Samir Chopra's Blog, page 38

Long Island University’s Labor Day Gift To The Nation: A Faculty Lock-Out

Some university administrators manage to put up a pretty good front when it comes to maintaining the charade that they care about the education of their students–they dip into their accessible store of mealy mouthed platitudes and dish them out every turn, holding their hands over their hearts as paeans to the virtues of edification are sung by their choirs of lackeys. Some fail miserably at even this act of misrepresentation and are only too glad to make all too clear their bottom line is orthogonal to academics. Consider, for instance, the folks at Long Island University who have kicked off the new academic semester in fine style:

Starting September 7, the first day of the fall semester at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, classes will be taught entirely by non-faculty members—not because the faculty are on strike, but because on the Friday before Labor Day, the administration officially locked out all 400 members of the Long Island University Faculty Federation (LIUFF), which represents full-time and adjunct faculty.

Yessir, what a fine Labor Day gift to the nation this makes.  When contract negotiations with your workers fail, well, you don’t continue trying to find an agreement in good faith; you just lock them out¹ and replace them with grossly under-qualified folks instead:

Provost Gale Haynes, LIU’s chief legal counsel, will be teaching Hatha yoga….Rumor has it that Dean David Cohen, a man in his 70s, will be taking over ballet classes scheduled to be taught by Dana Hash-Campbell, a longtime teacher who was previously a principal dancer and company teacher with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

As Deb Schwartz at The Nation notes–quoting Deborah Mutnick, a professor of English and a member of the union executive committee–LIU President Kimbery Cline’s administration has sought to “accrue a surplus budget,” succeeded by “firing people,” and is apparently guided by the principle that “the primary goal of the university is to improve its credit rating.”  That strategy sounds suspiciously familiar, as it should, for it is taken straight out the corporate playbook. Remember how we were told the productivity of American workers had increased in the 1980s? And then we found out it was because fewer workers were employed, and they were all working longer hours.

Such emulation of the corporate world is precisely what university administrators aspire to, of course. The same plush offices, the same air of self-satisfied importance, the same deployment of incomprehensible jargon spoon-fed to them by management consultants, the same glib throwing about of that reprehensible phrase ‘the real world.’

An unsafe worker in one workplace means unsafe workers everywhere; the wrong lessons are learned all too quickly by the bosses. LIU’s tenured and unionized faculty have been treated reprehensibly here in Brooklyn; this is a dangerous precedent and those who ignore the message it sends do so at their own peril.

Note #1:  Kevin Pollitt, a labor relations specialist with New York State United Teachers, notes that this is the first time that higher-ed faculty have ever been locked out, an achievement that LIU administration can brag about to their monetization-happy fans.

Hillary Clinton Prepares The Inaugural Ball’s Invitee List

This is an election season about the rich, the richer, and the richest. As it should be, since multimillionaires are running for election, and on their way to the presidency, hanging out with the folks who will have the most access to them after the coronation. In this regard, just like in the election polls, Hillary Clinton has Donald Trump beat. As The New York Times reports, fund-raising and schmoozing on the Clinton campaign trail is going swimmingly well, even if it has meant that the usual bread-and-butter events like news conferences, speeches, and rallies have been consigned to the sidelines:

Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public. But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour….And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.

“It’s the old adage, you go to where the money is,” said Jay S. Jacobs, a prominent New York Democrat.

Mrs. Clinton raised about $143 million in August, the campaign’s best month yet. At a single event on Tuesday in Sagaponack, N.Y., 10 people paid at least $250,000 to meet her, raising $2.5 million.

If Mr. Trump appears to be waging his campaign in rallies and network interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s second presidential bid seems to amount to a series of high-dollar fund-raisers with public appearances added to the schedule when they can be fit in. Last week, for example, she diverged just once from her packed fund-raising schedule to deliver a speech.

There ain’t no fear and loathing on this campaign trail, one that winds through the playgrounds of the rich and the powerful, just old friends getting together over caviar, canapes, and champagne, swapping stories about the old days, looking ahead to returning to the White House–AKA ‘the Fat Cat Motel’–and the good ol’ days of sleepovers in the Queens Bedroom and the Lincoln Bedroom. Perhaps, after dinner, Bubba will play the saxophone in the smoking lounge while Chelsea looks through her Rolodex and dreams of 2032. (Charlotte will have to wait a little longer.)

It was never going to be any other way. Once the debris of the hopeless dreamers and idealists had been brushed off the path, there was only one cavalcade that was going to roll down it. The ‘old adage’ works the other way too; the money goes where the power is. Let us not be surprised then, once the smoke has cleared after this election, if the priorities of the new administration show a distinct slant, if its manifestos show the imprint of dollar signs.

Top Ten Reasons America Needs Taco Trucks On Every Corner

Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, ‘warned’ the United States about an impending disaster in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC on Thursday night:

My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.

Mr. Guiterrez does not seem to have done his homework on this. Taco trucks on every corner are hardly a threat to America. Rather, they represent a golden opportunity for all kinds of invigoration of our increasingly moribund republic. Indeed, it is not too hard to think of several–to be precise, ten–reasons why they do. Without further ado, here they are. (The numbering of the list below does not indicate any prioritization of any kind; these reasons are equally important for the continued health and prosperity–in several dimensions–of great nation.)

10: Late-night revelers will wonder what old-timers are talking about when they speak of ‘hangovers;’ no drinker will go to bed hungry, an achievement every developed nation should be proud of.

9: Mongolian barbecue will never, ever, make a comeback. Unless the folks in the trucks start offering fusion specials.

8: As Spanish moves toward becoming the US’ first language, it is imperative American citizens acquire adequate proficiency in this language of our new colonizers; the unavoidable and indeed, almost obligatory, daily conversational encounter with taco vendors–who, we can be pretty sure, will not bother to learn English–will greatly facilitate this process. (Though our children will certainly never be able to appreciate the pleasures of asking, and receiving an answer to, that age-old question, “Donde puedo encontrar un camión de tacos?”)

7: America’s chronic constipation problem, which forces millions of young and old uptight Americans to force oversized bran muffins down their gullets every morning–washed down with a bitter brown water mysteriously referred to as ‘coffee’–will vanish overnight.

6: The irritating gluten-free craze, which has turned many of our friends and family members into aggravating proselytizers, will finally run out of steam; Americans will go back to eating, guilt-free, all the cake and bread and pizza they want, thus restoring America to its former glutinous greatness.

5: ‘Soft shell or hard shell?’ will soon morph to ‘soft or hard?’ thus providing endless entertainment for pre-teens, late-night talk-show hosts, and the occasional presidential candidate. (Sometimes bloggers too.)

4:  They’ve got your dietary disruption right here. And there. Come to think of it, everywhere.

3: Soccer fans will enjoy the opportunity to feast on tacos in lieu of corner kicks; players will appreciate the possibility of a quick chorizo or lengua taco special while they are writhing on the ground next to the corner flag.

2: Salsa will displace that abomination, ketchup, from grocery shelves; french fries will become American, thus obviating the need to forego them the next time France doesn’t sign on for a bombing campaign in the Middle East.

1: Remember the Alamo? Me neither. Bring on the taco trucks. I can’t be bothered to make dinner tonight.

A Literary Semester To Look Forward To

This fall semester, I will teach three classes; all feature literary components. They are: ‘Political Philosophy,’ ‘Philosophical Issues in Literature,’ and ‘Existentialism.’ The following are their course descriptions:

Political Philosophy: Shakespeare and Political Theory

In this class, we will read Shakespeare’s famous ‘history plays’—Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V–as political theory texts. We will set up our reading of these texts with ‘realist’ classics from political theory—Machiavelli and Hobbes to begin with, and then after reading Shakespeare, Nietzsche–and investigate their resonances with Shakespeare’s writings. We will be primarily concerned with that prime political entity, power: its seizing, sharing, retaining, usurpation, and deployment.

Existentialism:

Rare is the philosophical doctrine that straddles literature and philosophy as effortlessly as existentialism. Sometimes thought to be a purely French twentieth-century phenomenon, existentialism is both a philosophical position with a long pedigree and a literary movement with global presence and presence. In this class, we will examine literary and philosophical works in an effort to unpack existentialism’s central theses, understand their significance, and evaluate the works from a moral, political and metaphysical perspective. Among other things, we will explore why existentialism is held to be an atheist philosophy, why it resonates with Buddhism, and how it avoids charges of nihilism.

Philosophical Issues in Literature: The Legal Novel

In this class we will read several ‘legal novels’ closely to examine their particular literary take on issues of philosophical significance: What is the nature of law? Why do we obey the law? What obligations does it impose on us? Must we always obey the law? How we should interpret a legal text? What is the relationship between law and morality? What is the moral and political significance of the gap between the theory and the practice of the law? Are the pretensions of the law a sham? Is the law just an instrument of the strong to keep the weak in check? Can the law ever find the ‘truth’ in its courts? And so on.

Reading List:

James Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust , Harvest Books, (1965);
Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent , Hachette, (1990);
Ian McEwan, The Children Act, Anchor, (2015);
Kermit Roosevelt, Allegiance ,  Regan Arts, (2015);
Reserve (Time Permitting): Leonard Scascia, Equal Danger, NYRB Books,  I

I have taught both ‘Political Philosophy‘ and ‘Philosophical Issues in Literature‘ before but this semester’s syllabi are new. ‘Existentialism’ is a new venture for me. Which means that I have three new classes to teach this semester, a task intimidating and exciting in equal measure. Moreover, I have never taught Shakespeare before, so I face a particularly interesting challenge in taking that task on. (I have recommended that my students watch Sam Mendes‘ The Hollow Crown to supplement their readings of the history plays; these cinematic versions are absolutely superb and bring Shakespeare’s words and characters to life most vividly.)

Much could go wrong in the weeks ahead; but if things come off the way I’ve hoped and planned, this could be one of my best semesters of teaching here at Brooklyn College. Well then, once more into the breach, my dear friends.

On Not Being Able To Knot (A Tie)

I cannot knot a tie; I never learned to. Thankfully, my work responsibilities do not require me to self-induce asphyxiation on a regular basis and so I can eschew the wearing of one to work. On the rare occasions that I wear a jacket–the last occasion was in September 2014, when I officiated a friend’s wedding–I go tie-free; it’s a more dashing look. Or so I’m told. And so I press on, reassured that the absence of a tie in my sartorial arsenal does not leave me inadequately armed for this world’s challenges.

Things weren’t supposed to be this way. As a young boy, my father’s occasional tied-and-suited look struck me as impossibly glamorous; I too, wanted the three-piece suit, and the possibilities it seemed to entail. And the surrounding culture of formal wear and occasion-appropriate dressing beamed its approval upon such tastes.  I wore a suit and tie for the first time in boarding school; we were required to wear such an ensemble on our monthly ‘town leaves.’ That institution also required the daily wearing of ties with our school uniforms. Then, I passed over my incompetence in tie-knotting by seeking the assistance of my fellow students. I tried my hand at it myself but the end results were always a little less than inspiring, and I quickly gave up. (An old failing.) Moreover, it was easy enough to remove one’s tie at the end of the day without undoing the knot, and to save it for next day’s wear. A tie once knotted could thus be used again and again. Thus armed, I made it through two years of daily tie wear. Later, when my father’s three-piece suits were handed down to me, I wore them with pride and affection, scarcely believing that I was wearing the same garments I had seen him don so many memorable times. I proudly posed for many photographs in them, hoping I was displaying the same style and panache my father had so effortlessly instantiated. But I still could not knot a tie; sometimes my brother helped out, sometimes an older male relative.

Suits and ties were scarcely ever required after my school years. I wore them occasionally to weddings and interviews but I have not attended too many of either, and thus have only had to ask for tie-knotting favors on very few occasions. Once, as a graduate student, I needed a tie knotted for a job interview, and was helped by a kindly neighbor; on other instances, indulgent friends helped out. (For someone who could not knot a tie, I was impossibly picky about what I considered a good knot, thus driving some of the good samaritans who came to my aid to apoplectic fury.)

I’m a lucky man; my work does not require me to wear a tie, and I do not frequent social spaces where their wearing is an obligation. My inability to knot a tie caused me some embarrassment in the past–especially around those who for some bizarre reason took this particular capacity to be one of the essential qualities of manhood–but this particular incapacity has now become some cause for celebration. I dodged a bullet.

Prisoners As Subjects Unworthy Of Moral Concern

The Intercept notes–in an essay by Alice Speri–that ‘deadly heat’ is killing prisoners in US prisons, that state governments would much rather spend money on legal fees than on installing air conditioning. In one egregious instance, Louisiana spent one million on legal fees to avoid spending $225,000 on AC. As the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections Jimmy LeBlanc put it to the Associated Press in June, installing air conditioning at Angola would open a “Pandora’s box.” and that his “biggest concern is the impact on the whole system and the cost.” As George Gale noted in response (in a comment on my Facebook page), “I suspect what he actually means is “The public would crucify us if we air conditioned prisoners!”

Indeed.

Not too long ago. I made the mistake of reading the comments section in an online article about Orange is the New Black. There, many commentators expressed anger and dismay over the treatment of prisoners that was depicted in the show. Unfortunately, their anger and dismay was directed at the coddling that the inmates seemed to receive behind bars: They watch television! They walk around in the prison yard! They get their hair done! They had a store where they could buy stuff! One commentator finally went right ahead and said it “These women have a better life than I do.” There was something pathetic about that claim, something that spoke to just how onerous she imagined her life to be if it could be compared to that of a prisoner locked up behind bars. (This is not to say that many living outside of prison do not have qualitatively worse lives than they would have inside but I do not think this person, with an internet connection and the time to read and comment on an article about a television show, was one of them.)

Somewhere in the retributivist argument that many folks employ, the following premise is smuggled in:

If you commit a crime, and are convicted of doing so, you thereby lose all and claims to any civil, constitutional, and human rights. Indeed, you cease being a human deserving of any sort of considerate treatment. You are, after all, a convicted criminal.

It will be noticed that in this case ‘convicted criminal’ has come to mean ‘degenerate sub-human lacking those vital features which make him or her a worthy subject of moral concern.’ It’s not an eye for a eye but rather body and soul for an eye. (It should be remembered that the ‘eye for an eye’ formulation includes proportionality in its claim.) As a result, it is not enough that prisoners are denied their freedom and choice, restricted to particular spaces, told when to wake up, go to sleep, put the lights out, exercise, served particular food items and not other (with some concessions made for dietary constraints), and subjected to–among many arbitrary exercises of power–violence and sexual assault from guards and other inmates. No matter. They deserve it, they asked for it, they got what was coming, if you can’t do the time don’t do the crime, they should have thought about this before they committed the crime: the list of stern platitudes directed at convicts is never-ending, a grand testimonial to the smugness and complacency and small-mindedness of those of us on the ‘outside’ who have lost our capacity for empathy, who imagine that the strong arm of the law will never be lowered on them, who imagine that when they make a mistake, the benevolence and forgiving that has been so carefully hidden away by the world so that it can better deal with its convicts will suddenly be directed at them. It won’t; to encourage vindictive and cruel retribution directed at others is to set up a store for oneself too.

Gabriel Rockhill On Never Dying

Over at the New York Times’ The Stone, in ‘Why We Never Die‘ Gabriel Rockhill writes:

Our existence has numerous dimensions, and they each live according to different times. The biological stratum…is in certain ways a long process of demise — we are all dying all the time, just at different rhythms. Far from being an ultimate horizon beyond the bend, death is a constitutive feature of the unfolding of biological life….I am confronting my death each day that I live.

Moreover, the physical dimension of existence clearly persists beyond any biological threshold, as the material components of our bodies mix and mingle in different ways with the cosmos. The artifacts that we have produced also persevere, which can range from our physical imprint on the world to objects we have made or writings like this one. There is, as well, a psychosocial dimension that survives our biological withdrawal, which is visible in the impact that we have had…on all of the people around us. In living, we trace a wake in the world.

[O]ur physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives….intertwine and merge with the broader world out of which we are woven….Authentic existence is perhaps less about boldly confronting the inevitable reality of our own finitude than about recognizing and cultivating the multiple dimensions of our lives….They carry on in the physical world, in the material and cultural vestiges we leave, as well as in the psychological and social effects we have on those around us.

I’m fond of saying that my parents ‘live on,’ that they are ‘still alive to me.’ By this I do not mean that my parents are biologically manifest in this world. Nor am I ‘merely’ speaking metaphorically; rather, I think I’m deploying ‘alive,’ and ‘live’ in ways that are sensitive to the multiple meanings and dimensions of our existence that Rockhill is alluding to. One way in which I understood this dimension is based on a experience I had during my boarding school years. In those days, I missed my mother terribly; I was away from home for nine months. One day, while walking through campus, I looked up to see one of the glorious sunsets that my campus’ mountainous location facilitated; as I admired the exquisite display put on my for enjoyment, I suddenly felt comforted by the fact that the same sun shone down on my mother, hundreds of miles away at my home. At that moment, the physical distance between the two of us felt insignificant; my mother was not ‘biologically’ or ‘physically’ present, but she was present in other ways. In memory, in thought, in a placement in my life that could only be described by the word ‘presence.’ She was no longer a ghost without substance. That perception of her presence in my life has not changed with her death: she influences my actions and thoughts; she informs my various decisions, moral and political; she serves as inspiration and moral guidepost. Her letters to my father, the books she read; these continue to inform me of who she was and the life she lived. My memories of her animate my relationships with my wife and my daughter; they provide me guidance in those vital spheres. My evaluative sense of myself is often based in large part on reconciling her perceptions of me with my perceptions of myself. I could, with little difficulty, make similar assessments of the presence of my father in my life.

My parents are not non-existent; they are biologically dead, but they are not ‘artifactually’ or ‘psychosocially’ so.

Colin Kaepernick Will Not ‘Behave’ And That’s A Damn Good Thing

Colin Kaepernick, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers will not stand during the playing of the national anthem at NFL games. As he put it, after refusing to stand during the 49ers against the Packers this past weekend:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color….To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way….There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

And he is prepared for the consequences, for after all, his employer, NFL fans and sponsors, and the media could, and almost certainly will, turn on him:

I have to stand up for people that are oppressed….If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.

There are several interesting aspects to Kaepernick’s stance. First, and perhaps most importantly, there is no ambiguity about his stance. This is not a call to ‘come together,’ to ‘heal,’ to ‘forget and forgive’; this is not a bromide or a platitude to split the difference and maintain a quiescent state of affairs. This is a combative gesture of protest, one designed to be provocative, aimed against a symbol that is all too quickly used as protective cover by insecure patriots. They will soon issue the usual furious canards about how Kaepernick has ‘insulted’ those ‘who have died for the country defending our freedoms.’ Second, in so doing, Kaepernick is not merely taking aim at the police; he is indicting a much larger set of institutions, cultures, and practices. Indeed, by rejecting a classical gesture of respect for a national symbol, Kaepernick is rejecting the claims of the nation upon him, one to whom he feels his allegiance should not be directed as long as it does not fulfill its end of the citizenship bargain.

Athletes taking a political stance are not unknown. Some professional athletes have to be pressured or shamed into doing so; they speak up quickly and retreat, worried that their livelihood as will be jeopardized. The First Amendment will not protect them against their private employers. Others–like Mohammad Ali or Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Olympics–made more explicit gestures of protest and paid the price. In the American context, because so many athletes are African-American, they can expect that the responses to their political statements will be infected by a racism and anger and contempt that they know is never too far from the surface of their most dedicated fans. They know they are expected to be ‘good blacks’: do your act, entertain us, and when you are done, leave the stage quietly; do not stick around to torment our conscience or force introspection upon us; we like our athletes compliant and docile; do not remind us of where you came from and what you might identify with; indeed, you have no other identity than that given to you by your contract and your employer.

Colin Kaepernick has just refused compliance with these orders. He deserves our respect and admiration and support.

Standing Back And Letting The World And The Child Do Their Thing

Last summer, I met an old graduate school friend after several years. We chatted and exchanged notes about the intervening years and all the issues that had consumed us in that interim: finding an academic position, the dreaded tenure and promotion process, writing, and of course, bringing up children. Because I came to fatherhood late, we found ourselves talking about very different phases of parenting. At one stage in our conversation, while talking about her teenaged son, she remarked that she had been struck by how–after a certain age, perhaps as early as five or six, her son had, in a manner, grown up on his own with little ‘direct input’ from her; she had watched, in some amazement, as her awkward little boy, thanks to his own peculiar and particular interactions with the world around him, and consumed by his own curiosity and drive, had blossomed into a supremely interesting and ‘switched-on’ young man. She had brought him into this world, but he had built his own relationship with it, found his space within it and partaken of its many offerings, utilizing them in his life as needed, bringing to fruition his own interests and desires. (Forgive me, ‘J,’ if I’m not reproducing your observations with the appropriate fidelity.)

I listened with great interest. I realized that, as part of a thought related to some observations I offered here about parenting, I had often hoped for the world to ‘support’ my parenting; that, exhausted and anxious about whether I was ‘doing it right,’ I had worried that my partner and I were not going to be able to do this bringing-up thing by ourselves; we needed help. What ‘J’ had been experiencing and reporting on to me, was precisely that kind of ‘help.’ For the right place to look for aid with our parenting, for support in our efforts to ‘raise’ our child as best as we could, was at our child herself and the world she encountered: what she would do on her own, in the world she saw and experienced, with her own perspectives and orientations and interests. ‘J’s observations resonated with the kinds of statements I had heard other parents make: they were often amazed and surprised by what their children ‘brought home’ with them, by what they had learned on their own, and indeed, how they had broadened their parents’ horizons in so doing.

It’d be entirely dishonest of me to say I experienced anything other than relief at hearing ‘J’s remarks. Perhaps there was some hope in this parenting business after all; perhaps I didn’t need to be so intimidated and oppressed by the thought that I would transmit my dysfunctionalities and incompetences to my child; perhaps I needed to wait and watch as much as I needed to intervene and guide; perhaps, to let myself be guardedly optimistic as well consumed by my usual despondency, I should prepare myself for the pleasant surprises that await me as a result of the forthcoming interactions between my daughter and the world we’ve brought her into.

Colorado Notes – IV: The Outdoor Act That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Apparently bears shit in the woods.¹ What about hikers? Forget about ‘going’ in outer space. How do you ‘go’ in the great outdoors? The answer to this question scares many off from overnight camping, sending them back to the safety of the trailhead, the car, and then, onwards to modern civilization’s greatest achievement: the indoor toilet, complete with flushing system, toilet paper rolls, liquid soap dispensers, and towels. There’s no getting away from it: the call of nature must be answered, even if in the midst of, er, nature. Everyone poops; that fact does not go on vacation when you do.

And it ain’t straightforward, for the list of standards and guidelines to be followed are extensive, with conformance to them expected by all those you share the trail with: be discreet, sparing fellow campers a sight that cannot be unseen; stay away from water sources for those who transmit E coli to drinking sources are condemned to damnation; dig holes with a shovel for disposal of waste; do not use non-biodegradable wipes, otherwise, you need to pack it out (yes, pack it all out).  The physical requirements are equally onerous: deep squatting is a physical movement that makes many of us uncomfortable, but until Portosans start dotting the landscape–a fate too grim to comprehend–it is the only way to facilitate you-know-what. In ever so slightly buggy environments, some protective hand waving is required as well, up top and down below. (I cast my mind, ruefully, back to some New Zealand experiences involving sand flies; my rear end complained for several days afterwards.)

Morning rituals at camp are mostly uncomfortable and bothersome; stiff and sore bodies roll out of damp tents to pack up and get moving; the trip to the ‘outhouse’ is an important component therein. The dread that precedes it is, however, matched, if not surpassed by the almost euphoric sensation that follows its completion: body, mind, and step lightened, the hiker is ready to face the trail, its challenges suddenly less onerous. Cover on the trail is always harder to find; better to get things out of the way and set off with a clean slate (among other things.) Feel that skip in your step? You won’t if you don’t lighten up. Literally.

Despite my knowing tone above, I’m not an expert yet in the fine arts of outdoor pooping. And neither have I yet won mastery over the anxiety and angst that envelops the conception and execution of the act. My only consolation is the anticipation of that much-awaited–if stiff and painful to begin with–standing up and walking back to campsite with a huge grin on my face, now suddenly prepared to hoist those recalcitrant forty pounds or so on my back and get walking. With thoughts of next morning’s anticipated deeds held in abeyance.

Note #1: So I’m told. I’ve never seen one, nor have I ever come across any photographic or video evidence to this effect. Testimonial evidence and all that.