Meanwhile, there are alternatives. There is a nice sale going on at Lowes on chainsaws. I picked up a 16" Poulan for $118 dollars and you get a carrying case, spare chain, gloves, chain oil, 2cycle oil and a chain sharpening tool. They have got the 18" and 20" chainsaws on sale too.
Tom
Michael Yates wrote:
> Let me add to my previous post that I have been teaching four course per
> term with average class size well in excess of 40 over a period of 31
> years. I am dead tired, beaten to death, and I have to get out. I hope
> the younger teachers fight to make academe better, more humane, and so
> forth. I am not optimistic.
>
> michael yates
>
> Nathan Newman wrote:
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > > Nathan, professors were supposedly granted sinecures to give them
> > > the freedom to find and express the truth regardless of the consequences.
> > Of
> > > course, a good number of progressives have been fired, often supposedly
> > for some
> > > other cause, but sometimes the authorities have admitted that politics
> > was the issue.
> > > You can give us more classes, and some might quit, but you know
> > > that teaching is such that you can just reduce the time that you put into
> > each
> > > class. To get rid of the deadwood, you must have teachers who feel a real
> > committment to
> > > education.
> >
> > First, what I said does not apply to CSUs where teaching loads are often
> > pretty high to begin with on most campuses I know.
> >
> > But the broader point is to increase the emphasis on the value of teaching
> > and decrease the emphasis on research. If teaching is valued, you will get
> > more good teachers. You will no doubt lose a few good teachers also looking
> > for time to do research, but you will probably lose even more deadwood that
> > don't enjoy teaching and often don't do particularly great research either.
> >
> > In the ideal world, I would support union organizing by faculty to raise
> > wages and standards for adjuncts and lecturers, expand the number of tenured
> > positions, and demand that teaching be a respected part of tenure decisions.
> > But given the fact that so many tenured profs, even lefty ones like my old
> > Sociology Dept at Berkeley, don't lift a hand for such causes,
> > pragmatically, raising the teaching load seems like the only way to force
> > change in the system presently developing.
> >
> > To be honest, I might encourage progressives to raise the demand for higher
> > teaching loads specifically to force faculty off their asses. Again, back
> > in the budget crisis in California, it was only when undergrad activists
> > began publicly discussing teaching loads as one part of the solution that
> > faculty began panicking and you saw some start trekking up to Sacramento to
> > lobby against the budget cuts.
> >
> > I'm sorry; when I saw supposedly leftwing faculty discussing why they should
> > kick all non-sociology majors out of their classes as a budget-cutting move,
> > then add that they should allow business school majors in to keep alumni
> > money support in the future, my respect for the ivory tower as an
> > intellectual refuge dimmed considerably.
> >
> > --Nathan