Patricia Myers

This weekend my husband and I were watching our favorite morning show ‘Up with Chris Hayes’. I like this show because it makes me think. Each weekend intelligent, interesting, and well-informed people discuss the issues. I can almost feel my brain gaining density as I listen to the conversation. In the last segment of the show four fiction authors were the focus. Ayana Mathis, author of ‘The 12 Tribes of Hattie’, used the term ‘severely impoverished’ in making her point.

She waited nervously for me to arrive. Her daughter had told her that she needed to see me and that she didn’t really have a choice. She was standing at the front door waiting. Her sweater was pulled tightly around her for protection against the still cold February breeze. As I pulled into her driveway, childhood memories of my grandparents and then my parents flashed into my mind. They too stood by the front porch waiting. Waiting as we arrived to visit, or even worse, waiting as we left them alone yet again returning to the busyness of our lives. They would stand there waving as we drove from sight.

I am in the midst of teaching a course on social justice in which I use Sue and Sue’s (2008) well known text which requires an examination of areas of personal and systemic prejudice, bias and privilege. It is within this framework that I have been assessing the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State. Rereading Mark Kiselica’s introductory remarks (who coincidentally attended Penn State for his doctorate) was a timely reminder that we are both the products of and contributors to our culture. As I’ve read numerous articles on what the Penn State story entailed it has become clear that the culture at this university both produced and supported behaviors and beliefs while maintaining spoken and unspoken rules around who could speak up and who would be believed.

Last spring my husband came home from work with the news that he had been laid off again. This was the third time in the past few years that he’d been laid off. The difference this time was in the finality of the decision as there would be no call back to work. The past five months have been spent trying to adjust to the new normal of life in the ranks of the unemployed. We are certainly not alone. We are the 99%. The unemployment rate for Oregon in August was 9.6% with 21 of the state’s 36 counties in double digits with a high of 15.6%. Of the 14 million estimated to be out of work nationally, 75% have been unemployed for more than six months and 50% have been out of work for over two years. The academic reality of what it is like to be unemployed is evidenced in a recent Rutgers two year study where 32% of participants stated there were under “a good deal of stress” and 47% were under “some stress”. 11% of those in the Rutgers study had sought professional help for clinical depression. Those people were more fortunate than most as the majority of the unemployed can’t seek professional counseling due to loss of employer paid insurance coverage.

As a university professor for the past 17 years I have come to cherish summer break. Time off from school allows me to recharge my mind, my spirit, and my aging body. Typically I spend summers reading as many books as possible, watching as much baseball as possible, and working in my garden for as long as my back and my knees allow. This summer I am preparing for written comps in my doctoral program. Wanting to be intentional about my preparations, my goal was that my only reading would be professional. That intent lasted for about a week and then my soul cried out to be fed. Fear not my dear doctoral advisor as my fun reading is limited to however long I can keep my eyes open at bedtime.