Primarily found in Wyoming, and the next time you’re in market for salt brush, you may as well procure it from the Stevenson Intermountain Seed company, since I stole the image from their site. Sorry for the ad but my morality is complicated.

https://stevensonintermountainseed.com/shop/atriplex-gardneri/

Atriplex, oh Atriplex, you prostrate shrub of arid land.

The morning after the hammer email
I get an anvil call, for an interview.
The one real thing I’ve applied for so far,
and it’s borne fruit.

I’ll go and impress them.
And if they offer me a shitty salary,
I will tell them very politely
to eat an entire bag of dicks.

And I will keep looking.
Because I’m not unwilling,
to keep doing this job
for two more years

in this brave new world of the academy
ruled by authoritarian deans and
mindfucked scaredy-chairs
But what I will not do

is keep doing it
for laughable salaries
and zero respect.
Because for the same insulting money

I can run off and be a dumb
happy help desk tech somewhere in Glendale,
which sounds like the far end of human misery
but is better, even, than what they’ve built.

Incidentally.

I was talking to a guy a few days back who knows what’s up, and that I was leaving anyway. I don’t know if he thinks he’s my friend, or what, but he is the only person here who comes to my office and sits and unwinds and talks. Once he even hid out in my classroom while I lectured for an hour, which was very confusing.

He’s ex-military-industrial-complex, and maybe not so very ex- either, and he said: Brother, if you want to go to work for Them, just say the word and I’ll make some calls. I chewed on my lip a while and finally said sure. Do it. Thanks.

He got real thoughtful and started talking about himself seriously, which is rare.

He said, you know, I went to Afghanistan. (Yeah man I know. Roughly. You were … spooky. PsyOps.)

And I did horrible things.

Seriously fucking horrible things, man.

And I have to live with that every day.

…

So I’m listening real close, and I don’t know why he’s saying it, or saying it now, and I just say his name, in a tone that is meant to convey …

… as much empathy as I have, being a complete civilian and not even cut out for corporate cut-throatery, much less the real veins-gushing thing.

The subject of jobs and his connections didn’t come up again, and the whole conversation didn’t last much beyond that tipping point because we both had five o’clock classes to teach.

But I think what he was trying to say in some fashion was …

That he had a mildly disgusted admiration for me.

That he saw what I was and felt what I was, and he had some doubts still, but …

He was the one coming to my office because …

I was an anomaly, a damn curious one.

Here in my office lived the Last Professor DJ. Here in my office lived a man who had made it across the decades without doing horrible fucking things.

And somehow, improbably, was not a pussy. Or a bone-dry egghead. Or a ponytailed neoliberal SJW fuckwit.

Against all the odds.

And he wasn’t going to let my own momentary greed, my yes to the sellout, to fuck with all of that.

He was preferring to let me go back into the wild, like an addled trout, with what was best in me intact. Swim, motherfucker. You on your own and you don’t even fucking know how good you’ve got it. Keep wearing that hook in your gill as if it was a medal of valor, instead of an ill-advised piercing gone bad.

I’m going to take that unspoken advice to heart.

The shocking soothing splash of freedom on my face. Most of the dignity, even …

I’m free. Free godamighty rushing with adrenalin

Free.