It's hard out here for a Ph.D.

Culled from the job listings for Spanish positions in academia, here are some of my favorite actual job requirements (institutions have not been identified to protect my ass) and a few snide remarks about them:

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 requires the university to inform you that we can only employ U.S. citizens and aliens lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Each new employee is required to present documentation verifying identity and right to accept employment. Members of protected class groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

The first part of this sounds like it was drafted by Dick Cheney. But then: protected class groups? What, like, bald eagles?

Responsibilities include teaching all levels of language classes, developing a linguistics track, ... directing and teaching in overseas programs; and participating in Spanish chapel. Interested candidates should send a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a short statement of teaching philosophy, a response to [the Institution's] Christian mission.

We enjoyed this one last year, too. I wonder what would happen if you sent a diatribe against the Institution's mission. Hey, it's a response!

[Institution] is committed to employment equity and diversity in the workplace and welcomes applications from women, visible minorities, aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity.

Visible minorities? What is this, "Soul Man"?

The applicant may be required to teach courses through alternative delivery methods.

I love this. Can you can teach in Klingon, or balanced on your head? Or maybe by playing the Telephone game? ("Psst! Cervantes is trying to subvert common notions of truthful narrators here. Pass it on!")

All faculty are required to abide by the standards of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Preference is given to members in good standing of the sponsoring Church.

I'm not sure why this is even listed on the MLA Web site, since most of us would fall under the category of serious heritics according to this institution's guidelines. This institution in the state of... uh... wait... I can figure this one out...

Background check will be conducted on the applicant selected for the position.

This is actually a job I'm applying for. I hope they can't check out my middle school record. That would be embarrassing.

Moral of the story? Arch support.

Conversation just overheard on campus:

Girl A: ... we should hang out!
Girl B: Yeah!¹
Girl A: Facebook me!
Girl B: Uh... I don't know if I'm your friend.²
Girl A: What's your last name?
Girl B: [unintelligible]
Girl A: I'll look you up!<sup>3

1</sup> It also should be noted that Girl B was wearing those flimsy flip-flops you get for free after a pedicure (something I only just encountered a month ago after my first pedicure) as normal shoes. This is the second time I've seen this on campus, signaling something of a trend. All I can think is: it'll wreak havoc on their arches!!

² Well, this is clearly ridiculous, but it makes sense in the context of the conversation. These two people are friends -- acquaintances, maybe -- but they haven't put each other on the "friend" section of their Facebook pages, so they don't know if they're virtual friends, even though the conversation they're having proves that they are, in fact, literal friends.

³ And so, instead of exchanging email addresses, or phone numbers, they return to their Facebook pages, where perhaps they will "hang out" by deciding to join the "People who like Val's Pizza but not Blondie's" group together. Who knows. I'm officially out of the loop.

2010 Census: Ethnicity becomes an essay question

No, it's not all banjos around here. Last weekend I finally caught the Chicano art exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco (closing on Oct. 22, FYI Bay Area homies). The exhibit is nothing if not vibrant and interactive: first you're presented with Cheech Marin's (yes, that Cheech Marin) collection of Chicano painting, which is almost ridiculously colorful, and mainly evokes life and struggle in the LA-area Hispanic communities. That's a vast generalization, but I'm no art historian.

Next up are video collages, mini low riders (complete with mini hydroulics so you can make 'em bounce), political posters, snippets of music -- an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink of contemporary Latino culture that, for my money, tries to incorporate too much and winds up glossing over everything equally.

What I found most interesting about the exhibit were interviews in which people discussed the varying terminology in use today to refer to people of Hispanic decent and how it these labels interact with their own identity. In language classes at Berkeley, we've been taught to refer to second- third- etc.- generation Spanish speakers as "Heritage speakers," which denotes their one foot in/one foot out situation. In the interviews, I learned the term pocho or pocha, which is generally used -- pejoratively, it seems -- inside the Mexican American community to describe people percieved as poor speakers of Spanish, who have rejected their heritage to some degree, and end up mixing Spanish and English into Spanglish. Other people interviewed described Chicano as a term that denotes political involvement on behalf of the Hispanic American community; Latino as a descriptor that's too vastly geographic (referring to Latin America) to have any real cultural significance; Hispanic as negating the indigenous heritage and concentrating only on the Spanish-conqueror heritage of these populations.

So, the bottom line is that there's no bottom line: it seems like personal preference rules the identifiers that describe Latinos, Chicanos, Hispanic Americans, Heritage Speakers, Pochos, etc. etc. This is a more complicated situation than can be discussed in a blog, raising questions from the viability and adecuacy of so-called pure language to the morphing ways that immigrant communities and populations identify themselves as their contact with a country of origin becomes diluted over the course of several generations.

But things to think about while you're makin' that low rider spark, m'ijo.

Dueling banjos

As I sit here waiting for my students to email me thesis statements for their big midterm paper -- about a third are now an hour late -- I can't help but think about banjos. I really like banjos (this is an example of a very, very weak thesis statement). This week I saw two back-to-back concerts involving banjos: Tuesday night's stellar Crooked Still show at the Freight and Salvage; then Wednesday night's exceptional Sufjan Stevens show at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.
Crooked Still is a bluegrass band that really rocks out at times, and on Tuesday their ever-strange cellist was wearing a flaming pink suit and speaking in an Indian accent. The banjo player was a sub from their normal banjo player (who has a delightful 'fro), but he sure knew how to pick a tune and tame a fret.
Sufjan Stevens is difficult to characterize, although I've heard him referred to as "folk rock," which is probably about right. His 30+ piece band (including strings, a saw, horns, a celeste and the Pacific Mozart Chorus) all wore enormous butterfly wings. Sufjan is the banjo player, and in the middle of all that orchestration, the banjo just floated above, tying the whole spectacle together.
Now that I think about it, Crooked Still and Sufjan Stevens aren't all that different. Any genre of music can only be enhanced by a banjo player's prowess. Now that's a strong thesis statement.

Wedding Battle Scars

• Two skinned and bruised knees, obtained after slipping on my wrap while polka-ing with Mom to the Beer Barrel Polka. However, after said fall, I quickly regained my composure and continued to have a barrel of fun. (What means this "Zing! Boom! Ta-ra-rel!" anyway?)
• A persistent layer of permafrost hairspray and maybe a bobby pin embedded in my brain (end of night bobby pin count: 20).
• A newfound case of blog self-consciousness after having met (and electric slided) with at least half of my blog readership, one of whom became the second to demonstrate to me that among men over 60, Crocs are all the rage. I'm standing by my own opinion that they look ridiculous, however. (No offense to CBB or LAL)
  
• A wracking guilt after having forgotten to sign the wedding certificate at the reception. In my defense, I can't imagine I'm the only one out of the 200 guests to have forgotten this, and I did remember to contribute to the memory box, but this is what happens when there's an open bar and "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" to which to dance.
• Orange toenails.
• An enlarged ego, after killing with my reception toast. I also do bar mitzvahs and tailgate parties.
• An undoubtedly skewed perception that early October weekends in Madison are always 70 degrees and involve parking cars for the home football game, a fabulous wedding, brunch at Mickey's Dairy Bar and Marigold, lunch at Paisan's, excellent views of the sparkling waters of Lake Mendota, dinner at Tutto Pasta, drinks at Paul's Club, a harvest moon floating above the Capitol, the State Street Gallery Crawl, beers on the Terrace, trading zingers with high school pals, playing with Legos, and doing the chicken dance in a fancy dress. Same time next year, everyone?