Heo Cwaeth

Spring Break! Also, Bragging about My Students.

2011-04-17T10:41:00.006-04:00

And not a moment too soon! The kids and I were all getting tired and cranky.

I must say that I have been very proud of my kids for the past few weeks. We have been doing our drama unit, which in the eighth grade means reading "The Diary of Anne Frank." This text is often the introduction of empathy for a lot of young people, because it is so mind-blowing a premise. I can almost literally watch them realizing: There were people, in recent enough history that my teachers can talk about their grandparents' experiences, that wanted to kill other people -- even KIDS -- because of the 'church' they attended. (The town I teach in is not religiously diverse at all. Everybody goes to the same church, therefore religion = church.) But you can't save yourself by changing your church, because the people who wished to kill you were after your whole 'race.' And, unlike the movies and the church stories they are accustomed to hearing/seeing, Good didn't win. Not really. Millions of innocent people were tortured and killed before this evil was stopped. It's terrifying.

In the past, I've had some students who handled the terror by distancing themselves from the people being oppressed, but this year with the help of Eve Bunting and Martin Niemoeller the students were able to see the danger in that tactic.

My students have been fascinated, and terrified, and really INFURIATED about what happened to Anne Frank and the other residents of "the annexe," and about what happened to the other children in Europe. They have demanded to know why the US government didn't save Anne and Peter and Margot, where the hell the international community was while this was going on.

When they asked me to reassure them that genocides are relics of the past, and I told them I couldn't do that, they started looking up recent genocides.

They have started watching the news to make sure the US is "doing the right thing" in other cases of oppression, and almost started a protest march on DC regarding the situation in Libya.

They have netflixed movies and watched PBS and read online articles and gone to the Holocaust Memorial Museum with their parents on the weekend and researched Nazis and Jewish history (They have a thing for the maccabbees ever since Act 1, Scene 5.), and all this without my asking them to do any of it. So that every day, at least one of my students will come in with something to teach me about the Holocaust.

They have been just amazing.

In which the blogger avoids actual pressing work in order to publicly make a shallow, solipsistic observation

2011-01-22T13:16:00.005-05:00

It occurs to me that perhaps my fascination with the middle ages began with the understanding that seriously commitmentphobic behavior was codified and exalted as representative of perfect, chivalrous love. These are my people. Only, you know, shorter and more likely to die from a minor infection.

The Dark Horse Resolutions

2011-01-17T09:22:00.004-05:00

My best resolutions always come quietly, usually emerging from some area of my life I hadn't even known I was thinking about changing. This happens approximately two weeks into the new year, when I have had time to nurse my Christmas cookie hangover, and deal with the official aging that happens in that time. For example, this past week I celebrated my four year anniversary of quitting smoking. Not coincidentally, I also celebrated four years bronchitis-free the same day.

This year, after my last post considering what I should do to better myself and immediately alter my life so that it includes either louder desperation or less deperate quiet, I have given myself permission to have twelve mini-resolutions. So, I shall try on new lifestyles, habits, thought patterns, shoes, what-have-you for thirty days each and see which ones are worth keeping. Hell, 98% of resolutions die by February anyway, right? Might as well build in obsolescence and give myself a chance at twelve small victories rather than one big eleven-month long failure.

Ten days in, I decided January is vegetarianism and intellectual reawakening month, because I am bored as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

I'll start with vegetarianism. I wish I could say this was a moral choice and I'm a good person and all that. I can't make such lofty claims with a straight face, though. Anyone who has ever heard me talk of my experiences as a toddler and small child being sent out to feed the miserable bastard chickens knows that I cannot be compelled to eschew meat based on the helpless animals theory. This is a lifelong vendetta, friends, and the chickens clearly started it. No, this choice is mainly to give the kidneys a break from all the very hard work they have been doing, force myself to find those vegetarian recipes I keep swearing I'll find and learn, and just give myself a challenge big enough to shake my deadly-dull life up a bit. Nothing says paradigm shift quite like steamed asparagus and almond slices, after all. It's now day 8 of the 30 day vegetarian challenge, and I have had some success. I found a veggie chili recipe that is very yummy, for instance. Since I am not going vegan for the month, I also find I can have a slice of what passes for pizza in DC without feeling gross about it because I have been eating vegetables all day.

So, the first week went very well, and was quite an easy transition. I mean, rice and beans, peanut butter and apples, carrots and hummus are all quite good. I have lots of energy, and wake up annoyingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the mornings. My diet alerts come when I get to the end of a day and realize I have not eaten enough fat! Emergency bruschetta, heavy on the olive oil, STAT! There is a challenge looming, however, in that for the past two days I have been fucking starving, no matter what or how much I eat. My calorie intake is just fine, I've been checking, and my protein intake is low normal, but normal. So, I hope I will be able to figure out the trouble there before I eat the houseplants or gain fifty pounds in excess pasta.

Intellectual awakening is lumbering along in fits and starts.

I started by trying to read popular non-fiction and self-helpish type stuff, when it occured to me that the authors of such books assume that their primary audience is barely literate, a little simple, and unable to suss out the great piles of festering herring said authors deposit on the page. I mean, generally. I'm sure there is a self-help author who is brilliant and insightful, but my local library does not feature that author's works.
Due to a little known corollary to Newton's First Law which reads "An object in sweat pants tends to stay in sweat pants," I have not been able to drag my sorry ass out to the (free and metro-accessible!) museums that all exist within ten miles of my house before their 5pm closing times on weekends.
I have signed up for a Continuing Education class that is technically supposed to be at graduate level, but having perused the syllabus I will say that it is clearly not. Still, it's a chance to think new things, buy new books, and have new conversations with people I didn't previously know.
I have been using the tubes, catching up on blog posts by more serious minded individuals than myself, and reading the letter collections put up by Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Epistolæ. There are letters from Hrotsvit!

So, that's all you never asked about my January. Fascinating, no? Alas, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.

As Yet Unresolved

2011-01-02T12:23:00.003-05:00

God, I'm always late! The Gregorian year started 37 hours ago and I still don't know what direction I want it to take. This is not unprecedented. Slightly over four years ago, on January 14th, I quit smoking. A few years before that, on April 1st, I started exercising. I have to start that up again, actually, but I'm still feeling a nasty foot & ankle sprain I suffered this summer. I feel it a lot more after half an hour on the treadmill, so that now my mind believes that I should avoid the gym, as that room contains pain. I also live in a building with a lot of military folk, and I tend to get competitive. So I keep hurting myself trying to prove to Navy Seals that I can totally do everything they can do.

I tried resolving not to be late anymore for about 15 years straight, and all that did was increase my guilt about my perpetual lateness. I was born a month late. After fits and starts that lasted a decade, I finally settled on two majors and committed myself to completing a university education at 27. That was the commitment, not the finish date. Lateness is not a trait I can easily overcome.

My entire diet yesterday consisted of coffee, oranges, water, and ghirardelli squares, so I think making this the year I eat perfectly is quite out of the question. By the way, oranges and ghirardelli squares go really well together, provided you avoid the mint ones.

I have already lied to my journal.

My niece showed me how to play Sims 3 over the break, and I had a commitmentphobic panic attack when my avatar's boyfriend proposed to her. I'm talking cold sweats here, people. So, perhaps better relationships might be a bit farther off than twelve months.

So, my remaining candidates for 2011 are:
1. Get rid of as many old debts as possible.

Student loans will take a bit longer than a year, provided I don't win the lottery, but there are some $30 kitchen gadgets I have paid the credit card companies for twice over in minimum payments, while still owing $20. That pisses me off.

2. Get more selfish with my time.

At Work: I have been working insane hours to try to make every lesson a) fit the new profile my admin is demanding based on whatever they saw in their last meeting, and b) be a little fun for the kids. Fortunately, combining the perspicacity of my admin and coaches and the number of different things that have to go on simultaneously in a room that is truly serving the needs of all 36 students, I think I have a little room to wiggle out of much of (a) without anyone being any the wiser.
At Home: Some (a lot) of those work hours spill over into home hours. And so, though I want to read, I find myself reading mostly YA literature, when I really want to be reading books I enjoy because I enjoy them, and not books that I am vetting for kids.

3. Spend more time with friends, even if the friends are long-distance, and the time needs to be spent over the phone.

4. Recultivate the interests and passions that make me a person worth knowing. I have become mind-numbingly tedious lately. I mrean, I would walk away from me in an effort to find someone better to be around if I weren't attached. All work and no play, you know. So: Go to the theater. Go to the museums. Enjoy what the world has to offer.

5. Finally get good at typing "the right way." My hunt and peck typing is about 75 wpm. When I go to the home keys and try to be fussy about it, I slow down to about 25 wpm. Which would indicate that I should keep to hunt and pack, except the 11 year-olds who are coming in from Teach For America have apparently been typing since they were zygotes, and can type 'properly' at between 100-125 wpm. This makes me jealous. See previous point about Navy Seals and injuries.

6-10. I'll come up with five more things tomorrow. Maybe something about procrastination?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season, and wish you all a joyous new year. For my part, I got to see the sunrise over the NYC skyline as I drove home this morning, and I take that as a good start to this year!

(This is not my picture. I was driving. I swiped this one from Google images.)

Thinking through a Conundrum

2010-12-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a very bad week is followed by an even worse week, and so it has been with me.

I want to preface my comments by saying that I generally believe I have a good relationship with my students. That said, they are pre-pubescent and neo-pubescent kids, and that moment in life comes with some emotional implications. One of those implications is the tendency to either love or hate, with very little in between. Another is the burning need for vengeance when faced with a firm ‘no.’ It’s a little like dealing with short borderline personality disorder sufferers with poor hygiene. Last Friday I gave unofficial, but still complete, progress reports to 75% of my students. The news was disappointing to many of them, and in at least one case I moved firmly into the hate column. (I guess I ruined Christmas by telling his parents his grade.)

I must also tell you that, up until quite recently, I maintained two Facebook pages: One for my personal use, and one teacher page for the kids to ‘friend’ me and send me bad videos made by ugly people who can’t sing. (Yeah, I am getting old. So?) In the past few weeks, I added a batch of kids who ‘friended’ me, and I also added my school photo to the profile, where once there had only been a cartoon drawn by a previous student.

You likely know where this is going by now. Friday I gave out progress reports, and Saturday afternoon one of my students copied my school photo, created a Facebook page with my photo and in my name, and began adding pornographic pictures and status updates to match. They indicated that I am a teacher, and in which town on the profile, but listed my education as “Slut University.” I won’t get into specifics, but they had clear, if inelegant, theories as to why a male teacher and I are friends. Based on these theories, I can conclude that the designer of the page likes him significantly better than me and that said designer has some very fucked up views of what is sexy. By Monday, the majority of the children in the school had seen it. I noticed an odd uptick in the number of boys who mentioned my Facebook page before and during first period, but since I had just added a bunch of kids as friends to the legit teacher page, I didn’t think of it much.

Then between first and second period, two of my girls pulled me aside and told me they needed to talk to me. We went into the hallway for a moment, and they pulled out their smart phones and showed me the page. My head was spinning. All I could think was that I now had to tell a friend who has always been hyper-vigilant about his online persona that he was collateral damage in an attack on me. I was not looking forward to that. I thanked them sincerely for showing me the page, probably three times, and then we went back to class. The students in the class asked me “Are you OK?” the moment I walked in, and I’m not sure if that’s because what I was feeling was showing or because they knew what my two brave girls were about to show me. I assured them I was fine, and the period progressed as normally as is possible when the teacher is thinking about everything but the lesson. Not least among my thoughts was that I had just said goodbye and happy retirement to the therapist I engaged to get me through my first year without mom, and wondered if I could convince her to put off that retirement for a little while. There was also the concern that I would see news vans pulling up to the school before I could get in touch with my principal.

There was some searching involved, but I finally found the principal in conversation with my friend. I notified him that I needed to speak with him ASAP, and then nodded at friend and said “you too.” I insisted on a private space to have this conversation that everyone in the school except the adults knew about anyway, then sat in my principal’s office and described what had happened. My Principal was OK about it. He started to advise me to go through the district’s people to deal with it right then, but as he was looking for the number remembered that the district has a history of victim-blaming with bullying even when children are involved, and they have no legal requirement to try to protect a teacher. So, they would likely comb through my emails and online activities and see if I sent any personal emails or checked my bank balance online while at work, so they could have reason to reprimand me or get rid of me if this became embarrassing. They would probably ask questions, trying to make my teacher Facebook page seem somehow malevolent, ask me why I let children get a copy of my school photo, start seeking out reasons why it was reasonable for the kids to assume and state outright that I was a total slut. At the very least, it would put my name ‘on a certain radar’ which would make things difficult for me. And I was upset about that assertion, but I also know it to be true. I have recently ranted about the ‘no cell phone on campus’ policy that was the district’s answer to a bullied kid taking film evidence of his bullying to the news after he couldn’t get the district to protect him. I followed his advice to try on my own first, then went off to find friend and inform him of his place in the problem. He was OK about it, too. Very supportive, though I know it pained him personally to have his name attached to anything unseemly online after a decade and change of careful monitoring to prevent just that.

And then I started to meltdown, waiting for the day to end, and I knew I had my most challenging/most in need of me at my best class coming up, and I knew that was a recipe for disaster. So, I went home to start working on the issue RIGHT AWAY. I reported the page to Facebook in the only way they have available to do that. (Seriously? No phone numbers or email?) They managed to get the site down after just a few hours. So, it was likely gone before any children came home from school.

And then this bizarre emotional state of alternating numbness and intense hurt took over. This has been exacerbated by being met at many turns with boys telling me that they saw my page or ‘friended’ me on Facebook, because seeing a teacher humiliated is funny, sex is funny, and this teacher was humiliated publicly with sex, so that’s just hilarious. To them. I see it somewhat differently. When I am being generous, I comfort myself with knowing that the boys who say these things are not my own students, usually. But then I remind myself that one of my students clearly did this, so my boys probably aren’t asking because they know I have their parent’s phone number. Many of my girls have been caring, but then several other girls were listed as friends on the fake site. So, this is a clear indication of where I stand with the kids, and that is not where I thought I stood at all. Not even close.

And then there’s the problem that always comes up when a teacher wants to complain about the treatment she receives at the hands of her kids. What did the teacher do to deserve this? Why don’t the kids respect her/him? Why hasn’t the teacher connected better with her students? And it’s that, more than the sex thing, which haunts me when I tell someone about this, or want to. In my mind I wonder what judgments they are making about me as a teacher and person. I alluded to bi-partisan support for the notion that teachers ain’t shit in my previous post, and in situations like this that idea radiates off people.

I stumbled through the past two days, barely, wondering why my kids supported this page, why they thought it was so funny, and why the hell my administrators weren’t trying to figure out who did this. They tell me it’s because it didn’t happen at school, but I know that there are loopholes that allow the inclusion of cyber-attacks in our code of conduct.

I want to defend myself somehow, and consider filing a criminal complaint since the school won’t help me. Yes, against a child. But then, I know that the district and the news people and everyone, every time, assumes the teacher did something to provoke an attack like this. And I just don’t know if I have the emotional, physical and financial strength to defend myself. Yes, against a child.

The Moment I Started Hating Teaching

2010-12-12T22:01:00.005-05:00

I had a rough week this week.

The administration has decided that we will teach according to an entirely new model, a different philosophy from the last two "all-in" philosophies we have had, and they gave us two days to set that up in the classroom. As you may imagine, this abrupt change is quite a disruptive force in the middle of the second quarter. As you may also imagine, changing your whole philosophy of education because someone has informed you that your philosophy changed is a bit disconcerting. And this week was when the change was to be implemented. I also got a new co-teacher this week. Integrating all these changes required A LOT of extra work and planning from me. I was up until 12:30 every night trying to pull it together for the next day, every day. By Thursday morning I was screaming at the alarm clock about the ridiculous requirement that I do this 18 hour day AGAIN. So, for most of the week I hated the administration's imperiousness, and I hated myself for my weakness in complying with yet another unreasonable request.

And then I had a parent conference on Thursday that went very well, actually, but included a grandmother whose grandchild calls her what my nieces and nephews used to call my mom. I have never before this heard of anyone whose grandchildren call her this nickname, other than my mom. So, ouch. For a moment I hated Fate's cruelty.

I was also informed that one of my students' fathers has demanded that his son be pulled from my class because I obviously don't like the child. This because I refused to let him leave the classroom until he had done enough work to indicate that he needed a break. This is what we do with children who have breaks built into their schedule, and this child does not have that accomodation. However, he does fail my assignments on a regular basis by simply refusing to do them, so I must be out to get him. The colleague who inherited the child informed me tersely that my race is the problem here, and I have much to learn about the culture. This same colleague does not allow any child to leave her classroom at any time, regardless of their 504 and IEP accomodations. She has also considered the whiteness of another colleague problematic when she wanted to visit a museum before lunch rather than after on a field trip. But, you know, however well I intellectually know that the problem here is hers, assigning me a category as less effective or ignorant based on my race and not on my actions was hurtful. For a while I hated the defensiveness of the father and the racism of my colleague. The kid I remain neutral on, since he hasn't really done much of anything good or bad to create a strong opinion.

The "coach" who was assigned to our school (the only middle school in our district to make significant gains every year for the past five years) after her previous school failed and was taken over, dropped into my class today. The extra test-prep class, which my principal has decided should be available until the state tests, is being organized. The coach has a vision. After so degrading and demoralizing our department with constant hectoring about all the things we do inadequately, after decimating the morale of my colleagues, and after talking our pedagogical skill down in public meetings at which representatives from many more schools than ours were present, after convincing administration to turn our core classes into glorified Kaplan courses, and making it clear to me that the only way to save my reputation was to step down from leadership so my name does not appear on the gross educational misfeasance and malfeasance she is perpetrating on my department, she has a vision. And so our latter-day prophet of education felt the need to share her vision with me. That vision for the test-prep workshop ironically does not include test prep, but is rather a nebulous, unstructured literature appreciation course for boys. There will also be a T-shirt designing contest, so they can have something "cool" to wear on meeting days. Because homemade t-shirts are cool to twelve year-old boys. And, since they are boys, we must have multi-media projects, because boys dig the technology. Except our boys dig sports and fashion and fear technology, but why rely on knowledge of your kids when there are stereotypes you can play to instead? I hated her ignorance and arrogance.

Then Friday, I was working with the children on editing the personal narratives I have assigned them. I told them, if they were stuck, to write about a moment or a person who changed their life. Rookie mistake. I read about rapes, parental abuse and neglect, police brutality, crushing poverty, and homes so dysfunctional that the children wish they could stay at school until bedtime. By the time there were two hours left in the day, I was having a very hard time refraining from the tears I knew would make the children who trusted me enough to tell me these secrets self-conscious. For those two hours, I hated the world. Intensely.

I notified a friend, who wrangled up enough coworkers for happy hour so I wouldn't have to ask the man at the ABC for his finest gallon of vodka and a straw to get over this week. I went home to pick up the cell phone I neglected to pack Friday morning. Service was not available because I had been neglecting to pay the bill due to the furloughs this year cutting my funds so that they are just high enough, after student loans, to prevent putting me into overdraft every other month if I am very careful with my money. I was not careful In November. I paid the bill (payday), fed the cat, and went to meet my friends at an establishment with entirely too much Republican and Church propaganda on the walls, but waitstaff with exotic accents. So, there's that. Plus, the place had Guinness on tap, and some fine, hearty peasant food that reminded me of a time before student loans and teaching, when I could afford to travel. (Peasant food is always the best tasting in every country, though often not recommended by modern nutritionists.) I simultaneously hated the graduate school that paid English grads at 1/9th the rate of every other discipline because they subscribed to the same school of thought as Fanny Price's aunts regarding the training of those who will be mistreated later in life, Ratzinger, the profligacy of the last Superintendent of Schools in my district, Reaganomics, Congress, and myself for allowing this string of indignities to get me down rather than piss me off.

Then, while we were out as colleagues, talking about our lives and our jobs, and our futures, a friend who still goes to some meetings this coach of doom attends to talk about how she is the superman that our school has been waiting for (because our teachers are so ignorant in the art of teaching) texted me to notify me, laughingly, about the newest statements being made by my coach about my department. It seems that someone at the most recent meeting made a comment about the exceptionally broad knowledge-base of the teachers in our school. This person was thinking particularly of another department, not English, but our coach interjected with a correction just the same. It seems that our department is deplorably ignorant about language and literature, and requires as a whole constant, exhausting instruction in the very basics of our specialty area. This from a woman I had to correct three times before she reluctantly conceded that Dickenson's "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" might not be a poem about poor self-esteem and wishing people would notice one. This woman whose readings of literature are frequently so off-base as to be laughable, and whose accompanying arrogance would be laughable if our administration were more willing to deny her requests, finds me and my colleagues plain stupid. And for the rest of the night I hated her, and the fact that my friend requires my discretion to prevent blowback from coming at her for her betrayal of the goings on in the meeting.

Then, this weekend, I started thinking about all the skills I will teach this week, in exactly the prescribed way, because I have no right to intellect or creativity or autonomy of any kind in my school. I started to rebel a bit inside, and then thought about the fact that I do not have a go to hell fund that allows me to quit my job. Plus, the kids need a teacher. When I started the year with them, I made a commitment to teach them for a year, provided there were no dire circumstances pulling me away. But then I thought about the education I am providing. The narrow focus on literacy and convergent thinking I am forced by my school and current legislation to keep does not prepare my students in the way I wanted to prepare them for citizenship of a town, state and country. It doesn't make them able to excel in anything other than following orders. It doesn't make them critical thinkers who will hold their government to high standards. I am becoming the teacher I was warned against becoming, a teacher who covers material and prepares kids for tests, but doesn't educate them.

Now, let's imagine that I can get reformers and saviors and politicians and other ignoramuses out of my room for a few minutes, and I 'go rogue' and actually teach something useful to kids who are dying to learn. Will it be enough to make them educated people? If we all do that, will our kids have enough sense, ten years from now, to come back and demand to know why we taught them testing skills but not thinking skills? If they do, what will I tell them? Will they be educated enough by those secreted dribs and drabs of critical thinking training by then to know that my Nuremberg defense is an unacceptable answer? Since I know that now, and I know I am cravenly saving my job by electing not to heed my calling, what exactly am I doing?

And it is with those thoughts ricocheted around my head that I realize that I have begun to hate teaching. Really hate it. I hate it so much that I can't even hear the politicos of both sides calling me, by turns, fascist and communist over my own seething rage at myself and my country. I hate it so much that even my students, whom I love, just add to my pain because I know what I - coerced by No Child Left Behind - am doing to them. I hate it so much that I am blogging about my hate for myself and my professional compromises rather than writing lesson plans I know won't help my kids in any meaningful way.

The Very Worst Thing a Woman Can Be

2010-11-28T18:54:00.004-05:00

... according to the very odd pair of twenty-somethings I shared the laundry facilities with this morning, is fat. The very worst thing a woman can do is to inhabit a body that does not comply with the aesthetic vision of the beholder.

Wow.

I've long been astonished at how openly aggressive it is to feel that you have the right to wish people would alter their corporeal beings in order to fit your sense of style. I mean, even having a preference for someone else's style of haircut is a lot of damned nerve. Yet people feel the right to place demands for compliance on other people's waist circumference, calf tone, breast and buttock size and shape, and on and on. Even people I respect a lot, people who are activists for equality; people who theorize for a living, carefully undoing the false constructs that support silly, outmoded hierarchies will make reflexively appearance-based judgements, assigning lower status and even character flaws to those who fail their personal pretty tests.

But this morning, it just struck me as funny and I started thinking of all the things that I could theoretically do and be, and still somehow be a better person in the eyes of these people than I would be if I gained 50 pounds. The freedom I have to exhibit my nasty side while still being considered an acceptable person is awesome.

I could:

set fire to an orphanage

on christmas eve

and put a reindeer on the front lawn so the kids think Santa did it
Buy myself a whole bunch of stuff I have been fetishizing for months, rather than getting thoughtful gifts for the kids in my life.
Show my own nieces and nephews the cool crap I bought myself, causing me not to be able to afford even some blocks and handpuppets for them.

steal from the donation cup of a homeless person

Tape a friend saying exasperated things about his very guilt-sensitive mom and send her the recordings
Tape the same friend saying rude things about his "it's complicated" and send her the recordings

feed a laxative to the neighbor's dog
Ask another neighbor what vexing 'heavy construction' project her husband is working on, based on all the banging and hollering that goes on there when she's away.

Give students bad advice purposefully, then grade them on the good advice I should have given.
Have a dinner party, at which I serve only the foods that trigger severe allergic reactions in my guests.
Drink and drive with full knowledge that I am drunk and dangerous

And that's just the banal stuff that pops into my head in a few minutes. If I were really determined to be cruel, vindictive, selfish, rude, evil, controlling, passive-aggressive, aggressive-aggressive, short-tempered, ignorant, unjust, and so on, I imagine I could come up with some far more inventive things I could be and do just as long as I don't gain weight.

Collaborative Planning

2010-10-24T11:48:00.003-04:00

Hilarious, in that I have literally had conversations exactly like this already this year. (Regime change from good leadership to crazy leadership.)

Amazon Gets it Very Right

2010-10-10T11:04:00.005-04:00

[Edited to add the reason for the title. God, I'm out of practice!] After a gift-shopping spree on Amazon last year threw some wrenches into their profile of me, I have taken to ignoring their now very weird "suggestions for you" list when I log on to search for something. Recently however, I dared to peep at the list on the grounds that it might be funny to see what bizarre books they now think I want. And, lo and behold, I found language, history, theory and cooking books, and very few "Mummies' Guide to Dismantling Auto Engines" kind of books. It has reset itself. Calloo, Callay! In that list were many treasures, the greatest of which belong to the Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman oevre. (Yes, I was just that pretentious in public. Sue me.)

Though I am forced to be a partial Prescriptive Grammarian by trade (8th graders will start every daggone sentence with AND unless you insist they NEVER, EVER do that again, lest they anger the gods of language and get points taken off their work), I absolutely love The Origin of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman. It's got lots of stuff I revel in: language nerd facts, etymological arguments, and snark aimed at self-appointed grammar mavens who still seem to want to assign levels of moral authority to dialects. (!)

This particular fault is one that I meet up with every day at work. The school I teach in is predominantly African-American, and you would probably pass out if you heard some of the stuff even the (bourgeois) African-American teachers say about the class and regional dialect markers the kids use in their speech and writing. I'm not sure they realize they are thinking ill of the children for being working-class, southern, and black but that's prezactly what they are doing. And it's an ugly part of my personality, but I love doing the superiority dance right back at people who use false facts to make themselves feel superior to others. Especially when they're doing that at children. Of course, that doesn't help at all, because it just solidifies their belief in 'correct' and 'incorrect' language, and makes them more insecure and therefore more pernicious little language bullies, but a girl's got to have her fun.

Anyway, I'm thinking of giving a copy each to a pair of math teachers at my school who insist upon teaching my kids "proper English," despite having no idea what they're talking about. This seems like a less passive-aggressive approach than teaching erroneous Algebra and Geometry formulas in my class, or breaking out into Anglo-Saxon at the next faculty meeting during which "the children can't speak proper English!" comes up, which were my first and second plans, respectively. (At some point I want to write a lovely rant about Mathematicians and Scientists who can't seem to believe that they don't know better than everybody, even when speaking about their interlocutor's area of expertise, because, seriously, WTF is that?!)

[More additions, because I can't shut up.]
I was originally on Amazon looking for a book called Small Batch Baking by Debby Maugans Nakos, which was recommended by a dear friend and trench buddy from the Undergraduate German Class of Doom. God, I love this book! Even before my mom passed away, I was very reluctant to make a number of dishes that we both loved because I only knew how to cook for a small army, having learned the basics of cooking from my mother, who learned how to cook first for her father's restaurant, and then for a farm family and hired hands, and then off the farm for our extended family which included several exceptionally tall athletes. So, lots of food. Since my mother passed, I have been even more reluctant to make home-made baked goods, unless I could organize a dinner party to justify it, because cakes serve 8-10 people, and I do not wish to throw away a perfectly good cake or lasagna, nor to expand to the size of 8 regular people. Besides, even though my appetite can sometimes trip over into the rapacious, I can't demolish a lasagna or German chocolate cake alone. Unless I do like I did out of desperate need of cheesy goodness last week, and decide to eat lasagna for lunch and dinner every day, all week long.

So, now I have an information source which helps me to bake for self-soothing once in a while and have a reasonably-sized treat, rather than one single-sized treat followed by a week of gourmand-level excess that feels more like a chore than a joy. I mean, really, I dig gluttony, but only when there's some variety and discovery in it. The seven deadlies need to feel good in the moment, otherwise why bother, right?

[Tangential Blather]
Some of you may have noticed that I have stopped pretending I don't know how to boil an egg. My current social cohort is no less sexist overall than the graduate school weanies who kept trying to fob off all community work on the women in the program, while separating themselves out to argue feminist theory because they believed they understood that theory so much better than the women in the program (I'm not effing kidding), it's just that I have become much, much meaner in the intervening years. As Twisty typed, all those years ago, self-styled male feminists are greeted with the narrowed eye of suspicion for good reason. (That was a paraphrase because I'm too damned lazy to find the exact quote.) So, I don't need to pretend total incompetence in the kitchen anymore. Now I just tell people to fuck off when they try to nag 'womanly' behaviors out of me. Personal growth feels good. Plus, I get yummy food.

Damn It All!

2010-08-02T14:41:00.008-04:00

I have done all the usual interventions. I've written emails and signed petitions and called the white house gripe line and my senator's gripe line and carefully controlled my breathing and my tone so that I was expressing a thought rather than abusing an intern. But, see, there's all this extra rage that has to go somewhere, and I have a blog.

The White House, the Democratic one, has released it's rules for the high-risk pools that will exist to cover people who have been unable to get coverage for the next three years, and in those rules coverage for abortion care has been proscribed. A woman of child-bearing age, with serious medical conditions, who knows that accidental pregnancy would be a medical disaster for her and likely her fetus too, can't even access that coverage with her own, extra money. Basically, this is the Stupak amendment again, but this time where it is poised to do maximum damage to the women it constrains and their families.

Women like me. I was lucky enough to avoid developing/being diagnosed with my health issues until I had good health insurance. And I do have good health insurance, so we're not talking about me particularly. Yet, I now know in a way that I did not before (yes, I'm that short-sighted) how absolutely terrifying the threat of being compelled to carry on with an unplanned pregnancy can be. Because, though pregnancy is technically possible for me, it would require six months of very careful prescription alterations and testing and the assembly of a medical dream team to give me a snowball's chance in hell of having a healthy child AND living to raise it. An unplanned pregnancy would likely kill me, the fetus, or both. And now, women who have my health issues but not my lucky timing will have to, what? I mean, what do you do when you have no room for error, because somebody else's 'moral objections' are more important to your government than your right to bodily autonomy? More important even than your life?

These women, the most medically vulnerable, the most likely to NEED qualified people to perform life-saving abortions on them, are now the ones least likely to get that care. Under a democratic government.

The relationship women are in with the democratic party is toxic. Women come together every two to four years, and we work hard, and we vote, and we get them power so that they can serve the people. 'The people' being understood to include women people. They would have no power without us, none. Women owe the government NOTHING. Not faith, not hope, not charity, not trust, not patience, NOTHING. The debt all goes the other way, and I am goddamned tired of having to jump up and shout and scream to remind the people who are supposed to be on my damned side that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE AND CITIZENS WHOSE FULL CUSTODY RIGHTS TO THEIR OWN BODIES SHOULD NOT BE MADE SUBJECT TO THE THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL RAMBLINGS OF PEOPLE WHO HATE US OR "LOVE US ENOUGH TO CONTROL US" OR THINK WE'RE SOCIALLY PROBLEMATIC WHEN WE GET ALL AUTONOMOUS BECAUSE OUR SILENCE AND PATIENCE WOULD REALLY HELP THE PARTY OUT OF A TIGHT SPOT.

1989 NOW convention was right, folks, we need a human rights party. The Democrats want to chase the middle all the way to the right, let them. We need a new party with a new vision. The sooner the better.

What Will Be the New "Drilling Down"?

2010-07-31T16:19:00.002-04:00

I can tell by the sudden uptick in emails (including a request that I alter a grade so that a child will meet the eligibility requirements for a sport--rage!) that it is time to start preparing in earnest for the start of the next school year. As always, that is an almost overwhelmingly complicated prospect, yet full of hope and possibility. This may, after all, be the year that I am able to leave for home just one day, maybe even a day a month, feeling like I've done everything exactly right; ALL the children know more, think better, and feel just the right balance of respect/love and challenge/accountability from me. Could be, right? So, in between preparing for my friends visit, I am allowing my mind to just go everywhere, thinking of all the things that might possibly be this next year.

Alas, I have a good imagination, and a knowledge that some changes have been made that will require me to attend more meetings with school and district-level administration this year. This got me thinking about the 'professional level' verbal ticks adopted by some in leadership, and how vexing it can be to listen to the same damned word or phrase, often inappropriately used, dozens of times in a 'conversation' (read: lecture). The phrases change every year, of course, following the last trend in corporate blather. Three years ago, during my first teaching year, I was told I was being 'negative' because I asked a pointed question about an astonishingly foolish idea that was presented to the staff as intellectual alchemy. 'Negativity' is discouraged, or was, because 'positivity' was what made good results, and prevented annoying questions by insubordinate jerks like me, just like on Oprah and in the corporate world. I, as a newbie, foolishly thought that smart ideas executed well made good results. Silly me. Then, of course, the corporate world started to crumble and 'positivity' started looking a lot like either burying one's head in the sand or Harvey-level mental illness; it's pretty harmless and cute, but you wouldn't put the guy spouting this philosophy in charge of your money or your kids.

The bursting of corporate bubbles must have had a very serious impact on the health habits of corporate drones, indeed, because we were next instructed to "work the programs [we were] provided, with full fidelity to all the steps." This would have been almost reasonable, minus the insistence that educators stop all their annoying thinking and asking questions and just do as they're told already. Except. My school district spent approximately 70 jillion dollars on programs with competing and unreconcilable philosophies, and instructed us to put them all into place at once. This causes educators to ask impertinent questions like 'how can I implement all these together without making myself and the children explode?' and 'what results can I expect from this veritable cornucopia of overpriced programs?'. I don't want to go into detail, because I would probably be sharing corporate secrets, but it was a little like telling teachers and children that they had to simultaneously be completely skeptical radical atheists, and completely faithful as mormons, southern baptists, and orthodox jews. 'Twas a puzzlement, and all questions, objections, and general observations were met with a repeat of the 'full fidelity' requirement, because like addicts, we were addicted to workable solutions, and had to give them up cold turkey by working our steps.

And then we got to the "what the hell is wrong with you?!eleventyone!" year, during which we were encouraged finally to think. Huzzah! We like thinking! Thinking involves using knowledge and ability and coming up with further questions, or maybe even solutions! Thinking is our friend. Or not. Because there is no thinking, there is 'drilling down' to root causes, and when we had located 'root causes,' we were told to 'drill down' to the 'root causes of the root causes.' And then 'drill down' some more. I cannot begin to express to you how completely annoying it is to be told to 'drill down' repeatedly by people with annoying accents and nothing else to offer the conversation. And when we finally got to the platonic ideals we were mining for, we were asked how we could change them for the children. Except, some of the root causes have to do with the community and the fact that our schools are not really engaged with the community on a level that is helpful and unifying. Helpful and unifying costs money, and there's no money left to make the school a center of a vibrant community again, when you had to spend all those 70 jillion dollars on corporate education programs that each did much less than advertised, and combined did much, much less than slightly smaller class sizes and more frequent parent nights would have done.

Well, I can't imagine that 'drilling down' will still be the annoying as hell almost meaningless corporate left-over that gets touted with little context or understanding at the meetings this year. Even if my internal editors are all hard at work, which they rarely are, I have younger colleagues who haven't trained their editors yet, and older colleagues whose internal editors have become as cynical and grizzled as those guys in the forties movies. One person will say 'drill down' just once and then we're off on BP compare and contrast essay, I just know it.

Since there are still superintendents who append "CEO" to their title because it seems more professional (*cough* Arne Duncan *cough*), and consider educated children a commodity that we as educators produce from the raw materials of children plus books, measured by tests, I figure there will be no slowing of the desire of educational leadership in my county stealing bad ideas from their better-remunerated friends in corporate culture to prove that they are too cool and capable, and educators aren't out of the loop. So, some fool thing that some MBA somewhere used as a motivational earworm once will be adopted by leadership as 'the way to fix a broken educational system' like ours, and they'll feel like they fit in with their friends. The children, however, will continue to learn at the rates that teachers and parents can help them learn.

Mood Swing

2010-07-26T19:33:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's doldrums have been supplanted today by excitement upon learning that a dear, dear old friend (and her family) will be visiting my neck o'the woods soon. Yay!

This particular friend has had a tremendous impact on my life's trajectory; it was she who badgered, encouraged, and cajoled me into signing up first for a language class with her, and then for a full semester of college a few months later. It was her constant quest for knowledge in her own life that put her in a position to hold my hand and lead me into the undergraduate matriculation that finally took. She also was there to talk to and boggle with me at the extreme weirdness that is the university. I tend to think the university is an even stranger place when you've spent a decade in the work force, as we had. Perhaps that's just me trying to assign our non-traditional status as the cause of a culture shock that would have happened anyway. After all, I can't compare the experiences. Still, it was comforting to have another, more advanced adult in the trenches with me and all those rookies. For these and many reasons, I love her.

(S'blood, do I have to put a background story in for everything?!)

Anyway, I have now switched from grumpy to happy. I've been very busily working on what stuff is available to see around here for families. What's good for 7 year-olds, and what's good for 2 year-olds? How many Firehook cookies will I need to buy to allow me to purchase the children's affection without making them twitchy enough that I earn their parents' annoyance? All chocolate chip, or should I get the lemony ones too? Can I get my intermittently aggressive kitty in for a mani-pedi before they get here?

These and many other questions must be answered, and I will love answering them because I really like having something to look forward to again.

Random Bullets of Crap

2010-07-25T15:11:00.005-04:00

I'm feeling retro enough and grumpy enough to do this, so here goes:

It is too !#$% hot and humid to walk around my usually very walkable neighborhood with the extra weight of my walking cast. Driving with the driving shoe still hurts. I am getting very VERY grumpy about being at home.
My scanner is being a bastard.
Cat appears to invite large numbers of his little cat friends over in the night to shed all over my stuff.
I learned today that both sides can agree that I threaten democracy by being anonymous/pseudonymous and opinionated on the internet.
I am unable to make a very science-based dude I know understand that there is a very real possibility of entrenched ideologies affecting how a scientist asks his questions, even what questions he chooses to ask, and then how interprets his data. Because "social sciences" aren't "real sciences," so they don't count. And there is no discrimination against women and minorities in the "real sciences," because there is a several hundred year history of northern european descended males being superior at astronomy. Ignore the middle east. Never happened.
Also, he is not thinking in a sexist context, because his very feminist mom stayed home to raise him and his brother, so he didn't get all that yucky patriarchy training that happens in the preschools.
I am out of vodka.
We are now seven weeks in to my saga of the leak-damaged living room floor, which is still not fixed, though several promises have been made by the apartment managing company.
I bought an Angelonia because it was all pretty and purply, and would work well with my new bedroom decor, and it is dying at an alarming rate.
Organization and productivity remain elusive.
I gained five pounds since I hurt my damned foot.
I really suck at creating fiction. Even when I fictionalize reality, it's crap.
Affirmation bear has assigned me the task of eliminating perfectionism from my psyche. You know how you don't help a perfectionist? Give her an unquantifiable assignment!

[Edited to add the following]

Despite my status as an ex-Catholic, I am having a lot of difficulty learning how to work and play nicely with the loud n proud Protestants at work. Seriously, man, I don't say nasty shit about your grandma's intellectual and spiritual acuity. Also, praying for God to harm your enemies, including that guy who cut you off when you were on your way home from the Harris Teeter, is really disturbing. Save it for personal time.
There has been a lot of talk among people I know about "the renter's mentality" and nasty, clueless references to the poor in general, and renters in particular, as people who don't work hard enough. Because we can all be middle class if we work hard enough. And that is personally infuriating, because ...
With student loan payments figured in (an expense the complaining bourgeois I work with do not have, have never had, and do not expect their kids to have), I have determined that I can have a reasonably middle-class lifestyle, OR a reasonably middle-class bank account, but NEVER both.
But it is also professionally infuriating, because attitudes like that affect how one deals with poor children and their parents. The boy we had to hold back from moving on to high school didn't have his problems because his guardians were lazy, and rented their house, and were loud on Saturdays. He had them because they didn't have time or education to research the possible remedies, and even if they did, couldn't begin to afford the remedies for those problems.

Summer Project Plan B: Attempting to Write Fiction

2010-07-23T16:40:00.004-04:00

This was not supposed to be my summer project. Every year, I choose something large and somewhat scary to learn over the summer break. I was determined this summer to learn how to be moderately athletic. My general clumsiness and profound fear of looking foolish in front of the very muscular has prevented me learning anything more athletic than basic walking for several decades now, and even that is sometimes a wobbly affair. So, I decided this would be the year when I turned that history of clumsiness around. I would learn things and practice and emerge with the upright, squared shoulders and air of indomitable capability of the 'natural athlete.'

Despite those brave plans, a newer tradition reared it's ugly head, and I am in a cast this summer. For the third time in three years. Friends have declared that next year they will -- forcibly if need be -- wrap me in bubble wrap at least two weeks prior to summer solstice to break the pattern. This plan strikes me as a perfect way to break an arm rather than a pattern, but they mean well.

So, there I was with a summer to fill, mobility heavily limited, and no reasonable plan for learning in the face of a haunting fear. I hate that. I cast around for fears I could face heroically from a comfy chair and footrest, and lighted upon fiction writing. It is a shameful secret that I regularly ask my students to put aside their fears of inadequacy and try fiction writing as a way to engage with words and ideas in a fun and creative way, yet avoid the practice myself due to my own similar fears. I, Fraud. Filling in an empty spot where moral fiber should always have been seemed a plausible enough heroic journey for the summer, and I declared I would write something.

Almost immediately, memories of the last time I attempted to write fiction began to crowd in. I was twenty, and earnest, and arrogant, and painfully naive. I had written some letters to a favored uncle, and he approved of my style and encouraged me to try my hand at writing for real. There's very little that twenty year-old me wanted to hear more than that I could be an artist. I became perfectly awful almost overnight. I sat with my manual typewriter (Old School!), and my cigarettes (Daring and Tortured!), and put my Mr. Coffee on permanent duty (Dedicated!), and proceeded to type out the most humiliatingly transparent, precious dreck I could muster. My own mother read it and declared it 'kind of cute.' That chapter of the Great American Novel That Wasn't was quickly relegated to the back of a closet somewhere in favor of piano lessons, which I also took very seriously, and at which I also achieved little in the way of skill or artistry. We won't discuss the horrors I inflicted upon the poor, innocent bastards who trusted me to try my hand at cooking.

I think I kind of suck at everything artistic or in any way generative, folks. Yet here I am, with a proper computer this time, attempting to write a short story. (Start small, Heo!) You'll notice if you look to the right of this blog that I have approximately 250 words and have had since I put the widget there. In fact, I have managed a first page of three separate stories: a barely disguised autobiographical story that makes me cry too hard to write reasonably, a science-fiction story meant to use science to explicate a moment in biblical narrative (written by a humanities person and atheist), and some other pile of amorphous bullshit that I can't quite describe. They vary in quality from the merely humiliating to suicidal ideation-inducing.

I like to think of myself as the kind of person who can set her jaw at something and have it happen. I have managed many things in my life by employing just that strategy, and so I generally think of everything I haven't accomplished as stuff that I haven't adequately attempted. I think this may be the summer I find out what it's like to face a fear, do my best, and have that fear kick my ass anyway.

I wonder if it would be cheating to reframe the fear I face as "working my hardest only to find that I really do suck" and call it an odyssey already.

Thanks, Susan Faludi. I Needed That!

2010-07-21T23:27:00.005-04:00

The local library has a large bookshelf by the exit on which they place donated books that patrons can buy for a DOLLAR! I try to avoid that section of the library most of the time because I hoard books like an English major, but last week I was in the mood to spend $5 frivolously, and there were a lot more books than usual. I came away with a great haul, including a copy of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. And so it is that, after a mere 19 years -- half my lifetime, I have actually read the whole book rather than just the snippets that other people used for arguments.

It was often unpleasant to remember the illustrative cultural moments Faludi used in her argumentation. I could have lived happily for the rest of my life not remembering when young men, the good guys, our friends as we thought they were, cheered during the rape scene of The Accused. It was always unpleasant to remember the terrible words of clergy and politicians who were openly hateful about me and the people I loved. It was also perfect timing for me.

I have been trying to figure out for the past three months why I am suddenly in a panic about not being able to present myself to my high school classmates as the 'Mom' of a perfect nuclear family. This has never been my wish for my life. I have actually threatened to move abruptly out of state if a man gets all gooey over me and the thought of diamond jewelry. Because, yikes, marriage cooties! But here I was, having all this angst over not having what I never wanted, and it confused me.

And then, as I read Backlash, I began to understand. Thinking about people I knew well 20 years ago was making me think about what was 'important' 20 years ago. That, in turn, was making me anxious about not having what I am supposed to have by now in order to be considered successful as a woman. The backlash finally caught up with me, but the explanation of what was happening and why was close to hand. I'm lucky.

I wonder who's going to be responsible for chasing down the truth about all the crap that's being put out now about women and burrowing in the brains of young women and girls as little self-esteem time-bombs that will go off at some unknown time in the future. Who will write a chapter explaining what the hell is wrong with Steven Pinker, for instance? Who will go through and explicate the rancid sexism that was thrown at political figures in 2008 by reporters who claimed to be supporters? (I'm looking at you, Tweety, you big snorty ass.)

Heomodor's Prediction

2010-07-19T12:05:00.002-04:00

When I was a wee colleen, eager to thwart the unreasonable hierarchical constructs that I identified as the enemies of justice and goodness, but still naive enough to think I could purchase the accessories of revolution at the mall, Heomodor sat me down for a little talk.* She started right in at the gaping hole of greatest import in my understanding: my full acceptance of the media-softened narrative of “the sixties.” I paraphrase, but what she said went a little something like this:

“The television is lying to you. This country was AT CIVIL WAR twenty years ago. It was an ugly time, not a beautiful one. There was no love and peace then. Shots were fired, and people were killed. They were killed for their ideas. They were killed by the police, under orders from the governments of their cities and states. They were killed by their countrymen in the name of America, and God, and Freedom. It was terrifying, and it will happen again. Hateful people still exist, and they will still be willing to kill to frighten others into pretending to believe they are right. The next time it happens it will be worse.”

My response was to roll my eyes covertly, as was so often the case when my mother would talk about the events that occurred before I was born as if they were not perfectly resolvable sitcom-level conflicts. Yeah, right, mom. Of course men were rude to women, and white people were rude to black people, on purpose, as if their parents never introduced the topic of manners. Sure. Yeah, yeah, the flower children chose images of peace and love purposefully to challenge their opponents’ world views, thus filling their opponents with the kind of frothy rage that made Travis shoot Ole Yeller. Whatever.

Then, a few years later, I was a little less wee, and a little less desirous of proving Heomodor wrong on general principle, but still aggressively ‘independent’ enough to be determined to watch all the political coverage available so I could make an informed decision in my very first presidential election. Thus was I willing and eager to watch the Republican National Convention of 1992.

Holy Fuck.

I’d like to say that my assessment of the situation has evolved to include pithy insights and erudite evaluations since then, but it’s really just been a decades-long, ever-increasing feeling of ‘Holy Fuck.’ These right-wingers, they know how to up the hate-monger ante.

Now we have those on the right – not the crazy cabin-in-the-woods right like Timothy McVeigh, but the ‘Hi, I’m running for Mayor/Congress/Senate’ right – speaking publicly of ‘second amendment solutions’ to their political problems. And it’s not just idle talk, as the family of the murdered Dr. Tiller will no doubt attest. There are those on the right who are not using eliminationist rhetoric as a mere political ploy; these bastards want us silent, and if dead is the only way to achieve silent, they’ll go with that.

The rhetoric is being assisted along by judicial decisions like the recent Supreme Court decision overturning gun bans in various locations, but most notably in DC, where we keep our federal government. This is the same federal government that oppresses all these hate-mongers by limiting their free reign to oppress other Americans with impunity.

I fear that the perfect storm Heomodor envisioned a bit over a decade ago is gathering now. Militarized ideologues have been defining themselves and their followers as warriors for decades, yes. Culture Warriors and Christian Warriors, yes, but that is just the preliminary work. That work is their effort to Other people on the left, and some of the people on the left then Other the people on the right, and then we have opposing sides of “war.” That is in place, really. And there is a very short hop between metaphorical ‘war’ and real duck-and-cover war once Othering has been completed. Ask the Sudan.

*She kindly neglected to inform me of how embarrassingly obtuse it was to be a little consumerist 80’s girl, wearing mass-produced simulacra of the artifacts of an earlier teenaged counter-cultural rebellion. That must have been difficult for her, because I had a full complement of mass-produced Hippie-inspired Yuppie gear. Thinking back on this gear now sends me into a full blush that rivals the one I produce when suffering from the effects of bad tequila.

Spring Summer Cleaning Underway

2010-07-11T16:17:00.002-04:00

So, I think I have cleared all the E.D. medication ads from the blog. Yay.

Despite my worst fears, the majority of my posts have not been so boring/childish/irresponsible that I'm left with three posts and a terrible desire to burn my keyboard. Most injudicious blogging was fixable with one deleted paragraph and an added note that editing occured to spare the innocent. Not so bad at all.

I've entertained the possibility of replacing pseudonym wih just plain nym, but have not convinced myself that this would add anything of value to the blog or my experience as a blogger. I do know it would come with some inconveniences, though, so an emphatic 'not yet if ever' on that.

Question(s): Anybody have any ideas for freshening up the old template? Should it happen? If it does, what kind of stuff would be perfect? What to avoid?

On Sending in Payment for My High School Reunion

2010-05-16T10:49:00.005-04:00

I dropped that check into the mailbox over at CHECs central post office, and I could feel my dread grow as I heard the envelope slide down to meet its compatriots. Then, for an hour following, I tried to figure out how I could buy a loft like in Flashdance, only less rustic, and a weekend place in the mountains which manages to be both surrounded by woods and a working organic farm, and start a business, and write a book and possibly a dissertation*, and run my first marathon**, and get my 5' 10" frame into a smaller size without looking ill, and get married to a feminist man who doesn't want a cookie or try to outfeminist women or mansplain feminism to women, and adopt 3 beautiful refugee children in a way that is completely untainted by colonialist leanings. By August. Maybe I'll save the life of an injured unicorn as well.

Also, this payment has depleted my disposable income budget such that I will have to wait a bit before buying that replica of the bayeux tapestry I have had my eye upon. One of those people had better have joined a cult in the past few years!

*Without being enrolled in any program, or, for that matter, having read anything more challenging than Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout in months.
**Just for fitness level context, my big goal for the summer is to be able to run a 5k by October 1st. Bonus points if I can do it without begging for death at any point during or immediately after.

Spring Cleaning Warning

2010-04-06T18:46:00.002-04:00

This is to notify the literally several readers I have managed to keep through rather sporadic and often foolish blogging (LOVE you guys!) that I will be dusting the old blog off in the next few weeks, and eliminating some of the epic stupidity that sometimes landed here. Therefore, if you wish to blackmail me with evidence of which norse goddess I most resembled in 2006, for example, please gather all of your evidence as soon as possible. Soon these things will have gone, and the newer, grown-up blogging will commence. I think.

End of March Love Poetry

2010-03-31T14:11:00.003-04:00

The text of the poem below was taken in both Middle English and Modern English versions entirely from the website of Wessex Parallel WebTexts, a source I happened upon while seeking a printable text of The Owl and the Nightingale that I can scribble on. The poems are introduced and annotated on the site, in case you'd like to check it out!

Bytuene Mersh ant Aueril,
When spray biginneth to springe,
The lutel foul hath hire wyl
On hyre lud to synge.
Ich libbe in loue-longinge
For semlokest of alle thynge;
He may me blisse bringe;
Icham in hire baundoun.

Refrain:
An hendy hap Ichabbe yhent;
Ichot from heuene it is me sent;
From alle wymmen mi loue is lent
Ant lyht on Alysoun.

On heu hire her is fayr ynoh,
Hire browe broune, hire eghe blake;
With lossum chere he on me loh,
With middel smal ant wel ymake.
Bote he me wolle to hire take
Forte buen hire owen make,
Longe to to lyuen Ichulle forsake,
Ant feye fallen adoun.

An hendy hap, et cetera.

Nihtes when Y wende ant wake---
For-thi myn wonges waxeth won--
Leuedi, al for thine sake
Longinge is ylent me on.
In world nis non so wyter mon
That al hire bounte telle con;
Hire swyre is whittore then the swon,
Ant feyrest may in toune.

An hendi, et cetera.

Icham for wowyng al forwake,
Wery so water in wore;
Lest eny reue me my make
Ychabbe y-yyrned yore.
Betere is tholien whyle sore
Then murnen euermore;
Geynest vnder gore,
Herkne to my roun.

An hendi, et cetera.

Translation

Between March and April,
When the leaves begin to open,
The little bird takes its pleasure
In singing in its own language.
I live in love-longing
For the most beautiful of all creatures;
She is able to bring me joy;
I am in her power.

Refrain:
I have been given a piece of good fortune;
I know it has been sent to me from heaven;
My love has been withdrawn from all women
And settled on Alysoun.

Her hair is fair enough in colour,
Her eyebrows dark, her eyes black;
She smiled at me charmingly,
With a slim and well-shaped waist.
Unless she is willing to accept me
To be her own partner,
I will give up living for long,
And collapse, fated to die.

I have been given, etc.

At night, when I toss and turn---
That is why my cheeks grow pale---
Lady, all for your sake
I am seized with longing.
There is no man in the world so talented
That he can describe all her goodness;
Her neck is whiter than the swan,
And she is the most beautiful girl in the world.

I have been given, etc.

I am worn out with lying awake for love,
Weary as troubled water;
In case anyone steals my partner from me
I have been anxious for a long time.
It is better to suffer greatly for a time
Than mourn for ever;
Kindest of women,
Listen to what I say.

I have been given, etc.

Odd Development from War with Service Providers

2010-02-22T19:11:00.004-05:00

People who know me personally know that I hate my local cable company like dogs hate fleas, and for much the same reason. They extract more than I am willing to give, and are an at least intermittent irritant. So, when I moved into new non-mom-memory laden apartment, I was already primed for a storm of vitriol and the shame that follows because they treat me (and everyone else) really badly, and I let them get away with it. And the vitriol was compounded by the fact that we were recently snowed in for about six months in Northern Virginia. So, new apartment, plus boredom, plus no cable and intertubes. Rage.

Then the snow was finally cleared, and the cable company called to reschedule, and then kept me on hold for 30 minutes. Hate that. Then they skipped a few more appointments. Hate that more, because I was trapped in the apartment without actually being quite TRAPPED after just being freed, you know? And all for nothing. So, I called. And I said "I am extremely displeased with the service I am receiving from your company." and detailed the non-emergency related eff-ups of the past few weeks. And the dude on the other end of the phone said, "Well, ma'am, what are you going to do? Do you want to be without television?" And I thought that was a fair question. Cable Co has a monoploy in my area, and they suck.

So, I reflected. AND GUESS WHAT? My life has been quite a bit better without television. I mean, the back to back blizzards sucked, and being stuck waiting for cable dude that never showed was really annoying. But being without TV and intertubes has made me read a lot more, and work out a lot more, and go out to all the free museums around here a lot more. Despite being just moved in, my apartment is together and cute-ish. I went to see a production of Richard II. I had a dinner party at which I griped about Bushy and Green being 'dispatched' on Bolingbroke's orders with a pistol. In 1399. (I'll bet they were never expecting that.) And asked my friends what they thought of all the fiftyeleven minutes of backstory before Richard II started where I remember it starting. I am Niles Crane, apparently, because I still enjoyed myself while having some reservations about the production. But my therapist has declared me sane, anyway!

So I called cable back, and informed them that I've decided I really do want to be without TV. They were not expecting that.

Friends are mocking me for "Going Henry David" on them, but that's OK. I have a library card. I am writing from the library now. I am really enjoying my break from watching idiots try to outwit each other on islands and in apartments and at fat camp for prizes or jobs or the public shame that passes for fame now. So, while I have classes to teach and homework to grade and limited free time, I'm cable-monopoly free.

Am I Still A Medievalist?

2009-12-23T18:04:00.002-05:00

I’m still a little bitter with Spivak for making me read through 20, 30, 50 pages of extremely dense prose to get to a one-word answer. I don’t claim to be able to create an essay like Spivak’s, mostly because I don’t like to be scoffed at openly. But I do know that I can also go on a bit. Anyway, I will spare you the discomfort of slogging through pedestrian meta-navel-gazing and assorted ickiness. She who spends many hours of her days thinking about, studying, and working with the medieval is a medievalist. The answer to the title’s question: dunno.

If you’re the busy sort, have a great holiday! If you, like me, have a snow day and time to kill before you travel, you are most welcome to stick around for the whole thing.

When I began this blog, lo these many years ago, I placed ‘medievalist’ first on the list of descriptors located below the title. It was hubris, likely, to claim that title for myself with just a few classes in medieval language and history at the undergraduate level, and a shot at a graduate school education that had not yet begun, but I did anyway. It was a ‘dress for the job you want’ decision, and I shrugged my self-consciousness off as a repeat of the resistance to adopting an authoritative voice I had experienced as an undergraduate. I lectured myself I fit the above description of a medievalist, and therefore I counted. I occasionally added a “damn it!” to that, for emphasis. In desperate moments, I even imagined my undergrad mentor shouting “Get over it!” at me, as Mentor was wont to do when anyone got neurotic.

Like most medieval bloggers, I considered and then quickly abandoned the idea of making the blog fully medieval. As a first year grad student, I didn’t have all that much to say. I also entered graduate school determined to follow in the footsteps of my female professors, who managed to be full PEOPLE who studied and wrote about medieval or even renaissance topics. I specify female professors because a great majority of my male professors in undergrad showed themselves to us as stereotypical ‘professors,’ the brain on a stick phenomenon. They were smart, certainly, but also very single-minded in their activities and seemed very alone in their lives. Given the choice between becoming a fussy, out-of-touch megalomaniac – the all medieval, all the time route – or a full person with a multiplicity of enthusiasms, the greatest of which is my job, I chose to try to become the latter.

And then I started the Grad school experience. Oy. Watching the really unseemly faculty wars in my department at that time, I began to think that perhaps academia was not the place for me. Though I maintained a love for my work, the people I worked with made me want to jump out of my own skin on a fairly regular basis. And then that life I was determined to have got unwieldy. Heomodor could not physically, financially or emotionally handle being alone. And so she came to Microburg with me, and I was responsible for an elderly and infirm relative who would have what I suspected were anxiety attacks, but could also have easily been cardiac issues, every day as I got ready to leave for class. Looking back now at Heomodor’s quadruple bypass and advanced PAD, I think they probably were cardiac, and I’m glad I risked censure and eye-rolling and a whole mess of aspersions cast on my character and intellect to attend to them.

Now, I don’t tell that story simply to feel sorry for myself in public. I recognize that the department I was in was far more dysfunctional than most. I know several of my professors would start classes by telling us not to let ourselves be scared off by what was going on at Microburg, because simply nobody behaves like that; not really. But I thought I saw something structural in the academy that wouldn’t work well with my personality and my responsibilities. I also saw myself becoming a neurotic mess who was convinced that my self-inflicted poverty was actively killing my mother.

I didn’t apply to the PhD program at Microburg or anywhere else, but took my ‘terminal MA’ and a deep breath, and moved on to teaching youngsters about gerunds. It’s more fun than you think, but it isn’t medieval studies.

Heomodor came with me here to the shadows of the capitol as well, and developed other health issues that required attending to, and the medieval, being far from an immediate need, fell to the wayside. And now, while I go through Heomodor’s things, and mine, and finally begin to think about who I am when I am not centrally a caregiver, I have to consider whether two and a half years is too many to catch up on. Or if I even want to catch up as a professional. I mean, I am looking middle age straight in the eye, and I am less patient now than ever before. Besides, penury sucks.

Though I have largely dropped out of the conversations that started so promisingly, with Ancrene Wiseass and Dr. Virago, and Karl and later Medieval Woman, and Bardiac, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Scott Nokes and others who were so helpful and supportive and funny and smart and generous, I love that blogging allows me to eavesdrop on the best parts of the academic experience, the parts where people who love the same stuff get together wherever they are to talk, think, share, and even just geek out about it. (Wlonk!) Sometimes I’ll even venture in to add my admittedly now naïve, dilettante voice to the conversation.

So, I really don’t know if I am a medievalist anymore. I mean, yeah, I do spend an awful lot of time drawing parallels between the modern and the medieval. Also, if you could see my bookcase, even after I thinned it out, you would see that a large percentage of my reading time is spent between, oh about 800AD and Caxton. I do know that I’m happy that this blog exists, lame as it often is, and that the blogs of others more active in the field continue to exist in significantly less lame form. And I also know, that now, thanks to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's recent, eloquent article about blogging and medievalism, I'm feeling a little pressure to be less lame about this blogging thing. Possibly the best inadvertent application of guilt by a non-Catholic this year! Well done, Jeffrey!

Requiescat In Pace

2009-10-11T00:53:00.004-04:00

Heomodor passed last Saturday, October 3rd, at 4:40 am. Just to be ornery, she died of a Pulmonary Embollism rather than the illness she has been fighting for the past few months. She is now buried next to my brother, as she wished.

On Being a Black Hole of Emotional Need

2009-07-29T23:54:00.003-04:00

The best news I have to share with friends these days is this: my fear that enrolling myself in educational programs was somehow causing my loved ones to develop life-threatening or life-ending illnesses is now demonstrably untrue. For the first time, a loved one has been diagnosed with one of the "oh shit" illnesses while I am not anyone's student.

So, there's that.

I tend to hole up somewhere when I am in this sort of emotional state, and wait for six months or so until I can call people and chat about my life without getting sloppy about it. It seems tacky to emote all over people who just want to be happy and tell you about how their 2 year-old draws perfect replicas of Monet's greatest hits. But that wouldn't really be fair this time, because the person who is now mortally ill is Heomodor, and, truth be told, EVERYONE likes her. My friends like her more than they like me. By a lot. My ex-friends lament the loss of my mom in their lives. They do not miss me.

I'm a grouch. I scare people. I stand outside libraries in my leather jacket and discuss battle poetry. I ask uncomfortable questions. Since working as a CNA for years, I have very little sympathy for people with bruises and papercuts. Hard to get worked up about a papercut when you've seen a gangrenous leg almost fall off a guy. Since studying medieval literature, I have very little decorum left. Things that other people think is the most filthy thing imaginable I would say in church, because I got it from 12th century nuns anyway. I have been called tough countless times, and people were astounded and amused when I attempted to object.

My mom is not like me. She was raised to be ladylike, to be stoic when necessary, to be taken care of when possible, to listen. Strangers tell her their life stories because they feel like she will understand. People confess crimes to her, because they "know" she won't judge them harshly. Repairmen charge her less than they charge others, because she's so gentle a soul they can't take advantage of her. Once, when I was in undergrad and my income did not allow us to live in a great neighborhood (OK, but not great), I was reprimanded by a plumber for making my mother live in a working class town, when she clearly belonged "by the water." This was code for on the North Shore of Long Island, where the wealthy to obscenely wealthy live. Richard Nixon once pronounced my mom adorable and gave her a little booklet full of newly minted five dollar bills as a souvenir of meeting him. Luciano Pavarotti once hugged her when she "gently corrected" his phrasing. I'm not kidding.

Due to a fear of being alone, and some financial and health issues, gentle Heomodor has followed surly old me around for quite some time now, from undergrad to grad school cities, and now resides with me several states away from home in Virginia. So, I am the party responsible for disseminating some very bad news to lots of people with whom I don't always communicate as much as I should. Again, I hole up when stressed, and being responsible for my mom has often stressed me out. So, I have to call these folks and say "Mom is dying." And I really, really want to have a nervous breakdown, and get very uncharacteristically sloppy about it all. But I can't really request that level of support from people with whom I have not put in my time in some time. And they will be suffering themselves. Plus, I am so very bad at being emotional. I do it all wrong and upset people.

I really, really hate being weak and needy.

Burgerification Continues Apace

2009-05-27T22:53:00.002-04:00

I have evidence.

1) My kitten has health insurance. I didn't have health insurance until I was twenty. I didn't have good health insurance until last year.

2) I take Latin and advanced German classes for giggles. This knowledge will not help me financially. Even if I manage to pass the near-fluency German test, um, I think the Germans have all the Anglo-Saxonists they need. They certainly have all the English teachers they need.

3) As of this afternoon, I have been to a therapist. A therapist who advised me to: practice mindful breathing, keep a 'feelings journal,' and read Eckhart Tolle. I just paid a guy $150 to listen to me explain my childhood and give me advice I could have gotten at home watching a single Oprah show. And apparently, I have to be Buddhist.

4) I actually said, without irony, just the other day: "I wish I had time to get a facial."

2009: The Summer of the Word Nerd, and related topics

2009-04-13T22:21:00.003-04:00

A local institute of higher learning has an embarrassment of riches offered in the way of language courses this summer. This is convenient, because I have an urgent desire to apply myself to the acquisition of more language skills. It is double convenient that the school in question does not have the deliberately gatekeeping schedule that so many schools pretend happens by accident.
So, though the intensive Latin course starts early enough to get the students fresh from a short family break after final papers, they are late enough at night to make it possible for people to come home from work, throw a sandwich at their children, and spend the remainder of the night at Latin class. Hooray!

I really need the structure of a class for a language, I find. I have all the resources for Latin, but I keep having to start over because it's very easy to put the "my hobby" thing down when the teacher stuff needs doing. And the teacher stuff always needs doing. I hope that with an instructor holding my feet to the fire, I'll prioritize the Latin a little higher up on the scale.

One thing. Teacherling at work heard "summer of the word nerd" and wanted in. He's a smart kid. So smart I almost forget he's barely in big boy pants sometimes. He's also extremely competitive in the "I will twist this issue every possible way until you tell me I win" way that young men often are. I don't tend to tell people they win if they are arguing disingenuously, because I am like that. When I was his age, I would have probably told him he was right to shut him up, but I am currently old and mean. Hilarity is almost guaranteed to ensue.

Local church has a Latin Mass which it has had forever, which makes the rector a heretic. Latin practice for me, a chance to live a memory for Mama. Good stuff all around. Except, I have read the rector's website and, um, he's the suckiest heretic that ever was heretical. I mean, generally I enjoy all things transgressive, but this dude totally ruins it. His heresy is of the "We demand that the authority beats us more often and more vigorously" kind that might make for an interesting weekend if you're into that sort of thing, but is just awful in a person setting himself up as a sort of authority. So, I'm not sure I want to understand his Masses, because ew.

[Edited to protect innocent readers from stupid, whiny rant.]

Happy Spring!

2009-03-29T21:54:00.002-04:00

I managed to get out among the cherry blossoms for an hour or two today. Yay! I guess all of us who experience a winter get a little goofy in the spring. I tell myself that is so because otherwise I'm just a slightly modernized version of my corniest relatives. And that can't be. Because I'm not corny. I'm weird, which is way better than corny.

Anyway, a bit early ...

Sumer is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lowthe after clave cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Well singes thu cucco
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu nu!

And sunshine and flowers and hooray!

Slainte!

2009-03-17T22:14:00.004-04:00

Hope you are enjoying a fine celebration.*

*Unless you're British, then confusticate and bebother you! (Only for today, though. Regularly scheduled Anglophilia will resume tomorrow.)

Meet the Kitty!

2009-03-14T23:53:00.001-04:00

This is Finn, as a new kitty in my new apartment, just after Christmas. We thought he was a female kitty then, and gave "her" a very studious woman's name to go with "her" love of books, papers, and pens, and also to satisfy my pretentions to intellectualism. There have since been decidedly unfeminine developments that occasioned an emergency name change.

I, however, remain a pompous ass. Kitty is now named after two Finns; the Germanic Finn of Fragment fame, and the Celtic Finn of general Badass of Antiquity fame.

Since reaching adolescence, Finn has taken to curling up in the shamrock pot,

and protesting all human activities that do not produce food.

A Clear Message

2009-02-28T11:52:00.000-05:00

One of the struggles I have had as a teacher is creating assignments that are just challenging enough to promote intellectual growth without accidentally convincing anyone that s/he is a hopeless dolt. Because I teach in a middle school, that's supremely hard to do. The young people come to school overwhelmed. They are adjusting to multiple teachers and multiple sets of expectations. Also, they are being beaten silly by hormones and the general self-consciousness that arises when one's own body turns on one. Since the work of just BEING is so strenuous, all homework assignments I give are greeted with a groan that loosely translates to: "Why, oh why, must adults always ruin my life with their incessant demands?"

So, as a teacher, you learn to seek feedback from other teachers, parents, and your daily horoscope before you ask the children if you make them work too hard. But, sometimes, the young people perceive that one assignment, more than any other in their memory, is the biggest suckfest of suckiness that ever sucked. And they find a fun way to express that.

Do you know how you can tell that your students consider the project you have assigned them over the next couple of weeks to be excessively demanding?

Well, I'll tell you. After you have explained the project, the students look around at each other, dumbfounded. And then one brave soul stands up, points his pen at you, and shouts:

EXPECTO PATRONUM!

Eloquent, no? I laughed so hard I almost changed the rubric.

A Monastic Existence?

2008-11-09T21:08:00.000-05:00

When I am in one of my egregiously sentimental moods, I can ignore even my own pet peeves about the rewriting of history for the purposes of selling a neat, cutesy, Kinkade-level narrative about the past in order to imagine myself a part of that idealized and terminally gag-worthy imagined past. It's truly obnoxious, and one of my least favorite things about myself.

And yet I do it. I sit in the draftiest corner of my urban dwelling, and take out my translating work. I then carefully transcribe the next ten lines, and begin checking in my books and sources to create an interlinear gloss. And that stuff is actually necessary for me to translate, a part of my process, so that's all OK.

But THEN, I imagine myself somehow a member of a double house, with no responsibilities other than work in the scriptorium. And my imagination creates a world very like a 1960s-era film of a monastery would be, and completely unlike any reality that probably existed. And somehow my imagination puts my uncle, the dominican priest, in benedictine tonsure while in my celtic monastery with me. Because he's the only clergyperson I know who would want to be in a scriptorium, and makes a damned fine Bloody Mary besides. And if you're going to be in a monastery, there should be family and alcohol around.

And everything is all very peaceful. And all the nuns and monks are rosy-cheeked and get along well. And they smile at each other while singing. And at some point Julie Andrews or Sally Field or that singing nun from France show up.

Sickening, right? But anyway, there's a subjunctive on the seventh line and a technicolor confection in my head, and I'm happy.

But THEN something like this happens, and I read about it, and I remember that nuns and monks are often completely badass, and the real history of the monasteries was so much better than my maudlin technicolor imaginings can be now.

Finally Gruntled

2008-10-05T15:35:00.000-04:00

I have spent the majority of the past few months in and out of various funks and moments of introspection that acted as bridges between funks. This is, to be honest, my natural state. And yet, there are times in which I become so bone-weary at the thought of my voice being linked with complaint that I simply refuse to speak much about any topic. My best friends find this very vexing, but I assure them as I do you that they/you would find my incessant existential crises vexatiously tedious. At best.

Anyway, I am back to gruntled now. Or, I'm at least gruntled enough to be willing to examine any random disgruntlements. Full gruntlement is outside the reaches of my DNA, I'm afraid. Frankly, I find people who are thoroughly contented with their own lives, work, and minds a little scary. And sad. I mean, really? Middle management, Khaki pants and a golden retriever and you're good? That is seriously FUBAR. I'm pretty sure they have pills for disorders like that these days.

So, one of my existential crises was this: May I really call myself a medievalist if I spend the majority of my time attempting to increase the lexile scores of midgets? I do sometimes find some time to fiddle with older texts and stuff for my own enjoyment, but doesn't that make me a dilettante? And then that train of thought runs me straight into pissedoffville.

You see what I mean about the transient nature of the gruntles.

I have come to this conclusion, anyway. Even if I am not currently engaged in going from dilettante to profi medievalist, I will damned well be the best little dilettante in the Intertubes.

It's Working! It's Working!

2008-06-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

Happy Dancing!

I just had the most superfantabulous conversation with my niece, in which I realized that things are coming along quite nicely in the Heo family, thank you.

* Eldest niece is returning to college to be a teacher like me.

* Second eldest niece completed her Associate's, and liked it so much she may try another degree.

*Eldest nephew is registering for classes next year despite a difficult and troubling freshman year, because if Aunt Heo can do it, he can.

*Sisters 1 & 2 are both openly discussing quitting smoking. Because if baby sister can do it, they can too. (You can't even imagine how astonishing this is. Both have had minor cancers, and continued to smoke, because they wouldn't be told what the hell to do by anyone, especially know-it-all doctors.)

You see, I've been following my own heart. To the extent I have the courage (snerk) to do so, anyway. But I've also been engaged in social engineering in the micro sense. A college graduate in the family begets more college graduates, because she shows it is possible, or perhaps just activates the competitive streak in others. And it's working! Wait until they see me after I finish all this !#$@^& working out. (In this case they'll be the product of social engineering in the third generation. Courtesy of Bardiac, Dr. Virago, and Ancrene Wiseass in the generation before mine. Because if Bardiac can ride a bicycle around the North Woods in the winter, and Dr. Virago can run a marathon, and Ancrene Wiseass can learn martial arts while writing a diss, I can get off my butt and go to the gym in my building once in a while.)

Hooray!

However...

Can somebody please explain to me why I, who spent nearly all of my time in grad school having emotional breakdowns because I had to write, and it wasn't good enough, and I wasn't good enough, and everybody else thought of it first, and all the other writing block-inducing stuff one can imagine now want nothing more than to research and write about something. I've had some odd cravings in my life, including craving information, but I have never craved the whole research project.

Happy Memorial Day

2008-05-26T11:18:00.001-04:00

I've spent my weekend trying to get ahead on grading and planning (Yikes, the paper! When will I no longer feel assaulted by paper?) and intermittently dashing off on the Metro and bus lines to local memorial sites. It is very nice to be DC-adjacent when the national holidays come around. I mean, you can choose to go to a barbeque and just have a day off to relax, but it's also really easy to choose to commemorate the dead by going to the places we have designated for commemorating the dead.

I, like, TOTALLY <3 XKCD, and Here's Why:

2008-03-30T00:38:00.001-04:00

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/emoticon.png

Introducing Triple-Yogh Days: Complete with a Random Bullets of Catch-up Preamble

2008-03-29T17:45:00.000-04:00

Hello folks!

I know the long, infrequent blog-post with an opening apologia for the lack of blogging and commenting, and otherwise allowing the world at large to know that I yet live has become a bit of a cliché about the place. Yet I am loath to promise to do better, because I know how very lazy I am. And so here we are. If it helps, I promise I have been reading your blogs (those who have them), and wondering at your dedication.

Anyway, the R.B.O.C. which explains the post:

Two months or so ago, I went to the doctor with a mild illness. My BP was, as it had been every time it'd been taken since I was 18 years old, 120/70. Perfect!

Two weeks ago, I went to the doctor with another mild illness. This time my BP was, much to the consternation of everyone in the room, 230/128. Less than perfect.

There ensued many questions, the visible blanching of medical personnel, and the shouting of acronyms which would have been somewhat alarming had I not understood them. Since I did understand them, I was temporarily convinced that I was already dead, but for the paperwork. (Doctors never ask what jobs you used to have, just the job you have now. No reason for an English teacher to comprehend all that jargon.)

Since then I have been magnetized and polarized, and probably digitized as well. Seems as if everything is normal, except for the whole nearly-dead level BP.

So now I have to take pills which give me side effects which mimic what I should have been feeling with the Crazy BP, but bring me back to a normal pressure. Ironic, no? And there is more -izing to follow, which I hope will answer the question that is pinging around my brain; i.e., "WTF?!"

Temper tantrums about quitting smoking, and changing my diet and incorporating exercise only to THEN develop hypertension seem ill-advised at the moment. Which is not to say these tantrums haven't happened, they're just shorter than they would otherwise be.

Anyway, "show me a reason and I'll soon show you a rhyme" or whatever. That is to say that I need a plan rather than a reaction.

Thus, I have devised a new health plan I am calling "triple-yogh days." Because I need unity and completeness and nerditude right now.

Yogh the first: Actual yoghs. Other people have their habits that get them through the weird times. Most of those habits -- like alcohol, gambling, and random sex with strangers -- raise the blood pressure. Fortunately for me, I have the decoding of archaic and arcane language. Which is a blast and a half, and does not raise the blood pressure. Yay!!

Today I'm working on this from the Boke of Nurture:

Cast vinegre & powder þeron / furst fette þe bonus þem fro.
Crabbe is a slutt / to kerve / & a wrawd wight;
breke euery Clawe / a sondur / for þat is his ryght:
In þe brode shelle putt youre stuff / but furst haue a sight
592
þat it be clene from skyn / & senow / or ye begyn to dight.
And what ye haue piked / þe stuff owt of euery shelle
with þe poynt of youre knyff, loke ye temper hit welle,
put vinegre / þerto, verdjus, or ayselle, 596
Cast þer-on powdur, the bettur it wille smelle.
Send þe Crabbe to þe kychyn / þere for to hete,
agayn hit facche to þy souerayne sittynge at mete;
breke þe clawes of þe crabbe / þe smalle & þe grete,
600
In a disch þem ye lay / if hit like your souerayne to ete.
Crevise* / þus wise ye must them dight:
Departe the crevise a-sondire euyn to youre sight,
Slytt þe bely of the hyndur part / & so do ye right,
604
and alle hoole take owt þe fische, like as y yow behight.

I'm kind of stuck on "Crabbe is a slutt." How funny is that? It must mean something else, despite context clues, but it's fun for now.

Yogh the Second: Yoghurt. Don't fuss about the spelling now; it's about to get worse. Anyway, I may have a diet that is lacking in all the -iums: calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Yogurt provides 2/3 of that triad, and comes with yummy blueberries if you shop well. So, a heart-healthy diet doesn't have to be complete torture. Yay!

Yogh the Third: Yog(h)a. Because I am no longer allowed to exercise as I have been. And I do need to exercise, because I need energy. And you need to spend energy to make energy. I also apparently need to calm the hell down. So, exercise that is reputed to calm one the hell down = yoga. But I will say that yoga does hurt in a way that belies the soft voice of the instructor. Qualified yay.

And, in the service of calming the hell down, whenever one of my challenging wanna-be students makes me want to quit teaching and buy a soy farm, I hum this to myself:

Ben Vereen makes everything better.

Happy Easter!!!

2008-03-24T00:00:00.001-04:00

I'm just back from visiting with the technologically challenged Heomodor, but wanted to pop up and wish you all a Happy Easter. I'll be back soon with news and other trivia, promise!

One Definition of "Teachable Moment"

2008-02-29T23:29:00.000-05:00

(Noun) The distress created within an educator when a person, usually -- but not always -- a child under their supervision, confidently and perhaps innocently avers a soul-destroyingly false thing they have been taught by unscrupulous and/or ignorant-as-a-stump adults. This tension is often alleviated through an immediate, impolitic shout of "Who told you a thing like that?" and a subsequent lecture delivered in far more dulcet tones to eliminate the fear caused by the first shout.

Teachable moment(s) of the week:

Three separate 'tweener girls, at a book fair, upon seeing a book cover on which another young lady was depicted in a shortish, plaid skirt:
"Oh, she's gonna get raped."

Girl seeking advice about how to balance a boyfriend and schoolwork:
"Boys don't really care about us the way we do about them, so we have to worry about what they're doing all the time."

I need a drink.

"Real America"

2008-02-24T01:15:00.001-05:00

Among the many things chapping my ass these days are the political hacks on the TV talking about how the east coast isn't really America. New York isn't really America because there are all those icky New Yorkers there, Florida isn't really America because there are all those icky Hispanics there, and DC isn't really America because there are all those politicians and foreign diplomats there, etc. Because the "real America" happens elsewhere, away from people who have learned to cohabit with those who aren't exactly like them; people who might eat different foods, worship in a different place, or who might even have an accent. The "real America" happens only in places where everyone goes to the same church, and the same school, and the same diner after identical experiences at the same haircutter. The "real America" describes itself as "God's country," unironically, as if it actually believes that God is originally from Council Bluffs. The "real America" identifies as entirely Anglo, though it -- like me-- is an Irish-German mutt, made possible against the barriers in religious and cultural identity of our ancestors by the unifying hatred of the Anglos that those ancestors on both sides of the Reformation divide felt. The enemy of my enemy is my husband.

And, you know, I kind of get why the people of the middle watch those of us who reside at the borders with a wary eye. There are more of us than there are of them, for one thing. And, as a result of living at close quarters with people of many and varied backgrounds, our melting pot still has quite a few chunks of pure flavor in it. That's weird to a person who really, truly expects all people to be very like him, because all the people he's known so far are very like him.

[Edited to remove reference to innocent relatives who wanted nothing to do with intertubes in the first place.]

This takes care of friends and family I have in my 98% white hometown. But it emphatically does NOT take care of paid political commenters, with very expensive ivy or near-ivy educations, making truly offensive amounts of money to pull theories and data out of their butts and promptly fling their findings at their opponents or, in some cases, directly at the camera.

These people, if one should call them that, have taken the Francis Parkman train to employment. They are predominantly from the east coast, from much, much more well-connected families than any of you can claim. They have been granted access to expensive and exclusive education through the wealthy white affirmative action known as "legacy placements."
However, Francis Parkman actually dragged his bony Brahmin butt out to the midwest once in a while to put forth his racist and sexist theories of Anglo-Saxon superiority to the French and the Indians, because the French are all alarmingly feminine, unless they're being hypersexually masculine, and the Indians are all hyper-masculine and scary and bad, unless they're losing like a bunch of chicks which makes them less scary but still bad. And Francis Parkman was talking to people who were still identifying as Anglo because that's what they actually were, not what they were trying to be. He and his audience were "Anglo-Saxon," though from different sets of the Anglo-Saxon American experience. These bastards sit in New York or DC, and flap their fool jowls about "the real America," and they use Parkman's logic almost exactly (with some words changed as necessary), but they don't have the integrity to say what Parkman did say and think. The gist of which being something like, "We are alike, you and I, in that I am the master class to which you as the servant class owe allegiance. I will use you to fight for me, and you will use me to think for you." And this offends me as a person who comes from New York, and currently lives near DC, because if you think that 60% of the population of this country don't count as "real Americans" because of where they live, you should probably bite me. But it also offends me, because this logic, that once was being spewed forth from the lips of Francis Parkman was used against our common ancestors (my cousins and mine), for the purpose of preventing them from participating in America. Ironically, this logic played well at the borders and made life quite impossible for a number of the ancestors, which is why the German and Irish menaces went west to live in the wilderness, thus becoming today's politically expedient "real America."

I wonder how many generations it will take before a Spanish community in Kansas is up in arms in the Parkman way because of the sudden rush of Somebody elses coming into their community.

Navel-Gazing Washington Moments

2008-02-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

My new residence within view of the Beltway makes me feel somehow obliged to write about politics. Yet, I've been reluctant to write about this political season for a number of reasons. One of these is the general pointlessness of my holding forth on such subjects. I mean, it's not exactly as if my biases are hidden here. Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I wouldn't vote for a republican if he held my entire family hostage. Those who know me slightly better can tell you I wouldn't vote for a libertarian if he held only the family I like hostage. I mean, it's not like whichever democratic candidate will have to convince me to vote D over Witty Dominionist, Johnny Hothead and Delusional Gnome. *

I could comment on the MSM coverage of this year, I suppose. I mean, Tweety is a horse's ass, but we knew that. Many other media guys have sexist and racist underbellies that are showing only now, but we suspected something like that would happen, too. CNN's John Roberts can be a seasoned newsman, but fail to ask a necessary and completely friggin obvious follow-up question when Witty Dominionist says in defense of his traitorous plan to replace the Constitution of the United States of America with Pharisee Rules for Peasantry and Chicks "For now, I think we need amendments to outlaw abortion and strengthen marriage." I mean, my middle schoolers know that 'for now' means that there's an undisclosed something coming down the pike immediately after 'now,' and they are sufficiently intellectually curious to ask about it. That this CNN twit manages to cash a paycheck while being such a dumbass in public is vexing, but sadly not a surprise anymore. Several of the people who live in my building are reporters, and I occasionally ask them -- in a much nicer way than I will express here -- why their more famous colleagues are such candy-asses, but they claim not to know. So, our fourth estate is in ruins. But we knew that, too.

There probably is something worth saying about living in a state where the primaries will matter for the first time in over thirty years. My neighbors, many of whom are very sober, quiet people, are losing their minds. I get pamphlets and emergency notices slipped under my door and in my mailbox every day. When standing in the lobby, when getting our mail, when walking to our cars we get into conversations about politics, and who's voting for whom and why. I generally try not to have these conversations with people, because I have alienated people I love while arguing in what I thought was a reasonable and dispassionate manner. So, clearly my gauge is off. But at this time, in this place, people will not accept "I don't know" or "Hey! Isn't that the most adorable squirrel you've ever seen?" as answers to "Who are you for?." They demand answers. Which is kind of exciting, that they are excited.

However, I am a contrarian at my very core, I guess, because I can't whip up excitement of my own this time. And I usually get excited over every possible political vote. I mean, city council stuff has been known to send me into high dudgeon. This presidential cycle is different, though. I want answers, and I'm getting slogans. From everybody. In the past, I think sloganeering would have worked for me. Hell, I know it did work. I am not the same voter I was a few years ago. The past few years have made me rhetoric-resistant. So, I am now in the "whatever, just as long as it's not a republican hate-monger" phase of voter apathy.

Or, maybe it's like last year when the amorphous "they" started playing Christmas music and having Holiday sales before Halloween. It ruined the whole season for me. I refused to get all excited that early.

I will say this, though. It is very interesting to be walking around the produce section of the supermarket and look up and see known king-makers perusing the citrus. It's not at all like running into Tommy Tune and Stephen Sondheim in NYC. Pundits tend to be much shorter than Tommy Tune, for example, and I never cross the street for fear of saying something stupid in front of a pundit like I did with Sondheim.

* How much do I love that I had to go without a pronoun in that sentence, because neither gendered pronoun would work?

Time Keeps On Slippin'....

2008-01-13T20:06:00.000-05:00

I'm all old and stuff. Which isn't so terrible, really. My eldest brother and a sister-in-law never got to be three dozen years old. I do. So I should definitely not complain. This is time that should be treasured. Still...I've been very gentle with myself this week just in case there's a crazy old person looking to hop out at some minor provocation or another.

Last year, I gave myself a nine-days late gift in quitting smoking. First anniversary of non-smokingness tomorrow. This year, I have been considering my gift options. I've not been having much luck in the big gift department. It's kind of tough to follow up on breaking an 18 year addiction. But I have been having a lot of luck with little gifts.

The rules for my birthday gift to myself are simple:
- It can't cost me anything
- It can't cause guilt pangs
- It should, ideally, be both reasonably legal and moral

Luckily, Washington DC and its environs are almost ground zero for fun, free stuff to do. I have been having major fun this past week. ( I've also been going to a Big, Important meeting a day, so now my brain is all boiled from the pendulum swing between the mind-numbing tedium of meetings and "Hey! Cool arcane talk on geek stuff right near my house!")

Plus, the local grocery store had a special on in which it delivered groceries for free. Wooo! All the stuff I want from the grocery store, no schlepping!

Anybody in the area want to pop by and dust my house?

Happy New Year!

2007-12-31T12:50:00.000-05:00

I was listening to NPR on my drive home from Microburg to Charmingly Historical Edge City yesterday, lost in thought, and the woman on the mid-Pennsylvania NPR station read this poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The poem is, I think, the perfect New Year's wish for this year.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Happy Saturnalia, Everyone!

2007-12-24T11:11:00.000-05:00

As is tradition, I'm visiting friends and family, being excessively mirthful, exchanging gifts, and congregating about waxen candles and earthenware religious icons. ( I haven't been able to arrange nude carolling. Rats!) However you chose to celebrate the Winter Solstice and time following, I wish you the greatest possible joy.

ofer waþema gebind & a meme

2007-12-15T11:10:00.000-05:00

Well, not exactly, but I do love that line; and if you squint and look sideways at my recent experiences, it might just almost fit. What with all the waves of paperwork (FSM give me strength), and the wintry weather. (Although I must say the level of panic when winter weather comes to Charmingly Historical Edge City and its environs is not exactly proportional to the level of danger. It's a very "The sky is falling! We're all going to DIE!" reaction, starting at about the second flake.)

Anyway. Prepare yourself for literary solipsism, again.

Braced well?

OK, let's begin.

I have been thinking quite a lot about The Wanderer and the issue of what happens to identity when it is bereft of its usual context. Again, this is prompted by my recent experiences. I am out of context for the first time in my life, really. I have wanted this opportunity to do the developing that most people do when they are 17-18 and in their first year of college, but I never really thought about the mild anxiety that runs just below the surface of that experience. The anxiety of not knowing that comes as you question every assumption you have about yourself and your interactions with the world. Well, scratch that. I did think about it, and understood it intellectually, but understanding an emotional state requires experiencing a hint of that state. Or, maybe I'm even flattering myself that I get it now. Bah.

If I were younger, and possibly cuter (though I was delightfully decorative at 22, seriously), all these tangential ideas would be endearing, I suppose. Note to self: While constructing your new, Beltway-adjacent identity, keep in mind that you're no longer able to successfully pull off ditzy. That is all.

Back to the topic at hand, it also helps that my new job is Middle School English teacher in a school that is being 'restructured.' That's governmental rhetoric for 'This school is in an iffy area, and has not been doing as good a job providing middle class mindsets to poor children as we'd hoped. Therefore, we must inject extra levels of bureaucracy rather than, say, building a community center and staffing it with tutors and mentors and coaches.' So, I see a school community that is in flux, and a staff that is in flux. And all this is before we get to the children, who are engaged in the very serious business of trying to navigate the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Which can be a very frustrating thing to see as a teacher, because the silliness is strong within them, and that silliness really detracts from learning how to read a newspaper. However, it can also be a very profound thing to witness as a fellow human being.

How many run-on sentences is that, now? Ah, well. It doesn't matter. Back to me.

A few weeks ago, I was wandering about the Charmingly Historical downtown in C.H.E.C. and quietly envying the molto fabuloso other women who were wandering about in the same vicinity, because they were able to rock lovely capes, and I had a notion of myself as a more work-a-day sort of person. Non-fabulous, and incapable of wearing a garment that intimates quite that much 'tude. And I reminded myself of "my place," and walked past the capes I saw while officially shopping for teaching togs, and unofficially thinking about the identity I would construct for myself with three whole months family-free to work with.

Ironic that I would be conscious of identity as constructed, and of myself as engaged in the task of constructing an identity (albeit in a hurry), but would deny myself something I liked because it didn't fit in with my comfort zone. Silly.

A few days later, happy with my very buttoned-down purchases, but still ruminating over the many possibilities in becoming a new Heo, and intermittently giving some thought to The Wanderer and his 'anhaga' situation (It's not so much that I enjoy plaintive poetry, as it is that I have a planctus problem), that I remembered the anxiety of the greater culture over the 'anhaga.' Who might he be? How can we know? And the power of being away from everyone and everything that acts as a conservative force on your identity hit me. The Anglo-Saxons had fear of outsiders because they could and possibly should fear them. Those separated from their tribes have nobody to put them in their place. They can decide for themselves who they are. That's quite an amazing power, really. I mean, how do we know who people are if we don't know the people they belong to?

In real life terms, this means I was able to quiet the internal voices that told me I didn't deserve/couldn't be/ shouldn't try X, and I bought the damned cape. Heo Fabuloso, at your service. (And I wear it well, too. ) Now, I am very aware that discussions of clothing are by definition superficial, but the shift in imagination that the change in wardrobe represents is not superficial. Of course, there's another irony, in that I am attempting to construct an identity that is non-specific to my old time and place, but am doing so by mimicking others in another place. And I'm still battling with myself over the dragon and phoenix cheong sam I want to buy, because it's culturally different and fun, and I also have a brocade problem, but is it commodity fetishism? Am I making some sort of imperialistic gesture by assuming someone else's conventions of dress? Should I just go put on a Dirndl and my Aran knit sweater and be done with it?

Damn it! Where the hell did I put that point? I just had it a minute ago! &*(^%$#@

Oh, well. How about this ...? Whatever choice I make regarding my future career path, (to be a bocere or not to be a bocere, that is the question), the knowledge of literature from a culture that was self-reflectively and simultaneously emergent and in decline changes the way one thinks about almost everything. You begin to think that non-liminal spaces simply don't exist, because they can't. Which, in some ways is very freeing, The Wanderer rethinking who has the right to speak openly, for instance, but also rather scary, because that Wanderer dude ( if we're in his audience) could be an axe-murderer for all we know. (Very likely is an axe-murderer, considering the whole Anglo-Saxon warrior status.)

And the whole thing both fascinates me and frazzles my brain. Which is what philosophy did when I tried to read it the last year of high school. So, maybe I'm having the truest mid-life crisis ever, and reverting to childlike thought processes. **Sigh**

While I'm being self-indulgent:

The 7 MEME

I've been tagged by squadratomagico for the 7 meme, the one in which you tell the blogosphere 7 random and/or odd things about yourself. I'm trying not to copy all the weird stuff I have already told you about me, but I can't be sure I haven't shared the stories before. If I start to repeat my stories like that old guy in the lobby, just let me know.

Here are the rules:

The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.

3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. On it.

And here is the Meme:

The Meme:

1) I actually was one of those children who read the dictionary for fun. Now, in some cases, that was because there were ever so many words in there that sounded rude but weren't rude at all and couldn't get a person grounded. Like farkleberry, for instance. But also because words fascinated me. What they sounded like, what they looked like, how they felt, all the exotic places they had come to us from, all this fascinated me.

2) I don't remember being conscious of it, but I think I started reading medieval literature partly to feel closer to by-then-deceased eldest brother, who was -- while living-- an astonishingly successful auto-didact who loved medieval literature himself, and read voraciously enough to engage local famous-ish English professors in rigorous debate. This despite having quit high school to work and help the family, only earning a GED in his mid-twenties when it became hard to get a job without a high school education. When I was a child, my family thought of me as 'the smart one,' but as I age it becomes clearer to me that I was merely the one most likely to seek outward recognition (in the form of degrees, honor societies, etc.) for knowledge gained.

3) I don't know that I have ever accepted a new idea without putting up major resistance to it first. Not necessarily in a studious and scholarly way, but more in the lines of an uninformed tantrum. My process is simple; hear/read new idea, hate n.i., resent people positing n.i., create multiple rants about n.i. and people positing n.i., realize n.i. has merit, realize n.i. has more merit than my old idea, feel stupid for all the uninformed and blatantly idiotic things I said about n.i. and people surrounding it, shut up for half a second, grudgingly accept n.i. but hope to be proven wrong -- and therefore right-- soon, proselytize for n.i.'s acceptance, repeat. I shall illustrate, because it's rather funny in context, and because I know the persons in my example wouldn't know me in real life if they tripped over me. I was researching my senior thesis when I encountered Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, for the very first time. And I was irritated from the moment I read the title, because why the hell do we need to think MORE about masculine existence in the medieval period, don't we think enough about men now?!, and then when I saw that feminist perspectives were included and a man's name was on the editor's list, I became even more annoyed because my experience with men writing/speaking about feminist ideas was not good. I read the titles, noted all the times "castration" was mentioned and decided that any feminism discussed or engaged with would be given poor treatment, and I returned the book to the shelf with a sort of snort. And as my research continued, I kept coming across these names and thinking "Those jerks! They're everywhere! I just want to write a paper about the representation of women!" without ever thinking that "They're everywhere!" might be an indication that they had something to say worth reading. Well, fast forward, and look over there at my links on the right, and see whose ideas I seem to want to know about now.

4) I smile, and smile, but secretly hate the dude who comes into my gym and starts his treadmill at 7.2 mph, when I was having fun and feeling special because I had my 'wog' ( half walk-half jog, think kid trying to keep up with mom) up to almost 4.0 mph. Bastard! How dare he enjoy his workout at the level of his comfort, when my comfort level is so much lower! What the hell is he trying to prove anyway?!

5) I have great difficulty finding common ground with people who were raised in deeply patriarchal households. I just don't get them. This is not an affectation on my part, some sort of diligent application of feminist theory in questioning societal assumptions from the perspective of personal experiences. The whole idea of a father-centered family and society really is just so incredibly weird to me that I'm always astonished when people bring it up as if it's somehow normal. This confusion often gets me labeled a smart-ass. Which is also true, but not in these cases.

6) Probably the proudest I ever remember feeling was when I hit an A over high C for the first time when I was about 19, and made the chandelier in my voice teacher's house shake with the force of it. I never did manage a pianissimo at that pitch, but whatever, man...the chandelier shook!

7) When I was a child, I wanted to grow up to be President of the United States or Roberta Flack. Either one would do, really, though if I really thought about it the Presidency was the best. I used to get very upset about that whole 35 thing, too, because I did the math and discovered that the year I turned 35 was not an election year, and I'd have to be 37 before I could take office. So, this is actually the exact time I envisioned myself literally preparing to take over the free world after an infuriatingly-long extra two-year wait. Instead, I have to remind myself weekly not to take the Metro into the district to throw stuff at Senators.

I tag: Anniina, Bardiac, Magistra, and rule-breaker that I am, all others who wish to play, too.

How I Spent $500 in a Weekend, and Other Tales of Depravity

2007-11-04T20:32:00.000-05:00

When I came down south for my new job, I did so on borrowed dimes and with the expectation that I would not see my first paycheck until mid-November. I hate borrowing money. Hate it. So, I borrowed as little as possible (which was still substantial), loaded up the car with work clothes, an inflatable mattress, my computer and chair, and a few books to tide me over. I also had a loaf of bread, a plastic knife, and jars of peanut butter and jelly. That's pretty much it. Because I hate to borrow money, I had no credit cards with me. (In my early 20s I tried to secure the love of my friends with relatively elaborate wedding gifts. Took me two years to get over that summer of weddings, and I chose never to go back into that debt again.)

Now, I can't say that I handled my penury particularly well. I would burst into tears if I took a wrong turn and wasted gas, or needed to pay for something for work, or had to talk to a family member about making sure mom got her pills on time. Whatever. Twice I tried to get my mother to stop "helping me figure things out" on the phone, and twice she persisted until I was practically transformed into a liquid. (The fear of matricide by failure is a strong fear, and my mother has always been fiscally delusional. Hence part of the pressure on me to provide now.)
I was getting particularly desperate recently, as peanut butter and jelly loses most of its charm by week 3, and my back and legs were beginning to really resent the whole sleeping on a slowly-deflating mattress/the floor. Also, I hadn't any laundry money. And my mother was trying to help me figure things out again, by coming up with a debt-repayment plan for me. While talking about her own need to borrow to get her cardiac meds. Because, although I had asked her repeatedly if she had all her pills, she forgot that she was about to run out of the one that keeps her alive when I left.

It sucked in a very serious way, and I thought I had two more weeks to go.

And my pro-rated rent was due Thursday, and the brake warning light has been on for several days.

Well, surprise! I was handed a paycheck as I left work this Friday. A whole, real paycheck.

And I paid my pro-rated rent (half a rent payment), and I sent Mom money, and I paid back the person to whom I owed the least because she needed the money back the most.

And then I went all crazy!

I got a twin bed ( on sale!), because I didn't want to sleep on the floor anymore. However, I made sure it was cheap because my real bed will be coming down with Mom and the rest of my stuff in February, and this thing will be freecycled. I just need it to get me off the floor. But that was a bunch of money.

Then I went to the dollar store and got cleaning supplies.

And then I went to Home Depot and got a lamp.

Then I went to Target and got a tray table and a vacuum.
And half-priced chocolates. And toiletries.

Then I went to the post office and got stamps.

Then I went to the local grocery and got chicken and veggies (veggies!) and orange juice and bananas and cereal and deli turkey and cheese and mustard and a good, heavy wheat bread. And a single-serving slice of cheesecake.

And then I vowed I was done shopping.

And then I went out to get gas, and the floodgates opened again as I passed a shoe store, then turned around and went back in because they were having a sale! On cute shoes! And then I bought two pair of cheapish shoes and a seriously reduced handbag (and took notes on more expensive shoes and bags for a future date).

And now I have to behave myself because I haven't even had the brakes checked yet. (Though sometimes my brakelight comes on because the tires need air.)

I'll tell ya what, though. A lamp and a piece of furniture do wonders for an apartment. And, as much respect as I have for my vegetarian and vegan friends, I have to say that dairy products and flesh do wonders for me.

Now Blogging at You from Charmingly Historical Edge City

2007-10-26T20:54:00.001-04:00

Which is totally more expensive than Microburg, but also way cooler. In that Charmingly Historical Edge City sort of way, that is. It's not Cool, per se, but it is peopled by those who bought their townhouses from the artists who lured all the cute shops to the neighborhood. Yuppietown, actually, with cute shops. I can dig that.

Hiatus

2007-10-14T11:54:00.000-04:00

While I cart myself and my absolutely essential stuff down to my new city area. Wish me luck in starting the job and finding good transitional digs.

Too Many Tissues in the House?

2007-10-12T00:50:00.000-04:00

Well, then. I have a remedy. As usual, however, my remedy comes with a back story. ( I think I may already be that crazy old aunt who will explain the history of leeching in medicine when someone asks for a band-aid. Damn.)

Anyway.

My music history prof once declared to a room full of skeptical post-adolescents that any person who can watch/listen to La Boheme without crying has a serious emotional disorder for which there is no acceptable alternate diagnosis. You can't even blame that kind of emotional stunting on presbyterianism. As skeptical as my compatriots, I thought he was just doing the "it's OK for men to love Opera" thing. And then I saw La Boheme, and gave every liquid-producing gland on my face a serious workout.

But suppose you aren't in the mood for Italian-singing Parisians, what can you do?
You can watch/ listen to one of the more recent recensions of the tale of star-crossed love.

Spend a rainy afternoon watching RENT.

But don't just do that. Watch RENT while explaining to a relative with cardiac and vascular issues that Jonathan Larson , the creator of RENT, was another Gower Champion story. And try not to think about the fact that you are moving away from said ill relative, at least for a time. And while you're doing that, think also about the subject matter of RENT; creative young people living with and dying of AIDS in New York in 1989-1990. And then think about the creative young person you both loved and lost in New York in 1990. And by the time the cast finishes singing "La Vie Boheme" you won't have a tissue, paper napkin, or paper towel left in the house.

I promise you it'll work.

Considering Carpetbaggery

2007-10-04T01:37:00.001-04:00

[Update: Southward-bound Heo departs Microburg in a few days to search for temporary housing in the Major Metropolitan area. Hilarity is almost certain to ensue, as I have already had my heart blessed via telephone, and I understand heart blessings are generally not a good sign. Also, while I am no longer Catholic, I do have a compulsive need to finish the prayer when someone says "Lord, have mercy." Sometimes, I even break into song right after that. But by then I'm off auto-pilot and just being a smart-ass.]

Hey, all! I realize I have once again, very rudely gone AWOL on you. I would have been poor company, I assure you.

Anyway, just this evening I was offered a job ( not CC teaching) on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. I'm eskeered of the other side of the Mason-Dixon line much in the same way I was eskeered of the other side of the Hudson before I came to Microburg. ( People talk funny over there, and pray funny over there, there be the dragons, those outside the NY metropolitan area seem to think all native New Yorkers are carrying automatic weaponry and Hashish at all times, that sort of thing.) But, the job seems challenging and useful, and if the money is enough for me to be a responsible citizen while being a responsible worker ( and I think it will be), I may be living elsewhere super soon.

The funny thing is that I've been going through my things this past week and throwing away everything that doesn't past the Budapest test. That is to say, if my perfect dream job were to present itself, and I was preparing to move to Budapest to do dream work and spend off-hours drinking among the Magyars and exploring Saint Stephen's, would I be so attached to thing X that I would fly it over with me?

When I answer yes, I keep it. When I answer no, and it isn't furniture, it goes away.

Now, I wouldn't call prospective new suburb of major metropolis (Major metropolis! Yay!) Budapest, but if this job comes through, it'll be a serious move.

This Just In: PhD Comics Gets a Medievalist

2007-09-02T19:31:00.001-04:00

And a Germanist, too! Go see for yourselves! It's the August 31 comic! I have run out of excuses for exclamation points in this post!

Deep, Dramatic Sigh

2007-08-31T01:20:00.000-04:00

There, pity party begun.

I have driven about 1000 - 1200 miles a week for the past two weeks, going on last minute interviews in the hopes that I would find eleventh hour employment for this year. Two hiring committees that were supposed to get in touch with me by the end of business Thursday have not done so. And both were love-fest situations, but one particularly was all "We WILL be in touch. We haven't met anyone like you. You're perfect. There are nice apartments you'll love just down the parkway. We can go shoe shopping together."

Silence.

Anyway, it has been my experience that hiring people fail to get in touch with you when they said they would because they have no good news for you. So, it seems that with my fancy pants suit (some dude thought I was the opposing attorney t'other day) and my fancy pants educational debt ( though not attorney debt, which is good), I will most likely be spending the next few months doing something menial and sucky for menial and sucky pay.

So, this evening I ate a giant hot fudge sundae. Because I don't need my suit to fit anyway, damn it.

And that should conclude the pity party.

Except to note this: all this waiting helplessly by the phone for someone else to determine the course my life is going to take? That's why I don't do traditional dating.

Eight Random Things About Me

2007-08-28T09:41:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly sure that 80% of this blog is "random things about me," but I've been meme-tagged by young Chris of Mixing Memory, and I'm a sport. So, here goes:

1. I have not been able to sleep with a door ajar in the room where I am sleeping since the seventh grade, when I read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart." In fact, I will wake from a sound sleep if my bedroom or closet door opens. However, I can sleep very well in the living room, which has no doors at all -- just archways to other rooms.

2. I had my first HIV test before my first lover, and still have had more HIV tests than lovers, despite never having used intravenous drugs.

3. The first card in the Rorschach test...the one everyone thinks looks like a butterfly? I always see happy little poodles dancing together first, then a butterfly. But I only work to see the butterfly because I don't want to admit to dancing poodles. There's probably a pill for dancing poodles.

4. Speaking of neuroses, I have adopted a nuerosis from every job I have ever held -- even if I hated the job. Here, I'll prove it.
Babysitting -- I don't have pets and I don't have kids, but nothing with an edge smaller than a dollar coin or made of glass or containing poisons of any kind can be under four feet from the floor in my house or I start getting twitchy.
Clothing store -- all clothes in my closet face the same direction, and all hangers must be at uniform level, and at relatively uniform distances. Those pants hangers make me mad, because they ruin the uniform hanger-shaped line the rest of the closet has.
Nursing -- hospital corners all the way, baby, and I make those while facing away from the head of the bed because I was in nursing for a long time and also brought "proper body mechanics" needs away with me, too.
Undergrad student and Tutoring -- I schedule my time on a color-coded spread sheet, and put my paperwork for tasks to be accomplished in three-hole color-coded folders, that are all in a big white binder with both photos and text on the inserts at the spine and front to tell me which binder I'm dealing with.
Graduate student and TA -- I keep detailed records of all communications with teachers and students for at least a full calendar year. Why? Dunno, I might need them.
Teaching -- ditto all the teaching stuff above, and add a new reluctance to be seen in public while wearing denim.

5. My favorite lines from any song, ever, are "Er war ein Superstar. Er war so populaer. Er war so exaltiert, because er hatte flair." (Rock Me Amadeus) Dude fixed a rhyming problem by going pidgin!

6. I can reproduce the sounds of a new language well enough in a short period of time that natives will believe I can converse with them long before I even know what I'm saying. Another glitch to this ability to "sing back" words is that I have learned what I know of Spanish from various sources, so that new (to me) native Spanish speakers , upon hearing me speak a sentence start laughing and saying that was the fastest tour of South America they've ever been on.

7. This language ability was not always the case. On the Saturday before the Easter when I was three years old, I informed my eldest brother that I would not accept any syllogism in which the conclusion was "Therefore, the rabbit brings you brightly colored eggs." In my phoneme-challenged 3 year-old language, arms akimbo as they so often were back then ( I have pictures), it went something like this: " No, Gank! No Llabbits gonna bwing me no yeggs! Why the llabbit bwings yeggs cause somebunny dieds an I falld asweep?" I also thought the last four letters of the alphabet were: double-me, x, y, and z. I was adorable.

8. I look like somebody famous in England, but only there, and I don't know who she is. I do know that I get people of both sexes and many ages rushing up to gaze at me in London, and I've seen a couple of the London tall guys almost kill themselves straining to see me. Now, whenever I go to England, I feel responsible for her reputation -- whoever she is -- and make an extra effort to dress and behave well.

My Teaching Philosophy: Trial by Ordeal Edition

2007-08-27T08:24:00.000-04:00

The infamous professor whom I use on this blog and in my life as a sort of anecdote farm to illustrate Very Bad Things also had some admirable ideas that I have adopted in my teaching: he always admitted when he didn't know the answers to our questions, and he at least stated that a student's thoughts/beliefs/opinions were always welcome in his classroom, no matter how offensive. That second part was absolute nonsense of course, he wanted to be free to be as abusive as possible to his students, particularly those in simultaneous possession of vaginas and thoughts, and felt that a "truly free academic environment" would best serve his needs. But, theoretically, an open forum -- nobody gets punished for thinking in my class -- approach is a good thing. (And here I thought that the only things I brought with me out of that department were a two-year refusal to take any course in which the instructor of record was a male of any professed political stripe, and a much clearer understanding of my mother's anger.)

Because it's harder for me to see that which is admirable in a person I find loathsome, I have concluded that being honest about the limits of one's knowledge and encouraging free expression in one's classroom (albeit with a decidedly less venomous tilt) are probably as close to really good teaching ideas as I'm going to get, and so I have implemented those ideas in my teaching.

However, I have some problems Infamous Professor did not have, and so I have found over time that I have had to define the boundaries of the open forum a bit better. Yes, I am aware that adding boundaries to an open forum creates a closed, if broad, forum. I justify this choice by citing my duties as an educator to help all students expand their abilities.

Many students, when faced with an open discussion, fall into befuddled silence. This does not help them. A little structure allows them to feel safe enough to speak, and so I try to provide just enough structure to make a safe space.

Boundary #1: "You must say something that has some relevance to what we're doing/reading."

Others start spouting nonsense just for the joy of spouting nonsense, and refuse to defend their nonsense because "she said I could think whatever I want." This is also thoroughly unproductive, and very intellectually lazy. Why so many people think "free speech" means "unchallenged speech" is really beyond me.

Boundary #2 is "You have the right to say what you think. This does not include the right to silence all disagreement."

My students very often have opinions and ideologies that they have adopted, unexamined, from others whom they admire. That's normal for their stage of development, but is also something they need to start moving away from in order to take on adult roles in the world. I am a fact-based kind of person, and so I require that my students give me opinions based on something other than their general reading of the Zeitgeist in their neighborhoods, things they wish were true because that would totally support their specious arguments, and "my dad/friend/clergyman says." The arguments can stay, and even the Zeitgeist and appeals to local authority can stay in the arguments as long as they aren't alone, but false facts are not allowed.

Boundary #3 is "You are entitled to your own opinions. You are entitled to your own interpretations. You are not entitled to your own facts."

And finally, a problem that is the antithesis of Infamous Professor's design in adopting " a truly free academic environment;" my interpretation of a free exchange of ideas means that there is no bullying of any kind, so that all group members with ideas may feel free and safe to present those ideas to the group. Unfortunately, like Infamous Professor, there are a lot, like A LOT, of young people who harbor great quantities of causeless hatred in their withered little souls, and immediately upon hearing the phrase" free exchange of ideas" think "open season on the people I hate." While I acknowledge such ugliness does exist in the world, and even encourage students to discuss the uglier urges we may have as humans through my choices of literature, I cannot allow unfettered hate speech in my classroom. Even if it didn't offend me personally, and it does offend me, I have ethical and legal obligations as a teacher to make my academic space a safe space for all students, including and perhaps especially the students that others may target for hate.

Boundary #4 is "No bullying."

Students who are prone to hatefullness really resent boundary #4, because in their minds the only free space is a space where they are free to drive out those whose biological sex/ gender identification/ skin color/ religion/ political bent/ ethnicity/ tax bracket/ shoe choice they do not like.

That was a pretty long setup, I know. Bear with me.

This summer, my intensive literature course was "Introduction to American Literature" (Because I never ever ever get to teach something I would be really great at teaching. Never. It's against the law.). This class had the slightly narrower theme of "the creation of the Other in American Literature," because it was a summer class and I needed one theme that I could hop all over American Literature with, but mostly because once you've read The Wanderer and The Wife's Lament, and royal Vitae (Alfred, Charlemagne) and anything by Gerald of Wales, you start seeing the creation of "the Other" everywhere. And then you read Puritan sermons, and millenarian sermons, and Melville's Metaphysics of Indian-Hating, featuring an indian-hater par excellence, which is almost exactly in Saint's Life format, and some later stuff too, and lo! there are socially-constructed Others there as well. And then you sift through all the witches and demons and brown people and communists and weirdos and poor people and they start to look a lot like those filthy Saxons and Vikings and Welsh and peasants and witches and demons that you've seen before.

Long Story which I typed in but Blogger lost on me -- I had a Holocaust Denier in my class. Unlike 99% of my students, all of whom came into the class with some horrifying assumptions about life and people, he did not rethink his opinion when presented with corrected facts ( like pictures of Auschwitz), but rather became more virulently hateful. Boundaries 3 and 4 clashed with each other, and true facts plus his logic made him more of a bully than ever, and I had to choose the least destructive route, which was to make school safe for most of my students, and stop calling on the one.

What Things May Come

2007-08-26T09:40:00.001-04:00

The teaching of intensive courses this summer has left me with many and varied experiences to discuss with you, and also with the conviction that I should be kind enough to those who take the time to read my humble blog to occasionally do some organization -n- stuff. (I can almost guarantee you I will continue to run off on tangents, since tangents are my favorite vacation spot.)

In the meantime, news that totally excites me:

My very favorite contemporary poet has a blog, and I found it, and she posts poetry on it, and yay!

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Go check it out!

2 Weeks, No Sleep. However ...

2007-08-02T17:15:00.000-04:00

Paycheck!!!!

Also, my supervisor bounced some students I was having trouble controlling (because 18-20 is WAY too young to know how to behave appropriately in a classroom setting). Which has made one of my classes go from abject hell to pretty decent. This is nice for me, and very nice for the students who really want to learn something. Though there are circling parents and their lawyers, because the five other adults who came in to observe/give me pointers in dealing with total boneheads were colluding with me against these poor, innocent students.

Just Curious

2007-07-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

How hard do I get to kick a kid whose first creative writing assignment is handed in today

A) in the wrong language
a) in a class for English credit, and

B) fully plagiarized
b) in one of those totally obvious, pop-rock lyric kinda ways.

I mean, will I have to wait to get a purple belt or something?

Catastrophe Avoided, Stay Tuned for Possible Impending Disaster

2007-07-18T01:00:00.000-04:00

All the traveling about searching for employment has taken quite a toll on my finances. In the past 8 weeks I have gone from regular poor to scary poor, and finding summer jobs in Microburg is like trying to win the lottery. At first you imagine all the fun you'll have with your clerk job, and paycheck enough to buy the fancy noodles. But, alas, the clerk job always seems to go to someone else, someone less deserving, less in need. Frankly, you begin to think that dude with the summer job doesn't even really exist. He's a hologram the job people have put up to trick you. There never was a job! They just wanted you to fill out their paperwork! Soylent Green is People!

Anyway, just before I began looking about for places to sell blood, I received a panicked phone call. Someone who agreed to teach this summer backed out, leaving full classes about to start and nobody to teach them. Heo, are you interested, can you help? I thought about it for a bit, examined the peanut butter and jelly in the pantry, and considered the 1/4 tank of gas in the SS Bankruptcy, and agreed.

When the checks roll in, there will be plenty of fuel for me and the SS Bankruptcy both. With the remains I shall buy an island and crown myself queen! Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah!

One problem. Summer teaching backer-outer signed up for Three (3) intensive courses. Which begin Monday.

Stay tuned for short, incoherent ramblings disguised as blog posts.*

* Yes, more incoherent than usual. Smartass.

Thinking Blogger Award

2007-07-10T03:44:00.000-04:00

Bardiac nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award. Thanks, Bardiac!

And, as usual, this post comes right on schedule, two weeks after it was promised. Argh!

I'm especially honored to have this nod from Bardiac, because in her blog I find the work of one of those people who manages to be both inspirational and a somehow steadying force simultaneously. And then she adds intelligent, informed, insightful and generous to the mix and you can't even hate her for having her stuff together. I hate that. But I totally wanna be Bardiac when I grow up.

So, onto my choices. I have not been able to properly track who has these awards already, so if I have doubled a name, I apologize.

Oh, hell, I only get five?

Mixing Memory - Chris writes a very good cognitive science blog, in which he often explains the complicated processes we go through in our everyday thinking. And he even has footnotes quite often. So, I've started with blogger who writes about his thinking in response to the thinking of others about the act of thinking itself, which, when presented in blogular form, I now say will cause the reader to think on their own in response. How many "metas" is that?

Ancrene Wiseass - AW is a medievalist graduate student who writes beautifully about many topics, medieval and modern alike. I especially enjoy her posts on negotiating the demands of actual life and of graduate study simultaneously. It was in reading AW's blog that I realized that a grad student really could be a graceful contributor to the world of electronic words.

Karl "the Grouchy Medievalist" Steel - Even before he joined Jeffrey Jerome Cohen at In the Middle, Karl was tearing up the intertubes with insightful, provocative, and informative comments on other folks' blogs. So much so that when he joined JJC, I did a little computer-chair jig at the thought of more access to Karl-ian thoughts. He has not disappointed.

Squadratomagico - Somehow manages to live not just an ordinary real personal life outside of the academy, but her blog suggests that she's living an AMAZING personal life outside the academy. I love the stories, and her academic insights, but mostly I'm lurking around over there trying to figure out how she does it.

Lady Bracknell - The Perorations of Lady Bracknell, as you might imagine, are as august and aristocratic as is the lady herself. In her electronic editorials -- for who would dare call them anything as vulgar as 'blog posts'? -- Lady Bracknell does her best to rid the world of the unfortunate beliefs and practices of disablism, misogyny,* and all-around block-headedness.

*Aristocrats get the oxford comma. I read that in the rule books, I'm sure. Tiaras, white gloves, and oxford commas.

The rules for this meme are at the original post, or just below.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

I Can Has Dignity?

2007-07-01T02:26:00.000-04:00

If it seems like every other post includes an apology for my absence plus an explanation thereof, well, that's because that's been the pattern around here.

I'm sorry for being such a lackadaisical blogger.

But, man, do I have stories for you.

I have been on many road trips the past few weeks, in search of gainful employment, and oh! the places I've gone!

With brains in my head,
and feet in my shoes,
and gas in my tank,
I went off to peruse.

I began close to home,
not far did I roam,
to another burg that is micro,
as was the salary, alas!
proposed by the ass,
drat! I haven't a rhyme pair for micro.

Then overnight was the trip,
past bridges and tunnels and ships,
that brought me to a safe haven.
But after the second session,
we all learned our lessons,
and I knew it was time to be leavin'.

(Three cheers for sloppy rhyme! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!)

I stopped home for refreshments,
sleep, food, and a change of vestments,
and drove to a town by another great water.
The water was swell,
I gave Canada a yell,
But was not hired for lack of a daughter.

(I'm not kidding. They prefer their women married with children up there. I was told this expressly. They are clearly not Heo-ready. )

Another stop home for a drink and a nap,
then off I went again, white-knuckling the map.
I took the road out of microburg, and then a quick left,
and saw men in straw hats drive horses of considerable heft.
Amish, where they ought not to have been!
And the house of a minor president!
And a nudist colony!
All in the same small town.
Right on the way to my meeting.
I must now confess,
Although Johannes and Georg were dressed,
imaginings of them as nudists weren't fleeting.

Off to a beauteous town I continued,
where I lost my breath often,
but kept control of my sinew.
Welawey! Say I now,
for I was so desperately cowed,
that I could not give a coherent interview.

And finally, this past week,
Off south again I hent,
past the place where the sight of Amish one expects.
But they weren't there,
and the meeting was bare,
just a secretary and a recording device,
and one Heo, vexed.

Northeast a bit, too.
To a ridiculous zoo,
run by my natural enemy.
A short, squat man,
holding his chest unnaturally convex,
and a major dux bellorum complex,
that I watched kick in,
while supressing a grin,
as I rose when he came in the office.

And the cost of this traveling,
on mind, body and purse,
has been quite enormous,
though less so in verse.

Unemployed I remain,
whether I like it or not.
More travel and meetings
in which I try hard not to be trying.
More questions,
both silly and not,
and, I fear,
a few more Saturdays crying.

But on Sundays, I'm rested,
not so easily perplexed-ed,
and I remember medievalist training.
Patience, indeed,
Perseverance, too,
and eventually stuff won't be so draining!

Heo Posts Everyday Etiquette Tips: Lesson 1~ Grace Under Pressure

2007-06-06T02:06:00.000-04:00

When a neighbor comes over and brings you a lovely bouquet of clippings from her garden:

Thank her and make a big fuss over how beautiful the flowers are and how lovely they smell, and how you just adore fresh flowers.

Mean it.

Go get a vase, quickly, so that the flowers are in water as soon as possible because you don't want the stems to dry out.

When choosing the vase, be sure to pick the fat, unwieldy one.

When placing the vase on the counter, try to set it down at just the right angle, and with just the right level of force.

Watch it shatter in your hand.

Feel the largest piece slice your thumb. Assume the wound is not that severe since it didn't hurt that much, really.
Curse like a longshoreman.

Following first aid protocol, hold pressure on wound for 15 minutes so it can stop bleeding.

Repeat, because you must have done it wrong.

Reassure your neighbor, who is blanching visibly.

Make a joke about how accident prone you are.

With your good hand, pour your neighbor a cup of fresh coffee, which you carry from the kitchen to the living room with milk and sugar bowls on the toaster-oven tray because you have no tea tray.

Make a joke about your hostessing skills.

Chat as if you aren't concerned about your still-bleeding hand.

Excuse yourself 'for just a moment' because you're not sure you turned off the coffee pot.

Neglect to mention that the coffee pot turns itself on and off, and might someday knit you a cardigan if you can figure out the code.

Make small talk nonchalantly from the kitchen while you surreptitiously apply butterfly sutures (one-handed! ^4!) to the gash in the digit that -- along with philosophy and art -- separates you from the majority of other wildlife.

Realize that your grasp of philosophy is unimpressive, you couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler, and there are a few apes who have twice as many opposable thumbs as you used to have.

Consider adding whiskey to your own coffee. Refrain. You may be a dolt who is outranked on the evolutionary scale by some poop-throwers, but you're the only person you know in this city whom you can trust to drive you to the ER if you feel faint from the loss of blood.

Ask yourself how the hell you ever got into graduate school with your sad-ass logical skills.

Decide to pour whiskey into cup after all.

Realize that the stench of whiskey is unmaskable with even the strongest roast of coffee.

Pour whiskey out of cup. Rinse.

Deposit still-stinky cup in sink, start over with clean coffee cup.

Hear neighbor heading for the kitchen to check on you. You can't let her find you in here bleeding all over the butcher block in a kitchen that smells like whiskey when you didn't even get to drink the stinking whiskey. Emergency!!

Pop your smiling face out of kitchen.

Distract her with gossip about the neighbor whose house is visible from the window furthest from your kitchen.

Sigh in relief as she moves to that window to contemplate the news and their house.

Wrap 2x2 gauze around your thumb.

Wrap clear packing tape around your 2x2 gauze very tightly so you can drink your damned virgin coffee without having to continue holding pressure on your thumb.
Wrap 4x4 neatly around this, and with appropriate tape.

Discuss local arts offerings for the summer.

Pretend you're excited to see a community theater version of a play you hated when you saw professionals do it.
Feel throbbing pain, and strong desire to reprise your earlier role as longshoreman #1.

Encourage neighbor to go home by subtle shift to the annoyingly didactic.

Act disappointed that she needed to leave so quickly, but do that while walking to the door.

Walk her out, and thank her again for the lovely flowers.

Vodka, neat.

Proceed to local walk-in medical office.

Whew!

2007-05-25T23:29:00.000-04:00

[Post edited to eliminate idiot spelling errors and extra-awkward sentences. Medium-awkward sentences and less idiotic spelling errors have been left intact. Not really, or not purposefully. I'm just covering my butt.]

For just a moment, I may actually be my normal-ish self. Though I haven't quite figured out what normal looks like without some sort of looming emergency, academic or familial. Heomodor had all her problem areas addressed surgically this week, with some hours of high drama in surgery during which the surgical staff ran around quite a bit and shouted. Just like on the TV. Well, they didn't have sex in the broom closet in between laps around the O.R., but still. I was actually convinced, for the past month or two, that Heomodor was not long for this world. Good job, team of three surgeons! And a nice touch it was, your meeting with the whole fambly as a unit to explain stuff. Even the spindly one who adopted the 'benevolent but dismissive father-figure" status for himself while taking command (and, who did the least of all three) deserves a good pat on the back for his contribution. He also deserves a kick in the pants, but I'm tired this week. Which brings me to this question...why would someone who actually performs an iconic role [dramatic surgeon] in our culture double down by adopting another one [father knows best] in a conversation related to his work in his first iconic status? I mean, seriously! Next time wear a cowboy hat, too, why don't you?

More Reasons to Wear the Regalia

2007-05-21T02:00:00.001-04:00

When you march around to Pomp and Circumstance and Procession of the Nobles for the amusement of your friends and family, they are obliged to give you stuff. It's the rule. Now, in return for my performance, my family and friends have provided me with the following:

some cash (wlonk!)

two cakes (cake!)

a crustacean-based meal (Good for body and soul, both. I'm convinced that the matter with Kansas is the total lack of crustacean-based meals. )

a camera of the digital variety (the first camera I've ever owned that was not bought at a pharmacy)

Introducing Heo!

2007-05-18T15:36:00.001-04:00

Master of ~~Ceremeonies~~

~~the Universe~~

~~the English Language~~ (well, on paper I am)

Hmm, let's try another tact.

I went to post-structuralism sleep-away camp and all I got was this lousy regalia.

Sweet. I love regalia. And what's better than medieval robes?

Tomorrow, I shall march about in medieval robes, being careful to flaunt my extra-long, flappy arms. I will do my best to appear sage for the cameras.

Just know that my interior monologue as I sedately flap my masterful way up to the podium to get my fake diploma will include both "look at me, Ma" and "Woo-hoooo! Best Joey Ramone Day celebration ever!" I may also include a heart-felt "wlonk!" but that'll have to depend on the moment.

Why Do I Blog?

2007-05-05T15:48:00.000-04:00

Quite some time ago -- on my mother's Birthday, actually -- Bardiac tagged me to share five reasons why I blog. Because I am such a phenomenal blogging slacker, for reasons which I will share in the second half of this post, I did not complete the task. And I continued to not complete the task for so long that my fellow tagee, Ancrene Wiseass, completed her assignment, and tagged Anniina, who in turn completed her assignment and tagged me. And then I started to feel really guilty about being so slow to get on this meme. So, I let that procrastinator's guilt percolate for a while, and now I am ready to be a responsible blogger and write my post.

*Ahem*

Five Reasons I Blog:

1) Long Story with two parts, in fine TMI tradition: I would classify my experience in my family, although loving, as akin to being in a high-demand cult. Seriously. Part of the pull of graduate school was, for me, the chance to be away. As I planned my move to Microburg from civilization, I became absolutely giddy with the prospect of living far enough away from my family that I stopped being defined, and defining myself, as Daughter of X, Sister of Y. And I know that sounds immature, because it is immature. But there you have it. About two months before I was set to depart, a family member fell ill -- not dangerously ill, but too sick to work, and too poor to go it alone. I am the only unmarried, non-replicating sibling. Therefore, my charge into freedom changed radically. Like, the freedom part of it got taken away. I was determined to continue on to graduate school, but I would have to take my family member with me, and take responsibility for said family member. Moving made me the sole emotional and social support for said person, who is not the type to create a new social network, and be the largest financial support as well. Not a lot of time for that, plus grad school, plus finding a place where who I am is entirely based upon me. One improvises. So, ta-da. A place where I can be bitchy and evil and pompous and self-centered and school-centered and politics-centered and me, and nobody gets hurt.

2) As I wandered about the internet, hunting for information about becoming a medievalist, I found blogs that centered on just that. And they were written by women, most of them. And those women were feminists, too. Huzzah! So, I started to think that I could also be a feminist medievalist, and that perhaps I could bring something to the conversation while we all made our way to the medieval. I'm cartain I don't do that as well as I should, but you can't build a skill unless you work on that skill, right?

3) I had to create a blogger account to comment at Bitch PhD and Ancrene Wiseass anyway.

4) I seriously like my pseudonym, and whenever I'm moderately clever in a very geeky way I like to share that.

5) My friends have heard my anecdotes before, and they aren't as impressed by my rapier wit as I like to imagine all the non-commenting visitors to this blog are. You see, in my mind, the non-commenting don't fail to comment because I haven't said anything generative, or they're creepy pervs who are using the internet to search for sick ways to get sexual pleasure out of medieval torture devices. Oh, no. They fail to comment because they are stunned by my perspicacity. So, to maintain my delusions.

Five Reasons I haven't Blogged Lately:
1) Overflow classes, just in case I never make it back to graduate school.:$0
Volunteering commitments that help me get over myself: $0
Writing decent final papers for all those classes while keeping volunteering commitments so that choice to make it back to graduate school is ultimately mine: Priceless.

2) Relative is ill and requires much shuttling to doctors.

3) I need a job! So far two interviews, no offers. Le sigh.

4) You know how Pandarus always shows up where nobody invited him in Troilus and Criseyde? He does that in papers about Troilus and Criseyde as well.

5) Actually attending when speakers come on campus in case I never make it back to graduate school and I just go around being all ignorant of the stuff they were talking about forever because I didn't learn it now.

Wherein the Blogger Notices a Theme

2007-04-15T01:58:00.000-04:00

As it happens, I have gotten into several -- intermittently heated -- discussions with a peer this week over what he calls the "slow food," and "home spun," movements, and I call the "cult of domesticity."* Now, when I say "intermittently heated" I mean that I got pissed a few times. We were doing that thing where we say the same things 53 times, in slightly different ways each time, and we each only say one thing. And then we gave up and pretended it was because we had reached consensus, when no such thing had occurred.

Conversations that go that way are maddening in the extreme, but ever so easy to pare down for blogular purposes.

He said: These are interesting ways to reintroduce art to life and break with the cycle of consumption/corporate ickiness.
She said: Why is it only traditionally Mama activities that have to suddenly be a giant, labor-intensive pain in the ass? Maybe we have to consider fixing families first, or, failing that, that there are other ways to fight the corporations.
He said: This isn't a right-wing movement, so it can't be anti-woman. I feel like you're leaving us with more consumption, and not wanting to fight the corporations.
She said: Maybe we have to fight the corporations in a different way, one that takes into account that men don't statistically pull their weight at home now, when everything is microwaveable. Maybe we should start the fight at the 60-80 hour workweek. And left-wing can still be anti-woman, or just "What women?"

And that's where we got stuck. Because he kept telling me that it wasn't a right-wing thing, and I kept telling him that it could still be anti-woman by accident or even design and be a left-wing thing. That there was nothing inherently pro-woman about left-leaning politics. In fact, evidence has tended to support the theory that left-wing men are fairly frequently completely bloody worthless where fighting for women's rights is concerned.

In a weird performance of the exact issue I was telling him about, he kept centering on "the important business" of fighting corporations. And in order to do that, he was neglecting to see how this fight, fought in this way, might -- almost certainly WOULD -- negatively affect women individually and as a group and actually end up giving the social right-wing what it wants even as it takes something from the business right-wing. But the something that would be given to the social right-wing would come exclusively out of the hides of the womenfolk, so that's not 'important.' The answer was always: it isn't right-wing.

And then I released the Kraken at a committee meeting because the men there were shouting women members down so they could have their three-way pissing contest -- ostensibly about an issue that affected women almost exclusively.

And then I turn to the blogosphere for respite. Because I'm silly.

And I got to see the whole "Markos is still a jackass w/r/t women, film at 11" thing at Pandagon. And, sure enough, there was Markos, being a jackass right out in public. And, of course, his fellow left-wing men and women joined in a lovely misogyny cluster in comments, and they got very upset when the feminist blogosphere noticed. 'Cause, how dare mere, one-issue bloggers disagree with an A-list blogger?! They should obey in silence, especially since they're all cootified girls and stuff. (Hey, Critical Thinkers! C'mere a sec. If women could trust left wing men not to do what Markos JUST DID IN PRINT RIGHT THERE AT HIS SITE, YOU DOLTS, perhaps more women would be willing to be team players. Because when the only person who ever has to take one for the team is you, and it happens all the time, you start to think, "maybe this isn't the team for me.") Because, God knows the democratic party doesn't need women's votes to win elections.

Then, I went to Feministe, where Jill was very nicely asking fellow members of the left not to join on the "bash the Duke accuser" bandwagon. And, she said this:

Even if you believe that the attacks on this individual woman are warranted, consider the effects that they will have on rape survivors. Consider what rape survivors feel every time they hear her called a liar. Consider what women will internalize about rape from this incident. Consider how that will effect them in the future — how it will effect their own reporting, or their belief that their friend, their daughter, their mother is telling the truth.

And, after I re-read just in case Jill had put some snark somewhere that I missed, the theme was clear. These guys, left and right alike, ARE considering what their words and actions in these cases do to women. Especially the silencing effect they have on women who've been assaulted or even just threatened in a plausible way. That's why they do those things. Now, not all of them think very baldly, "This'll shut those bitches up." They may rationalize it differently. But, that's the effect they're looking for and getting; Silence the women.

When I saw the face of the Fox anchor who put the name and photo of the accuser up onscreen with the phrase "the Duke Liar" under it, I swear I could hear the underlying "Now I'm gonna hafta show you what we do with trouble-making bitches around here." It was absolutely vengeance and hatred filled, and it was absolutely meant to be a public show for women who need to learn their places and lessons well. Just like the DJ who released the name of the Kobe Bryant accuser, and the bastards who released the name of the OC accuser -- this was motivated by hatred of women. And its design is to shut women up.

And then, back at Pandagon, Chris Clarke got all Chris Clarkey and suddenly some of the left wing men got it. But there were still those on the loooooong thread there and at dKos who came in to say "We don't think it's fair that not everything is about what we want to talk about. And American women are stupid. Especially when they don't speak Japanese. And where do you get off using bad words and telling us to shut up when we're men, and we have important thoughts. We can't possibly learn anything from women, that'd be dumb. Maybe they should shut up." And the circle is complete.

And now I shall return to reading the Play of Noah, because there are fewer troublesome depictions of women in medieval literature than there are in life and on the internet today.

*As I often do, I will be subjecting the reader to a personal short story/anecdote before meandering over to my somewhat-related point. I'd advise you to send all complaints regarding this format to my Freshman Comp. professor, but that wouldn't really be fair; she made a valiant effort to get me to stop that years ago. Me, I encourage the attachment of short stories to almost any written work, as long as the story doesn't 1) make it weird for me to look at my student, or 2) require me to call some sort of mental health and/or law enforcement professionals to my class.

Hey, I just totally subjected you to a Bonus Anecdote via footnote!

Jill Filipovic

2007-04-14T02:45:00.000-04:00

I saw this post some time ago at Ancrene Wiseass, and I meant to support Jill here, but didn't. Time passes quickly in the blogosphere, you see, and by the time I got around to posting the topic seemed untopical. The top search engine returns for Jill Filipovich were writings by Jill Filipovich already.

Sadly, Jill's recent post asking people from the left and right both to consider what effect the decision made by Fox and Smoking Gun et.al. to reveal the accusers face and home information would have on rape survivors, or women in general, has revived the AutoAdmit thugs. Said thugs have climbed out from the ooze to post their support for Jill's hypothetical rape and murder, because she thinks women ought not to be threatened with rape and murder, and such a position is untenable. They're solid citizens over at AutoAdmit.

I intend to write a fuller response to Jill's thoughts soon, but for now I give you tigtog's work, copied in full.

Mirroring the post made by tigtog:

This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger.

Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women’s physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.

Jill Filopovic‘s name and class routines etc have been regularly posted to this board, and at least one of the pseudonymous board-members claims to be Jill Filipovic‘s classmate. Photos that Jill Filipovic posted (with full rights reserved) to an internet photo-storing and sharing site have also been posted to the sleazy discussion board without her permission. This is a horrendous invasion of Jill Filipovic‘s privacy, a violation of copyright law, and calls the ethics and character of the alleged law-students participating in these discussions on the discussion board into question.

A major side-effect of an already nasty situation is that the sexist, objectifying cyber-obsession threads come up on the first page of internet search results on Jill Filipovic‘s name. To an inexperienced user of the internet, it may even look as if Jill Filipovic and other female law students chose to compete in these Hot or Not rating competitions, instead of having their pictures posted without permission.

This post is an attempt to balance those internet results to point to the significant writings of Jill Filipovic instead, using the Googlebomb tactic and also linking this post to social networking sites (eg. del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon). Please feel free to copy any or all of what I’ve written here to your own blog in order to help change the top-ranked search engine results for Jill Filipovic. If you don’t have your own blog then please at least link to one of Jill’s posts listed below at your preferred social networking site and give it the tag ”Filipovic” (as well as any others you think appropriate).

I have linked to these sites in this post:
Jill Filipovic‘s bio page at Feministe
Jill Filipovic‘s blog posts at the Ms. JD blog
Jill Filipovic‘s article about these scummy lawschool sleazebags at Feministe
Jill Filipovic‘s article at Ms. JD: When Law Students Attack

If any of the other female law students stalked by the same sleazy site wish to copy this text with names altered, you hereby have my full permission to do so. All other rights reserved. (C) 2007 tigtog

Administrative Stuff, and Other Stuff.

2007-04-10T01:11:00.000-04:00

Blogroll Changes:

[Updated in order to correct the impression that Marie Borroff is a blogger. Though I could totally see that happening.]

Some People decided to move their blog homes, and Other People decided to come back from a faked death and an island vacation to Bora-Bora, so I had some blogrolling adjustments to make. Also, I didn't particularly like the "They Wonked" category on the sidebar separating some blogs from other blogs, as if I were making value judgments about the blogs. I was in fact making value judgments about the blogs on my blogroll, but the impression the bullets gave was that I thought a Law-professing dude and trumps Medieval and Renaissance History and Literature professing women. That simply isn't so. I'm sure John Balkin is a swell guy and a terrific dinner companion, but he's no ~~Marie Borroff~~ Eileen Joy.

Speaking of Academic Celebrities:

A colleague of mine was at a mini-conference recently wherein he briefly met super-famous Academic B. Super Famous Academic B is distinguished from the Academic Stah of "Speaking at Microburg, what do I do?" fame in that Super Famous Academic B actually has original, paradigm-shattering ideas of her very own that make sense. I still hate them both, but I don't consider SFAB's salary and speaking fees to be theft, as I do AS's income.

Anyway, SFAB was really rude and dismissive of my colleague who, bless his heart, is a giant kiss-ass. Look, don't get me wrong. I like him. I think he's a genuinely smart, affable, well-informed, and nice guy. But I have also seen him kiss up to 6 asses in one grammatically correct sentence without even using a group noun. And this person, out of arrogance, or exhaustion at being pestered by grad students, or whatever, just blew colleague right off. She didn't even bother pretending she wasn't blowing him off, either. Which shocked colleague, 'cause he's good at what he does.

And I pretended it shocked and appalled me too, because I wanted to be supportive of a person who looked so wounded. But, I'll tell ya what. Even as I feigned a credible gasp, up from the dark and twisted caverns of my soul came creeping a wicked laugh. This was a win-win for me, really. Someone FINALLY said to colleague, in her own special way, that being an attractive, well-dressed and affable young man who sighs all three syllables of "professor" with the perfect mix of aroused intellect and endearing, childlike awe doesn't necessarily mean people will bend over backwards to help you from the moment they meet you. And, BONUS! Super Famous Academic B, from whom I sensed major falsehood in her down with hierarchy writings, was openly nasty to an underling just because she could be.

Let's be clear, I hate hierarchies too, and some day after the end of May we'll talk about what I think about Professors who insist that graduate students call them Professor or Doctor up until the day they're hooded, all the while addressing the students by first name. (Here's a hint: Know what I call my medical doctor? Stan, that's what!) And, honestly, I agree with Super Famous Academic B's thoughts. But I know, in the way that you know these things, that she's full of shit. She expresses herself very well, and people find her ideas radical and sexy, and they cite her articles effing endlessly, but there's the distinct aroma of horseshit there. Kinda like how you just know that certain male 'feminist' academics would always ask the female grad students to handle cooking/set-up/and cleaning for department events, because the men were 'so busy with their academic work.'

But this isn't to say that I am happy that a famous academic is faking her radical beliefs. I wish she really did believe what she wrote. But one likes to know the radar still works, ya know?

P.S. There are male academic stars I hate, too. But you know who they are without my havin to tell you, most likely. If you're reading this blog and agreeing with me often, you probably hate them too. And if you read this blog for someone to disagree with, just imagine all the male academics you think are wonderful.

Speaking of Pandarus

2007-03-31T23:45:00.000-04:00

Does my butt look like it belongs to Chaucer's depiction of a Trojan ethics-optional warrior culture in this post?

You look confused.

I'll explain, shall I?

I have nieces. Oodles of 'em. They are smart, silly, athletic, lazy, funny, serious, charming, brusque, whiny, weird, goofy, cranky, short, tall, ill-mannered, gracious, and any number of other adjectives you might care to mention. Just like people.

Yet, a 'feminist' male 'friend' of mine, upon hearing that I got a surprise visit from Niece #3 today immediately asked, "Is she pretty?" At which point, a number of memory neurons started firing on protector neurons, and I told him to get lost. Now, the first time I said it in a joking way. But Mr. Genius just HAD to keep insisting I answer his question. So I answered his question like an aunt whose niece, on the basis of being adult and female, was immediately being considered for classification of the "would I or wouldn't I?" kind by a man who calls himself a feminist and my friend.

This hurt his widdle fee-fees.

I am now in a boiling rage. I hurt his feelings?! Hm. I answer the phone and explain that a niece I haven't seen in a bit made a very lengthy car trip up to the back of bloody beyond to see me, and brought her new boyfriend for me to meet, and I was so delighted to see them I seriously considered making an attempt at cooking. And where are those sheets that fit the futon in the guest room anyway? Can I call you back in a day or two?

And I get two questions:
1) "How old is she?" and, upon learning she was indeed in that coveted barely adult range...
2) "Is she pretty?"

And then the weirdest thing happened. Every time a guy 'friend' tried to use our 'friendship' as cover for being a sexist, vulgar ass to me sprang to my memory. Every time a guy 'friend of mine' ignored our friendship and common decency to make a comment about the developing physique of Niece #3's older cousins sprang to memory. Every time any man treated me or any woman I cared about in my presence or in my knowledge as if we existed only insofar as we might serve his purposes sprang to my memory.

And I had a revelation.

If people hate me because I say, plainly, that I will not tolerate my kids being treated like sexual jokes, they can go right ahead and hate me. I have a more important social role to fill than 'friend of random jackass.'

Random Questions

2007-03-29T09:05:00.000-04:00

That have popped into my head in the past few weeks. Some of them are grad school related, some not so much. As a collection, I think they're funny.

- How many times would I have to run a Zizek article through Babelfish before it started to make sense to me?

- When Pandarus sticks his head under the sheet on the bed where his naked niece lies after having sex with Troilus, and they 'gan to pleye,' WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?! Ew, man.

- Will there ever be another Edmund as Edmund-y as Raul Julia's Edmund in Central Park in 1974?

- Why is microfiction so often about sex? Is it wrong that sexual microfiction makes me a) laugh, and b) feel sorry for the poor bastard who wrote it?

- Why do grown-up dressy shoes pinch so?

- Why didn't my relatives leave truly scandalous diaries for me to read? Relatedly, would it be OK to start telling fantastic lies in my own journal for the benefit of future generations on the swestersunu line?

- If my modern Americanist friends get all snooty with me again, would it be wrong to ask them how they manage to sort through the literally TEN YEARS worth of criticism on their author to come up with something new and interesting to say? Especially considering that they have to learn zero languages to do that? Because, seriously, the attitude is starting to grate.

- Why did I, a grown woman, get a pimple on the center of my nose the day I had to present a gift to somebody in a ceremony?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2007-03-17T19:18:00.000-04:00

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

1892

Yes, I know this poem is a St. Patrick's Day Cliché. But I also know that this poem actually manages to make my soul still when I read it. If I were a better linguist I would know why it does that, but I'm only mediocre at the linguistical business. So, I offer you an inexplicably peaceful soul today.

And, perhaps a little laugh:

May those who love us, love us.
As for those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts.
But if He can't turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles,
so that we may know them by their limping.

Culture Clash

2007-03-10T17:14:00.000-05:00

Context Information:

Most of you who read this blog know that I come from a working class family. Well, we're working class when things are going well, and I clearly remember a few years when things went spectacularly poorly and we were underclass. (Again, that information is purely for context. I have few complaints at this late date.) I generally pass for middle class, though, because I grew up in an affluent town. This is not to say that I currently pretend to be something that I'm not, although there were many years in which I tried to do just that, but rather that I have learned most of the dialect markers of the middle to upper middle classes and know how to use them a lot of the time. For social survival.

When I was an undergraduate, I thought the startling differences in beliefs and attitude between me and my peers were mostly attributable to our age difference. I mean, I knew that some of their "woe-is-me" stories were laughable, but it didn't really sink in that these stories were partly a product of privilege rather than pure immaturity. My family required my financial assistance as soon as I was able to give it; I needed to work full time right after high school. I got 'technical training' and worked for nine and a half years to be able to save enough to a) pay for college, and b) be able to work 4 days a week rather than 5 so I could actually make it to my classes. I was old, and I had a lot on my plate. So, I only encountered my fellow students on campus, preferring to socialize with my friends from work whenever I had the time. And I just assumed that all the things that struck me as weird about these kids had to do with the fact that they were, you know, kids. In ten years, maybe after they had kids of their own, and knew the experience of having people count on them, we would be able to interact more. What can I tell you? I'm dense.

The Point Lives in Here Somewhere, I Hope:

Then came the mind-bendingly selfish choice to go to graduate school. I won't bother you with a description of the emotional maelstrom that surrounds that choice every day. If you're a working-class person in the academy, you're experiencing it yourself. If you aren't, you don't have the structure in place through which you can understand it. Just as I can't understand the moment I'm about to describe to you.

While we were all sitting around enjoying a grad student neurosis-airing moment recently, a friend of mine put her head in her hands and groaned, "I don't want to be a loser." And several others expressed the same sentiment. (It was a glum meeting.)

Now, my cultural background and current weirdness led me to read this part of the conversation entirely incorrectly. I mean, I nodded knowingly because I thought I understood what they were saying. I, too, have the fear of being the loser. I am the child who has excuses made for her in conversations with extended family and close family friends, because:

I don't do work that builds anything tangible.
And I don't make good money at this ephemeral non-worky work I do.
And I don't want to marry and have kids, which is just weird.
And it's unfortunate that I'm so booksmart, but can't really DO anything anymore.
And I never go to Sunday dinner.
And I'm always late with the money for my mom's medications, so my sister always has to front the money for me.
So, what good is it that I think I'm so smart when I'm practically committing matricide-by-failure?
And everybody else has to do the emotional heavy lifting for me because I'm at Microburg, and I always have homework to do. At 35.
And I'm not really a snob once you talk to me, even though I'm always reading. You just have to think of me kind of like a recent convert to religion who annoyingly tells everyone all the new stuff I've learned, but not because I think you're going to hell for not knowing it, too, but because I'm excited by it for reasons no one understands.
And there's proof that I'm not just lazy and avoiding work in graduate school, even though it's clear I don't do work here, because I did do work for so long. There were paychecks.

So, I started to respond with comfort that I would need if I made a similar statement. Which earned me confused looks.

Because, when these people said they didn't want to be losers, most of them were talking about their parents both finishing PhDs in 5 years or less, and their siblings all being accepted to the #1 graduate programs in the world in their respective fields, and progressing even faster, or having gotten a T-T position at a "great school" on their first year out after finishing a PhD in 3 years. The others were talking about the low salary they could expect as academics, and how that would make them look stupid in front of their families when their cousin Bob is making the GDP of three nations already.

What they were emphatically NOT talking about was the fear that they would get their PhDs, and then not get jobs, which would cause several generations of their family after them to refuse to go to college at all because Aunt Heo spent half her life at college and was such a spectacular failure anyway. Or that the debt they'd acquired was so beyond the scope of their ability to imagine it that they were having difficulty sleeping. Or that they really were afraid that they were literally killing their relatives by not having enough money to give them, in a timely fashion. Or that they fear that all the "you're not quite good enough" messages one often gets from one's professors doesn't so much speak to the quality of a sentence, or a paragraph, or even a whole draft of their work, but rather to their quality as people. So that one person, having a bitchy day, or needing to prove his/her power over others can send them into a month-long tailspin of crushing angst.

In Short:

You know how, when you speak a language really well, and you go to the country where that language is spoken, and you begin to lose your accent, and you start believing you are indistinguishable from the natives in a lot of ways, and then a folk song comes on the radio and you realize in that instant that you are, and will always be, a foreigner living in their land?

Yeah, that.

Sometimes You Just Wonder

2007-03-03T22:48:00.000-05:00

...at the ease with which the powerful can set the powerless against each other. And the joy with which a previously oppressed person will place his/her boot squarely on the neck of another if it seems like that action will gain him/her some small advantage, thus making it easier for others 'above' the oppressive oppressors to oppress them in turn , leading ultimately into a full-on fascist jamboree wherein all but a few are oppressed in their turn.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you "The Five Civilized Tribes" a.k.a. Cherokee & friends, who earned their "civilized" moniker by being slave-holders in the old south, and apparently, remain assholes to this very day.

From an article in WaPo this morning(behind free subscription wall):
"The 250,000-member Cherokee Nation will vote in a special election today whether to override a 141-year-old treaty and change the tribal constitution to bar "freedmen," the descendants of former tribal slaves, from being members of the sovereign nation."

What?! What year is this? This is just a bad joke, right?

Er ... Nope.

"Advocates of expelling the freedmen call it a matter of safeguarding tribal resources, which include a $350 million annual budget from federal and tribal revenue, and Cherokees' share of a gambling industry that, for U.S. tribes overall, takes in $22 billion a year. The grass-roots campaign for expulsion has given heavy play to warnings that keeping freedmen in the Cherokee Nation could encourage thousands more to sign up for a slice of the tribal pie.

Jesus, that didn't even require a sweat on the part of the powerful. Way to stay strong, Cherokee people!

"Don't get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry," Darren Buzzard, an advocate of expelling the freedmen, wrote last summer in a widely circulated e-mail denounced by freedmen. "Don't let black freedmen back you into a corner. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. FOR OUR DAUGHTER[S] . . . FIGHT AGAINST THE INFILTRATION."

Hey! I recognize that rhetoric. Where can it be from? Oh, my, it sounds so familiar. Who else, historically, used the honor of their daughters as a rallying cry against another group of people, a people they had oppressed, and were now frightened would retaliate? Eh, must never have happened if I can't remember it.

"It's oppressed people that's oppressing people," said Verdie Triplett, 53, an outspoken freedman of the Choctaw tribe, which, like the Cherokee, once owned black slaves."

Exactly.

So, people of conscience can't go through with such a vile thing, can they? They can't expel their own for a few more gambling dollars can they? The people will rise up, and play that goofy 70's song, and the Cherokee people will be as one once more, I just know it.

The WaPo article about the Cherokee vote today:. (Behind a free subscription wall)

"With a majority of districts reporting, 76 percent had voted in favor of an amendment to the tribal constitution that would limit citizenship to descendants of "by blood" tribe members as listed on the federal Dawes Commission's rolls from more than 100 years ago."

Ass. Holes.

And the Government "tutorial site" on the Dawes Rolls:

"The Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes was appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1893 to negotiate land with the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes. It is commonly called the Dawes Commission, after its chairman, Henry L. Dawes.

Tribe members were entitled to an allotment of land, in return for abolishing their tribal governments and recognizing Federal laws. In order to receive the land, individual tribal members first had to apply and be deemed eligible by the Commission.

The first application process for enrollment began in 1896, but was declared invalid. So the Dawes Commission started all over again in 1898. People had to re-apply in order to be considered, even if they had already applied in 1896. The resulting lists of those who were accepted as eligible became known as the Dawes Rolls. Their formal name is the "Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory". The Commission accepted applications from 1898 until 1907, with a few additional people accepted by an Act of Congress in 1914."

So, lemme get this straight. An oppressed and expelled people bring with them out of the south their own subset of oppressed people. Then, 100 years later, when tribal rights are starting to be respected again, even if just a little, they expel their subset of oppressed people. For money. Based on the documentation of a racist government commission that had something to gain by refusing to count any person with even the slightest appearance of 'black blood,' whether that person also had Cherokee blood or not. In fact, one hint that a person was black at all kept them off the Dawes Roll, even if they also had Cherokee & friends blood. So, these 'freedmen' were kept from the rolls for racist and capitalist reasons at the turn of the last century, and are being expelled from the tribe again now for the same reasons.

Updated below, because I'm not done ranting yet.

Is there no place, no group of people, that can be touched by the violence of oppression without craving the power of oppressor themselves? Was HOBBES right?! Are people who say they want justice only interested in becoming part of the club? Is the whole world just comprised of people who will happily adopt racism, sexism, creedism, and any other fucking -ism that's convenient to get them what they want or think they need?

Look, I belong to more than one group of assholes, stemming from varied traditions of assholery. So do you, most likely. But at some point, don't we all have to say that the lesson we have brought from 500 years of absolute racist, sexist, hateful, soul-destroying bullshit is that we will have no more of said bullshit?

When do you suppose we will value self-respect over money? 'Cause you can't tell me that a person who respects him/herself does a thing like this.

On the Acquisition of Fancy Pants

2007-03-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

Houston, we have interview suit! A perfectly delightful double-breasted, pin-striped, nicely constructed, fully lined, month's worth of groceries AND extra little treats interview suit. Hell, I think it came close to rent. And I like wearing it; my salary demands just went up.

Before I went interview suit shopping this time, I scorned the fancy pants. Because my life's trajectory has been such that every day clothing of the expensive variety was not an option, and didn't need to be. More than a decade in nursing? Nursing uniforms five days a week, a few pairs of jeans, and half a closet full of gowns appropriate for weddings and tea dresses appropriate for baby showers. Couple years as a teacher? I wore corporate casual teacherly stuff, but not of the very best quality, or even middling quality --- think stores than end in "mart" or "get" here---because ... psshhh... they weren't paying me to maintain a *nice* wardrobe, just a professional one. And nice costs money that I could be using in better ways. And who wants to spend a million dollars on a pair of beautiful pants that will just have a chalk-line across the butt by lunchtime? Then I became a grad student, and mostly wore the left-over teacher clothes. Same job, different age group, same chalk-line, same wardrobe.

But now! Now I go into a world of people who will probably not bleed on me, a world where the chalk line is not a given.

Introducing the Electronic Absence

2007-02-26T22:33:00.000-05:00

Pre-rant apologia: I hate that I'm becoming this person, too. Chances are that you will read this and cluck over my power mongering. That's cool. Last week I would have done the same to you if you wrote this post, or one like it. I would have told you that you're about a minute away from having been an undergrad yourself. I would have asked you if you make fun of twelve-year-olds for not understanding calculus. I would have secretly mumbled about some people needing to remember that we are all students of our disciplines and of life, and some are just further in the process.

That said, they totally started it.

Rant:

There was a bit of an explosion today. The gist of which is that beginning tomorrow, ANY student of mine who EVER sits in my class with an ipod or similar device hanging out of their ears will be automatically marked "EA" for "Electronic Absence." There will be no discussion. I will not remind adults or late adolescents that listening to ipods during class time is a waste of my time and theirs. That is, or should be, understood. I will not tell Mr. or Ms. Chillin' that they have been marked absent. It's not my job to notify people that they aren't in my class. They should know that themselves.

Ditto cellphones, blackberries, et. al.

And yes, those absences do count towards the absence limit in the attendance policy, and no, they aren't negotiable.

And I swear to the FSM, if just one more of these people tells me that they work harder than every student in the class, and it's not faaaaaaiiiiiiir that they should get a B when some guy who is lazy and stupid and probably a drug addict, but also their very best friend got a B+, I may start twitching.

Post-rant: I really do love teaching. I really do love most of my students. But, man, some students get to college thinking that education is Burger King have-it-your-way-right-away land. And they have got to be convinced otherwise quickly. Or else their future will be completely, er, yswived. And that's not what they came to college for.

Random Bullets of Information Ranging from Crap to Non-Crap. In No Particular Order

2007-02-25T03:21:00.000-05:00

Things you probably noticed already:

I figured out how to work the bullets!
Google got me. The bright side? Now I have the ability to put labels on my posts. The not so bright side? I hate being coerced. Hey Google! I thought you said you wouldn't be evil. What's the big idea with the blatant and unrepenting exercise of juridical power over my blogular freedoms, then, huh? Isn't that evil? (Yep, read Foucault recently.)
There have been deletions from the blogroll. Blogs that haven't posted for several months are gone, though I hope the bloggers are happy and healthy. The blog with the commenters who gave me the willies is also gone, because I don't need that kind of ugly in my life. Not even tangentially.
There have been additions to the blogroll. Every day more people with more great things to say about, well, everything come to my attention. About 18 months later, I add them to my blogroll. I know there are blogs that ought to be there now, and aren't. I promise they will be someday.
There's a new section of the blogroll entitled "They wonked." There are wonky blogs there. I have no idea why it is in bullet format.

Things you may not have noticed yet:

Six weeks without smoking!
And I've finally 'earned' that crypt rubbing I bought myself as a treat at the end of week one.
And, come to think of it, quitting smoking might have contributed to my extra-negative take on the world of late.

Things you have no way of knowing until I tell you:

After a full day wrastling it down, and changing to 3/4 inch margins all around, I have completed the updating of my resume (accent aigu x 2 there). Holy shit, I've done a lot of stuff these past few years! No wonder my to-do list seems to have it in for me. I am now prepared to paper the state with applications for employment beginning with the work listed in the Sunday papers. Ta-da!
I had a party this weekend, and about half the people I expected showed. I am now in a fix. What does one do with leftover bad merlot? (Seriously, never trust the wine guy.)
If the people on the big committee I serve on don't stop yelling at each other about "taking action," when they mean "writing letters," I may have to stab myself in the head in the middle of the next meeting to relieve the pain.
The people on the big committee really hate it when you say stuff like that to them during the meeting so that your objection is in the minutes and everything.
The people on the big committee will always remember to be offended by that sentiment, but continue to yell at each other about "taking immediate, decisive action" as soon as you stop talking. ESPECIALLY if the immediate, decisive letter they want to send addresses an issue outside of the big committee's narrow range of influence.
The people on the big committee think Words = Deeds, and Volume = Validity. I hate them. A lot.
The insurance company has elected NOT to fix my car, that their client bent, because it's an old car. They will send me a check for the "fair-market" value of my car instead. They will then spend the next 5 years charging their client as if they had fixed my car, and fixed it with pure platinum. I hate them. A lot.
I have changed banks. Because the banking business that exists on campus is worse than a pack of thieves, and I told them that. Seriously, I am not one to be shocked by greed, but the business practices of this bank were absolutely horrifying. And their 'justifications' for these practices? "That's how we make money." Not from me, they don't.
My niece to the second power visited. She's even more adorable than ever, now that she's more than a little poop-machine, that is. Though she did scream blue murder if she was put down on the carpet when there were clearly people around who could be holding her and doing her wee baby bidding. Unsurprisingly, she has not learned to crawl.

That's all for now.

The Guilt!

2007-02-20T05:24:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry about the spotty posting, folks. I've been experiencing a full-scale guilt attack for weeks now, and, as you may have been able to tell from my half-assed posts recently, this attack has been preventing me from thinking properly about anything. Mostly because I can't *do* anything without thinking of how many other things I ought to be doing, how everyone else in the whole wide world would be able to do whatever I'm doing better than I, and damn it shouldn't a grad student be able to do X faster/ more thoroughly/ more thoughtfully?!

Then there's the guilt over the real-life stuff, and the guilt over the not my-life stuff. So, I should be a better student/ teacher/ scholar as well as daughter/sister/aunt/friend and while we're at it, I should be a better political advocate for the stuff I truly believe in, and I should never lose my patience, etc.

Anyway.....

One hopes that soon the guilt attack will pass, and I'll be back to whole-assed posts.

On Language

2007-02-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

The genesis of the following post, for those of you keeping track of invention, arrangement and revision strategies at home, is multifaceted. That's grad-student speak for "I've been ruminating over some ideas, based on other ideas already floating around, and now I'm not sure how to introduce this topic which is only tangentially related to this other stuff."

So, to quote Inigo Montoya, "I 'splain. No, there is too much. I sum up."

You know what? No. Even summing up is taking this places it oughtn't go. To one-under Montoya, I'll just allude. How's that?

These be-phudded people got into a conversation about the state of the field of Old English studies, and the people with Y-chromosomes among that cohort got a batch of language bees in their bonnets. And they said "language language language," and then the people with matching alleles said "There's other stuff too, and here's why." And then the mismatching alleles ones said "language, and here's why." And then the whole conversation, which looked like it might get really interesting and productive, just petered out. I hate that. (They didn't align themselves by gender; I did that. I'm not sure that there's a connection between the sex of the critic and his/her view of what must be studied in this case. Just seemed odd -- and perhaps noteworthy? -- that it fell that way.)

At the same time, but unrelatedly, Anhaga wrote a rather beautiful post about The Wanderer, which is my very favorite go-to poem for almost-ineffable melancholy. I mean that in a good way, of course. I love melancholy, especially when it's of the sort that sits right at the edge of human language's ability to codify it.

Then I was reading a blog entitled "Slouching Towards Extimacy" and I thought, "Geez, extimacy is a great word. Neologisms can be fun. I love great new words. Wait, I love great old words, too."

So, as you can see, I was chased through blog-readings right into the Old English - Planctus -Language - Cool Words nexus, quite without intending to get here. It's not exactly a Lorelei Gilmore "monkey, monkey, underpants" moment, but it'll do.

Now, once in the OE-P-L-CW Nexus, I began listing the really old words I find cool:
Cwaeth was there, but you had to know that
gefrunon is a big one, love that one (meaning asked and/or understood, but also suggesting having learned something through hearing)
beot...vow, very nice
gliwstafum (joyful speech, literally: glee-letters. I ADORE this word.)
larcwide .. teaching words

You do see where this is going?

The words the Anglo-Saxons had for language are as much fun for me as the approximately 473 words they had for sorrow. I'm fairly certain that this is not simply because I'm a language nerd, although that must help. The ways in which the Anglo-Saxons foregrounded language in their writing/composing has always been interesting for me. Well, sure, they were either composing in language or recording spoken words, so language was their medium. However, their rhetorical choices of when and how to reference language, and to what end, are infinitely fascinating to me.

The Wanderer, for one, uses references to language rather ingeniously. He seeks those in whom he can confide, he looks back wistfully at the kind and wise words of his lost lord, he imagines the words he would use if he encountered his lord again. Like anhaga, I have some trouble reconciling the sundor aet rune moment at the end with the remainder of the poem, because it is the first time the Wanderer is alone with language. Every other reference to language has been about the value of language to the community. Who ought to speak, and who ought not to speak, for the best interests of the community. Bjork argues, famously, that the Wanderer's exile is voluntary at that moment. I'm not quite sure I agree with that assessment, because it seems pretty clear to me that the Wanderer is arguing for inclusion, all throughout the poem, based upon his inclusion and favored status in the past, and based upon his special knowledge of the suffering of loss. In fact, he seems to turn the whole system on its ear, ~~suggesting~~ stating outright that those who have not suffered as he has speak too much, and that those like him ought to be privileged speakers rather than suspected ones.

Rhetorically, he's quite good, that Wanderer. I am OK because I used to be valued, and now I've lost all the people who valued me, and therefore I'm OK because I've suffered and know better. You young folk talk too much, and know too little.

Well, That Doesn't Suck

2007-02-04T12:16:00.000-05:00

My performance on a quiz created by Anniina at Mischievous Muse

You Got 93% Right!

Impressive! There's barely a book on the list that you haven't read. You give me hope for the survival of civilization. Bravo! Give yourself a good pat on the back. You've earned it.

Famous First Lines Quiz
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Apologies and Excuses

2007-02-03T13:40:00.000-05:00

I apologize for neglecting the blog this past week. But, seriously, I have solid excuses for my negligence.

1) I signed up for an extra course this semester, assuming I would choose to drop one course once I got the syllabus and/or decided the professor offended me through the wearing of bad shoes or something. (That's a partial joke. There was once a professor I swore I couldn't hear over his deeply unfortunate neckties.) I have not been able to choose a course to eliminate, and will be taking an overload. Just for kicks. So, apparently, the only thing necessary for me to start enjoying the university is to decide to leave it for a bit. Huh.

2) Somebody slid on the ice and crunched my car. All parties are healthy, and my car is still almost fully functional (there's a door that will not close when opened without the help of a very large, very fit man; my car door is now sexist), but I'm a little pouty about it. For all the wrong reasons, actually. Here's the deal: while my car was in pristine condition, I could pretend that I was driving a super-old car in a sort of ironic retro-cool gesture. Now, with the clear impression of another car's nose in my super-old car, it has been demoted from ironic retro-hip to junky old car. Damn it, I hate that. I am impressed in another way, though. You oughtn't to be able to smush my tank with a little zippy car, and you certainly shouldn't be able to do so without damage to your car. So, someday, when I have all the books I want, and lots of extra non-book money, I will buy the type of car that smushed mine. 'Cause, wow.

In other news:
* I may have a slightly inappropriate crush on Terry Eagleton now, because -- thanks in large part to his book -- I'm beginning to understand what people are talking about when they get all jargony.

* Slightly related question: Does anybody know which section of Poet's Corner one looks in for all the references that I can't find in British Critic's writing? I've looked at footnotes, and chapter notes, and endnotes, but I still can't find justification for some of the rather startling assertions that show up in "We're all English gentlemen here, and we all know X" form in the writing of British scholars. Well, maybe I don't need the location of the crypt in Poet's corner so much as The Complete Yank's Guide to Accepted English Gentleman's Knowledge. Does Amazon carry that?

Why I Am Pro-Choice

2007-01-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

I made a commitment to myself that I would blog about women's rights in a purely positive way today. Frankly, the anger that I feel knowing that there are those who want to relieve women of their rights makes that quite impossible. But, I'll do the best I can.

For me, the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is a day for celebration. It's the anniversary of the day that my people were released from government-enforced slavery.

Oh, now I know that many who read this will think that I have a lot of nerve comparing women under compulsory birth laws to slaves. Let's think about that for a moment, shall we? What does one call a person who must submit herself entirely to the well-being of another, or risk death attempting to escape that 'duty'? What does one call a person whose wishes for the use of her own body are not considered in the decision-making process? Slave is a harsh word to use, but in this case it is also an accurate one.

There were photos online of protesters in Pennsylvania today, carrying signs that read "Your mother kept you." They're right, my mother did keep me. She had no legal choice in the matter, really. Women's reproductive functions were still the property of the state when I was born, just over one year prior to the Roe v. Wade decision. She could have broken the law, of course. Many did. Many even lived to tell about it. She could not have had an abortion after Roe v. Wade, because the cancer the doctors discovered in her uterus while she was carrying me was quite advanced by the time I was born, and her uterus came out just after I did. Frankly, it's a miracle she survived at all.

So, my mother did choose to carry me to term and raise me. She made that decision for all of my siblings, too. And, trust me, they are legion. Yet, she celebrates with me and my siblings today, because she knows that her daughters do not have to choose between respect for their own rights as full human beings, and respect for the law. We don't have to 'choose' to risk our own deaths and risk leaving motherless children behind because the doctors or the government or some schmuck with a collar says that's what's right. Whatever else we may encounter in our daily lives, we have the comfort of knowing that we have full custody of our own bodies.

Some people may show up at this blog and say that I should be grateful that my mother was forced to risk her life and the well-being of my siblings so that I might live. I would ask them to consider under what circumstances they would choose their own lives over the safety and well-being of their own mothers and their entire families. Not many, right? I mean, not if they're not totally horrible people. Had my mother NOT chosen -- under duress-- to carry me to term, I wouldn't have a single bad thing to say about her. She owed me nothing.

There are those who would like to reinstate that slavery, just as there have always been reactionaries after every major movement forward in human rights. Those people will spend today trying to convince lawmakers and homemakers alike that it is in the best interests of the nation, the family, and the once and now proposed slaves ourselves that we gild our shackles and wear them proudly. Fuck them.

Bad Medievalist! No Mead!

2007-01-19T17:08:00.000-05:00

That's a sort of empty threat, as Mead is perfectly vile even in the best of circumstances. But I'm not sure the medievals had cookie technology, and I've never read "meanwhile, back at the cookie-hall," so it had to be Mead.

Anyway, those of you who are the observant sort will have noticed a Quitmeter counter added to the footer space. So far I have saved myself about 20 dollars by not purchasing tobacco products. Yay! The cheapness, it is often quite strong within me, and keeping track of money not spent is good motivation.

HOWEVER, apparently the end of week one post-smoking gets to be a little hairy, and I needed further motivation. So, as a reward for being such a good girl, I decided to wander around the local consignment shop and see if they had anything in the 20 dollar range with which I could reward myself. That way I would have something tangible and more pleasant than fierce cravings and an ironically worse smoker's cough to remind me of my commitment to stop smoking.

As I was about to leave, empty-handed, because the stuff in the 20 dollar range at a consignment shop is just as crappy as the stuff in the 20 dollar range in any other shop, I encountered a framed brass crypt rubbing of a Knight and Lady with some Latin along the bottom. (I haven't translated it yet) Had to have it, right NOW! before somebody else saw it and stole it from me, the dirty scoundrels. I now owe myself about 150 dollars -- yes, I was gyped -- and I have to decide which room it's least creepy to have a big crypt rubbing hanging in. I'm not creeped out by such things, I absolutely love them, but one must consider the guests sometimes.

What amazes me is how well I can 'reason' myself into following my impulses. I've spent the week mostly battling my inner addict, and all the obviously crazy reasoning that it threw at me, successfully. That seems to have weakened me, though. I had no desire to spend nearly ten times the amount I'd saved, but I saw something I wanted to own and all the tricks of my psyche came out to convince me to buy it. And this time *they* won.

Well, maybe the debt of honor will get me through the next several weeks of not smoking.

On an even lighter note, links to some stuff that made me do the wonderfully attractive laugh/snort found at We Have Pie Charts via Chris at Mixing Memory :

People Who Fight With Swords

Pirate Information

HOLY COW!! Blogger Let Me Through!

2007-01-18T02:18:00.000-05:00

I thought the Homeland Security folks had decided to minimize the public's exposure to navel-gazing fluff and memes and very rare attempts at medievalist rambling, and thus had cut off my blog access like a buncha filthy commies. (That's right, Skippy, I said "commies." Tell me how the NSA is different from the Stasi. Go on, I double-dog dare ya!) Turns out it was just a prolonged technological glitch, but I'm still keeping a close eye on those commie bastards at Homeland Security. Just in case they get ideas.

While I was on my unintentional blog hiatus, some very terrible things happened.

1) Ancrene Wiseass, the blogger who inspired me to to try my hand at this blogging stuff, and was the first to link to me so that others would even know this place existed, has decided she's taking a prolonged, perhaps permanent, leave from blogging herself. Thanks for everything, Wiseass, and good luck wrestling that bear.

2) Michael Berube decided to quit blogging, too. No more show trials, or fun, smart-alecky take-downs of critics who just don't get it, or ...look, I'm not even going to pretend I understood the music references. I studied classical voice when I studied voice, and I wouldn't know a punk-rocker from a prog-rocker if they were both wearing signs. But, it was kinda cool to be able to say, "Hey! I may be a stereotypically bookish dweeb, but those guys over there appear to know about cool stuff, so nyah!" This also means that I will never have the opportunity to say in comments, as I often wished, the thing that you say to your favorite drinking buds after they've made you snort Guinness in public. To wit: "You guys are dicks. I love that about you."

When Will I Learn?

2007-01-09T03:05:00.000-05:00

New Kid does an OKCupid quiz and it seems fun, so I do it. And I'm foiled every time! But I keep doing it. There should be a pill for that.

You stick out like a sore thumb, with your social awkwardness and mildly neurotic behaviors--but you don't let it get you down! You are The Geek, and are here to prove that people who know the first 1000 digits of pi and try to woo dates by talking about calculators can be happy too! You have friends...and they are probably just as odd as you.

Your low anxiety score implies that you are able to relax, can enjoy the here and now, and have a healthy amount of self-confidence.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and perhaps feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably fanatic obsessions, counting compulsions, or other geekish tendencies. You may know every word to LOTR, or draw anime of all your friends.

The Geek
You scored 45 anxiety, 57 awkwardness, and 57 neuroticism!

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Not that I should be surprised by the results, I am the woman who still harbors a secret crush on this guy:

Happy New Year!

2007-01-03T18:12:00.000-05:00

Hi folks! Hope everybody had wonderful holidays. I had lots of fun with the wee ones, and ate so many Christmas cookies that I will probably be spending the next two weeks in elastic waistbands. Better living through the invention of rubberband pants!

I'm now stopping at home for a moment of stillness and privacy between visits to family.

I do have one complaint about the holiday season. Before I left I made sure that the local felons who attempted to break into my apartment the day I returned from Christmas visiting last year would have an extra day to do so, and a nice clean and comfortable place to ransack. (I also removed all my easily carried valuables, including my computer tower.) These are not the smartest of felons, clearly, because they had a loud argument on my front porch last year about 'whether we should go through with it' when somebody 'thought that car wasn't here yesterday.' That somebody was right, of course, and I was waiting at the top of the stairs with my umbrella and hammer in hand, ready to do battle. Yeah, yeah, I know. Unsafe. I've always been more brave than intelligent, and there doesn't seem to be a cure.

Anyway, this year I decided that robbing me would absolutely serve them right. I'm a grad student. Hello. I threw my fancy earrings in my handbag, and my computer tower in the trunk of my car, and that was the end of my hockable belongings. Still, attempted felonies do not excuse poor hostess skills, so I left a sparklingly clean place, and a number of snacks and beverages on the kitchen counter. And, after all my elaborate efforts to secure my fortune and my reputation, they didn't even bother to show up this year. I call that rude.

Happy Holidays

2006-12-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

I am off to homebase for some niece and nephew face-time, puppy-snuggling and cookies.

Have a great holiday!

Does This Come With a Tiara?

2006-12-23T00:03:00.000-05:00

As seen at the fine blogs of Ancrene Wiseass and Bardiac

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Venerable Lady Heo the Laconic of Much Leering
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Winter Break To Do List

2006-12-17T02:07:00.000-05:00

Count this list as a combination public-accountability statement, and an opening to make suggestions.

[Update: I have no idea what happened to the formatting here, and I can't fix it. Sorry.]

Time-sensitive:

- Call/write Professor who sent out that CFP for 5-7 *minute* papers, and make sure that wasn't a typo. 'Cause, geez!

- Work on abstracts for 1) that 5-7 minute thing that I'm really hoping will be 5-7
pages, 2) Heroic Age CFPs for June and January, and 3) no holds-barred grad
conference at my alma mater.

- Speak to substitute-wranglers at local public schools. Travel takes money, ya
know.

Less time-sensitive:

- Finish up Wheelock and get started on the Oxford Latin Reader.

- Find a person Fluent in German. Bribe him/her to speak with me for a couple of
hours a week. (Don't want to lose my German)

- Get a grip on theory.
- Read Eagleton's book.
- Swipe undergrad Intro to theory syllabus from friend who TAs that course.
- Using syllabus as a guide, read selected bits in the Norton anthology.
- Go on a quest for any other "Idiot's guide to literary theory" I can find.
- I suppose Said and Foucault will have to be a part of this, but Derrida makes
me queasy and Spivak makes me cry. So, starter theory then.

- Swipe area exam reading lists from other universities (people who do the PhD here
make their own), begin compiling the Medieval and Renaissance stuff I need to
read for eventual quals and/or simple self-respect as a medievalist. (I've
already read many of the things on the lists I can find, but there are still
gaps.)

Actually, I'd be happy to get about 1/2 of that done. Eh, we'll see.

Announcement

2006-12-16T00:13:00.000-05:00

Well, this is hard. Might as well jump right in, right?

This coming May, I will become -- probably temporarily -- one of those people who suffers from the most dreadful of academic illnesses: Terminal MA. My grades so far are good; this is not the university handing me my hat and suggesting I open a coffee shop or take secretarial courses.

Rather, I know for certain that I do not wish to continue at Microburg. I love my work. Good lord, I got all tingly just a few weeks ago when Ansaxnet had a discussion of the meaning of -sceaft. I am seriously hooked on OE studies. And I genuinely like most of my professors and colleagues. But somehow the mix just isn't working. I shouldn't be this angry while doing work that I love among people I (mostly)like.

However, I also don't know where I want to go from here. I admit that I didn't properly investigate Microburg when I decided to come here. It has a good reputation, some very good medievalists, and is close enough for me to reasonably consider visiting my family often-ish. But, man-o-man, do I ever hate it here.

So, rather than sending out a bunch of applications to places I can't possibly a) afford to visit, and b)properly investigate before the applications are due, I decided to take a year and think about where I want to be next. It might also help to be a member of my family again for a minute, and work off some of this ridiculous debt I've acquired.

So, there you have it. I will be an industry outsider for a bit. Unless, of course, I get all CC adjuncty in the interim period, which may yet happen.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Blogging.

2006-12-14T15:41:00.000-05:00

Alright. I'm no Persephone, and Spring will not arrive now -- although I have spent most of the last couple of weeks underground, and it is unseasonably warm today. Just sayin' -- but I really like the melodrama of Victorian art. And I wanted to look at something pretty.

Things I have learned this semester:

- I have NO Business in a theory-based class. This is the third time I've done this to myself, and the third time my thesis completely unravelled before my very eyes less than a week before the paper was due. The scrambling and editing and huddling on the couch clutching a pillow that then occur all conspire to make me believe I'm just an idiot w/r/t theory. Which is weird, because I really like philosophy, and I really like literature, but when you mix the two...blargh.

- If I never read the phrases "Throughout History," or "Since the beginning of time" again, that'd be swell.

- While I am sympathetic to writers who explore the ways in which their own masculinities were constructed by the societies in which they live, and use their art to 'consider alternative ways of being and knowing,' I'm unwilling to accept that blatant misogyny is an acceptable means of working those isssues out. So, I really don't want to hear about all the 'radical' things X author said in Y work, when his big, 'radical' contribution can be summed up thusly; "See? I can put my boot on a bitch's neck just like you! Let me in the Man Club already! C'mon!" Seriously, dude, misogyny is not an alternative way of either 'being' or 'knowing,' so knock it the hell off.

- The more education I get, the more likely I am to say very bad words in regular conversation. Counter-intuitive, no?

Now, what's been going on in the world since I tuned out for navel-contemplation?

Gone Fishin'

2006-12-04T01:15:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in the deep, there is a thought swimming around. I aim to find it.

Regular blogging to resume around the middle of next week.

Good luck with the late-semester craziness to all of you!

Great Moments in Irony

2006-11-28T12:35:00.000-05:00

A Mercedes-driving student, whose outfit (with accessories) must be worth more than any car I have ever owned, has just informed me that I disagree with her proposed thesis not on the grounds that I think she won't be able to find enough evidence to make a good paper of it, as I stated, but rather because I'm one of the 'liberal elite' trying to keep 'people like her' from success.

You know, that was so good that I'm not even offended by the fact that she accused me of being petty and unprofessional.

A Pretty Dream

2006-11-25T16:22:00.000-05:00

... to get me through the paper-writing/presenting/editing/grading season.

This May, I drop off the last of my paperwork at the department and administrative offices, luggage in hand. From campus, I take some form of public transport to the nearest city that counts as an actual, you know, city. From there, I catch a plane to a major European city, where I have rented a furnished apartment for the next month or two. I drop off my luggage, go to the local grocery store and try my hand at buying things that are exotic, but aren't too foreign to the American palate (trying to avoid the ick factor here). I then go to the bakery and vintner and buy EVERYTHING I can carry. I read only popular literature for the duration of my stay, and call it scholarship because it's in a foreign language. I flirt outrageously with well-built morons, because 1)who cares if they're interesting when you don't know what the hell they're saying? and 2)a lady may do anything she pleases and remain a lady, provided she doesn't get caught.

1-2 months of fat, drunk, and stupid to follow.

Promoted to the Level of My Incompetence

2006-11-22T02:40:00.000-05:00

I'm in charge of dinner Thursday, and I have begun preparations for the annual over-feeding of the barbarian hordes. (I have to start early because I wouldn't know a frappe from a puree if it hit me.)

If you're stuck for stuff to be thankful for, be thankful you haven't been sentenced to dinner at my house. Now, where the hell did I put that thing? No, not that thing; I saw that. The scary looking spikey thing that the book says I need. Oh, nevermind.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Realism?

2006-11-20T20:01:00.000-05:00

Ever notice that, when you're reading 18th and 19th century literature, and you look around your department at all the internecine warfare, 'cutting,' constant threat of utter ruin at the slightest misstep, and desperation to be among the 'right set', you know precisely what the author must have had in mind? And you can tell who's at which level of the new aristocracy?

He's new, but he knew Said personally. Um, Viscount.
That other new guy -- he met Bloom once. Baronet.
Her? She knows everybody, and has angered them all. Impoverished Marchioness; you might as well have a conversation with a milkmaid.

It's fun.

[Update: Ever notice that you write something, and then publish it, and then read it and think, "D'oh! Not what I wanted to convey at all!"? Ah, the difficulties of having a 'raw' blog. Anyway, I don't actually court the 'right people.' In fact, with my foot-shooting tendencies (did it again this week) I'm most likely to become some sort of impoverished and/or 'fallen' milkmaid. The fun part is deciding who is which character, and which character they should aspire to become. As for me, I'd like to become Eliza Bennett -- minus the love of difficult men -- but chances are that I'm Kitty. Elizabeth wouldn't have to update a post. ]

Seriously?!

2006-11-18T18:19:00.000-05:00

Upon learning that one of my part-time academic jobs is compensated at a much lower rate than the same job in another department, I wrote to the dean to ask for an explanation of the logic behind that choice. The response: Disciplines pay differently all over the world. This University's pay rates are in line with national averages.

So, is it true that it is nationally accepted practice to pay English graduate students at approximately 1/9 the rate of other graduate students? Because when I checked The Chronicle of Higher Education, as was suggested to me by the dean, I didn't find such ratios among faculty. I didn't even find a 2:1 ratio, though some came close. Certainly I didn't find other disciplines within the humanities/social sciences that were paid 9 times as much as their English student peers, as is the case here at Microburg.

I'm now even more convinced that the administrators of this university should be arrested.

University of California at Los Angeles Police: Merging Brutality and Cluelessness

2006-11-17T11:11:00.000-05:00

(hat tip Amanda)

In the God-I-Wish-It-Were-Unbelievable File:

University Police at UCLA repeatedly used a taser on a student Tuesday night. Several times after he was already handcuffed, in fact. The student was in the library after 11pm, and didn't produce his ID when asked.

The police have stated the student was belligerent, and trying to incite a crowd. Um, yeah, from what I see in the student videos, the student was in fact belligerent, but the crowd was incited not by the student's actions, but by those of the police.

The kid was told to leave the library, and was either being obnoxiously slow about it, or needed a minute to get his crap together. That's not clear. The police went to take him into custody as he was leaving, and he screamed 'don't touch me.' That's where the student videos pick up.

The student stated that he had a medical condition, and the police continued to use their tasers on him. (I'm pretty sure that's a second reason this assault was against the law. The first being that the student did not present a clear and present danger to the police or his fellow students.)

I'm not a law enforcement officer, but as far as I can tell, being a dick is not cause for using force. I'm also not a neurologist or a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure I would become pretty damned non-compliant after being assaulted. When a student who was explaining to the police that electrical shock makes people unable to comply with physical commands, he was threatened with tasing. So, that's illegal act number three. The police cannot threaten you for asking for their identifying information.

Use of force is meant to be the LAST RESORT of the police. "I don't like your attitude" is NEVER a constitutionally-supported reason to use force, or to threaten the use of force.

The Video

UCLA Interim Chancellor Norm Abrams Contact Information:
Telephone: 310-825-2151
Fax: 310-206-6030

Address (U.S. Mail):
Box 951405, Murphy Hall 2147
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1405

Address (Campus Mail):
Murphy Hall 2147
Campus: 140501

E-mail (chancellor@conet.ucla.edu)

Picking Your Brains

2006-11-10T21:15:00.000-05:00

I have an unusually high number of Educational Opportunity and Study Abroad students under my teeny little wings this semester.* For the most part, things have been going fairly well. Their papers are getting better each time, anyway, so my comments must help somewhat. More people are contributing to discussion. In other words, life in the classroom is fairly good.

However, some of the kids are missing work or missing entirely too much class. I've spoken to them -- as a group -- about it, and a few people have handed in late work and/or started coming more regularly to class. But many have not changed their habits/made up the work.

Here's what Ive done so far:
- encouraged the students to come see me at office hours in class and in comments on their papers.
- written directions to my office on the board multiple times.
- changed the attendance sheets to put little stars next to the names of people I'd like to speak with, and added a giant note that a star means it's your turn to conference with me.
- offered email conferences, and have written my email address on the board numerous times.

All to no effect. And they absolutely know that I want them to succeed, and will do whatever I can to help them succeed, but I will not give them a passing grade if they haven't done all the work. Now, if I thought these kids were just lazy and uninterested in their education, I wouldn't care either. I don't get that impression, though. Frankly, I think that being proactive about their education is a skill they haven't learned. Middle-class and upper-class kids always come to speak to me about their work. All the time. Can't shake 'em. But the kids who are here from elsewhere, or are first generation college students, will not come to speak with me. This will absolutely negatively affect their marks if it continues. I can't set a standard, and then tell them they've met it when they haven't. That wouldn't be fair. But, I also know that the stakes are much higher for them than for their peers. They are taking loans, or here on scholarships, and bad grades could make them lose their funding.

Other folks have this answer: "They're adults now, they have to take responsibility for themselves. Let it go." But, I have yet to meet an 18 year-old adult. And these other folks with authority/experience are all middle/upper-class people from Anglophone countries. They were never taught helplessness in the face of authority. Many of my kids were taught just that. "Be silent. Accept the teacher's ruling without complaint or questioning. Know your place."

So, how do I get these kids to understand that the teacher is not some weird other life-form? That it's absolutely necessary for them to work with me to make a plan for their success? That it's not disrespectful to ask questions, and education is not something that happens to you without your consent?

*In some ways, this makes a nice change from having too many over-entitled little snots who can't believe a mere know-nothing grad student would have the unmitigated gall to give them a grade below an A, ever.

Excuse Me,

2006-11-07T08:27:00.000-05:00

but what are you doing reading a blog when you should be out voting?

[Update: I woke up early and voted with the elderly this morning. Since that time, I've been stressing about the election returns in between trying to read very dark and brooding prose. Aargh! Stressful voting plus Victorian Novels: bad. Next time, I'm going to do the final hour voting run, or at least read something light and peppy on election day. And now, I should return to reading the works of George Eliot, if that IS his real name.]

A Question of Philosophy: Grad School Theater

2006-11-03T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's Friday night. Even as we speak, I could and should be at a party with my graduate student peers. We should be discussing literature, and philosophy, and art, and science, and the quasi-local opera's craven choice to provide bowdlerized supertitles to their productions this season, and the cheap things you can buy to turn frozen left-over pizza into a delicious meal that doesn't feel like the seventh time you've had left-over pizza this week, and whatever the hell the mathematicians are talking about while the rest of us smile and nod, as one does with mathematicians and lunatics.

But I'm not there. After the week I've had, I could use a drink and a lovely conversation. But, here's the thing: these people are the cause of my uncharacteristic thirst. Well, I'm the cause of my uncharacteristic thirst. However,
interacting with them has really helped the process along. Frankly, I'm hating the hell out of the majority of my graduate student peers right now. No doubt that'll change back to normal in the week ahead, but for today I'm content to hate them.

For some reason, the number of people willing to perform the role of 'intellectual superior' among our cohort has spiked dramatically this week. You know these people, I'm sure. The ones who seek out peers who are feeling stupid, and try to convince them they're right. For instance, I was having trouble with a paper. My thesis was falling apart, actually, and I needed to go back and revise my entire reading of the problem at hand. Well, I made the mistake of saying that in a conversation about these papers, and I was told, 'Hey, not everyone can be a scholar. It's good that you found that out now.' Nice, right? I won't tell you what was said to a friend of mine, who's having some trouble grasping literary theory. I actually can't tell you that story without wanting to shoot my keyboard, it makes me so mad. (We'll get back to the broader 'theory question' later.)

It scares me that such unsupportive people are teaching post-adolescents away from home for the first time in their lives. But, I digress.

I recognize this behavior as the coping mechanism that it is. Being a student is extremely humbling. Having people evaluate your thoughts all the time is extremely stressful, and makes for some pretty powerful neuroses. I get all that. As I've said before, I'm working on a full complement of all codified neuroses myself. Besides that, I've seen this behavior before in the special needs children I used to teach. They get so tired of being the ones to make errors that they revel in the errors of others, being sure to be as loudly derisive as possible when the mistake is not theirs. It's actually very tough as a teacher to learn to recognize that behavior as normal and indicative of personal insecurities, and then react accordingly, while still supporting the child who has made the mistake currently being ridiculed. It's even more difficult to recognize the same unattractive tendency in yourself. I'm less patient with adults than with children, though, and I include myself among the adults. Even though I know the psychological triggers and behaviors are the same, it's just harder to take from someone old enough to vote, ya know? It took all the energy I had not to say something like, "You're right. She and I have some issues with this one class that stands within your major area of interest. Now, tell me, what are your thoughts about this stuff that stands within our major areas of interest?" It would have been a fair but ugly response, and I'm trying to avoid that whole ugliness thing. Whether momentary ugliness would have been better than this prolonged and repressed anger is probably something else I should consider.

Now, this class is theory-heavy. Which means that the theory drives the literature, rather than the other way around. Which means that there are many many 'theory people' in the class, and they often introduce theories into discussion that others of us have no access to, because we don't study them. It gets a little tiring to be perpetually saying, 'Well, that sounds like a great phrase. What does it mean?'

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure I agree with the theory-driven formulation, but it seems to be the way things often go in my department. This argument gets sticky quickly, I know. Sometimes, I want to just read the damned book and come up with my own ideas about which theory will be most effective in understanding it. But there's never really a time when we read completely free of a philosophical frame, and shouldn't we at least be aware of what that frame is? I know that as an undergrad I did some feminist readings of novels, without knowing that I was employing feminist philosophy. The professor had to tell me. "OK, Heo, that's a good feminist reading. Now, how would you read this same novel from this other viewpoint?" To which I often responded, "Huh?" So, I get the whole 'be aware of your ideological frame as you read' thing. I just don't always want to adopt someone else's frame. My best example of this is the professor who's frame leads him to believe that all literature is oedipal. That gets really creepy, really quickly. I mean, what does this guy's mom look like, anyway?

**Before the conservative reader decides to make the following his proof that liberalism reigns supreme in the humanities, he should know that there are conservative theorists who are just as determined as their liberal counter-parts that theory is all-important. They all think I'm an idiot, too. **

Back to the point I intended to make a while ago, there seems to be a deep philosophical divide between me and those who self-identify as 'theory people.' We can't talk to one another. And I mean that literally. Attempts at communication leave everyone slightly confused and irritated. (The following are two actual conversations, fused into one for blogular presentation purposes.)
Me: "What do you study?"
Them: "Theory."
Me: "OK, which theory?"
Them: "No, theory."
Me: "OK. So, what type/time frame of literature are you applying theory to, most often?"
Them: "Not literature, literary theory."
Me: "But the term 'literary theory' suggests that there will be some 'literary' mixed in with all that theory."
Them: "Hm. Not really."
Me: "So then, what do you do with the theory?"
Them: "We study it."
Me: "So that eventually you can apply it to a broader range of literature?"
Them: "Look, idiot, we're theorists."
Me: "Is it like comparative theory, or the history of theory, or what?"
Them: "Yes, all of that."
Me: "But....what role does the literature play?"
Them: "Theory is the literature."
Me: "I'm not much interested in meta-theoretical stuff, I'm afraid. I'm studying medieval literature."
Them: "How can you possibly teach literature without theory? I mean, how do you contextualize the literature?"
Me: "By contextualizing the literature. Time, place, form, intended audience, current audience, that sort of thing."
Them: "But, what theory do you apply to the literature?"
Me: "Whichever theory seems best supported by the literature."
Them: "So, you let the literature decide what theory you'll introduce?"
Me: "Yup."
Them: "But, that's insane. What is your point in teaching literature? What do you want to accomplish?"
Me: "I want my students to be able to read this literature in an informed way."
Them: "But how are they being informed? You haven't given them a way of reading that informs them."
Me: "Sure I have. They can think of the time and culture in which the literature was produced, the traditions that the literature works from and with, language choices, imagery, medium, etc."
Them: "Why aren't you in the history department where you belong?"
Me:"Why aren't you in the philosophy department, where YOU belong?"

end scene

And the point of all that above is this: There are more of them than there are of me, and I think I might really be a dinosaur. Perhaps literary scholarship no longer seeks people who have what I have to offer it.