SEPTEMBER IN A NUTSHELL

In this edition:

A. Global Overheating - book recommendation
B. Urbana trip (Sept. 2-14)
C. Back in LA

A. Global Overheating - a book to check out

(People conventionally call it "global warming," but "warm" gives all the wrong connotations: warmth, comfort, R&R. So, I've determined henceforth to call it "global overheating." )

Just finished reading an excellent book on it published by the Atlantic Monthly, the venerable magazine of ideas and current events. It's called "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery, an Australian naturalist and former prof at Harvard. It's the most readable - and thought-provoking - book on the subject I've seen. If you like any of Jared Diamond's works, this one is comparable for its carefully selected anecdotes that stick in the mind. The paperback version goes for a little over $11, Money well spent. Also recommended is Al Gore's recent documentary movie "An Inconvenient Truth", if you can get beyond the occasional worshipful side story about Gore and his post-Clinton life. The issue is really bigger than politics, and US red-state/blue-state parochialism shouldn't get in the way of getting a good popular exposure to the dominant issue of the 21st century.

B. URBANA TRIP

One of my plans from early summer was to get back to Illinois after I finished up my ESL teaching at Cal State Long Beach. Due to some procrastination in buying the tickets (and sheer exhaustion and overwork), I didn't get around to buying the tickets till after classes ended the 18th of August. That meant the cheapest advance-purchase fares started in September.

September 2 I flew Frontier Airways to Chicago. I wanted to save money, so I got the train into the city from Midway Airport, then was going to get a Greyhound south to Champaign. It was the middle of the Labor Day weekend, and everyone was warning that LAX was going to be a zoo. Actually, it was the emptiest I've experienced in all my time going through there. (Maybe it was the Frontier terminal?) So, with a false sense of "hey, things are going pretty smoothly!" I got to the downtown bus station in Chicago ready to hop on my bus.

Slight problem. The driver of our prospective bus had gotten sick and they were looking for a replacement for him/her and the bus. Just an hour delay (they said). Meanwhile, like the case of constipation from hell, people kept flooding into the terminal but nobody seemed to be getting on buses. The lines from every door just got longer and longer. One extended, I swear, 100 feet, cutting the terminal waiting area in half. Our line for the bus to Champaign/St. Louis kept getting longer and longer, too. The one hour delay, turned into two hours, and it was getting near midnight with no bus in sight. Families were starting to camp out, sitting on the hard, cold floors, and in the line next to me a 40-ish German backpacker arrived who reeked as though he'd recently had an "accident" (whether vomiting or some colonic upset, it was hard to determine). Of course, he had to stand right across from me. Those with several people in their party elected to have one poor sap hold their place in line while the rest beat a retreat to somewhere where the air was fresher. I, being alone, had to hold my ground in the Dante-esque bus station waiting till the Lord only knew what time salvation would arrive in the form of a Greyhound Bus. A city bus (not long distance) was eventually conjured up, and we headed south, arriving about 1:30 am. My friends had left the light on for me. I hadn't the heart to ask them to pick me up at that hour! Ah, the joys of travel!

Fortunately, everything else about my Urbana trip went swimmingly. Unlike LA, sweltering in the 80s and 90s, Urbana was perfect the entire time - daily temperatures in the 70s, and only one day of rain. To space out the wear and tear of having me as a guest, I lined up four different host households over the time: George and Therese (friends from the Intensive English Institute), Ray and Heidi (friends from the community college - Ray was a former boarder in my Urbana house for a time), Seth and Laura (now youth pastors at my old church), and Joy and PT (also from the IEI).

I had scheduled get-togethers with all my former friends over the next ten days (my morning appointment, my lunchtime appointment, my afternoon, dinner, evening - you get the picture). But I also kept running into old acquaintances everywhere I went. One Sunday was typical: I attended my old church, chatting to scores of people afterwards, was invited to some old neighbors' for lunch, stopped by the pastor and his wife, who lived one house down and chatted for a spell, then walked back to my host house down tree-lined streets in the balmy Sunday afternoon. I passed the house of the station manager at the community radio station I had volunteered at '98-'02 and rang the bell. He answered, invited me in, and then invited me to the neighborhood bar-b-que next door, where they were cooking brats and soy burgers on the grill. So, I accepted a beer (in bottle, of course) and stood around conversing for about an hour before meandering on. Several minutes later, I was brought to a standstill by a voice calling "Paul!" A former colleague from the IEI was on his bike to do some catch up work at the office. We stood and chatted for a while. It was out of some stereotypical "lazy, hazy days of summer" beer commercial.

One afternoon, I was invited to a Brazilian Independence Day party (Sept. 7) put on by the tiny Portuguese Program, where I used to volunteer. One of the long-term TA's invited me, especially since one of the old language profs would be visiting just that day. Rosangela was in charge of Portuguese basic language classes when I first started my relationship with the U of I's Portuguese program in '98 and had since gone to American University Beirut with her husband Ibrahim, who is Lebanese-American. They had gotten out by the skin of their teeth by chartered car through Turkey only a week before during the Israeli bombardment. I hadn't seen her since about 2002, so it was kind of a homecoming.

It was gratifying having all the personal reconnections back in Illinois - a social feast compared to my life in LA, where you have to plan and make real effort to get together with people in a city of over 6 million.

C. POST-ILLINOIS

Now that I'm blissfully unemployed (and unregistered for any classes), life is as slow and relaxed as I choose. But I am motivated by my own internal goals, namely to find "the job" after having "a job" this past summer. Teaching ESL was my first career, and you don't need a PhD for that. Meeting with two of my old dissertation committee members in Illinois gave me some fresh direction. Since my visit, I've been in contact with the University of Illinois's Continuing Education program about computer-based distance ed for foreign language. Apparently the state recently approved a huge influx of funds for that program, so money and positions are becoming available. Would I mind ending up back where I got my PhD? Not really. I'm quite at home there and still have a social network I had almost forgotten I had.

Sadly, my number-one job choice since April, the possibility of working with the the Arabic Flagship K-16 program at Michigan State looks dimmer and dimmer. Late in July they emailed about "project hires" slated for mid to late August. August came and went with no word. When I emailed earlier this September, they replied "We're good!". Apparently, they ended up hiring grad assistants for cheap. No mention of what became of the "project hires", even though I had sent them a huge package with my CV and some Arabic school materials in August. They may need new personnel as the program comes on line in the next year or so, but immediately, the prospects look slim indeed. Meanwhile, there are other jobs to apply for. I'm aiming to get one by the end of this fall - whether in LA or even overseas. My personal project time in LA is pretty much done. I'm ready to move on.

October's big event will be moving Aunt Helen from her present house into the new one we bought for her in the village (Crestline up in the mountains). Date to be arranged. That has been one of my big to-do items since I first got to LA, so I'll be very relieved to have that out of the way. Dad was after Helen for years to move to a retirement community or at least somewhere more appropriate to her 86-years before he died. It's taken three years since then to get her to go along with any other option. At least she'll stay in the town she's known for the past 20-odd years and can walk to do local errands instead of relying totally on her mountain nurse assistant once a week.