ScarlettHill

Wheeee!

I got some work. Hooraaaaaaah!!!!

'Course it's not a whole job, not yet anyway, but it's a foot in the door. Just got a message from the VP of the college downtown to come see him Thursday - wants me to edit the faculty handbook. Just a freelance jobby but it's a start. I really want to work at that college 'cos it's full of cool liberal hippies like me and also they get 12 holidays, 12 sick days and a week at Christmas. I had a part-time offer there but I need full-time and turned down something elsewhere in the hopes of getting something at my fave college and have been having a mild inner panic ever since! Kids are back at school Monday and I had just decided this morning to take anything at all from Monday - which probably meant one of those awful phone jobs that only want me for my accent.

YAY!!! A reprieve!!!


Regards
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Scarlett

Pimpbot

Liberals in Texas?? whatever next, someone will be telling me its a dry heat


Congrats

NC Penguin

Congrats! I'm working at a local, nationally known university in Durham. Like you, it's a foot in the door to the world of work in the US.

Unforrtunately, this place is far from liberal but it's fulltime and keeps me out of trouble!!



NC Penguin

ScarlettHill

I got to know quite a few of the profs the same time I got to know my husband. We were all part of a poetry website. A lot of them (not my hubby, he's the baby of the bunch) were around when the college opened in the 60s - one of the community colleges that was all about getting education available to more people for less money. In England I was planning to work for the OU eventually. I love the way these institutions level the playing field a little for people whose lives/finances mean they can't do the middle-class thing. But that's my hobby horse.

Up the workers!!!



Regards
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Scarlett

ScarlettHill

Cheers!

Hey Dallas seems pretty liberal to me. But maybe that's the people I know. I also hear we have a crime rate here higher than New York City. We just went to the top of the league. But I never see it. I love the multiculturalism here - my kids were growing up in a small English village in Cumbria - very beautiful but not exactly tolerant of anything much except fish 'n' chips and the local rugby team. I love that their friends speak two or three languages - in addition to the sign language they all learn at the local school, where they have better behaved kids than I ever saw at a school in England.

Regards
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SCarlett

Pulaski

Sounds about right, as soon as the liberals move in, the criminals soon follow, .... or maybe the liberals are the criminals?

ScarlettHill

Phrrrrrt!

I don't really know what a liberal is - seems often used as a derogatory term for people who don't agree with the toffs. But hey I've been called a liberal for my opinions time and again so the cap just might fit and I guess if I ever go bald I may wear it My politics are really very simple - they amount to a high volume yell across a roomful of fighting kids - BE NICE!

Regards
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Scarlett

Pulaski

Maybe that's the definition of a liberal - somebody who thinks that if you treat everyone with respect they'll all "be nice".

The rest of us realists know that it ain't gonna happen and that we need to secure what is ours, lock up the crooks, .... and execute some of them!

Stumpyguy

Interesting cultural observation: in America liberalism is the great bete noir of the conservative Republicans mainly due to the historical failure of the American labour movement to gain popularity by providing an attractive political counter. In England liberalism failed as a political movement due to the lack of need for legislative support for free market mercantile capitalism, and the relative success of the English labour movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Actually now that I think about it, it also might have had something to do with rent boy scandals and BBQ'ed alsations.

ScarlettHill

I love the way you divide this up into those who know - your lot. And those who think - presumably my lot?

I plead guilty to thinking.

But your definition - it's not qot quite what I said. My kids are very nice - everybody says so. They get invited out everywhere. They're full of fun but respectful, loving and kind. But guess what? They didn't just happen to get that way. Once in a while Mr and Mrs Smack had to pay a visit to botty land along the way. There was method in my madness. I wanted nice, respectful kids and thats what I got. They haven't been smacked in a long time because they haven't needed it.

But here's the thing. I hated smacking them. And we're only talking about a smack on the hand. It wasn't retribution. It wasn't punishment for its own sake. It was never done in anger. It was more along the lines of, if you put your hands in the fire it will hurt. In the same way, if you speed along the freeway or drive while drunk you will pay a fine or lose your licence - I hope! Despite having the heart of a lentil-chewing hippie with anarchic leanings I know there need to be rules and enforcement of those rules. I don't think treating everyone with respect makes everyone respectful. I don't think asking a drunk driver please not to do it again is going to be very effective. Some things have to be taught.

Funny thing though, I never met anyone who learned respect from being treated with injustice, or learned anything by being put down like a dog.

Tell me, when you execute someone, exactly what are you teaching them and how is it going to improve their behavior? Let me see now, the lecture goes something like this, doesn't it:

Killing is wrong.
And now, let me drive that point home to you with a needle full of lethal drugs sanctioned by the state - this state that tells you killing is wrong.

Anybody confused yet?

Regards
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Scarlett

Pulaski

Ah! You're a closet conservative!!!
Not I.

(i) Everybody can learn from their own mistakes. It is smarter to learn from others' mistakes. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if you commit a murder in Texas there's a good chance you'll be executed.

(ii) So far as improving behavior - among the executed there are no repeat offenders.

ScarlettHill

LOL you try SO hard

And how you love labels - do they make you feel all snuggly and warm?



Those of you who know things with such certainty rarely suffer from confusion. I've noticed that. The older I get, the less I know with certainty, except the very basics of existence - if your neighbor is thirsty give him something to drink. If someone spits in your eye, offer him the other eyeball. If he takes your coat, offer him your mobile phone too. That old dusty stuff.

I took the doors off my closets long ago - they're far too big in America and I wanted to use the space for something other than stuffing shirts

No repeat offenders - how true. But plenty of gun-toting Texans who think killing is not wrong and therefore far too often try to take the law into their own hands. Far more killings altogether than places where murder is not legalised. And, of course, if you look at the statistics you'll find it's often us DART-rail passengers who actually need killing off for our crimes. The rich Texans can presumably be rehabilitated by daddy's money?

It must be wonderful to be so in the know, to live with such certainty.

Me? I'll stick with death and taxis!



Regards
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Scarlett

Ranjini

Sounds good, Scarlett Congratulations!!

Patrick

Congratulations Scarlett, well done

Patrick

tbiller

Hi Scarlett - congrats on the job.

Where in Cumbria were you? I only ask I worked in Barrow after college and loved the place (well, maybe not Barrow, but the Lakes especially.) Aah, nostalgia.

My darling lilberal (Californian) wife won't entertain the notion of living in TX (even though we have great friends in Dallas and Houston) as she says the first thing I'd buy would be a Dodge Ram truck with a gun rack. It scares me that she knows me so well