Abelisto Begs

The following is yet another email to an adminstrator.

I am not one to beg or be pushy but, at the urging of a colleague I trust greatly, I would ask that you reconsider my sabbatical for next year. A number of things are happening on campus right now that makes my proposed project very relevant, important and engaging to students:


a. Quite independent of my own interest in the topic, both ******* and ******** are seriously considering placing bee hives in the old orchard near Yons for the partial purpose of bringing the issues of sustainability and environmental concerns to the minds of those on campus. This project would be more effective if linked to a course that provided students with the social, economic, cultural and environmental factors connected to these issues.


b. The senior class is seriously discussing donating bee hives to ***** as their senior gift. This demonstrates an interest amongst students in the issues outlined in my proposal.

c. A Resource Analysis grad. student is seeking my help on his own research on bees.

d. One student is interested enough in the environmental and social issues surrounding the survival of honey bees to interview me for his journalism class.



All of the above indicate to me that a Bee focused Global Issues course would be both valuable and engaging to our students.

Social Fields

I wrote this as an email to a colleague this morning.

I've been thinking about this article all morning and think it might be useful to expand on Bourdieu's insights in relation to our own situations at ****.

Bourdieu has noticed in his own research that all social fields (e.g. **** faculty or the world of beekeeping) are arenas of social conflict and struggle where the various species of capital (e.g. economic, social, cultural, and symbolic) are _not_ the only things at stake. The winners in these struggles not only recieve the lion's share of capital, they are also given the "authority" to define what the "rules of the game" are in further struggles. Unlike a game of baseball or football where the rules stay the same no matter who wins or loses a game, the rules do not stay the same after each contest in a social field, but are changed by the winners to some degree to favor their own interests in further struggles. As I see it, this explains alot of what has happened over the last 15 years at ****.

The faculty at **** is a dominated subfield of the **** institution as a whole. The administration has "consecrated" certain members of the faculty as "leaders", either through promotion to administrative positions or as "informal", behind the scenes, leaders. Overall, these "consecrated" individuals have some characteristics that distinguish them from others:

a. (Bureaucratic Technicians) They do not engage themselves in critical/creative scholarship in their own disciplines beyond the reading of journals and textbooks. Sometimes, this is lacking.

b. They possess an incredibly extreme Protestant Work ethic. They see hardwork and busyness as a virtue in and of itself, whether that hardwork actually leads to any significant increase in "outcomes". In systems theory language, they focus more on "outputs" than on "outcomes".

I would add one other thing. For various career trajectory reasons (e.g. being an **** alumni, being hired by administration without an outside search) these individuals demonstrate an extreme loyalty to **** as an institution. While we all love SMU, many of us have other countervailing loyalties that keep us from totally "drinking the Kool-aid". I cannot ignore the debt I have to the Jesuit and the Anabaptist traditions that influenced me through college. I cannot simply ignore the critical thinking skills I've acquired from 30 odd years as a sociologist and simply say "Oh, conflict theory doesn't apply to ****. We don't have conflicts and we all have the same interests."

So, these are the qualities of those who have won, at this point, the social struggle in the faculty and so, these are also the qualities you and I are held to and judged by: (a) bureaucratic technician skills, (b) Working hard but not smart and (c) uncritical loyalty. Those of us who can't or won't live by these rules are at a disadvantage during further struggles and are easily labeled as "obstructionists", or "anti-lasallian" if we do voice objections. Even worse, like me, the institution can simply ignore them.

"Bee Glad...For the Hum Has No Ending"

I've been writing so much about the construction of the top bar hive "Metpropolis", I've failed to mention the piecing together of my more conventional hive -- "Bee Glad...For the Hum Has No Ending." It's a 10 frame Langstroth hive I've been purchasing bit by bit from betterbee.com. I will use starter strips rather than foundation, a screen bottom board, and a top hive feeder. I will locate the hive, along with "Metropolis, near our house surrounded by an 8 foot wooden fence with a locked gate.

Before you ask, this hive's name is a play on a 1960s movie title: Be Glad for the Song Has no Ending. The movie centered around my favorite group of all-time: The Incredible String Band.

Even with the cold and all the snow here in Minnesota, I've started some herb plants which I will be planting in this "gated (apiary) community".

Another Email to Global Issues Class on "Ishmael"

I had a few angry students attend class on Wednesday to review for a test. Most of the anger is focused on the book "Ishmael" again. Here is the email I sent them enititled: Some Hints.

I didn't have time to give you some helpful advice on taking the test on Friday. (Sorry about this) This is especially important for those of you who haven't taken these tests from me before. So keep the following in mind:

1. Whether you want to believe it or not, I really don't care what position you take on a given reading. What I do care about is:

2. That you understand the argument of the author fully and treat it fairly whether the author is Day, Westheimer, Kahne or Quinn.

For example, many of the "high-five" criticisms made of "Ishmael" this morning only showed me you hadn't read the book adequately since Quinn anticipates and answers those criticisms in Ishmael. Any critique you make of "Ishmael" must also take into account Quinn's answers as well. As a critical thinker, you cannot just dismiss "Ishmael" with knee-jerk responses that either distort his argument or selectively ignore pieces that don't fit into your pre-conceived ideas.

I think many of you have forgotten that I said I think "Ishmael" is a scary book. Why? Because I can't easily dismiss it and would like to at many points, just like some of you.

3. Try to avoid anecdotal evidence to support your argument. If you can't, admit that your evidence is anecdotal and leave it at that. So, for example, if you don't have systematic evidence that rich people have, lets' say, a good work ethic, and argue that they do, simply because one time you saw Donald Trump working in his garden, admit it! This is just an anecdote, a one time event, and you are building a case on that.

For those of you who want to read someone who criticizes other thinkers and does it by treating their ideas fully and fairly, read Aquinas' Summa Theologica. But remember, even Aquinas recognized he was finite.

Anyway, have fun studying,

"Healthy Bees"

I just completed the University of Minnesota's online extension course: Healthy Bees. This beginner-focused course introduces the hobby beekeeper to the various pests and diseases that currently plague honey bees in a very entertaining, accessible way. Each module of the course focuses on one hive "super-villain", presenting what entomological science currently knows about it, the preventative measures beekeepers can take against "the villain", and suggestions on what to do should "the villain" appear in your hives. Drs. Spivak and Reuter see "hard chemicals" and antibiotics as weapons of last resort, urging beekeepers to use good apicultural management techniques, nutrition and genetically resistant bees for combating diseases and pests. As experimental empiricists, they suggest only those treatments that have been found effective in laboratory tests and do not produce resistance in the pest over the long-term. So Spivak and Reuter reject the use of many "essential oil" approaches and say that the "jury is still out" on whether the small cell approach has any significant benefits in the control of Varroa mites. They also reject the use of antibiotics as a preventative protocol.

Ishmael: Threat or Challenge?

The following is an email I sent this afternoon to my Global Issues students concerning their reactions to Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael. I am sharing this email here because I think it relates to sustainable beekeeping.

I felt alot of defensiveness in class today. To stem this off, I would ask you to look at Ishmael, not as a threat, but as a challenge. Use the "flying machine" story as an example. When human beings "discovered" the laws of gravity and aerodynamics they didn't say, "Oh, I won't believe it because I want to fly" nor "Those laws don't apply to us human beings." To do that, would've meant the continued crashing of air-machines by their inventors. Instead, what was said was, "Given these laws, how can we produce a flying machine?" Now apply that to what Ishmael says about the world hunger problem! If what Ishmael says about the relationship between population and food supply is true (and the evidence seems to indicate it is), how can we create a long-term sustainable solution to world hunger? (This is not a question social darwinists ask!) Ignoring the relationship between population and food supply will only produce an eventual crash, sooner or later. Saying the law doesn't apply to humans will only lead to this crash.

Remember, learning can sometimes be uncomfortable, since it demands examining and possibly breaking those secure comfortable cognitive boxes we place reality into (including God). Also, you don't have to believe Ishmael but you do have to understand his argument accurately without 'knee-jerk" dismissals.

Interesting Developments

I was at a farewell get-together in Fountain City last Friday and discovered an important and interesting fact: one of the administrators at my university has also been exploring beekeeping and pondering the placement of hives on campus. My university was once a county "poor farm" and still has remnants of an old orchard. This administrator has thought of "reagriculturalizing" (in a sustainable fashion) some of these areas on campus and bees are in his plan. He has signed up for the U of M's extension course and is also collecting some equipment, atleast to place on his own farm. We have begun talking about our own plans and how to work together on it. More on this later.