count for no less than .25 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) per semester. My personal aim has been to assure that all NTT faculty have some professional space in their workload available for performing University service. This would imply no faculty with a 4/4 teaching load. If your teaching load equals 1 FTE, you can't serve on any University or department committee in a professional capacity. But this hasn't happened yet.

There is, however, a growing recognition on the part of central administrators that it serves the institution poorly to hold NTT faculty at arms length. And they are making efforts to change how lecturers are viewed and treated by the administration. For many of them, it's a difficult transition to make, and you still hear them (e.g. the Dean and the Provost in Fall 2015) refer to "faculty and lecturers" as if lecturers are not faculty.

There are still gaps. We have not yet successfully organized the Continuing Education faculty. This remains a growing pool of disadvantaged workers in the heart of the enterprise. We have also failed to create a system of effective professional development opportunities for NTT faculty: this is a glaring problem. When NTT were only used for sabbatical replacements, the need for professional development could be overlooked. But many of our NTT faculty have been teaching continuously for 20 or 30 years with little or no opportunity for maintaining their currency with the field. This is a travesty that does not serve the institution and needs to be corrected.

Those factors aside, UMass Amherst still represents a far better model for equitable treatment of NTT faculty than the national average. We should do more to show what we've done and help other institutions — and faculty unions — recognize the benefits of organizing the NTT faculty and not allowing them to be exploited.

Six months ago tomorrow, we had to let Penny go. With her loss, our family became dog free and now, indeed, pet free for the first time in my memory. (Muffy, the scorpion I kept in my office, passed away over the summer.) It's been a rather sad six months.

Reportedly, my family had a dog — a beagle basset hound — when I was very young, but I don't remember it. We got another dog when I was in elementary school: a boxer. Her name was Miss Boxer and, as children, we liked to imagine her wearing a tutu and carrying a purse. I grew up thinking that a boxer was what a dog ought to look (and act) like — and other kinds of dogs just didn't compare.

There was a brief time in my life, when I first started living with Alisa, when we had cats. Brrr. Cats. To say "I have cats" would now feel like a disease.

When we bought a house, one of our first plans was to fence in the back yard and install a door to get into the yard. With this accomplished, we got a dog. And not just any dog.

We went through a reputable breeder and bought a purebred fawn male boxer named Plato. (His full name was Platonic Harmony of the Spheres). I created a website about Plato to document our early adventures with him. He was a wonderful dog, although Alisa never really warmed to him. He was my dog: he didn't really care about anyone else. He tolerated most people, but had really very simple interests. He wanted a walk. He wanted some food. And he desperately wanted the companionship of other dogs (to romp -- and to fight).

Alisa had been thinking about getting another puppy for a while before we got Penny. We did not get her from a reputable breeder. (Although she was AKC registered -- we ultimately named her "Pretty Penelope Go Penny Go"). We were at a rest-stop in Pennsylvania and saw someone with a whole flood of boxer puppies. She was a broker carrying puppies, probably from a puppy mill and probably intended for pet stores. She was reluctant to sell us a puppy but we persuaded her and took Penny home with us to meet Plato.

Plato adored her. At first. Eventually, he would retreat to his crate to avoid her ankle-biting. Penny was a terrible menace: she chewed up anything and everything, including the parking brake handle in our car. She ruined several pieces of furniture and some of our chairs still bear her tooth marks.

She was fearless when she was with Plato and they romped and played and were inseparable. Then Plato was diagnosed with canine lymphoma and died within months. She never really recovered from the shock. She grew increasingly timid and eventually was largely governed by her fears: of things that flap, of going over rumble strips in the car…

Penny was Lucy's dog. Whenever anything happened — any noise or conflict — and Penny would be cowering behind Lucy's knees. But Lucy cared for her, treasured her, and doted on her in spite of her idiosyncrasies.

Penny's muzzle had turned grey even when she was quite young. And when one of her hind legs had gone lame years before, we'd investigated cruciate ligament surgery, but they'd said she had a heart murmur and directed us take her to a doggy cardiologist for an echocardiogram before they could evaluate her for surgery. At his point, we'd said to her, "Well, we hope you just get better on your own." Which she did. At the time. But we didn't have high hopes for a long life. But she surprised us.

She lived a long life for a boxer. She got slower and slower. Eventually, Lucy would take her out for a walk and, although you could see that she wanted to go, she'd get to the edge of the yard, look longingly out at the world, and then sadly turn around to go back inside.

In the end, she couldn't get comfortable. Especially as the summer approached, she was hot and couldn't settle. She would try to lie down and then scramble back to a sitting position. Her joints were obviously painful. She could barely get down the one or two steps into the front yard.

She also was obviously confused. She would get stuck in a corner and have a hard time working herself back out. She didn't seem to know where she was or what was going on. She didn't always seem to recognize people anymore.

We came together as a family and decided it was time. Alisa found a webpage that said, "A day will come when it is clear to you that your pet needs to be put down. And that day will be one day too late." This was helpful to us as we watched Penny's quality of life decline and dreaded what was coming.

During her last couple of days, someone was with her almost constantly. We coddled and cossetted her and tried to make her last hours as comfortable as possible. We all had time to say goodbye and then Alisa and I took her to the vet and we let her go.

In the six months that have followed, we've missed the doggy companionship. The house seemed very empty and quiet, especially at first. I miss her velvety muppies and soft ears. And her short, waggly tail.

We're not likely to get another dog. I find that people (including myself) tend toward overly romanticized conceptions about what a dog is. You see this most clearly in Disney movies where all the characters have animal familiars: non-human-actors that are subservient allies who try to advance the agenda of their human partners. That's not what dogs are. They're not like children or people or friends — they're animals that have been selected to push our socialization buttons.

But I still miss Penny. She was a good dog.

In addition to facilitating a panel on Makerspaces, I attended several other presentations. I'm new to Community Media, so it was useful to attend.

The first presentation I attended was about getting cable companies to allow PEG stations to use the electronic program guide. This is something I've asked about repeated with respect to Amherst Media, because Comcast has been unwilling to do it here and the program guide only shows "Local 1" or "Educational Programming" -- and TVGuide shows nothing at all. The presenters (one of whom is the current president of the Alliance for Community Media, the national parent organization of ACM-NE) provided a solid background about the resistance of cable companies to allow this and offered many helpful suggestions. As much as 40% of television viewing happens via DVR and, if your content isn't scheduled correctly, people can't easily view your content this way. Cable companies ought to see PEG content as a huge draw for cable television: the viewership is often low, but extremely "sticky" with a very loyal following. But many cable companies resist letting PEG stations schedule their content because it helps them organize and build an audience, which will turn out during the franchising negotiations. Their suggestions were mainly to push hard for access to the program guide, make a persuasive case that it serves their interests to serve their customers well, keep pushing, and document everything.

The keynote speech was by Martha Fuentes-Bautista, a faculty member from UMass Amherst who's worked extensively with Amherst Media. Several years ago, she did an indepth study of Amherst Media's relationship to the community, Access360: Building engaged communities in a digital age. In her keynote, she spoke about the community media ecosystem and how to engage with all of the different components and stakeholders.

After lunch, I attended a presentation that I thought was going to be about fundraising and how to seek funding. Instead, it was about a particular campaign that the community foundation of Hartford ran in collaboration with a local PBS station as marketing for their 90th anniversary. It was an interesting story, but was more about marketing and branding than it was about how to look for funding. When people asked how much the campaign had costed, they refused to say, although they agreed the number was possibly more than the entire annual budget of many local public-access stations.

In the last time slot, Jim Lescault and I attended an "ask the lawyers" presentation. People raised a number of interesting questions about franchising, crafting releases for content, the new PEG enterprise fund statute, and other interesting topics. Seeing the kinds of questions people ask was as helpful to me as the answers.

The day wrapped up around 5pm -- just as traffic on the expressways peaks -- so Jim and I went over to a local barbeque place to get a sandwich and then, next door, to the tavern where they were holding the afterparty. We hooked up with a couple of people Jim knew and had a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. I also got to try a new (to me) IPA: Stony Creek Cranky. Good beer, good friends, and good conversation. A fitting end to a great day.

Last year, it was Jim Lescault who spoke about Makerspaces at the ACM-NE Annual Meeting. This year, it was my turn: yesterday, I facilitated a panel with speakers from three Makerspaces: Bryan Patton and Devra Sisitsky from MakerspaceCT, Christ Anderson from AS220, and Christine Olson from our own Makers at Amherst Media. It turned out pretty well.

I provided a brief introduction to the philosophical alignment of public-access television and the Maker movement. I drew heavily from the presentation I did for Science for the People, but turned down the Marxist rhetoric and focused more on community-building. At the same time, I wanted to puncture the hypothesis that a lot of people seem to have that "The Maker Movement Is Going To Save Us" and "The Maker Movement Is The New Economy". I felt a little bad when I realized that the team from MakerspaceCT was going to do this exact presentation right after mine. But I left my comments in because I think it's important.

The three presentations about Makerspaces were all very different from one another. Christine provided a very nuts-and-bolts look at our Makerspace, focusing on our sense that building the community was what was important, as opposed to installing some equipment in a room and calling it a "makerspace". It was a great introduction to what we're doing, what's working, who we're trying to partner with, and what our challenges are. I thought it was a fantastic model if another access station wanted to get started trying to build a Maker community. Neither of the others really had anything to do with access centers, but both were interesting for other reasons.

After the presentation, a woman congratulated me on the panel. I admitted that I thought it was a little incoherent because the different presentations were so uncoordinated and from totally different perspectives. She disagreed saying, "No! That's what made it useful: to see it from all these different points of view." I was very pleased and was glad to be a part.

Update: I posted again about the rest of the conference.

When Max Gladstone and Theodora Goss both tweeted links about Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker not allowing Syrian refugees, I thought I would retweet both. But I was surprised to discover, when I tried to retweet the second tweet, that Theodora had blocked me.

I can't say that I know Theodora well — I first heard of her through Philip, who I believe was a Clarion classmate. I met her at Reader Con a year ago and introduced myself briefly. And I had followed her on Twitter for a couple of years. Being a teacher of writing, interested in poetry, and sharing a connection through Phil, I thought I could have the temerity to occasionally comment on things she wrote. When she posted a picture of a beautiful sunset in Budapest, I commented that there were beautiful sunsets in many places that people rarely took time to appreciate. When she posted a picture of a teacup with a sakura painting, I offered a haiku about the longing for spring that the picture inspired in me.

nur ses monatoj ĝis la sakura tempo… reva teumad' #hajko #esperanto / just six months 'til sakuras… daydreamy teatime #haiku @theodoragoss

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 14, 2015

Since you don't receive any notification when someone blocks you, I don't know exactly when it happened -- or, indeed, how many times it's happened. But I know of one other instance where I was blocked (in Twitter) and twice when I was unfriended (in Facebook). The two instances in Facebook were due to political differences: people found my left-leaning political positions unsupportable -- in one case telling me I should leave the country if I didn't support their red-state agenda.

The other case in twitter, was due directly to something I said. A trans person retweeted a link by (what was seemingly) a young woman who was mocking her boyfriend for saying she wore too much makeup. I replied to to the tweet, perhaps offensively

.@lilkittten @frenezulino He meant, "If you want to look like a clown, feel free to wear makeup—just don't think you're doing it for me."

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) April 28, 2015

This is a pet peeve of mine: I have frequently heard women claim that men require them to wear makeup (or pantyhose or whatever), when it appears to me that women actually police each other regarding clothing and appearance much more than men ever do. And I've always thought that wearing make-up makes you look like a clown. But usually, I have enough sense to keep my opinion to myself.

I should have recognized that there are a lot of reasons why people wear make-up. An elderly male colleague who has psoriasis wears foundation because people otherwise would stare at the livid rash across his face. They still stare because of the makeup but, evidently, he finds that better than the alternative.

Phil suggested that Theodora probably blocks a lot of people who post creepy things to her on Twitter. I can certainly believe that: I've seen some of those. He offered to contact her and ask, but I demurred. I certainly don't want to force myself on anyone. Still, I was surprised and a bit hurt to find myself lumped in with creepy people. The internet is a weird place.

Last night, I opened the Amherst Media annual meeting.

At the @ACTVMedia annual meeting @limako kicks us off talking about how local media builds community. pic.twitter.com/lk2ZpsXaXO

— Josh Stearns (@jcstearns) October 21, 2015

Here are my remarks:

Thank you all for attending the Amherst Media Annual meeting. It's wonderful to see both new and familiar faces.

As you probably know, it's been my first year as president and a tough year for Amherst Media with challenges on every front.

Tonight, however, I want to focus on the positives: With the help of Diana Stiles we launched our first annual fundraising campaign.

At the recent Cable Ascertainment hearings, it was wonderful to hear person after person come forward to testify about the key role that Amherst Media plays in our town by providing access to Public, Educational, and Government news and information.

People depend on Amherst Media to help them understand what's happening in town: with our schools, with town meeting, with many of the important boards and commities. Whether live, on rebroadcast, or streaming, many people stay connected through Amherst Media.

Our members also create an incredible amount of great video content about our community. Going Deeper, Neighbor-to-Neighbor, the Bruce Show, and on and on.

We also help capture interesting events happening in town: Ron Story's talk at the Amherst Historical Society, many talks at NERDSummit, Ron Fortunato's talk to Makers at Amherst Media.

But we're more than our content: we're also a community of people. We have outstanding staff Ari, Kayla, and Nick who work with an army of interns and the public to produce, direct, and film our shows. Our Board of Directors: Josh, Ed, Matt, Mat, Rick, Leo, Lynn, Demetria, Irv, Joe, and Adrienne. Our many members whether producing and creating videos or working in our various youth projects. And finally, our director Jim, who somehow keeps us all working together.

We have a packed agenda for the evening with several questions to bring to the membership and many opportunities for member to get more involved with our organization. But before we move on, I wanted to thank you -- all of you -- for your trust and support in allowing me to serve as president this year.

After my opening remarks, Jim introduce a reel of highlights showing some of this year's productions and introduced Judy Brooks to speak about the Jean Haggerty and Matt Heron Duranti to introduce this year's honoree, Jerry Gates.

is pleased to congratulate Jerry Gates the Jean Haggerty Community Award honoree at the @ACTVMedia Annual Meeting pic.twitter.com/xMa1TJK8oq

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 22, 2015

Jerry spoke movingly about his experience working to organize a shelter for the homeless in Amherst, his community of helpers, and plans for the future.

Subsequently, we conducted the business of Amherst Media. We adopted some revisions to the bylaws, provided a moment for each of our standing committees to report on their activities, and reviewed the Treasurer's report.

After we adjourned the membership meeting, we conducted a board meeting to select officers for the coming year. There was consensus on the board about all of the officer positions: a single nomination was put forward for each & was seconded, the candidate accepted, nominations closed, and, without objection, declared elected by acclimation. I will serve again as President. Demetria Shabazz will be vice-president. And Ed Severance and Matt Heron-Duranti will reprise their roles as Treasurer and (with the revision of the bylaws) Secretary.

It's been a tough and complicated year for Amherst Media, but I feel like the board is really coming together and I have high hopes that next year will see the organization really move forward.

I'm writing to express my hope that the Senate, which has traditionally been an ally of UMass Amherst and public higher education, will stop blocking the $10.9 million that the University needs to fully fund last year's collective bargaining agreements. The University took a substantial budget cut this year which the Chancellor did not pass through to academic units. But it's disrupted plans for faculty hiring and renovations needed for new faculty.

I've been particularly concerned to see the collective bargaining agreements held up against student fee increases, as if they were the only reason. Increasing labor costs, which as you know are largely just cost-of-living increases, are only one of several drivers of increasing costs at the University.

One crucial driver has been the need to replace our aging buildings, which the University has undertaken in the absence of adequate capital funding. The chronic under-funding of the campus by the state left the University, at one point, with nearly two billion dollars of deferred maintenance. Judicious use of new construction has enabled the campus to decommission old, failing buildings and side-step the bills for their deferred maintenance. But Massachusetts is one of the only states that expects future student's tuition and fees to pay off the academic buildings.

Another driver has been the need to increase student financial aid: federal and state aid used to cover a significant part of the total, but have stayed almost flat and are now just a fraction of the need. UMass is paying more than 70% of the needs-based financial aid -- mostly out of other students' tuition.

I've wanted to tell you about the great sense of common purpose that exists currently on the UMass Amherst campus. We have a great chancellor and I've never seen the faculty so united. (Well, except perhaps, when Jack Wilson tried to foist his 'one university' plan on the campus.) OK. So, I've never seen the campus so united *behind the administration*.

I'm also encouraged by the change of leadership in the system office. I know you've expressed concerns to me in the past about a lack of transparency in the UMass system. But I think this is a moment when a new UMass president has an opportunity to make changes and take things in a new direction. But not while trying to clean up the mess left behind by his predecessor.

I hope you can find a way to resolve this problem and remove the cloud hanging over the University. It's a real obstacle to getting on with our work.

Thanks much for your service and continued support of UMass Amherst.

At some point, the only way to use Google Calendar with Apple's Calendar.app was to set up two-factor authentication and then create an "app-specific password" to use in the application. On my laptop, running Mavericks, this quit working a couple of days ago. Trying to create and enter a new password didn't work either. Eventually, I used this as an excuse to install El Capitan where the Internet Accounts System Preferences now directs you to authenticate directly via Shibboleth to configure a Google Account. But I suspect this means that Mavericks (and previous) systems will find it hard to work with Google anything going forward and will need to be updated to Yosemite (or El Capitan).

Dum la pasintaj dek jaroj, mi ofte ofertas programeron ĉe kongresoj por proponi ke ni kune verku poezion. Kiam en In the Land of Invented Languages Arika Okrent parolas pri "Esperanto haiku", ŝi partoprenis mian programeron ĉe la usona Landa Kongreso en 2004. Plej ofte, mi proponas hajkojn, sed almenaŭ unufoje mi faris rengaon. Kaj ĉijare mi proponis tankaon.

Mi ne havis kialon por proponi tankaon krom tio ke mi volis fari ion novan. Kiam antaŭ kelkaj semajnoj mi ektrafis la ideon verki tankaojn, mi esploris kio estas tankao.

Mi jam sciis iomete pri tankao: mi sciis ke ili estas la praa japana poezia formo. La elitoj verkis tankaojn en la kortumo de la japanaj imperiestroj. De tankao, devenis rengao, kaj de rengao devenis hajko. La formo havas silaban nombron 5-7-5-7-7.

Hajko estas tre strikta pri temo (devis temi naturon kaj indiki sezonon ktp, ktp) sed tankao estas pli libera. La unua parto (5-7-5) "kreas la scenejon" — ĝi priskribas ion — kaj la dua parto (7-7) priskribas la emocian — ofte fortan — reagon.

Mi decidis ke mi devas provi verki tankaon por certigi ĉu mi ja povas. Mi cerbumis iun fortan emocion kiun mi povus priskribi kaj ekhavis ideon. Post duonhora laboro mi havis mian unuan tankaon:

Longe fermita, la cedran ŝrankon staras en ŝia ĉambro. Miaj larmoj makulas la blankan edziĝrobon. #tankao #esperanto

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) September 29, 2015

Intertempe, mi verkis kelkajn tankaojn por praktiki kaj ĉimatene ofertis la programeron. Ĝi okazis tuj post la matenmanĝo en bela dometo je la fora flanko de Arĝenta Golfo. Ĝi estas iom alta super la lago kaj havas grandajn fenestrojn per kiu eblas vidi la pejzaĝon.

Mi neniam scias kiom da homoj partoprenos. Kutime venas nur manpleno. Ĉimatene, tamen, venis proksimume dudek! Mi stulte forgesis alporti paperon kaj plumojn por tiuj kiuj ne havis, sed aliaj partoprenantoj estis kunportintaj sufiĉe por dividi.

Mi klarigis tion kio estas tankao kaj legis kelkajn el la miaj. Kaj tiam ni ĉiuj simple verkis dum duono da horo. Poste mi legis unu el miaj:

Alveni frue, sen plumoj kaj papero, ĉe bela domet'. Pigre ĉirkaŭrigardi al la belaj folioj. #tankao #esperanto

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 12, 2015

Tiam la aliaj legis siajn tankaojn. Ili estis belegaj! Multaj estis trafaj kaj ĉiuj esprimis grandan plezuron pri siaj tankaoj kaj la sperto.

Mi klarigis ke mi verkas poezion malpli por montri al aliaj homoj ol por la sperto profundiĝi en la momento — kaj en mi mem. Verki poezion donas al mi grandan plezuron kaj mi esperis ke ili sentu same.