I woke up thinking about two women who were very dear to me – both of whom have been dead for some years now.   I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.   The first, Beverly Jensen, came up immediately.   She has a novel coming out in June, based on many short stories she wrote while her children were growing up,  all of them stuffed into a cramped apartment in Chelsea, which they somehow made work.   I went to her website and listened to two short audio clips of her reading from her book, titled posthumously by her husband, “The Sisters From Hardscrabble Bay.”     I had listened to them before, I realized, but it was lovely to hear her voice first thing in the morning,  clipping along in a slightly inflected Maine accent.  She reminded me that anything is possible.

I then NE’d my sister, Nancy Blair.   I was just curious to see if this middle-class suburban housewife who died 9 years ago would have any hits.   She had been an artist after all – someone who sold her paintings at local art shows in malls near Chicago.  She actually got commissions to do paintings for wealthy North Shore women and made a few hundred on each one.   I have a couple of her paintings, mostly flowers.    I find it comforting to have something created by her near me.  My husband sneers at her work, and though I would never say this to him, I know what he means.  They’re not great art.  They’re not particularly stamped with originality.  But they do come from her gut, her soul, her heart, and I am grateful to have them.   Contrariwise, I do not treasure my husband’s sculptures, dotted around the apartment, though they are quite good, if likewise, lacking in originality.    They tend to dominate, to insist on their presence in the rooms.    I look at them and I am so very bored with them, mainly because I find him often staring admiringly at them while he slightly adjusts the angle of view.   I also get frustrated because they were all done more than 25 years ago, and he’s done nothing new in the intervening years.    I mean, come on.  Get on with it.

Then I realize that I’ve put up (partly in egoic self-defense) old posters of me from my acting days.  They’re not prominently displayed in the living room; they’re in the hall and the bedroom.  But they’re there.   Has this become a pissing contest in the Carroll household?  I think so.   We’re each marking our territory; staking our claim to fame- or at least to a moment or two of creativity that is uniquely ours.    I didn’t put mine up, by the way, for years, until I guess I needed to take a whiz.  That is, I needed something of my own in my own house.

And then there’s the passing it on thought.   Beverly wrote not for publication but out of a great need to be creative because that too made her somebody who was worthy of recognition, even if it was her own self esteem.   It’s difficult to be a creative person (Beverly had been an actor) and raise two children on a teacher’s salary in New York City.   It’s difficult to have received attention and then to have it taken away by poopy diapers and throwup and worry.    This was her way of saying “I’m still here.”   I guess we all need to keep saying to someone  that we’re still here.  If we are artists, we do it through our art.   Writers write.  And me?

I yearn.   I’ve spent the last 11 years on an intellectual pursuit.   Luckily I was brought into the Writing Project fold right away and was encouraged to be creative in the classroom.   This school of teaching fit perfectly with my post-actor self.     It’s not working anymore; I don’t know why.     Is it that I’m teaching only online?   Do I need to be in the physical classroom again?   It IS a challenge to be creative in the midst of teaching online.   So much of the creativity is born during the design of the class, in choosing the content and deciding how best to display it.   Once you’ve got a good working online course up and running for a few semesters,  I think it can become not unlike the several profs I’ve had who worked from yellowed and stained 3 by 5 index cards that they brought out for whatever course it was they were doing yet again.    They were NOT reinventing the wheel each semester, just as I see that I am not doing much of that either in my online venues.   I do try to shake things up by using different texts and trying out new sorts of writing assignments.   But I don’t see the students eyes light up because I’ve said something clever or useful in class.   I don’t see the students’ boredom which would lead to my increased determination to hook them in. I don’t see them.  I only hear them through their writing ( or not).     They have to provide an “aha” moment to me in writing, and how many of them are skilled enough writers to do that?  Not many.   So I don’t get to see those lovely moments.  I think I miss that.   I’m doing a lot of yearning these days.  I feel emptied out, flat.   Is this a piece of the puzzle I’m trying to put together of my missing emotional life?

I spent parts of yesterday sobbing – great big gobs of sobs.  This is something I don’t remember ever doing, though I’ve done my fair share of crying.   I also spent yesterday trying to figure out which of the stressors in my life was unleashing such grief.  That IS what it felt like.     I began with the most usual suspect.  I had been to a First Friday meeting at the union for adjuncts the night before.   I was nervous and a bit angry at the man I have to report to re my new job as adjunct rep on the Lehman campus.   There’s a great deal of paperwork involved, which seems to me in the general area of BS work, but hey, they’re paying me.   I also was feeling under-appreciated for I have taken the job seriously and have used my stronger skills to get the word out.  Mainly I’ve been introducing myself through mass emails to all the departments’ adjuncts.   I had to first go around to every department and get lists of adjuncts – no mean feat.     This is NOT what caused my grief.

At the meeting, there was an attempt to put together a proposal to the larger union on ways to benefit adjuncts in this new waiver decision (NO MORE WAIVERS), which was a done deal before the adjunct PSCers even knew it was going down.    One proposal that was tossed around was asking the union to bargain for fulltime lines for adjuncts who have served 20 years or more.  After debate, it got voted on but the new proviso said “after 10 years.”    Okay.  Fine.  I have 11 years.  Great.   Nothing to cry about there.

A woman at the end of the table – attractive, 60ish – was not called on – and was very upset.   One of the exec committee kind people took her out to the hall and seemed to comfort her.  When she came back to the table, she was allowed to speak.  This is the gist:

I’ve worked for over 25 years as an adjunct.  I have never been given a fulltime line – as in even a substitute line.   I see myself literally dying in the classroom.  I actually know people who have started dying in the classroom, because they can’t retire. Why can’t they retire?   They have to keep teaching six credits to get the health insurance that adjuncts are offered.    Why aren’t we acknowledged for our work and our contribution to the CUNY community?   All it would take is one damn semester of a substitute line and I’d be on the city health plan ( the one that fulltimers get).     I’ve given my guts to this institution, and I’m going to die in the classroom.

Okay, she said it all much better than the above.  And the way she said it and something about her moved me deeply.   I identified, because I’m 65 and I’ve been trying for the last 4/5 years to get a fulltime job at Lehman.   I have come so close too many times, which has in turn made me very frustrated and ultimately bitter and resigned.  I will no longer even try for anything.  I have officially given up.    I had a substitute line for 12 hours and then it was taken away.  Oops.  Sorry.  Made a mistake.  So sorry.  We’ll make it up to you.  Yeah, sure.   Well, I was still naive and believed that they would.    I applied twice for the conversion line, only to see a former student of mine get it after working the minimum  number of semesters (7) in order to be called an experienced adjunct.    In another instance I saw my dearest friend get a fulltime line that was never even publicized.  She had been told a year before that when so-and-so retired, she had it.  I kept protesting that that couldn’t be – they had to put it out there for everyone to apply.   Nah.      I had a job in Adult Degree for five years that I loved.  It was a parttime job, but I hoped that somehow, some way when the creators of the program retired, that they would put me in as the director.   I was perfect for the job.   Truly.    No way.   They brought in a fulltime person from the art department who had done some advising.   A lovely woman.   However, she is going blind and cannot read the fine print.  Have you ever tried to read a transcript?    So I watched as the program fell apart – not her doing actually, though she took endless amounts of time with people because of her disability.      At this point, I heard about a fulltime job in Irish Studies.   Voila!  I was hired.  My troubles were over.   And to boot, I’m half Irish.  Hey, it helped.    This job however was not a typical HEO job within CUNY.   It was a program that had to fund itself through dinners, lectures, grants et al.    I quit my other teaching assignments and got ready for my closeup – my finally fulltime job.  And then…they lost the line.   They didn’t fundraise enough money the year before to keep the HEO line.   At that point I had to scramble and go begging for my teaching jobs and my Adult Degree job.   Got ’em back.  And Irish Studies.   My plate was extra full.

Last September I was working p/t in Adult Degree, Irish STudies and teaching three courses.   Uh-oh.  Someone forgot to tell the new Dean of Adult Degree that she couldn’t pay me as a non-teaching adjunct, which is what she was doing.   All sorts of mishigas ensued (WAIVERS.  Yes, that dirty word was applied to me).   I ended up with no job in Adult Degree which made me weep, but not sob.   I decided to remain in Irish Studies, giving my 3rd course option to them as a non-teaching adjunct position.

Then….oh no, this is really my last attempt.   I saw a posting for Academic Program Manager at Lehman – a new position – for which I was 70 percent right for.  The 30 percent or more lacking was in technical expertise.    I got all the way to the search committee interview which I thought went well.   I was feeling especially confident because someone on that committee had told me that I was a very strong candidate.     Yeah, right.  Didn’t get it.     I got over that one more quickly than the others, when I realized that indeed, my lack of technical skills would be a great hindrance.

So that’s it.   That’s the last time I’ll apply for a fulltime job at CUNY.   I tried.  I really did.   I’m at a crossroads.  Perhaps that’s why I sob.  I have to make some strong decisions.   I don’t want to go on grabbing at these little jobs (like the union rep one) that come along.   They come with a certain amount of self-disgust.   Oh, I’m a loyal union person.  I believe in unions, but I have many questions about strategy.   I also find that union people can get so narrowly focussed that they don’t listen anymore.   At least that’s what I’m experiencing with my two grave superiors.    Is 3000 bucks with no taxes and Social Security taken out worth it to me?   You see, I’ve been an actor most of my life.  I’m used to saying, “I can do that” whenever there’s a job out there.  Uh-oh. Here come the tears again.   Perhaps that woman at the meeting is me.  It turns out she’s an artist.  She teaches art.  I’m an actor who hasn’t acted in a long time.    I enjoy teaching; I appreciate the work these past 11 years.    I am … at a loss though.

I can’t figure out what exactly is lost.