The three candidates vying for two seats on the Cow Eye Junction City Council all vowed Wednesday night to decrease unfettered immigration, support local farmers and diversify the area’s technology infrastructure.

In the first public debate before the August 7 election, candidates agreed on many topics raised by audience-generated questions.

The Diahwa Valley Business Council and the Kiwanis Club of Cow Eye Junction sponsored the event, which was held at the Cow Eye High School auditorium.

Incumbent Arthur Dirkswood tout-ed his experience as both a council member and mayor of the city, while Superindendent of Education Darla Brookmire pointed out her long list of endorsements from community members and elected officials.

Newcomer Miles Tanner, a 24-year-old online internet entre-preneur and IT specialist who has lived in the city for the last fourteen months, promised a fresh approach to issues and improvements to digital communication, if elected.

Tanner called the recent launch of the city’s website a “wonder-ful first step” but said he would go even further to reach out to tech-savvy residents and create Twitter and Facebook accounts.

“Many youth, my generation and younger, operate mainly on the Internet,” he said.

All three candidates showed hesi-tation to support introduction of a poll tax even though neighboring cities have recently adopted such proposals.

Dirkswood and Brookmire both said they would want to study the issue. Tanner said he would support the tax if the majority of property-owning residents really wanted it.

All candidates supported a pro-

posed new sign ordinance to require storefront signs to be backlit.

Dirkswood was the only one to offer alternative solutions to curb increased migration to the area and-stem the resulting displacement of the local populace. His plan calls for enforcing local ordinances, including

curfews, and cracking down on other illicit activity at the Purlieus where non-locals are most likely to gather in large numbers.

The proposed ban on chewing tobacco in all public places was another hot topic during the forum.

Tanner called on local residents to

find alternate snacks that were more healthy. But Dirkswood said that tobacco is an important part of the town’s history and culture.

“You can’t just expect our people to give up something that has so much metaphorical value,” he said.

(See p. 3, “CANDIDATES)

Latest news of Cow Eye Junction and the Diahwa Valley Basin

Cow Eye ExpressVolume 68 Issue 22 Monday, May 11, 2015

If anyone thought the unexpect-ed rain storms that blessed us last week were an indication of things to come, they might want to look at the most recent meterological projection released by the National Association of Weathermen. According to the study, rains are projected to last through the weekend then dry up again indefinitely.

Many local ranchers are straining to make ends meet during the histori-cally unprecedented drought. “I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to hold on,” said Jack Bucknell, owner of the Triangle Y, a small ranch outside Cow Eye Junction. “We’re doing our best but some-thing’s gonna have to give here pretty soon.”

Some local residents are looking elsewhere to explain the increas-ingly harsh conditions. “It’s clearly a karmic occurence,” warned Marsha Greenbaum, owner of Marsha’s Kundalini Studio at the Purlieus. “We’ve seen this before as a society is punished for its selfish and glut-tonous ways. It’s time to reclaim our spirituality before it’s too late.”

Loren Gillicuddy, a cashier at the general store next to the makeshift bus shelter, agrees that the effects are punitive, but disagrees with the causes. “I’m not into all that karma baloney,” she told a reporter as she wiped off a dusty counter top. “I think it’s more connected to the fact that we just haven’t had any rain for a while. If you don’t have rain, sooner or later you get drought.”

(See p. 4, “RAIN”)

Photo by Erik Olsen

A former Special Projects Coordinator has published a novel about his experiences in Cow Eye Junction, and his former colleagues are none too pleased. The book, Cow Country, claims to document one character’s pursuit of love and regional accreditation at a fictitious institution by the name of Cow Eye Community College.

“It’s really a book about our humanity,” says the book’s pub-lisher, Natalie Zeldner of Cow Eye Press. “It’s a wonderful tale of cul-

tural displacement and conflict.”The 540-page novel depicts faculty

infighting, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, and organizational ineptitude on a massive scale. The book also fea-tures sexually explicit scenes involv-ing faculty and staff of the college.

The author, Adrian Jones Pearson, was not immediately available for comment, but did release a statement through his publicist that said, in part, “I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Cow Eye Junction and I sincerely hope there are no hard feelings about

the book. I really do hope people have a sense of humor. I mean, it’s just fiction.”

Reaction to the book in Cow Eye Junction, meanwhile, has been mixed, with some faculty calling it a betrayal of trust and others insisting it does not paint a true portrait of the college or surrounding community. “As a small college, we took Mr. Pearson in and welcomed him to our community,” says Esperanto instruc-tor Angela Davis. “And this is how he pays us back?”

(See p. 2, “NOVEL”)

Construction continues on the new dam along the Cow Eye River.

Photo by Jarvis Putnam

Candidates promise change amid status quo

By Jarvis Putnam

By Ethel Newtown

Novel by former CECC administrator raises ire of colleagues

Books Corner

Electoral season brings old, new Extreme drought conditions to continue throughout region, say researchers

By Ethel Newtown

Election official Dorothy Waterside demonstrates a state-of-the-art ballot machine. The new equipment was paid for by a generous grant from the Dimwiddle Foundation.

Others feel the book makes light of a painful topic, specifically the college’s well-documented struggles to maintain its institutional accredi-tation. “It’s not funny at all,” said new CECC President Brenda Smith. “All of us are working hard to dem-onstrate our firm commitment to the continuous improvement of our institution. Sure there are problems, as there will be at any college. But we’re moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, something like this does not help.”

One scene that particularly rankles both faculty and staff is a culmi-nating Christmas party sequence depicting what appears to be an all-out educational bacchanalia. “That scene is preposterous,” says Davis. “Barbiturates? Dunking booths? A cow-blowing demonstration? Lengthy pontifications on the nature of our humanity? Those things sim-ply can’t happen at a community col-

lege. Especially not in late Spring.” For composition instructor Alice

Brown, meanwhile, it was Pearson’s writing itself that kept her from enjoying the book. “The use of com-mas is absolutely atrocious,” she said. “And don’t even get me started on his semi-colons!”

One faculty member who did express support for the book was Samuel Middleton, an instructor of medieval poetry at the college. “I actually liked [Cow Country] a lot,” he said. “And the depictions of the Kafka-esque accreditation process are spot on. Obviously, you can’t take things like this literally.”

Still others are choosing to take the high road, dismissing the novel as nothing more than a minor work of fiction. “Who cares what some first-time novelist thinks?” Gunsmithing instructor Purvis Elkington said. “The guy came here and left after a single year. Well, good riddance.”

And then there are those faculty like Lydia White, an English instruc-tor at CECC who says she hasn’t read the novel and does not plan to. “Look, I’m a professional English instructor which means I’ve devoted my life to teaching. I honestly don’t have time for things like contem-porary fiction. In fact, I’ve got a Modern Lit class to teach in about ten minutes and about a hundred and fifty student essays sitting on my desk, not to mention meetings and reports and peer evaluations that require my immediate attention. I don’t have time for nonsense like this.”

Cow CountryAdrian Jones PearsonCow Eye Press2015540 pagesISBN: 9780990915003$19.95

CECC offers professional development for faculty

Cow Eye Community College unveiled plans on Thursday for a comprehensive Professional Development series to benefit English faculty who can’t find the time to read for their own personal enrichment. The program, which will begin next Fall, is slated to provide time-management strategies and other useful tools to ensure that its faculty have access to literature they enjoy.

“Our faculty are the core to what we do here as a college,” says col-lege president Brenda Smith. “And part of being an educator is engag-ing in the exchange of intellectually stimulating ideas. If our faculty are too busy teaching and performing other professional duties to partici-pate in that exchange, it means our students will ultimately suffer. And we want to address this.”

The ambitious plan comes in light of a recent study by the American Association of Community College English Instructors (AACCEI) sug-

gesting that the average English instructor at a community college reads less than one work of lit-erature per year. “Statistically, it’s about three-quarters of a book,” said co-author of the study Dr. Sunil Chaudury. “But we’re not sure whether three-quarters of all English faculty are managing to make it through an entire book. Or whether all one hundred percent are only getting through three-quarters of the book they attempt. Either way, it’s clear we have a problem.”

The results of the survey pro-vide valuable insight into the read-ing habits of English faculty at the nation’s community colleges, where faculty are more likely to read self-development guides (6.7 per year), grant proposals (5.3), accreditation

reports (1.7), governance documents (1.4), and compare-and-contrast essays (38.3) than novels (.58), lit-erary novels (.21) or contemporary works of fiction involving intel-lectually challenging themes (.03). “So if our English instructors aren’t reading meaningful literature,” asks Chaudury, “where are they getting their literary sustenance? And more importantly, if they’re not finding the time to read for their own enjoy-ment how are they modeling this behavior for their students?”

Among the most common rea-sons cited for this inauspicious state of affairs is the extreme workload among English instructors, espe-cially those who teach at smaller colleges where additional adminis-trative duties are more likely to be

an expectation. Laura Whitehead, a tenured English professor at Caskin Community College in rural Wyoming, says that reading for its own sake often takes a back seat to more immediate duties like prepar-ing lesson plans, providing feed-back on student essays, reading and drafting reports, and even attending various committee and departmental meetings. “Every semester I teach five classes with twenty students in each,” she says. “Each student writes five essays and each essay requires multiple drafts. After getting through all these essays, believe me, the last thing I want to do is read anything else. Honestly, I’d rather use the down time to walk my dog or go for a swim.”

Janice Thorpe-Grossman of

Buchanan Community College in upstate New York agrees. “It’s embarrassing to admit,” she says over a stack of ungraded essays on her desk, “but it’s been many years since I actually sat down to enjoy a work of literature for its own sake. I just don’t have the time.”

The irony of the situation is not lost on these busy faculty them-selves, many of whom admit feel-ing increasingly estranged from their original passion for literature. “I got into this line of work because I love reading,” says Anisha Montgomery of Brown River Community College in Idaho. “But now that I teach litera-ture as a tenured professional, I find that I have no time or inclination for it at all. It’s sad really.”

Students at CECC read a copy of the controversial novel about their college.

Photo by Jarvis Putnam

Cow Eye Community College faculty attend a recent professional development session on intra-faculty courtship

Photo courtesy of Cow Eye Community College

Novel (cont.)

Cites study, low reading rates among English instructors

What is Cow Eye’s most pressing election issue?“Taxes. Which is why I’m voting strictly Federalist this year.”

-Jared White,Apothecary

“Immigration. All these new people coming to Cow Eye are compro-mising our way of life.”

- Myrtle Blank,Housekeeper

“Education. Why should we have to spend the rest of our lives pay-ing back student loans?”

- Alan Brickle,Student

“Genetically modified foods are the bane of our existence and must be banned.”

- Lewis P. Stark,Entrepreneur

By Ethel Newtown

The Cow Eye Express Monday, May 11, 2015Page 2