Blogkeeping: a preview of things to come

Sunday night - or would that be Monday morning - blogkeeping? No, even after midnight, Auntie Mame would still call it Sunday night, middle of the night hours away.


Blogkeeping is catching up odds and ends. Kalte Ente by any other name. I intended to introduce a column for personal reflections so I don't lose my voice in midst of adjunct faculty advocacy, NFM stuff, relevant news and recycled content. I waited too long and now it's deck clearing time. Such are the wages of procrastination. What's coming and what needs clearing out of the way?

On the horizon...
Today's teleconference board meeting focused on NFM's soon to to be rolled out for our 2010 BIG and multi-tiered initiative: adjunct unemployment compensation. Briefly, the first wave gets out information on filing and emphasizes encouraging as many contingent faculty to file as possible. Following stages will address gathering more information on filing experiences state by state and ultimately advocating for legislative change at state and federal levels. On the way there, however, we must all become as well informed as possible.

Central to the "1st wave," the web site (yet to be unveiled) is almost ready, looking quite handsome and packed with useful information. Press releases are being fine tuned. The next newsletter, Issue #2, scheduled to come out to come out at the end of the month will focus on the initiative. 


None of these will be the first words. Opening salvos have been fired elsewhere, not the least being COCAL's groundbreaking efforts, including the Cervisi decision in California, and the magnificent resource (cover shown below) available from Chicago COCAL, compiled by Joe Berry, Beverly Stewart and Helena Worthen

In the meantime... 

Different states, notably Illinois and New York, have held filing parties to educate and advise NTT faculty about the filing. It's been blogged here, on The Adjunct Voice and other blogs. @NewFacMajority has been running tweet-out series on the subject. 

Next...

Clearing the deck, general blogkeeping, reminders, personal voice reflections, usw held for the next post. Until then, do take a look around the page at changes. If you haven't read Issue #1 yet or want another look but haven't printed it (good for you, saving trees), check the upper right side of the page: newsletter screenshot + link. Further down, you'll see the petition widget, Give Ohio Part Time Faculty the Right to Bargain. Matt and Maria are still collecting signatures, so click and add yours if you haven't already. An advocacy click list could be a post all by itself. So noted for blogkeeping punchlist.