Friday ramble

…masquerading as a blog post. Mercifully brief, I keep promising but rarely succeed. Rambles are like that. You never know how long they will turn out to be  or even if you can find your way without getting lost, going off track. Most of these are or should be separate posts and may even be someday. Not today though.

Noted along the way

MLA 2013 coming up, Boston, Jan 3-6. NFM Board and other members eligible for MLA membership are urged to join and attend the meeting. Nov. 1 is the deadline to apply for travel grants of $300 to attend. New Faculty Majority is already well represented on contingent faculty committees and would like to see a strong board and member turn out. The 2013 meeting will have a strong focus on contingent faculty. Maria Maisto is on the PT Faculty executive committee discussion group with Sue Doe and IHE "kinder campus" columnist my friend Maria Shine Stewart. The panel will focus on the pedagogy of the precariat -- teaching students about contingency. Josh Boldt (NFM board member, The Adjunct Project) and Maria are on the Presidential Panel.

Monday rambles: NFM pit crew & other notes, COCAL. protests

As you may have noticed, board member and blogger (here and on Cringing Liberal Elite) Alan Trevithick has joined our NFM Facebook pit crew. Now to find the perfect NASCAR gear for him. Matt and Maria are on too but may not be as active. No gear for them.

Tomorrow is a NFM board meeting / conference call 11am EDT. If  anyone has last minute questions, email or post them as comments. Mostly, it's a catch up meeting, reports, structural/admin items. Tomorrow there will board news to announce. Now there is Foundation news: 501(3c) status approved. Member Forums will launch soon on the main site. We are also working on a membership drive. Since it's still in the formative stage, we'll asked for your opinions, ideas and reactions. Then expect to be reading a lot about that here and on our social media network. You may even come to think of the drive as needing a leash law. Why a membership drive? Easy. The stronger our membership base the more we can accomplish.

ramblings

Time to put this puppy to bed before too late to be interesting, let alone any longer. Recent topping off: yesterday mailbox and social media exchanges were about:

• the TAMU San Antonio adjunct getting booted for having the temerity to expect admin to do something about threatening emails: catch it links, discussion, comments and all on Josh Boldt's Adjunct Project and Con Job (Fb group that has become our electronic water cooler)
• messy mooc musings (+ comments) from Kate Bowles (Music for Deck Chairs, Australia), Jonathon Rees (More or Less Bunk, Colorado) and tidier,  less dramatic, iterations of the same from members of Change 11 cohort, retired physics prof Gordon Lockhart of mooc cow renown