1. There's such a thing as "Affect Studies." I don't know what it is or how I feel about it; in fact, I'm trying to maintain a profound lack of affect in reference to this emerging field.
2. There's such a thing as a "Fatsion blog," on which fat women post photos of themselves in their daily outfits and write comments on how their clothes make them feel. Moreover, it is possible to get a Ph.D. by studying Fatsion blogs.
3. I don't intend to post any photos of myself in today's outfit, but the purple scarf is certainly attracting attention. Hurrah for brilliant color!
4. No one will notice your brilliant ideas if you speak softly, lean away from the mike, and employ a sing-song rhythm that lulls listeners into snoozeland.
5. It is important to study foreign languages. Who knew?
6. "Virtual research communities" promise to prevent the proliferation of "unrelated silos of data." Are data silos more like grain silos or missile silos?
7. "Backlash" can now be used as a verb. How long has this been going on and why didn't anyone inform me?
8. It is possible to present a paper at MLA decrying "the soullessness of critical discourse" and the academy's "bias against human inwardness." Moreover, even if you give that paper at 8:30 a.m. on the final day of the conference and hide it in a panel titled "Poetry and Prayer," it will provoke interesting conversation among an ample number of attendees.
9. No matter how many times I give conference papers, I still get nervous. An hour from now I'll be doing my song and dance, and I just hope someone cares to come and listen. I promise not to sing anyone to sleep.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
A little medicinal entree
I'm just being a good cancer patient, I swear.
My recent blood test suggested that I need to boost my protein intake, so for lunch I ingested some pure, unadulterated protein.
Well, mostly unadulterated, if you consider rice, soy sauce, and wasabi adulterations to raw fish.
Yes, I ate sushi for lunch. I had to, really. Doctor's orders. It's a very efficient way to absorb protein.
And it was really, really good.
My recent blood test suggested that I need to boost my protein intake, so for lunch I ingested some pure, unadulterated protein.
Well, mostly unadulterated, if you consider rice, soy sauce, and wasabi adulterations to raw fish.
Yes, I ate sushi for lunch. I had to, really. Doctor's orders. It's a very efficient way to absorb protein.
And it was really, really good.
Paging Roy G. Biv!
Decorators at the Philadelphia Loew's made an interesting choice: in the hall outside the Regency Ballroom, the walls and floor are covered with warm, welcoming earth tones, browns and taupes and greens that make the stark white artificial holiday wreaths dotted with cobalt blue and silver decorations stand out sharply.
Of course, at MLA, any color stands out. Of the more than 40 people attending one MLA session last night, only four were not wearing black. The presenter in the orange sweater looked like a tangerine tossed into a box of black socks. Given the whole visible spectrum available, why do so many academics dress monochromatically?
Of course, I have to admit that I'll be wearing a black skirt and sweater when I present my paper Wednesday...but I'll top it off with a brilliant purple sweater and scarf. Someone has to bring a rainbow into the room.
Of course, at MLA, any color stands out. Of the more than 40 people attending one MLA session last night, only four were not wearing black. The presenter in the orange sweater looked like a tangerine tossed into a box of black socks. Given the whole visible spectrum available, why do so many academics dress monochromatically?
Of course, I have to admit that I'll be wearing a black skirt and sweater when I present my paper Wednesday...but I'll top it off with a brilliant purple sweater and scarf. Someone has to bring a rainbow into the room.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Aimless at MLA
Today we drove across Pennsylvania the long way--and it is a very long way, but probably easier and certainly cheaper than trying to find a flight to Philadelphia from our little corner of nowhere. We drove a rented red Chrysler Sebring featuring a cushy-mushy ride, wretchedly uncomfortable seats, the pervasive scent of cigarette smoke, and a blind spot the size of Detroit. But at least it's cute. Cute has got to count for something.
I saw only one deer carcass along the highway, suggesting that either Pennsylvania's crack carcass-removal crew has been hard at work over the holidays or else the deer herd is a bit thin this year. Last time we drove to Philadelphia, we couldn't count the dead deer we saw along the way.
And now here we are at the downtown Marriott, where many MLA attendees have that deer-in-the-headlights so look common at academic conferences, particularly among those interviewing for vanishing jobs. We arrived in time for me to change out of my traveling clothes (which absorbed the cigarette-smoke smell from the rental car!) before dashing down to see the screening of the new Zora Neale Hurston documentary. But every chair was already full and the crowd was overflowing into the hall, all those bodies clad in black wool generating enough heat to send me into instant nap mode. So I decided to skip it.
I wandered around the book exhibit (and no, I don't need any more free tote bags) and came up to the room to zone out for a bit before attending the next session. I'm still up in the air about which panel I'll attend tonight: translation, digital Whitman, or Henry James? I'm a little aimless right now, but after spending most of the day aiming due east at 70 miles an hour, a little aimlessness feels just about right.
I saw only one deer carcass along the highway, suggesting that either Pennsylvania's crack carcass-removal crew has been hard at work over the holidays or else the deer herd is a bit thin this year. Last time we drove to Philadelphia, we couldn't count the dead deer we saw along the way.
And now here we are at the downtown Marriott, where many MLA attendees have that deer-in-the-headlights so look common at academic conferences, particularly among those interviewing for vanishing jobs. We arrived in time for me to change out of my traveling clothes (which absorbed the cigarette-smoke smell from the rental car!) before dashing down to see the screening of the new Zora Neale Hurston documentary. But every chair was already full and the crowd was overflowing into the hall, all those bodies clad in black wool generating enough heat to send me into instant nap mode. So I decided to skip it.
I wandered around the book exhibit (and no, I don't need any more free tote bags) and came up to the room to zone out for a bit before attending the next session. I'm still up in the air about which panel I'll attend tonight: translation, digital Whitman, or Henry James? I'm a little aimless right now, but after spending most of the day aiming due east at 70 miles an hour, a little aimlessness feels just about right.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Lostness lost
I like Rebecca Solnit, and I like the title of her new book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Lostness as a condition worth pursuing--that's an compelling idea. Unfortunately, the book itself seems to have lost its way, paying brief visits to one profound idea after another but failing to connect the dots coherently, and while Solnit produces glittering paragraphs, the syntax sometimes wanders.
A passage in the essay "Two Arrowheads" crystalizes Solnit's artistic vision:
What is the message that wild animals bring, the message that seems to say everything and nothing? What is this message that is wordless, that is nothing more or less than the animals themselves—that the world is wild, that life is unpredictable in its goodness and its danger, that the world is larger than your imagination? I remember a day when he was out working and I was alone in his house writing. I heard a raven fly by in air so still that each slow stroke of its wings was distinctly audible. I wondered then and wonder now how I could give all this up for what cities and people have to offer, for it ought to be less terrible to be lonely than to have stepped out of this sense of a symbolic order that the world of animals and celestial light offers, but writing is lonely enough, a confession to which there will be no immediate or commensurate answer, an opening statement in a conversation that falls silent or takes place long afterward without the author. But the best writing appears like those animals, sudden, self-possessed, telling everything and nothing, words approaching wordlessness. Maybe writing is its own desert, its own wilderness.
This passage displays Solnit's prose style at its best and worst: the profound idea succinctly expressed ("words approaching wordlessness") rubbing shoulders with the irrelevant personal detail ("he was out working and I was alone in his house writing": why do we care whose house it is? Is his home-ownership important to the anecdote?), the delicious rhythm and sound repetition ("air so still that each slow stroke of its wings was distinctly audible") bumping into clunky phrases abounding with weak linking verbs ("I wondered then and wonder now how I could give all this up for what cities and people have to offer, for it ought to be less terrible to be lonely than to have stepped out of this sense of a symbolic order that the world of animals and celestial light offers"). How does one step out of a sense?
Maybe I'm just being picky. Solnit's writing does provoke a great deal of thought about the value of lostness, and she often constructs lovely sentences and even whole paragraphs worth a second look. But the book as a whole fails to hold together, circling so loosely around the idea of lostness that lostness itself gets lost.
But maybe that's the point.
A passage in the essay "Two Arrowheads" crystalizes Solnit's artistic vision:
What is the message that wild animals bring, the message that seems to say everything and nothing? What is this message that is wordless, that is nothing more or less than the animals themselves—that the world is wild, that life is unpredictable in its goodness and its danger, that the world is larger than your imagination? I remember a day when he was out working and I was alone in his house writing. I heard a raven fly by in air so still that each slow stroke of its wings was distinctly audible. I wondered then and wonder now how I could give all this up for what cities and people have to offer, for it ought to be less terrible to be lonely than to have stepped out of this sense of a symbolic order that the world of animals and celestial light offers, but writing is lonely enough, a confession to which there will be no immediate or commensurate answer, an opening statement in a conversation that falls silent or takes place long afterward without the author. But the best writing appears like those animals, sudden, self-possessed, telling everything and nothing, words approaching wordlessness. Maybe writing is its own desert, its own wilderness.
This passage displays Solnit's prose style at its best and worst: the profound idea succinctly expressed ("words approaching wordlessness") rubbing shoulders with the irrelevant personal detail ("he was out working and I was alone in his house writing": why do we care whose house it is? Is his home-ownership important to the anecdote?), the delicious rhythm and sound repetition ("air so still that each slow stroke of its wings was distinctly audible") bumping into clunky phrases abounding with weak linking verbs ("I wondered then and wonder now how I could give all this up for what cities and people have to offer, for it ought to be less terrible to be lonely than to have stepped out of this sense of a symbolic order that the world of animals and celestial light offers"). How does one step out of a sense?
Maybe I'm just being picky. Solnit's writing does provoke a great deal of thought about the value of lostness, and she often constructs lovely sentences and even whole paragraphs worth a second look. But the book as a whole fails to hold together, circling so loosely around the idea of lostness that lostness itself gets lost.
But maybe that's the point.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Put a fork in it
I could go on fiddling with my MLA paper until the end of time, but when I can no longer see the words, it's time to stick a fork in it and call it done.
My paper is missing one bibliographic reference and a page number and I need to sharpen the focus throughout and beef up the conclusion, but right now the whole thing looks like mush to me, so I think I'll hit "print" and walk away.
Of course I'll need to revisit the manuscript again before I present it on Wednesday, primarily because it's about three pages too long. The paragraphs in which I genuflect to every scholar who has every said anything, interesting or otherwise, about these poems are ripe for chopping. I'd rather have too much material than too little, and there's nothing like an emergency paragraph-ectomy to reveal the deadwood in a paper.
Now that the paper is done (or as done as it's going to get this year), I can focus on the fun part: planning, packing, getting the show on the road. Philadeliphia, here I come!
Better not forget to pack my paper.
My paper is missing one bibliographic reference and a page number and I need to sharpen the focus throughout and beef up the conclusion, but right now the whole thing looks like mush to me, so I think I'll hit "print" and walk away.
Of course I'll need to revisit the manuscript again before I present it on Wednesday, primarily because it's about three pages too long. The paragraphs in which I genuflect to every scholar who has every said anything, interesting or otherwise, about these poems are ripe for chopping. I'd rather have too much material than too little, and there's nothing like an emergency paragraph-ectomy to reveal the deadwood in a paper.
Now that the paper is done (or as done as it's going to get this year), I can focus on the fun part: planning, packing, getting the show on the road. Philadeliphia, here I come!
Better not forget to pack my paper.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Unwrapping a wonderful surprise
Twenty-three years ago today I was in the hospital giving birth to our first child.
I hadn't really planned to spend Christmas in the hospital. I had finished teaching and passed the oral exam for my Master's degree a week earlier, and the baby wasn't due until the end of January so I had big plans for Christmas break: furnish the nursery, clean the whole house, bake 14 dozen Christmas cookies, decorate the Christmas tree, host our entire congregation to a Christmas Eve open house at the parsonage, and more.
By Dec. 23, the cookies were baked and the tree was decorated and the house was clean except for a final vacuuming, and all I needed was a quick visit to the doctor's office for a routine checkup. Instead, I was admitted to the hospital immediately and had an emergency C-section on Christmas Eve.
The open house was cancelled.
The cookies came to the hospital to spread holiday cheer among the staff.
The seven-foot-tall Christmas tree stood there drying out for the next six weeks before anyone could find the time or energy to un-decorate it, by which time it had carpeted our living room with needles.
But we had a pretty terrific Christmas gift. On Christmas morning the nurses stuffed Laura into a Christmas stocking, with her tiny head sticking out the top. We still hang that stocking every Christmas to remind us that sometimes the best gifts arrive when least expected.
Merry Christmas to all--and may your holidays be filled with wonderful surprises.
A boy and his chainsaw
What more could a guy want on his 50th birthday?
I've never minded having a December birthday, but mine is early enough in the month that it doesn't get mixed up with Christmas. But then I got married on Dec. 18 to a man with a Dec. 22 birthday and gave birth to a daughter on Christmas Eve, so for years we've partied pretty much all month long.
When we were all younger I used to bake cakes for all those birthdays and then freeze what we couldn't eat. I would take the partial cakes out of the freezer around late February to brighten up the bleak midwinter when no holidays were in view.
This year we've done our share of party-hopping, but we had our final family birthday celebration of the year last night. I got a book and my daughter got some cool clothes and music, but no one was happier than the 50-year-old kid with his gas-powered chainsaw.
Now I'll have to keep an eye on him or he'll deforest our woods by New Year's Day.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
The wanderers return
My son is downstairs exercising his percussive skills on the drum set that sits quietly in the corner most of the year. He hasn't been home since his sister's wedding in June, and we wondered whether he'd make it this time thanks to the snowstorm that stranded so many travelers last weekend. But he left Texas late Friday (after passing his check flight to get his instrument flight certification, hurrah!) and arrived home exhausted Saturday afternoon.
Now we await the arrival of our daughter and son-in-law, who are expected this afternoon. They will find a house full of noise and wonderful aromas, the birthday lasagne ready to bake and the Christmas cookies and candy set out to tempt us all. We'll celebrate three birthdays tonight, get some music going and play a few games, and we'll do some Christmasing tomorrow before the wanderers go on their merry way.
In the gaps between arrivals, celebrations, and departures, I'm still fiddling with my MLA paper and working on preparations for our trip to Philadelphia next week, and let's not forget my brachytherapy treatment this afternoon. It's a remarkably busy time but I don't feel the slightest bit stressed, even with the drummer boy pounding away. Compared to other Christmases, this year has been a walk in the park. So far.
Say, is that a blizzard heading our way?
Now we await the arrival of our daughter and son-in-law, who are expected this afternoon. They will find a house full of noise and wonderful aromas, the birthday lasagne ready to bake and the Christmas cookies and candy set out to tempt us all. We'll celebrate three birthdays tonight, get some music going and play a few games, and we'll do some Christmasing tomorrow before the wanderers go on their merry way.
In the gaps between arrivals, celebrations, and departures, I'm still fiddling with my MLA paper and working on preparations for our trip to Philadelphia next week, and let's not forget my brachytherapy treatment this afternoon. It's a remarkably busy time but I don't feel the slightest bit stressed, even with the drummer boy pounding away. Compared to other Christmases, this year has been a walk in the park. So far.
Say, is that a blizzard heading our way?
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