this essay by bioethicist Gregory Pence (Alabama) is both wise and timely.  An excerpt from the end:

[A]s I look back, my major feeling, after teaching for years as an adjunct and working 80-hour weeks in real estate, is great satisfaction in having any job at all in philosophy. Because for many years, I never expected to get one — and even after I did, I kept looking over my shoulder at the shadow of what might have been.

I now believe that too many graduate students feel entitled to a great job. That attitude sets them up to fail. Some of the graduate students I knew at NYU's philosophy department, then a program of slight stature, eventually forged careers because they endured — they moved, they compromised, they published, they would not give up. They had the right attitude.

Some colleagues from elite Ivy League programs who say they are "stuck here in Alabama" feel as if life has passed them by, that they missed the boat because they never got a job at Yale or Berkeley. Maybe the current economic downturn, which is already affecting universities, will make those young professors more thankful for their tenure-track jobs, no matter how imperfect.

To be happy as a professor, you don't need to teach in buildings that win architectural awards. You don't need a two-course-a-semester load to publish (I published during my first years in Birmingham, despite teaching nine or 10 courses a year). You don't need your university to give you a dedicated blog site or IT personnel to support your home computer. You need a tenure-track job, and then you need to work hard at the three things we are expected to do: teach students who want to learn, publish about things you care about, and be a good academic citizen through service to your institution and field. That's the deal. If it doesn't sound good enough, then maybe you should try bartending in San Francisco. And when you do, lots of adjuncts will apply for your job.