Star DNP

On this date in 2007, I reported to my first day of (temp) work at my new job at Mahler Private Staffing (MPS).  I had been given a 3 - 4 week assignment, through Manpower Group, to work as an Administrative Assistant to a private service search firm.  When I took the job, I didn't know what "private service" was, and I have to say, it seemed all pretty weird.

In those early days, I was writing ads and candidate profiles and conducting strange specialty research projects (I'll just say that I know a lot more about ornamental gardening than anyone who has a yard like mine!).  I was invited to stay on in a permanent* part-time role, and spent a few days a week at their office, which became the mid-point of my normal bus commute (in those days it was the pre-Green Line, which I think was #11) from the Colonel to UW-M.

I spent that first school year back in Wisconsin alternating between my academic/teaching brain & my officeTeam persona, and I wasn't too terribly disappointed when May came around, and I was summarily dismissed with no reason given - I just went and found another temp job - first as a receptionist at a home health care company (where I was able to stream much of the Euro 2008 soccer tourney during work), and later as the global economy crumbled around us, at Northwestern Mutual (where internet surfing was restricted, so I read the company's financial newsletter and had a front row seat to the inner workings of the financial crisis, in between planning corporate events such as baseball-themed ice cream socials and 5-, 10-, 15- & 20-year service honoring ceremonies).

When I was called back to MPS in August 2010 to work on a project, and later invited to take on a permanent** role in November as the "Candidate Librarian" (my invented title - never over the course of the subsequent decade was I ever clear about what my title was), I was intrigued and also delighted to see how much had changed.  What I loved most about my work over the last decade, other than the people I got to know and work alongside, was the commitment to quality.  Doing all aspects of the work well felt like a fundamental shift from 2 years earlier, when the whole company felt very transactional.  A client of ours, who I met in Manhattan in 2013, perhaps said it best: "MPS is the best, because they actually give a shit."

There were some new faces, and some old familiar folks, and in my first year back in the role a lot of sweeping changes occurred, which thrust me more to the fore, and I began take on significant search and recruiting work, in addition to my continuing librarian role.  In August 2012, shortly before starting my final school year of teaching at UW-M, I took my first work trip.  I was working on a housekeeper search for a client with a home in Palm Beach, FL, and we decided I would travel to South Florida to meet the finalist candidates.  I stayed at the Brazilian Court Hotel, and 10 minutes after my arrival it was clear that I was an impostor... but it was was fun to be so.  I'm not monied, and will never be so no matter what fortunes the future permits.

More than anything, what my decade plus at MPS has shown me is that the presumed distinction that the monied believe in is a last desperate charade.  Not all of our wealthy clients (UHNW - as in ultra-high net worth) were, in fact, monied.  They had money, of course - obscene amounts of it - but some understood the arbitrary stupidity of it.  Most, though, prefer to construct mythologies wherein their privilege is anything but.  Their wealth was worked toward, earned, a just reward for the cleverness and astuteness and wherewithal of them or their forebears.  What I learned was that this entitlement most often took the form of elaborate narration.  

We construct the world around us by telling its story - to ourselves or anyone else who will listen - and my time at MPS helped me develop the skill of listening to those narratives and finding ways to accommodate them.  There was a more sycophantic version of this accommodation, where it is largely accepted, but my method was more to understand it, act as if it were normal, and then find the right people who could fit into the story that was being told. 

And so I spent the next decade of my life at work trying to be a part of building something.  I remained myself (which was fundamental to my undoing in the end... and in the middle), but also came in to myself, and when I started running most of the East Coast search work in 2013 I had to opportunity to begin creating and inhabiting my own mythologies.  When I would walk into the UES apartment of a client of ours (say the founder of a company that is a household name), and they would often look at me and wonder just what, precisely, I was doing there.  (On only one occasion, though, did the client actually voice this question).  

Mostly, we would shoot the breeze - on the more enjoyable occasions finding common ground (a connection to Wisconsin, or an interest in my dissertation work on Haiti), but more often than not, they would talk about themselves.  (Not terribly surprising, as I was there to learn them, but it was equally easy to learn them regardless of the topic of conversation).  There were a lot of variations on a theme, but mostly they all wanted someone to take care of them.  The idiosyncratic part was the matchmaking, the fit and feel of who they would want around them - in their homes or sitting right outside their office.

That's the part that I am best at.  I can do all the rest, but offering bespoke assistance in the form of people and advice.  Maybe this is what my new company does... Seeger Enterprises?  It's motto (or mission): Do Good.  Be Better. (DGBB Enterprises?)  Offering Consulting and Coaching, Bespoke Search, and Project Management and Development.

"It might be nice, it might be nice..."

* It was not news to me, but I was surprised in May 2008 to receive an object lesson in the truism, "Nothing is permanent," when I was let go for the first (but far from last!) time by MPS..

** Among the strangest phenomena of working at MPS is that fact that every 4 years (2008, 2012, 2016 & now 2020) I was fired from my post.  In 2008, it felt fairly arbitrary (in fact wasn't!), but by 2012 and thereafter, I have come to realize, my penchant for speaking my mind, even when it is outside the norms for the room, was not well received by leadership.  My skeptical mind was in fact the greatest strength of my tenure, because it was precisely counterpoint to leadership's tendency toward mythological thinking, but it was rarely well received, despite its proven effectiveness.

The eclipse, Hegel, and the American Road

I logged 2400 miles of American roads, 14 hours of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 full Brewers game broadcasts (all the enemy radio feed on XM), and 1 total eclipse as seen from Glendo State Park in Wyoming.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing.  En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness. 

My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!).  I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota.  It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.

I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago.  I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed.  On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.

Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read.  I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.

During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose.  I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all.  As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!).  When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing.  It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!). 

Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage.  It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free.  I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark.  That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.

*.  *.  *

I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it.  I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight.  Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married.  When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.

A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth.  An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space).  Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.

I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip.  Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans.  Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do.  We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.

My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small.  I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse.  I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.

What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment.  We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work. 

Some thoughts on "Pre-Occupy"

Yesterday afternoon UW-M's Center for 21st Century Studies hosted a Pre-Occupy Symposium, examining various potential roots of #OWS*.  The talks, and in particular the subsequent Q&A reaffirmed my reticence to get much-involved with the world of leftist activism and organizing.  I am, of course, generally sympathetic and supportive (not to mention appreciative) of the work they do, but the conversations become a bit too predictable ofttimes.


***

Update 1/10/13 - I never really got too far with my write-up of the event.  Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed by the proceedings.  I am, certainly, sympathetic for the radical Marxian desire of those taking part in the event, but the whole imaginarium of the event.  The people presenting at the symposium seem not to live in the same world as most people - as real people.

*Though #OWS is also, ultimately, unsatisfying as a name for the 2011 (and subsequent?) movement, Annie McClanahan's excellent pre-pre blog post on the symposium submits the term for our consideration and I find it a useful catch-all.

Zombie Day!

For reasons inexplicable to me, Monday, October 12th will be zombie day at the UW-M Student Union. Max Brooks will be speaking at 7pm (unfortunately, it seems to be a "zombie preparedness presentation", but i'm holding out for a good Q&A).

Additionally, the UW-M cinema is showing Dead Snow, a Norwegian zombie, Nazi comedy. I haven't seen it, nor have I read a lot about it, but what I have heard has been generally positive. I'm looking for it to be a hilarious update on the French non-classic, J'Accuse.

But, in addition to both of these events (each exciting and worthy of note in its own right), there is also a lecture being given by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor of Africology called "Do Zombies Exist?"

Overall, Monday promises an array of zombie thinking, satirical zombie preparedness conversation, zombie comedy (zombedy?), & (hopefully) rigorous academic attention. Hope to see you all there.


***Updated: 19 October 2009***

Although I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Bellegarde-Smith after his talk (and he seems like he's a fascinating guy), I very much regret the extent to which he gave up the floor both to a documentary created for Canadian TV & to an open "discussion" of the question. While the documentary did make a fair number of claims, Professor Bellegarde-Smith, an (ordained?) Voodoo Priest merely talked around the issue - he seemed most interested (and this I got mostly from our conversation after the lecture) in the fact that Voodoo, unlike other mystical religions (Sufi, Zen, Kabbalah, even Native American religions) has never had any sort of modern renaissance. No young folks, looking for answers turned to Voodoo en masse as they seemed to many of the other mystical religions. This was accounted for because of race, but these claims didn't go much further, nothing more interesting was said, really.

Now, with Dead Snow, there really was absolutely no disappointment. The movie was quite funny, quite gory (the demise of movie geek Erlend is particularly gruesome {and simultaneously hilarious}). The premise of the movie is a lot like Evil Dead, except in Norway, with Nazis, in the snow...

Finally, Max Brooks' (evidently, son of Mel Brooks) talk was entertaining (and very well attended). Because the premise was a zombie-preparedness lecture, I wasn't too disappointed, but I did feel like his responses to the Q&A was overly glib. Something akin to Stephen Colbert appearing on other shows, still fully in character.

Posting on the Down-Lo

So, it's saturday morning and i'm at work.

That's right, despite my return to grad school, i've become a soul-less, corporate, sell-out. I come in a couple days a week and play office-guy. They seem to enjoy it & they occasionally give me money in exchange for my time.

So now i'm the kind of guy who wakes up on Saturday mornings and goes in to the office after (for instance) a lively English Department party at the Department Chair's house (which somehow we & the v.cool 'Angy' ended up being the very last people at. One moment the house is swarming with smarmy English majors & professors, the next moment we're in the foyer sipping chardonnay and realizing the homeowners are quietly chatting with close friends in the kitchen and no one else is anywhere to be seen - we slipped out and took our drinks to the street.)

Some Saturdays have been harder to get going than others, but overall it seems to be an ok arrangement. For now, i'll carry on working hard at not working, yet getting paid for it, whilst i simultaneously working hard, not working and not getting paid to go to school and also avoiding work for which i am paid, but don't really have time to do teaching freshmen 'how to write', yet actually not telling them anything.

Get that?

Schedule for the Week

Tomorrow begin my classes. Strictly speaking classes started today, but evidently Tuesday will be my Mahler day, my day off. The first day of English 101 is pretty much scripted out, so i haven't really much to do. I will walk in, briefly perform, and give an in-class writing assignment that lasts the rest of the class. After class i've got another class, this one where i'll be a student. 'Introduction to the Modern' or some such (i've just snuck in, barely). Currently i'm registered for three different classes, though i'm told i only ought to take two (two, i can't imagine what i'll do with myself taking just two classes, the U of C schedule has set me up for a strong feeling of underachieving no matter how much work i'm doing). I'll likely end up dropping my German Lit after 1963 course, which won't be such a loss as i don't think i can take die neuen Leiden des jungen Werthers again. Friday, i'll be looking forward to (after teaching again) another installment of Men's Club. All are welcome to Milwaukee's local chapter, and it should prove to be an interesting crowd. With a crowd ranging from fashion design majors to English PhD candidates with folks scattered in between. In other news, Roman Numeral J is sponsoring another reader contest (that's right another, check the archives). As some of you may know, brooke and i recently came into a Wii. Our collection of Miis is as yet underdeveloped. And so, a joel trivia question (the winner will have an honorary Mii created {a Mii, for you uninitiated, is a cartoonish version of a person that plays various games on the Wii} of them) The question is: What is the most recent alcoholic beverage purchased by joel? For the purposes of this quiz, "purchase can be purchased for me by someone else, but the most recent beverage, whether it be at a bar, liquor store, or guy in a parking lot. The answer will change and will be checked based on time i check answers. As a bonus, if you can also name the brand you will gain an extra Mii (you can choose anyone you like, as long as i know what they look like or you can provide a picture). Ok, good luck, and good luck. Enjoy the coming week, and get your Men's Clubs planned now. Remember, all you need to do is have a few cocktails between the hours of 5 & 7 pm CST (i decree that times move back a bit to accommodate working-ness) and wear a tie (preferably bad).