SUMMER WORK

Good news to report! Just this past Thursday I got a call from California State University - Long Beach (or "Cal State Long Beach") offering me a position teaching ESL in their American Language Institute this summer. Beginning, in fact, this coming Tuesday and going on for 12 weeks! (This job comes with no health or benefits, but it is $36 an hour for the hours I'm actually in class.)

In an earlier posting, I mentioned that I had seeded local ESL programs with my CV the past few weeks in hopes of some part-time ESL teaching this summer. Last week, I had begun to think the window of opportunity had passed, when the Cal State call came in. It's always a shot in the arm to be wanted by some program, even if it's not for my long-term career. Long Beach was one of the two schools on my A-list, both California state colleges. And it could perhaps work into some other postion at the same university more in line with what I'm looking for in instructional design, or even a position as an ESL professor in the Linguistics program, so it's definitely a foot in the door and will give me lots of credibility in job hunting in California. (If Cal State Long Beach saw fit to hire me, then I must be OK!)

There's also been some communication with my UCLA contact about part-time work in his govt. grant project cataloguing Arabic teaching materials as one of the many languages the project is working on for their database! That would not only get me a foot in the door in the state university system, but in the University of California (UC) system, which is one of the most presitigious in the country (UCLA and Berekely are two of the best known campuses). Don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but it's promising, and there's no question that Prof. Hinnebusch would like me in the project! That's real enough.

Anyway, great news all round -- news that will shape my life now through mid August ...

A HOUSE FOR HELEN

Another older theme in this blog has been Ann's and my ongoing hunt for a suitable house for Aunt Helen, who adamantly refuses to leave the mountains.

The good news is that after one false start, we have finally located a house in Crestline, where she now lives, that her Mountain Nursing nurse Cathy likes, the realtor likes, and -- most importantly -- Helen likes. It's in the small, level part of the village area where all the shops and restaurants are, but back from the main road in a more residential area. So, most importantly, she can walk out her front door to get to the post office, bank, and grocery store any time she wants.

The owners, Latinos from Guatemala, were away visiting family back home when Helen et al. looked at the house, so we've had to wait till they got back whether they would accept our offer of $275,000. The realtor Steven called me up Sunday to say they were back and had accepted our bid, so now it's mainly up to Ann to negotiate financing, inspection terms, etc. Fortunately, her husband Cam has a cousin who is a mortgage banker in the San Diego area, so we have access to good advice. Our goal is to pay most of it down, finance what we can't manage right now, and pay off the rest within a few months when Helen's first house is sold. (The realtor thinks it should easily go for $325,000 or more.) So, this summer is going to be a busy one for Ann and me, and I'll be putting more mileage on Dad's old Infiniti driving back and forth, I imagine, before it's all over and Helen's new place is refurbished, Helen moves out and into the new place, and finally the old place is refurbished and sold.

But all the effort should be worth it. Getting her fixed up in a more suitable setting has been on my to-do list since before Dad died in 2003.

ESL

Although teaching English as a Second (or Foreign) Language was my old career (from '85-'93), I have decided strategically while still here in LA to return to it briefly this summer - mainly to bring in a little needed income. (Bills don't wait till one's employment status is finalized!) Fortunately, in Los Angeles with its millions of non-English speakers (or at least non-NATIVE speakers), the market is huge.

So, for the past two weeks I have been driving around the South Bay/Long Beach areas dropping off my CV at various community colleges and two nearby California State Universities (Long Beach and Dominguez Hills). The program administrator at Long Beach turned out to be an Illinois grad (small world), so she sent me a chatty email later on and promised to forward the CV to her boss.

I tried an adult school here in Torrance the first week, but, entrenched in their government workers union protectionism, California adult schools take only ESL teachers with adult school certification (forget a PhD and 15 years of ESL experience). So, ironically I am perfectly qualified for the most demanding academic ESL that the state university system offers but not the mom-and-pop variety of neighborhood ESL that adult schools offer.

I am still waiting to hear back from most of the six institutions I applied at. It's been over a week in some cases and over two in others. Some schools are so 20th century, they don't even have email for their staff, so I've had to mail my follow-up notes! June is really the start of the summer term for most of these schools, so I need to hear back soon if I am to have any chance at getting in at the beginning. I did request my name to be put in for subbing, as well, but it won't bring in the income a solid 6-week ESL course will.

Meanwhile, the main job hunt continues. In Wisconsin a few weeks back, I ran into an old colleague from the Intensive English Institute at the U. of I. who is now teaching Farsi at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She encouraged me to send her my CV and she'd pass it on within the institution. Which she did. So far, no word back on that either.

The Heinle publishing house in Boston I contacted back in March (I did an informational interview with one of their tech people) that tried to interview *me* about one of their editor positions while I was ostensibly interviewing *them* ended up not hiring me. Actually, I told them in the interview I wasn't quite ready to commit to applying for publishing jobs at the time, but they insisted I send my CV anyway, so I did thinking, "How could it hurt?" "Not enough publishing experience" was their Catch 22 decision. That's really the only long-term job I have actually *applied* for since being in LA. But as I wrote earlier in this blog, May is my month to finally start *applying* rather than just doing "career research", so that's what I'm in the process of doing.

JC LOVES MM

The middle of this month we are to be treated to a major motion picture based on Dan Brown's publishing phenom "The Da Vinci Code" (abbreviated to DVC in the following). I've had friends (mainly non-Christians) who have read it and wondered what I thought of it, but I've resisted reading it until just this week. I was in Milwaukee airport looking for a book to kill the next 3 1/2 hours back to LA and thought, "Well, everyone who hasn't READ the DVC's going to be talking about it now that it's a movie, so I'd better read it so I have a right to discuss it." So, that's what I've been doing the past week.

This evening, I was just at two major book store chains in Torrance and was blown away by the sheer publishing hype surrounding the book - special tables with all of Brown's novels in hardback, paperback, deluxe photo editions - not to mention all the spin-offs on the Sacred Feminine, Mary Magdalene, the Gnostic Jesus, etc. prominently on display to catch some of the monetary fall-out from the DVC. Heck, there was even a Da Vinci Code weight loss book! It's a certifiable phenomenon, folks, and you'd better be prepared to talk about it, since every unchurched person in America is now going to consider her- or himself an expert on Christianity -- the REAL story they've been "hiding" from us these past 2000 years.

First off, to be fair, the book is a rousing good thriller (as well as a bit of a mushy romance). If Brown had made no pretensions that his work was based on historical fact, it would be a fun pseudo-historical light romance/thriller I could recommend unequivocally. (Not content with that, however, Brown prominently adds a page titled "Fact" at the beginning of the novel -- it is, after all, a novel -- and writes "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.")

A mini SYNOPSIS of the DVC for those who never intend to see the book or movie but want to keep up with the cultural buzz:

Dashing Harvard symbologist (?) Prof. Robert Langdon is called in by Paris police to explain the esoteric symbols and words the curator of the Louvre Museum, Jacques Saunière, managed to write around himself before he expired of a gunshot wound on the floor of the museum. It turns out to be clues to a world-shaking secret he's guarded that only he can now pass on. The police suspect the innocent Langdon of the deed, however, and he is about to be arrested until he is dramatically rescued from the museum by the granddaughter of the curator, the beautiful Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist with the French version of the FBI. They spend the entire novel on the lam from the French police, who, we are led to suspect, have connections to that dark, dastardly, ancient patriarchal institution, the Roman Catholic Church. The real assassin is an albino Spanish monk, Silas, who owes his life to the charity of Opus Dei, a dastardly, secretive ultra-conservative Catholic lay order that is intent on protecting the Church -- and humanity -- from the revelation of a deep, dark secret about the faith: Jesus Christ wasn't God after all, just an ordinary Jewish guy who married Mary Magdalene, had kids, moved to France, and opened a used car business in Toulon. (OK, I made that last bit up). Yes, the royal dynasty of Jesus is still around, folks! (Remember this is all the fruit of "research" and is guaranteed "accurate" by the author.)

The main legend Brown has incorporated into the novel is the (apparently true) legend of the HOLY GRAIL, which, it turns out, isn't a chalice at all but secret writings about this JC-loves-MM story (as well as MM's bones - she is actually a goddess, it turns out, but the kind that dies and decomposes) that were rescued from the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem no less during the Crusades by the Knights Templar, who, we learn (more "facts"), are still around today in a top secret society under the name "the Priory of Sion". (Btown swears to the accuracy of this in his "Facts" page, as well.) This Priory's historic task is to safeguard the JC-loves-MM truth and protect their descendents from those dastardly, bloodthirsty Catholics who've been out to knock them off for 2000 years. The Louvre curator turns out to be the grand-master of the Priory, one of four top men all killed the same day by Opus Dei's hitman. After many plot twists, betrayals, and code breakings -- and long theological discussions about what the true Christianity originally was with the sacred feminine restored to prominence (apparently it restores orgiastic sex rituals to their proper place in Christian liturgy, too - a "love feast" anyone?) -- Robert and Sophie end up in England and, guess what, falling in love as the sun sets over the hyperactive esoteric symbology of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, where it seems MM was buried at one time. (I won't give away the very end.)

The annoying part of all this is that there are so many historical and religious holes in Brown's "research" that you could drive a (Renault) truck through them. I am not a scholar of medieval esoterica, but certain whoppers in areas I DO know something about did shout out at me:

- Brown seems to think the Dead Sea Scrolls contained ancient writings about Christianity. Sorry. They were Jewish documents written by (adamantly) non-Christian Jews before and after Christ.

- Brown seems to think the "Catholic Church" (i.e. the one with the Pope living in the Vatican) has been around in its present form for 2000 years. He never seems to have picked up an encyclopedia to check on Church history, which all scholars agree wasn't divided into Western (Catholic)and Eastern (Orthodox) until 1054. Before that there was no "Roman Catholic Church". Brown doesn't even mention the word "Orthodox" in any part of the book, surely an insult to our Eastern Orthodox brethren, who would surely want to be in on the great institutional conspiracy against the "sacred feminine".

- Not content to damn Christianity for its misogyny against the divine male-female, Brown throws in a little historic revisionism on Judaism, as well, claiming that the Jewish temple/tabernacle originally honored both a male god (Yah) and a female god (Shekinah), and that the sacred name of the Jewish God (who apparently isn't "one", although that is the deepest claim of the religion) YHWH incorporates both "Yah" (the male deity, remember) and his female counterpart "Hawah", the Hebrew name for Eve. (Actually Hebrew has two different letters transliterated as H in English: one is used both times in YHWH; the other H is used in the name Havah, or Chavah in some spellings -- i.e. they aren't even the same letter. I'm a linguist and know a bit of Hebrew; these things stand out!) But remember, this was all "carefully researched" by Brown. From "God is two" to "God is one" - religious deflation in action! But if Judaism wasn't monotheist -- what is?

- Serious historians agree Constantine was the famous Roman emperor who convened the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, where the dual nature of Christ as God AND man was upheld by Christian bishops from all over the empire. But no, 1,681 years after the fact, Brown reveals the true version: Constantine always remained a pagan, yet somehow as secular ruler (with no church title or authority) he invented from scratch the doctrine that Jesus was God 300 years after Christ. Brown assures us that this doctrine had occurred to no one in Christian history before that - news to St. Paul, St. John, St. Athanasius, and all the Church Fathers before Nicea, who all claimed so. In a modern analogy, US Christians may mainly vote Republican, but I doubt few of them would take President Bush's pronouncements as authoritative on church doctrine!

... and many other minor rips in the story that weaken the fabric of the whole. (You might want to check out the "Da Vinci Hoax" by Olson and MIesel for more errors.)

If this sounds unfair, like I'm picking on "just a novel", remember that Brown claims absolute accuracy for the historical aspects of his book, both in the book itself and in TV and magazine interviews. He freely admits that he has an agenda to influence readers' religious beliefs, to shake Catholics' faith in their religion, and bolster the cause of gnosticism and the "sacred feminine". He is an unashamed evangelist for his beliefs -- one who's pulling in a fat wad of cash while doing it. And, more seriously, millions of historically and religiously illiterate readers are taking Brown's assertions about Jesus and Church history at face value. The book is tearing down peoples' beliefs and supplanting them with others. That's why I think, regardless of the lightweight appearance of the novel, it is a major threat to traditional, scholarly views of who Jesus was and how Christianity developed, one that intelligent Christians can't just ignore. JC-loves-MM is perhaps THE major version of the Christian faith on the market right now -- and it's gaining hundreds of thousands of converts, even within traditional churches. And the secular bookstores have no problem helping Brown propogate it while raking in billions in sales themselves.

All I'm saying is the Da Vinci Code buzz is currently reaching fever pitch and will be all we hear on TV or read in the paper for the next month or so (at least until the next big book-cum-movie comes along to replace it), so you should read it (or see the movie) and be ready to respond intelligently. It's better than the lame "I haven't read the book myself, but I think it's scandalous!"

CONFERENCED OUT

Time to catch up on the blog!

The last two weekends have found me at language conferences, the first at UCLA and the second at UW-Madison back in Wisconsin. (Apologies to those in Wisconsin whom I didn't have time to visit; time was very limited!) The main point has been to network with people in my future field, be "visible", and maybe get tips on where some hot jobs are. Oh, and catch up on what's going on in the language teaching field (a very distant fourth!). Registering for both I had to fudge a bit on my "academic affiliation", since I'm unemployed and out of a grad program at the moment. So I was Paul Sundberg from the University of Illinois -- which got confusing when I told people I was living in Los Angeles! Since I wasn't presenting, just attending, it made for a very relaxed and open opportunity to look after my own priorities.

April 21-22

The UCLA conference was for the University of California Consortium of Language Learning and Teaching -- let's see, that acronym is UCCLLT. (No cute acronym for this one!) The first evening's banquet and plenary session was at the very exclusive, hidden-away Luxe Hotel off Sunset Boulevard in a part of town that less than 1% of Angelenos can afford to buy a house in. Of course there was only valet parking. Since I was a "local", at least I didn't have to pay to stay there. The conference itself was really unusually affordable, however - just over $70 - so it really was an efficient use of money for my job search.

Very soon after entering the tone-y, but very minimal lobby, I met the chair of the consortium, a professor at UC Davis who regularly attends another conference I go to: CALICO (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium). He was actually one of the last people I socialized with at Michigan State at last year's conference, and at the time he said "Well, you have the PhD now, which proves you can run the academic hurdles. The actual degree isn't so important." I'll be emailing him this weekend to see if there are any positions in the UC system of campuses that involve developing language materials.

The most helpful "contact" at the conference was a professor emeritus from UCLA, Tom Hinnebusch, who has been involved in Swahili and East African studies for many years and is currently working on a government grant program to catalog language resources for all major languges. I met with him at his home back in February, and he was the one who suggested the UCLA conference. He insisted on my joining him at the conference lunch and introduced me to several people. He's kind of taken on a mentor role with me, which I have absolutely no objections to! :-)

And at the UCLA conference he mentioned that he would be attending the Madison conference for Less Commonly Taught Languages that was coming up the following weekend. I had been dimly aware that such a conference was later in the year, but here it was a week away! I debated whether to attend or not but decided in the end that it was too valuable a networking opportunity not to go. Fortunately, even with such little advance notice, I could still find a plane fare on Midwest Airlines for just under $300. (If it had been over $500 I doubt I would have considered the idea much longer.)

April 28-30

The conference in Madison was for the National Council on the Less Commonly Taught Languages) -- or NCLCTL. (One of their acronyms is "nickel-tickle", which makes it all sound highly professional! One speaker from Stanford said she preferred to call it the "National Council on the Less Commonly Financed Languages, which comes out even worse: "nickel-fickle"!)

"Less Commonly Taught Languages" is the new catch-all term for anything that isn't Spanish, French or German -- basically, all the languages you can only find at universities, including some biggies like Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Post 9/11 there is suddenly a new value on these languages for national security, and consequently there is a sudden flood of new federal funding for teaching them, including the big buzz at the conference, the NSLI program (National Security Language Initiative) that Bush announced just a month or so ago.

This was a three-day conference for marathoners. Most usually break up by Saturday evening, but this one continued doggedly on through Sunday lunch. But since I had no commitments to any particular speaker sessions, I could wander the exhibitor area and chat up the reps (keeping an ear out for job opportunities).

One booth had materials from a government-funded language program at Michigan State, one of whose exhibitors I already knew from other conferences. Talking to them, I learned that MSU had just been given a grant (less than a week prior!) to develop a K-16 (kindergarten through senior year in college) "flagship" program in Michigan schools. Since 9/11, the government has come to realize that it needs more citizens with real expertise in "strategic" or "critical" languages like Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, etc., and so it has started these flagship programs at various locations around the country, usually where there are "heritage speakers" of the language already present. For Chinese, for example, one model flagship program is in Portland, Oregon. Michigan, especially the Detroit area, has the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the US, so that was a very natural choice for an Arabic flagship program. I immediately emailed the head of the program (not at the conference) to introduce myself and my Mideast background and inquire whether there might be newly funded positions as part of the grant. This is actually one of the most exciting (to me) prospects out there at the moment.

One other person who has been a key resource for me was also at the conference in addition to Hinnebusch - Dora Johnson from the Center for Applied Linguistics in DC. I had first met her at her talk on K-12 Arabic programs in the US at the Baltimore conference back in November, and we have been in email contact a number of times. She also took on a mentor role at the conference, introducing me to others she thought might be interested in my qualifications, including the head of San Diego State's Langnet computer project, which is gathering electronic language materials online as resources for language teachers all over the country. (I don't think she was impressed with me very much, since Dora threw us together just after I had gotten to the conference Saturday morning, a time of day when I am at my catatonic "best".)

I only had a day and a half for post-conference personal visits, so I only managed to meet with a few friends and family, including some old Aramco friends who live in the Madison area, Tom and Karen Witte, and Karen's sister Marge Johannsson, who was one of our family's best friends in Dhahran. We met, appropriately, at a Turkish restaurant on State Street. Sunday night I spent with Uncle Tom and Chris up in Plymouth, who are now living in an "empty nest" with all three kids grown up and working. Joe and Rachel are in the Minneapolis area, and Peter is in Milwaukee. My flight back to LA was early Tuesday AM, so it worked well to be able to stay over Monday night with some old Illinois friends, the Chubbuck's, who live close to the Milwaukee airport.

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Well, May 15, 2006 will be one year since I graduated with my doctorate from U. Illinois. It's a psychological anniversary, as well. I have told myself over the past year that I would give myself one year "off" if necessary to get other personal projects done and research careers, but by a year later, I would have to start applying for real job positions. That anniversary is just one week off now!