State Representative Calvin Hill is Pointing His Finger

I'm going on mini-tirade. I ask that you read all the way through. Please and thanks!

A powerful state lawmaker believes Georgia’s university system must not be too bad off financially if it can afford to employ experts in such subjects as oral sex and male prostitution.

Rep. Calvin Hill (pictured to the left) (R-Canton) said the university system has resisted accepting the budget cuts that nearly every other part of state government has absorbed as lawmakers fill a $2 billion hole in the budget.

Meanwhile, he said, Georgia State University is touting its faculty as experts on issues that are outside what he believes to be the university’s mission.

“I’m saying we all need to pull together and when we have things that are extraneous and outrages, which I don’t think should be discussed with our tax dollars, maybe some of this will come to mind when we have to make budget cuts,” said Hill, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Click here to read the rest of the AJC article. I owe a thank you to friend, poet, and blogger Robin Kemp for sending this info my way.


Dr. Mindy Stombler is one of the professors who has Senator Hill pointing his fingers. I checked out Dr. Stombler's course offering for Fall '08 and Spring '09, and I am here to tell you that she did not teach Blow Jobs 1101 as the AJC article would make it seem; however, Dr. Stombler did teach multiple classes of SOCI 3156: Sexuality and Society.

What is this Sexuality and Society course? I'm glad you ask. Here is GSU course listing for Sexuality and Society:

Social construction and social control of sexuality. Examining trends in sexual attitudes and behaviors across the life course and how they are influenced by social interaction and social institutions. Topics may include sex research methods, representations of sexuality, sex education, sexual health and infection, sexual violence, and the commodification of sex.

I think people from the 700 Club would even admit that course description sparks some interest. I also know, as student who attended Georgia State University, that Sexuality and Society is a very popular class, and it fills quickly. I have only heard positive reviews of the course. If Rep Hill wants to talk money, I hope he realizes a class that fills each semester equals money. I think Dr. Stombler should invite Rep Hill to audit one of her classes, since Rep Hill wants to criticize. The Capitol is only a couple of blocks from GSU, so it isn't like it would be out of his way.


I want to share information on Dr. Stombler's research because I find it interesting.

"Her latest research project involves unraveling the power dynamic embedded in the practices of oral sex, particularly cunnilingus, and connecting conceptualizations of cunnilingus to public discourse (particularly messages about oral sex sent through music and other media). Key questions include how people view cunnilingus and how individual and public conceptualizations of cunnilingus are mitigated by race, gender, class, and sexual orientation," and I have pulled this from her faculty page at GSU.

Also, according to her faculty page, Dr. Stombler did a three-year study of Black and White Fraternity Little Sister programs that focused on the different ways that men exploited women in these organizations and the different ways the women resisted exploitation. All thanks to Google for your being able to read an article titled Resistance in Sweetheart and Little Sister Programs, which was written by Stombler and Padavic. Maybe I should mail a copy to Rep Hill; however, I doubt it would be do any good, and I'd rather use my stamp to send the article to someone who would actually read it and have an intellectual conversation about it.

I want to read what Dr. Stombler is currently writing up. Her current project is writing up her results from a second three-year study of gay fraternities that focuses on how men in gay fraternities negotiate the dual identities of being Gay and being Greek. Now, I think it would be stupid to question if Senator Hill wants to know about this study. I'm not a betting man; however, I would bet that Senator Hill doesn't even know that gay fraternities exist. OHHHHH....... maybe we could talk a gay fraternity into asking Senator Hill to pledge. Or, here is an even better thought: a gay fraternity could name Rep Hill a honorary member.


Rep Hill needs to turn his finger to the Governor's recommended continued cuts to the QBE education formula that go to operate schools, the elimination of 10 conservation rangers and 18 staffers at the Environmental Protection Division, cuts for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime labs and arson investigators at the Georgia Forestry Commission, reduction of case workers at the Child Protective Services Division, the closing of four prisons, and elimination of nurses in Georgia's schools. And that, my friends, is just the beginning of what I think are important issues.

Representative, quick wasting taxpayer's money by spending time "investigating" and talking about distinguished GSU professors when you could be working on some of the issues I listed above and many other.

Obama Bumper Stickers Have Arrived!

Above is a picture of one of the Obama bumper sticker I created. The stickers are 4x4 and $3.50 each (includes shipping). If you are interested in purchasing a bumper sticker or three, send me an email at dustinvbrookshire@gmail.com.

I told a friend of mine people are stimulating the economy when they purchase a bumper sticker. He looked at like I was being silly and gave me a whatever. I responded, "Well, someone made the stickers. Someone at FedEx had to deliver the sticker. I'm going to buy envelopes to mail the stickers, so Target will get business. The USPS will receive my business for shipping purposes. And, I am going to use the money I make to pay for classes at Georgia State University." He didn't have anything to say.

MATCHBOOK Launch Party!

I am excited to announce that on Friday, September 21, 2007, Beth Gylys is having a launch party for her new chapbook titled MATCHBOOK. It is with ease that I can praise Beth Gylys. As a former student I can attest to the fact she is an amazing professor who has a genuine love of what she does in the classroom. (If that isn't the case she needs an Oscar for her performance!) She is an amazing poet; feel free to read her first chapbook BALLOON HEART or her two full length collections, BODIES THAT HUM and SPOT IN THE DARK, for evidence of her wit, humor, intelligence, and brilliant craft.

I must brag on Beth a little more before I get back to the exciting topic at hand. I keep Beth's BODIES THAT HUM on my desk when writing. It is one of the books I keep in my satchel when I attend conferences. Yes, the book is that good! The Boston Review published a few of Beth's villanelles that can be found in BODIES THAT HUM and David Lehman had this to say about those villanelles:

Beth Gylys has been writing a series of villanelles that test this arduous form
as a vehicle for writing about love, romance, and contemporary life in the
American idiom. She has written more than twenty of these poems to date, and
they are breathtakingly successful in exploring the limits of the form and
applying it to the demands of her own experience. Some of the villanelles are
funny; others are tender, sensual, and filled with high romance; many combine
wit and humor and urban speed in new and exciting ways. In "My Savior in the
Form of a Bus" and "Hard Luck" the apparatus of the villanelle is used toward a
narrative end. "Do Not Dive Head-First" rises beyond the immediate task of
parodying Dylan Thomas, while "Personal" must be the first and only villanelle
on record to combine the qualities of a classified ad with what Norman Mailer
called an "advertisement for myself." Read and enjoy

I digress no more.

MATCHBOOK is a collection of personals written in sonnet form. (Hats off for a collection of sonnets-- I try not to touch a sonnet with a ten foot pen.) Beth delves into all personalities and lifestyles: straight men and women, gay men, lesbians. As if it wouldn't be interesting enough, Beth has spiced up the evening by variety of people reading her poems--- I'm thrilled to be one of the people reading!

Mark your calendar, program it in your PDA, you need to attend the launch party for Beth Gylys's new creation, MATCHBOOK, on 9/21/07 at 7:30pm in the Troy Memorial Library, which is located on the GSU campus.

Attend and see which personal speaks to you. MATCHBOOK has someone for everyone.

Poetic Inspiration AKA Beth Gylys

In honor of National Poetry Month, Collin has written a few posts regarding inspirations. I thought I'd follow and mention a local muse of mine, Beth Gylys. Simply put: she rocks me. After working with her I often joke about my work being BBG or ABB-- before Beth Gylys or After Beth Gylys. It is with great pleasure that I share one of her poems and announce two of her poems will appear in the May issue of ToasterMag:

Photographer

Framing, you crouched, focused, captured, shot,
I watched you where I stood, your movements slow,
measured. Sparring with the light, you hoped
to hold the thing, to catch the proper angle,
came back along the path where arches rose
and sunlight burned my face. We walked a while,
then stopped again for ten or fifteen minutes.
Patient, I’d learned it takes a lot of time,
confining bits of world within squares.

At home, we relived Arches by the window,
holding each slide up to see the image.
“Look,” we said, “this one’s really good,”
and passed them back and forth across the table,
the cat meowing at our feet, and you,
annoyed. “Shut up!” you yelled, and grabbed for her.
I loved the colors of those slides, the orange--
pink of rock, rising from the sand,
the one of us standing by a bush,
your arm around my waist, your silly grin.

In albums of your many trips and visits,
there’s more of me than you. Waist-deep in leaves,
I wave, or showing of my strength, I hold
your friend piggyback on the lawn—I’m bent,
laughing, his elbow hooked around my neck.
At Crater Lake, I stand in shorts and seem
exhausted, my hair flying loose, my eyes
squinting at such rich shades of blue.
That was before I flipped the car. You took that
too, the metal crushed like foil or paper
while I lay miles away in ICU.

In most, I seem content, holding the cat
or drinking coffee with my high-school pal.
What did I know or did I lose from then
to now? Here’s one in Maine, the two of us
on bicycles—Acadia Park—the ocean
neating the shore beneath the road we ride.
is that the way we lose ourselves in time:
a wind or ocean chips away the land;
we wake one day to find ourselves surrounded,
water to our hips, the island gone?

Last year my parents came to see the house.
You and Mom installed an extra phone line
to run the modem that you’d bought. “You two
can talk through e-mail,” said my mom. Her smile
stung; she never read me very well:
our own strained smiles still trying to believe
in what we were, still trying to deceive.
there are no pictures of that visit; you hardly
took the camera out all year. We never

did get copies of the wedding proofs.
The photos with the shadows that you hate,
and hardly any of our guests. We shrugged
and said, “What can we do? He is our friend—
he took them all for free.” We rolled with things.
That was our way. When Sara came, the time
her husband threatened to find a whore, we made
the extra bed, drank tea and talked till late.
and when my cousin told us he was gay,
we gave him hugs, played Scrabble all night long.

The pictures end in New Orleans. Your friend
got married there last June; there’s only one
of us together, riding the train, your hand
holding the rail above my head. We smile,
of course. We had to smile—this was a picture!
And then blank pages after that. I turn
and turn as if to find a future there—
us headed West, or fixing up the house—
as if the slots of plastic might be filled
with answers to the questions: what went wrong,
why loves leaves us, or how to carry on.

from Bodies that Hum