The Southerner Journal

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - I just finished grading finals.

I got up at 4:30 a.m. to drive 100 miles to Monticello to make sure those grades were submitted by the 10 a.m. deadline. You may wonder why I’d leave so early. It turns out my office computer caught a malware virus last week that kept me from entering grades online as it had to be completely rebuilt. Joy. I digress.

So I arrived at 6:45 a.m. without coffee or breakfast (my stomach’s acting up) to finish adding things up and checking everything twice, which allowed me to submit them by hand just before 10 a.m.

Once that was done, I had to direct maintenance workers to help move my three-room lab into one small room. I thought it might work, maybe, not likely, but I’d gone so far as to diagram the room to indicate table placement: four 8-foot tables, two 5-foot tables and a 4-foot desk. Notice, I’ve given lengths. Unfortunately, the 8-foot tables were so wide, only three would fit.

Considering I wanted to return to North Little Rock to spend some time with my best friend (who just got back from Iraq), I became somewhat flustered, but the cold and blustery day made my face red anyway. (True, but silly; I couldn’t help it.) I invited the dean to take a look. He did and even found some thinner 4-foot tables that we might be able to line the walls with. God bless Dean Spencer.

So I’m thinking my day’s getting better. I grab glass from some folks (as I’m known to occasionally do since we recycle in NLR) and head 100 miles north. It’s cold, dreary, rainy … and I’m happy to be heading back, listening to Widespread Panic, watching for the troopers and the cars sliding off the road, waiting in a traffic jam crossing the river bridge and another on the Levy overpass.

Upon arriving home, I receive a phone call from the mother of one of my students. What?! (you incredulously ask) Her MOM? Seriously. At college? Actually a university. Granted, it’s not the first time I’ve had a parent inappropriately contact me. One man came to the door of my class while I taught to find out if his daughter was making it to class. He wanted her to graduate and was tired of paying for it.

But I can say this is a first. Never before has a parent called me, especially to bitch at me. (That’s why I don’t teach high school.) But here I am, phone stuck to my ear, explaining that I cannot talk to her about her daughter’s grades as it violates federal law (FERPA), explaining I’m taking her call purely as a courtesy, and if the student wants to talk, I needed to speak with her.

“I don’t wanna talk to him!” I hear her screaming in the background, just before the phone clicked. Damn, she even hung up on me.

At first, I got a little peeved. But then I realize this happened two days after I met the mother of a former student, who nearly had tears in her eyes thanking me for helping her son become independent enough to strike out on his own. Maybe it’s karma?

Whatever. After that, I found it easy to get online and read the other complaints about grades. I can cut-and-paste the course requirements right into the e-mails, so it’s easy to explain why things didn’t turn out as planned … without seeing anyone face-to-face or listening to an early 20-something’s mother as she bitches at me over the cellphone. (sigh)

A group known as the YesMen spoofed the New York Times this morning. OK, you may say, putting up this fake Web site could be done by almost anyone. But going to the trouble of making and distributing a print edition to the morning commuters?

That’s genius .

MONTICELLO, Ark. — I recently attended the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers annual conference in Kansas City, Mo. Students seemed worried that the media as we know it will not be there once they get out of school.

Who’s to blame them considering the continual death tolls:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29carr.html

Considering we’ve just gone from three national daily newspapers to two, who’s to provide the news if the profits from the print product disappear? Who’s to say the Christian Science Monitor won’t figure it out?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1029/p25s01-usgn.html

But just when everyone says newspapers are dying, along comes a historical event and EVERYBODY wants a paper:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/obama.newspapers.ap/index.html

Personally I believe newspapers will stay around as long as smaller communities exist, and as long as people need something to read while taking public transportation, going to the bathroom or sitting under a tree. Truly, time will tell.

MONTICELLO, Ark. — I received the following warning from our Information Technology team at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Thought you might want to be cautious:

Original release date: November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am Last revised: November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am

US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Readiness Team) is aware of public reports of email attacks circulating that are related to the recent U.S. presidential election. The email messages appear to be coming from a seemingly legitimate source and contain a message indicating that additional news coverage of the election is available by following a link. The link (see example below) directs users to a website that appears to contain a video of the president elect. The website will instruct the user to update to a new version of Adobe Flash Player in order to view the video. This update is not a legitimate Adobe Flash Player update; it is malicious code. If the user downloads this executable file, malicious code may be installed on the system.

US-CERT encourages users to take the following preventative measures to mitigate the security risks:

  * Install antivirus software, and keep the virus signatures up to date.

  * Do not follow unsolicited links.

  * Use caution when visiting untrusted websites.

  * Use caution when downloading and installing applications.

  * Obtain software applications and updates directly from the  vendor’s website.

Relevant Url:

<http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001530.html>

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Moms carried small children on their hips while the pre-teens looked around in disgust. Elderly women moved ahead to sit down while their husbands kept their place in line. Younger men and women spoke in hushed tones. Though crowded, nobody wanted to leave and miss their chance.

Early Christmas shopping? Nope; the line that stretched around the inside lobby of Laman Library held hundreds of citizens taking the opportunity to vote early as Arkansas’ polls opened Monday, Oct. 20.

A Long Wait — As I got into the end of the line, I noticed it stretched along the library’s back wall and past the children’s library.

I arrived around 11:10 a.m. after purchasing $2.23 gas at the Indian Hills Kroger on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. I thought the gas line was long, but I wasn’t prepared for the line to vote. The last time I practiced early voting, it was an in-and-out affair as very few people took advantage.

That’s not the case this year. Luckily, I kept speaking with a corrections’ officer through the wait, passing the time and being continually amazed at the numbers of people who kept pouring in the doors. I’m sure he said something about the turnout first, maybe along the lines of “This just shows people want a change.” I just remember saying it did my heart good to see so many people wanting to exercise their Constitutional right.

We discussed the issues while moving inch-by-inch, around the outside wall while trying not to disturb the library patrons working on the computers but having no choice but to glance at their computer screens as we moseyed by. A middle-aged woman tried breaking in line. No one said anything to her, but she must have gotten hot under the collar as the stares could’ve sent knives into her back; she finally moved to the end of the line, all the way back across the lobby.

Keep on coming — This shot looks back to where the line started when I arrived at the right end of the bookshelf (where the man wearing a green shirt stands). By the time we left the lobby, the line stretched past the left end of the bookshelf into the foyer.

As 11:15 stretched to 12:20 and we’d made it but halfway around the lobby, I decided it’d be a good idea to call work and let them know I might be late. “It shouldn’t take too long. Now that I’m here, I want to make sure I vote,” I told Amy Meeks, the secretary of Arts & Humanities at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. She replied that it was not a problem and she’d let the dean know.

It takes roughly an hour-and-a-half to two hours for the 100-mile drive between North Little Rock and Monticello. I knew I’d be pushing it, but I’d already stood in line this long. Usually, I am not the type to wait in line at a grocery store; I’ll leave the buggy and come back later. The only similar-type lines I’ve ever found worth the wait were for student tickets to the University of Tennessee-University of Arkansas football game in 1998 and for student refund checks while an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. But to vote? I feel this election undoubtedly deserves the same rapt attention as refund checks and football tickets. Read the rest of this entry »