by Greg Baysans
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A Real Education
"It is equal to living in a tragic land To live in a tragic time." -- Wallace Stevens, "Dry Loaf" "It would start with a thirsty working stiff out on the town with his back pay, swaggering into the half-bars/ half-bordellos called boarding houses and hard on the heels of whiskey, women and song. But soon the ceiling would start to spin, his legs wouldn't obey, and oblivion moved in like a fog. He would awaken on a ship at sea." BCTI has eight campuses, the main one near Seattle, Washington, another in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland, Oregon. BCTI's first program, called Integrated Computer Applications, is seven and a half months long. "There are employment specialists at BCTI who assist you with employment search before you leave and for a year after you graduate," a brochure reads. Plaques on the walls attest to a placement rate of over 90% for BCTI's placement specialists. "Of all the Enron mementos, John Olson may have the best one. Olson, an analyst who has been a long-time skeptic about the energy company's once- stratospheric stock price, has a handwritten note that the Enron chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, sent to Olson's boss, Donald Sanders. 'Don -- John Olson has been wrong about Enron for over 10 years and is still wrong,' Lay wrote. 'But he is consistant (sic). Ken' When Sanders showed him the note, Olson recalls shrugging. 'You know that I'm old and I'm worthless,' he said, 'but at least I can spell "consistent".' " Tuition is $10,000 for the first program. The school will loan you half of that, the government the other half, since you are currently unemployed and penniless. Sign here. In 1997, more than a thousand black farmers filed suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging discrimination. "Under President Reagan, the Department dismantled its civil rights enforcement apparatus, leaving bias complaints to mostly go unaddressed." "He's not sure precisely when the notion to bury school buses popped into his head, but he calls it the best anger management regimen on the planet." There are now five buses sticking out of the ground, one in a neighbor's yard, one after the other, tail or nose in the air. From the BCTI typing manual: "Thoughts for the Day" (excerpted) -- "2. Sometimes leaning (sic) is 'a blinding flash of the obvious' -- be there to remember it (sic, run-on sentence)!" "19. You cannot motivate others unless you are motivated yourself (followed by no period, yet the next line begins '20.')" "31. (which is smaller and in italics whereas the list starts out with numbers not in italics) Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. -- Thomas Jefferson" "62. (again italics) A winner is (with "is" in bold for no reason, the rest of the sentence not bold) a person who asks questions and listens to the answer; a loser never listens." "71. Style is the man himself [ (open bracket but no matching close bracket) and the woman herself." "84. We don't see things as they are, (comma, sic; should be a period, but should also be checked against the subsequently named source) we see things as we are. -- Apidis (sic, sic, sic!) Nin" "87. Learn from the mistakes of others -- you can never live long enough to make them all yourself" (again, no period; this manual has obviously been prepared by someone who is begging the example.) "100. (Where the indent starts to go one digit deeper is on the last line of text from item 99, a format error) The man [woman] who makes no mistakes (I was happy to see matching brackets around 'woman') does not usually make anything. -- Edward John Phelps" "108. Hard work is the best investment a man [person] (sic, man is first amended with 'woman,' then with 'person', showing inconsistent editing) can make. -- Charles Schwab (followed by 109. No text. The end of the list.)" "He had been Shanghaied, addled with a drugged drink, hustled into an alley or dropped through a trap door to an underground tunnel leading to the harbor, bundled in a blanket and sold for a few dollars to a captain in need of a crew." BCTI's first program has five parts to it, and in the fourth you will learn to prepare a manual, much like the typing manual, a review of the Micro- soft Office applications you have learned. One hour each day (or night) is spent typing. This is a business letter. It is important to write business letters to appear professional. A Daily Review (some have typos) is found "online" and often reviews proofreading and business letter grammar, so important for success. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that the black farmers could pursue a class action lawsuit. Litigants were awarded $50,000, tax-free ($15,000 also sent to the IRS to offset the taxes), but some litigants were charged taxes nonetheless and were pursued by the IRS (but this isn't at all about how the government found a way to give itself tax money on damages for which it was responsible). "He holds up a white pharmacy bag holding a dozen empty anti-depressant pill containers. Larry Eaton promises to bury a bus a month until his neighborhood, next to a women's prison (still under construction), is rezoned. Frustrations over the prison have exacted a personal toll, shredded a romance, shoved him into a funk that cut his earnings to nearly nothing." On a train trip in 1998, I was reading Ted Hughes as a woman behind me got drunk. "I teach high school English," she was trying to be friendly. "What are you reading? Poetry? I don't know anyone who reads poetry. He was married to Sylvia who?" "This Day In History" (covered most days at BCTI) more from the typing manual: "Silly but true facts" (excerpted again) -- "The worlds (sic -- or has someone finally abolished the apostrophe and not told me about it?) oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9000 years old!" "Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they cant (sic; it really has been abolished -- or these worms have a language all their own) find any food." "Eskimo ice cream is neither icy, (sic: comma; the grammar and punctuation review was a difficult topic for most fellow students and most instructors, even those who had graduated from college) or (sic; neither/or? neither/or? neither/nor) creamy." "Slugs have 4 (the numeral, not the word spelled out as the textbooks we received as part of our education instruct us to do with numbers under ten) noses!" When some black farmers began getting checks for $50,000, their neighbors wondered where was theirs. Most hadn't heard about the case until after the fact. Others wanted to file on behalf of relatives now deceased. A deadline was created by which time a "Late Claim Affidavit" (explaining why the claimant was not part of the original class action lawsuit) needed to be filed and approved before those persons could then submit a claim to be approved or rejected. The shredding of Enron documents? A reconstruction? From these pieces I can only ascertain what this is not about. This is not about Enron, not about Shanghaiing, not about BCTI or proofreading. This is not about anti- depressants or education really, and not about how the only place for poets in the 21st century is in advertising where the masses don't know they're being fed poetry or they'd squirm. "Portland was known as the worst port on the West Coast for Shanghaiing, putting even wicked San Francisco in the shade. Portland was vice-ridden and corrupt." "Eaton snapped at a meeting in which an employee of an area sand and gravel company with prison contracts was elected committee (to consider property rezoning) chairman." An exhibit from the Portland Art Museum in the late 90s toured the country with a statue of a poet king from ancient Egypt who wrote, "the wicked prosper and the good are trampled and used." "Keyboarding Tongue Twisters" (excerpted) -- "Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran" (ran away with the period at the end of that sentence and two others on the same page!) "Lily ladies ('ladles' would make a nice tongue twister but it clearly says 'ladies') little Letty's lentil soup." About this same time (the late 90s until 2001), there was a proposed action called "40 Acres and a Mule" which would be awarded to the heirs of freed slaves. Some were told to call the toll-free line for Black Farmers Litigation. Those who expressed an interest in filing for the Black Farmers case were told that the deadline had passed but the case may be reopened. What is your name? Social security number? And the data base grew. Some callers call in every week. The phones are manned by temp employees (no vacation pay, no health benefits, temp employees are all the corporate rage) dispensing facts for lawyers, barely earning minimum wage. I am one. What energy is to Enron, education to BCTI.... A McGuffin to Hitchcock. A Stonehenge of buses. My supervisor (ten years ago, at my first job in Portland) said I had "slipped through the cracks," why I was paid thirteen dollars an hour to a co-worker's twenty-one. He was hired two years after me. "Nobody knows how many men were Shanghaied out of Portland, but the numbers probably ran to the thousands. Many of the boarding houses were owned by the Shanghaiers, or 'crimps' as they were called. Crimps usually got $30 to $50 per man, a tidy sum at the time." "Eaton set out to match the $300,000 mini-mansions just to the north. The landscaping cost $11,000 (before buses)." A scam group toured the south, held meetings for those interested. "If you'd like to sign up for the 40 Acres and a Mule or Black Farmers Litigations, show up, give us 500 dollars and fill out these papers." There is no fee to join a class action lawsuit. The next day they'd moved on to River City, Iowa. Next stop, Bridgetown, Oregon. "Your BCTI loan has been sold to E-Plus Financial Services. I can't help you with that. Melinda, the placement specialist who worked with you, no longer works here at BCTI nor do the teachers whose names you list as job references. And that generous loan from the government? You owe that to them, not to us. Would you like that number? How else might I help you?" My four (of four) classmates signed statements acknowledging that, despite dismal attendance records, each was satisfied enough with their education to accept their certificates. Page 57: "How to Bath (sic) a Cat" Eaton, on vacation in Hawaii, stared for hours at cable access, a local city council meeting. "Just like Portland." "Black Farmers Litigation, this is Greg. May I help you?" "I'm calling to check on my status." "Your Late Claim Affidavit is still with the Arbitrator. Call back in a month." "But I've been calling for over a year." 60,000 received, 6,000 Late Claim Affidavits had been expected. "And I sold the last tractor to get the $500," she continues. "BCTI will teach you competitive skills much in demand in today's workplace." My class manual was returned from BCTI's "printing" (photo-copying) department. Rectos appear as versos and the versos rectos. "'Pretty soon there'll be nothing but big yellow toothpicks poking out of the ground all around here,' Eaton says." "'This is a case of business fraud,' said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who sits on a Congressional panel looking into Enron which paid $55 million in 'retention' bonuses to about 500 employees just before filing for Chapter 11 (protection)." A handwritten note from Chris Butler, BCTI Beaverton campus director, begins: "Dear Greg, Thank you for taking the time to bring to my attention the errors you found in our newest typing manual. I have to agree with you that the English language is very precise and an 'amazing efficient tool' as you said (I had typed "amazingly" or would have added a comma)." The note ends, "Proofreading skills is (sic) an art (no comma) and I'm happy to find a student like yourself who understands and realizes what an art it is. Thanks again Greg (sic, no commas on either side of my name) for your letter. Sincerely, Chris" (a quaint swash under his name) (The typing manual remains on the shelf and in use, uncorrected, three months later.) I must have slipped through the cracks to an underground tunnel which leads to the harbor. The placement specialists at BCTI have given me the name of a temp agency that has a part-time job. 20 hours a week! I'll be answering phone calls, not something I trained at BCTI for, but it could be interesting. My phone rings. It's the government loan office wanting money. (Feb. 2002) NOTES This poem includes "samples" from the following news items: Shanghaiing article, by Joseph B. Frazier, The Associated Press, April 22, 2001; Bus protest article, by Dana Tims, The (Portland) Oregonian, 2002; Gordon Smith quote, by Tom Detzel, The Oregonian, Feb. 6, 2002; Black Farmers info, by Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post staff, January 6, 1999; Enron memento article, by John Schwarz, New York Times News Service, 2002. P.S. After being under investigation for several years, BCTI closed several campuses, including the one in Beaverton, in February, 2005, without giving students required notice and without being publicly charged with wrongdoing. The title refers to something my mother would say to me and my siblings when threatening a spanking, "I'll give you a real education." -- gcb
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