In this post, I take three pieces of cloth of different hues and slightly-differing sizes, and I try to weave them into one single design. Hopefully the design can have a name, and a pattern to string the fragments together. I don’t know how these pieces ended up in my cupboard, but they have been there for over a month now, pleading to be redeemed into something useful. Some of them have asked for a chance to undo them back into their original, separate, and primitive states, should they not like the final product, and so, I will wait and see how YOU receive them.

---------
DISPARATE TRACKS


By the edges of Labonte
At two in the morn,
Neither cold nor warm
The mermaids kept singing
They weren’t singing for joy
Or because they were sad
They just sang.

------------

Umm Basoos bet fifty shillings
On her second horse
In the Breeders’ Cup.
Antar ranked twenty and first.
Avenging her loss
Umm sentenced her first horse
To drinking water
From a salty source
For a month and a half.

----------

‘Peek-a-boo’, smiled Abu
‘Pick Abu’, said Baby Sue,
‘See this apple,
Well this apple ain’t for you.’
*****
Ali H. Raddaoui. January 24, 2010

In this post, I wish to share a poem and to shed some light on its inception. I imagined a situation in which there was a swimming pool for children, and another one for older people. The narrator gets into the children's pool and describes its sweet noises and joys. He remembers suddenly that at fifty plus, he is no longer a child, though he could almost see the child in him. In the midst of this thought, a life guard asks him to leave the children's swimming pool and go to that for grown-ups. At that point, he feels the water is getting rather cold. He goes to the shower to warm up a bit, and then, goes out into the street.
***
COLD DREAM

As I jumped into the pool
The life guards didn’t see me.
The water was uterus-warm
Children’s voices filled the air
They hovered and flapped their little wings
Splashed water with their feet
And threw drops on each other’s faces.

At fifty plus
I didn’t have the feet of children
I couldn’t afford to tie swimming aids
Around my waist to keep me floating
But my heart hovered
I could nearly hear the child in me…

From her promontory
A life guard whispered to me:
“Please proceed to the pool for grown-ups,
This one is only for children”.

The water turned cold
I retreated into the shower
And soon out into the street.
January 19, 2010

LEARNING TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY: MARTIN LUTHER KING SERVICE DAY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

In this post, I wish to talk about how the Martin Luther King ‘day off’ was celebrated here at the University of Wyoming on the 18th day of January 2010. For me, this was a unique experience and I am glad to report that it has changed me in ways I am grateful for.

First off, people celebrate the work and spirit of the Reverend Martin Luther King with a day off. Over here, and I guess in many parts of the US, this message has changed into the following: it’s the Martin Luther King Day On. Now, that’s a pretty cool pun on words but it’s also an indication that people at many levels agree that there is much work to be done yet to concretize social justice in such a manner that all the people of this country and peoples of the world benefit from this beautiful concept.

Secondly, for the first time in my life, I felt I had a chance to give to the community. How did this go? Well, as an academic, I have always served the various institutions at which I worked. I did that primarily through teaching, supervision and representation in local, national and international conferences; I have always considered that whatever we do in the classroom by way of teaching, research and supervision should be based on the concepts of social responsibility, social justice, and the common good. At times, this was my first message especially with classes conducting research, so as to provide a framework that goes beyond rigor in methodology and to instill that research work with an agenda that seeks to address social issues with the explicit aim of elaborating solutions that alleviate pain and identify injustice wherever we can see it in our areas of expertise. That was always at the level of rhetoric and in the confines of one’s area of specialization. In other words, it was more like theoretical work, more like reciting an oath of allegiance without really doing anything about it.

Over the past few days, as the message that commemoration of the life of Dr. King was to be turned into a day of action, I signed up. The University of Wyoming Center for Volunteer Service wanted to make a difference in the lives of the local community through addressing the needs of its less fortunate members of this community who couldn’t afford to weatherize their homes and workplaces. Those who signed up for this day of service were to help with energy saving through sealing windows and doors in residences and workplaces where the cold Wyoming winter was more acutely felt and also through changing light bulbs with more economical ones. About 150 volunteers showed up the Wyoming Union, preparations were made and as many as fifteen teams were dispatched to where they could make a difference in Laramie, out of their own will, desire, and commitment to helping solve real problems.

There are many other aspects I could comment upon, but I wish to get back to the idea of giving back, of leaving the comfort of one’s home, office and the classroom pulpit so to say, the comfortable confines of the academic’s ivory tower, to really go meet people and impact their lives, in the most modest and humble way possible. I guess this is the first time ever I find me among a group of students, interns, administrators, and faculty, led by a student leader, doing something about what we have been theoretically repeating for years on end. This is a great feeling. I am glad ‘community service’ for me is no longer just a beautiful banner to carry and that there will be further chances to put it into practice.

As a result of this action, I feel without hyperbole that I am a changed person. This may seem like a small experience to some, but I believe it has the capacity to change a persons’ worldview; we all live in what is often termed ‘a-me culture’, but being able to disrupt this equation and to donate part of one’s time and energy to social issues with immediate impact on the lives of others is a unique feeling.

What I have learned is more than I can talk about in this brief post, but I will add that in the process, I have also learned how to winterize my own apartment and have come to meet a fine group of people with whom I have spent quality time. In the end, it is correct to say that this was group effort, and that together, we can a make a difference.

THE WATERS OF MONTANA

In addition to everything else that it stands for, Wyoming is a land of horses, cows, deer and ranches. An appreciation of country is nothing unusual for many people here. Such topics have often come up in conversations I have had with friends and acquaintances in the past five months I have been here. Though I hail from North Africa, Arabia, or maybe because of that, I haven't found myself in territory that's completely unfamiliar. Among other things, I have listened with much interest and appreciation to Johnny Cash's song ‘Tennessee Stud’, and I know that in Arabic poetry, horsemanship, bravery, and traveling used to be very dear themes to many Arab poets. In these as well as in Johnny Cash's song, sound and meaning often merge, to create a perfect illustration of Alexander Pope's condition for poetic creativity: ‘The sound must seem an echo to the sense’. Recent conversations I have had with one Laramie artist on Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ also come to mind.

'The poem below titled ‘The Waters of Montana’ is a way a personal reaction, not exactly the result of personal experience, but a composite of I know, see, experience imagine and integrate. I use the Arabic name of ‘Antar’ as a name for my imaginary horse, and I see me thus traveling from Kansas to Montana, with the element of snow being added to the mix of personal knowledge and current experience.

***

THE WATERS OF MONTANA

As the hands of time
Ticked by
Antar and I
Scuttled, walked
Rested and galloped
From Kolby, Kansas
To the edge of Custer National Forest.
Snow and darkness
Overtook us.
We unpacked by a vale
To pitch the tent and wait for dawn.
Antar saw a brook
Fancied a drink
And as he stooped,
The water was turning into ice
And declined to get drunk.

Laramie, WY, January 16, 2010

BUILDING AND RUNNING A RESEARCH CENTER: FIRST THINGS FIRST

A research center is not another name for an ad-hoc committee, a study group, or even a regional research unit. It is a far more serious undertaking, a sort of a think tank specialized in one area or other of strategic research. Both the mission statement and the vision of such a center will depend not only on who provides the funds, but also on who is going to be in charge of the manning and running center operations. How much power each of these parties has in setting policy is not necessarily a comfortable or self-evident equation to solve. In this short post, I wish to think aloud about the prototypical relationship between the two.
***
There is an old saying that ‘he who pays the fiddler calls the tune’, and generally speaking, those who dispense the cash will have right of way to draw the general policy guidelines to be followed by the center. The sponsor may well be a governmental or intergovernmental agency or a large business operation. Assuming that it is the sponsor who has the final say on the overall direction of the center can be a bit of simplification. More and more, there is recognition that any agency, think tank, research center, profession, union, guild or trade must have an agreed-upon code of conduct which is akin to a constitution. Underlying many formalized scientific and social research bodies is a principle called social responsibility. This is true of physicians, nuclear scientists, physicists, businesses, as much as it is true of teachers, nurses, linguists, standardization watchdogs, consumer-protection agencies, and so on.
***
What social responsibility entails is a declared commitment to the social good or the common good. How we define the common good itself is very controversial, but at the very least, it has to be seen that the outcome of the work being conducted is not meant to hurt or endanger the values believed to be essential for the survival of humanity at large, without distinction between people on the basis of all those socioeconomic variables that set humans apart.
***
With specific reference to the social responsibility of a research center, it has to be clear that neither the sponsor nor the experts and administration of the center are in the business of doing work that does not lead to human benefit across the board. In other words, both the sponsor, the managers and subject-specific human resources have to agree from the very beginning that universally-agreed upon values will have to be adhered to as a matter of course.
***
In the case of education, those will values will include but should not be limited to the right to learn, the right to communicate, the right to use and speak one’s native language, the right to think, the right to express and criticize alternative viewpoints, the right to create, the right to innovate, the right to be treated fairly and -- principally-- the duty to treat others fairly.
***
A final note
It may be that there are those who judge the integration of the common good as being a bit of a simplistic and idealized view of life, business, and the world. Here though, we are talking about a minimum of two drivers: the business driver, i.e., the sponsors, those who will pay for center infrastructure and human resources, and the knowledge workers and managers who run the big, strategic operations of the center. Unless a clear, documented, and satisfactory agreement is reached between the two from the very beginning, there is a possibility that the center might not be capable of delivering the goods it was set to deliver.

BUILDING AND MANAGING A RESEARCH CENTER: A BLUEPRINT

Developing and heading up a research center is a most challenging charge. Anyone entrusted with such a task should, as Dr. Coombe of HCT has rightfully suggested, seek out best practice in this area because very few of us, if any, receive specific training to take up such a job. After all, most of us hail from teaching, and later develop skills and competencies in administration, spilling sometimes into management protocols and practices. It is not immediately clear which is the best model to follow, a business model or an academic model. For all I know, it may be that the distinction between the two is outdated; there has been much talk, for quite a while about the so-called BET model: Business and Education Together Model, signaling a shift in academic thinking that institutions of higher education are no longer ivory towers, islands of sorts that neither affect nor get affected by a sea of change around them. There is more to say about this model, for now, it may be safe to assume that the right combination of business interest and academic pursuit will produce a new breed of researchers and research centers that will have a real, useful and measurable impact on the socioeconomic environment.
***
Despite the temptation to make this relationship between academics and the business world the centerpiece of this post, I will maneuver myself in the direction of pragmatism and try to answer instead the question at hand, about how to build and govern a research center. I should like to allocate another post to bad/worst practice in research center building, but for now, I wish to produce off hand, in list form, the elements necessary for a research center planner to factor into the process.
***
In the circumstances, a research center planner has to think through the following points, not necessarily in this order:

1. The BET Model and the question about the balance of power
2. Mission statement
3. Vision
4. Logo
5. Program of action
6. Sponsor’s goals and agenda
7. Budget
8. Recruiting human resources including researchers and staff
9. Socio-economic environment outreach: associates and partners
10. Publicity campaign
11. Products and services
12. Returns for sponsor and participants
13. Physical headquarters
14. Web site
15. System of communication among members (possibly in the form of a wiki or FTP)
16. Management best practice.
***
It will be interesting to look into each one of these factors to determine more specifically what is at stake in each and how to go about implementing them in such a manner that they create a cohesive whole.

More on each soon.

THE ANATOMY OF FRAUD

Our inboxes are replete with spam. Here, I speak specifically about emails purporting to be from people willing to share fabulous sums of money inherited from someone who was diseased or diagnosed with a terminal illness. These people speak of fortunes in the order of millions stashed in forgotten accounts. Out of automated reflex, having been stung once, I have learned to check such messages and to click on SPAM. There seems, however, no end to the tricks up the sleeves of these modern-day thieves.
***
In this post, I explore this practice with reference to a message I received February 1, 2009. Please find the message in red below. Initially, I didn’t go the extent of suspecting the genuine nature of this invitation to partake in the activities of the World Youth Festival with themes worthy of the attention of the noblest among us. Quite the opposite, in fact, I felt flattered that the organizers of the World Youth Festival had thought about me to represent my country and to attend either as a person or a member of an NGO. I particularly felt in agreement with the goals of this cross-continental youth organization that is intent upon upon building a space based on ‘democracy, secularism, pluralism, equality and respect’ (translation mine). One part of me continued to think about making arrangements for the trip, and the other part of me started to reread this invitation in the direction of doubting its authenticity.
***
So now that you know about my misgivings, here is the message in its entirety.
******************************************************
Conférence/Session2009-2010
Festival Mondial de la Jeunesse -
ENGLAND USA 2009
World Youth Festival
Londres- Maryland 2009
USA ENGLAND AIDS SOCIETY.
Maryland K0B5/ Londres GP-67
USA-ENGLAND

Objet : Invitation à Participer au Festival Mondial de la Jeunesse.
(Version française)
LONDRES & USA
Thème: *** La valorisation des cultures
*** Lutte contre les Fléaux Sociaux ( Prostitution - VIH/SIDA Drogue )

L'Organisme Internationale USA ENGLAND AIDS SOCIETY dont le siège est au USA, pour sa cinquième Edition de rencontre entre organismes recherche des ONG, associations ou groupes de personnes ayant une fois assister, participer, animer, et oeuvrant dans la même direction que l'organisme pour participer à son Festival International qui se tiendra dans plusieurs options courant le Mois de Mars 2009. C'est dans le souci que ceux-ci valorisent ou mettent en application leur savoir faire que le festival aura lieu au USA et en ENGLAND .

Un Festival unique où toutes les associations et ONG sont les bienvenues, une formation est prévue sur les stratégies de la mise en place d'une STRUCTURE, assistance et suivie rapproché.

Londres et Maryland accueilleront le 5ème Festival Mondial de la
Culture auquel participeront plus de 1000 jeunes et organismes du monde entier avec la présence des grandes personnalités Politiques du monde. Le Festival est le seul espace de rencontre complètement conçu et animé par des organisations de jeunesse de tous les continents. Un espace fondé sur la démocratie, la laïcité, la pluralité, l'égalité et le respect. Un espace engagé, revendicatif, novateur, et constructif. Le Festival est une occasion unique pour les plates-formes régionales de jeunes et pour les organisations de tous les continents de partager leurs idées et projets. Les personnes désireuses d'assister ou participer avec leur groupe au Festival doivent contacter préalablement le DCC (Département de Communication du Comité) dont l'adresse est ci-dessous afin d'être inscrits sur la liste des membres de la délégation, veuillez aussi adresser une demande d'informations pour avoir tous les détails sur l'organisation du forum ainsi que les conditions à remplir pour y prendre part. Le festival est ouvert à toutes les associations et ONG et à toutes personnes etc.?de tous les pays. Pour avoir plus de renseignements sur ce festival, adreser nous votre demande d'information et de formulaire à l'adresse du Bureau d'Etudes suivante ci
dessous.

Nous sommes à Londres pour le Recrutement des jeunes ou ONG desirant participer à ce festival.

Email: bureaufestival.canben@yahoo.com
Tel: (00) 44 703 596 8137
Londres....
(Comité National Préparatoire)
Département Communication et Informations
Mr PAUL HORST
Mme MARIE LIZ
Service Informations
CNP Festival Mondial de la jeunesse Franche collaboration.
L'ensemble du comité préparatoire.

******************************************************
Let me now proceed to a brief analysis of the message text and
***
1. This message was sent on February 1, 2009, a Sunday. Now it may be that an international, non-profit organization like the World Youth Festival is busy on a Sunday, all the more so as the date for this international organization is drawing near; after all, the Conference convenes in the month of March 2009; one and a half months or a maximum of two months leaves too little time to organize an international function of a magnitude of thousand invitees, hence the need for the organizing committee to work on Sunday. Well, maybe that’s no problem.
***
2. We have all heard of the Olympic games being organized in two countries by way of being more inclusive. The message above states that the Conference takes place concurrently in London, England and in Maryland, USA. I find this somewhat suspect, though I don’t necessarily dismiss it as a ploy.
***
3. Look now, if you will, at the sender’s email address: bureaufestival.canben@yahoo.com. I find it strange that an international NGO, like World Youth Forum, and the USA-England AIDS society do not have a .org or .net email extension. If anything, I would have thought they should not depend on Yahoo! for an email address. I am a regular citizen and a physical person, and Yahoo! is almost a default email address for me. For an international organization, people expect a more clearly-recognized affiliation.
***
4. I googled ‘World Youth Festival’. The now defunct ‘World Youth Festival’ was active during the Soviet era, and understandably doesn’t have any event scheduled for 2009-2010. There is however another one: the UNESCO Word Youth Festival, to take place in July, 2009, neither in London, UK nor Maryland, USA, but in Stuttgart, Germany.
***
5. What I did next was to google the address itself: bureaufestival.canben@yahoo.com. I found the same message with the same information about the same conference from the same sender with the same theme, and it purportedly took place concurrently in Canada and Benin in the 2008-2009 session. The only difference this time is that instead of a yahoo.fr extension, the Canada Benin event had a yahoo.com extension. Please see this URL: http://lists.debian.ch/community@lists.debian.ch/2008/msg01340.html
***
6. In the midst of this investigation, I definitely realize this is a hoax. I will add the following indication though: please look at the physical address postcode: Maryland K0B5, for the USA address and Londres GP-67. Of course, no such zip are used either in the USA or in England. The English address should not refer to ‘London’ as 'Londres' either. The British postmaster may send such a message back to sender (LOL).
***
7. Look further into one of the organizers of the Conference: USA ENGLAND AIDS SOCIETY. A Google search reveals no such society, though there is one by the name of the AIDS society USA, and AIDS society, Canada.
***
8. Over and beyond these indications, there are of course errors of grammar and spelling in the French text. I can tolerate these errors on the part of a regular citizen, but not on the part of an international organization, unless this organization is using a free software programme to do the translation, and even then… Look at these errors:

• a. '…associations ou groupes de personnes ayant une fois assister, participer, animer'. The three underlined verbs here have to be in the past participle form, and not in the infinitive form.
  
• b. … Les personnes désireuses d'assister ou participer …doivent contacter préalablement le DCC …afin d'être inscrits. It seems to me ‘inscrits’ refers back to ‘personnes’ and so has to take on the feminine marker ‘inscrites’.
• c. Pour avoir plus de renseignements sur ce festival, adreser nous votre demande…. ‘adresser’ of course takes double s in French : ‘adresser’.

***
It seems to me, having conducted this quick search and analysis that the email I sent them by way of further enquiry is unnecessary. I am glad I have engaged in this bit of outloud thinking and live writing as it were, but I promise to follow up on this if and when I receive an answer from them.

REFERENCES

Conférence/Session2008/2009. A email thread. Retrieved from: http://lists.debian.ch/community@lists.debian.ch/2008/msg01340.html

Das UNESCO-Welt-Jugend-Festival 2009. Retrieved on February 2, 2009: http://www.unescofestival.com/

Wikipedia. World Festival of Youth and Students. Retrieved February 2, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Festival_of_Youth_and_Students