Tidings and Turnings
01. It has been 7 years and 8 months since I last posted here. I haven't got a great deal to say at this particular moment, other than to put my fingers to keys and leave some mark in allegedly indelible electrons arranged thus on the aetherial canvas. At the moment my mind and energy alike lie elsewhere, but the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, and all that. So. I've returned, far changed, still walking the path that was set before me and winnowing the paths that lay ahead.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Monday, April 18, 2011
Is What Is What It Was?
2010.04.18
400 Days Remaining
01. I'm grading essays for Medieval Philosophy right now, and am very tired. But I have been focusing my grading energies the past few weeks on the Supernatural class (especially regarding writing) and so I need to catch up on MPh essays. I should be done soon, or maybe I'll finish up tomorrow morning.
02. Today I did a bunch of stuff around my apartment, paid bills, edited some stuff, made some phone calls (the city of Wilmington decided that I hadn't paid a parking ticket which I definitely paid, and so they sent me a letter explaining, very politely, that they would boot my car the next time they caught me. When I called and finally, after 15 minutes, got to the right department, I was told that they had no idea why I had been sent this letter, it was all taken care of, and I could come to Wilmington without the threat of vehicular incapacitation - they'd better be right), etc. These are the minor but persistent tasks and issues that define life. I experience an aesthetic pleasure in accomplishing things like that: seeing a completely cleared off table, all tasks on it finished, all bills paid, etc. There's a virtue to work, and too much leisure can become a problem.
03. I watched the film The Brothers Bloom this evening (around, under, and behind the grading) and am not quite sure what to think. It's charming and clever up until 2/3 of the way through, and then it gets complicated and somewhat dark. The two sections aren't unrelated, and there are some very interesting undergirding themes throughout, but I was surprised (not disappointed) by how it ended. I recommend it. I also recommend the soundtrack, which is almost entirely instrumental (a song played over the credits has lyrics) and brass-band, vaguely jazzish, and very distinctive.
400 Days Remaining
01. I'm grading essays for Medieval Philosophy right now, and am very tired. But I have been focusing my grading energies the past few weeks on the Supernatural class (especially regarding writing) and so I need to catch up on MPh essays. I should be done soon, or maybe I'll finish up tomorrow morning.
02. Today I did a bunch of stuff around my apartment, paid bills, edited some stuff, made some phone calls (the city of Wilmington decided that I hadn't paid a parking ticket which I definitely paid, and so they sent me a letter explaining, very politely, that they would boot my car the next time they caught me. When I called and finally, after 15 minutes, got to the right department, I was told that they had no idea why I had been sent this letter, it was all taken care of, and I could come to Wilmington without the threat of vehicular incapacitation - they'd better be right), etc. These are the minor but persistent tasks and issues that define life. I experience an aesthetic pleasure in accomplishing things like that: seeing a completely cleared off table, all tasks on it finished, all bills paid, etc. There's a virtue to work, and too much leisure can become a problem.
03. I watched the film The Brothers Bloom this evening (around, under, and behind the grading) and am not quite sure what to think. It's charming and clever up until 2/3 of the way through, and then it gets complicated and somewhat dark. The two sections aren't unrelated, and there are some very interesting undergirding themes throughout, but I was surprised (not disappointed) by how it ended. I recommend it. I also recommend the soundtrack, which is almost entirely instrumental (a song played over the credits has lyrics) and brass-band, vaguely jazzish, and very distinctive.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
And so it goes
2010.04.17
401 Days Remaining
01. A lot of interesting things have happened during my two month blog hiatus, and I don't know if I can recall all of them at the moment. For now I'll focus on last weekend, when my Supernatural in American Popular Culture class did our overnight Ghost Hunting (in an auditorium/theater on campus which is reputed to be haunted). We were accompanied by a Campus Safety officer who has his own paranormal research group, and who is the other guy who does scary storytelling sessions for dorm groups around Halloween each year. We got started around 10pm (having had to wait for the Dance Department's rehearsal to end), and kept up all the way to 4am. The officer and I took groups of students (from 6 to 12 per group) onto the stage of the auditorium in the very low light, and proceeded to run through a series of observations (looking for shadowy figures, odd lights, etc.) and questions ("is there anyone present?" etc.) which are typical of the ways that most pop cultural paranormal research groups operate. The students seem to have had a good time, and I found it fascinating to observe, firsthand, exactly how silly these procedures are. I'm not in any way opposed to paranormal research, but if this is how these groups operate, they aren't actually doing paranormal research. We were three steps away from Spiritualist seances, in terms of method. Still, it was a great deal of fun and pedagogically very useful.
02. Last night I returned to the auditorium to attend the Senior Thesis Dance Concert held by the Dance Department each Spring (three of my students were in it and they invited me). I am uncertain how to describe the experience; I suppose the easiest thing to say is that I don't speak dance. I was often confused or unsure what, if anything, I was supposed to be getting out of the performances. I don't mean that they were unpleasant or nonsensical, I really felt like I was not speaking the language, because the rest of the audience (made up of non-seniors, professors, and family members) seemed to laugh all at the same times, or to find the same moves or sequences meaningful in a way I did not. I was most impressed by a few pieces which were rather atypical of the performance as a whole; two were solo pieces and the other by a trio (that one was not set to music and was apparently originally choreographed by Twyla Tharp).
03. One sequence (in one of the pieces I couldn't substantially grasp) in which several dancers were encouraging someone else (who was clearly, at that moment, the audience's intended focal point) to do something...it got me thinking about visual and somatic ways to represent the theory of mind I've been developing for a long while, where "ego" is a position rather than a thing, and the various internal sub-personalities which constitute us (all of our discrete drives, memories, aversions, habits, etc. are fragments out of which each one of us is constructed) contest one another to occupy the lead position. I may go and talk to the Dance Department faculty and see if anyone has worked on using dance to communicate and explore ideas like that. I've seen someone use masks to make a similar (but not identical) point.
04. Something else that has been on my mind lately: the new Arthur film (about which I've heard consistently bad things). At some point when I was a kid I saw (at least large parts of) the original Arthur, starring Dudley Moore, but I was too young (or my viewing of it was too fragmented) for me to have anything more than a vague sense of the characters or plot. I noted weeks ago that it was available for streaming/viewing on Netflix, and so I watched it while working on other things (mostly grading). I remembered a few scenes with some vividness, but upon watching the film now I have discovered that I mis-remembered their sequence, significance and, in one case, the characters involved. The movie I partially mis-remembered was somewhat more complicated regarding character development (Arthur's fiancee, Susan, is more sympathetic and rounded in my imagined version). There is one scene where Arthur's prospective father-in-law, Burt, tells Arthur that, when Burt was 11, he killed a man who tried to steal food from Burt's family. For reasons I cannot imagine, in my inaccurate memory I thought that scene was an important point in establishing Burt as a character with perspective and sympathy who was encouraging Arthur's maturation (in my mis-memory the scene occurs late in the film). In fact, in the actual movie, Burt was threatening to kill Arthur if Arthur hurt Burt's daughter, and was infantilizing him in the process. I still prefer my mis-remembered version of that scene.
05. Over the past few weeks I've somehow drawn the attention of several of the faculty involved in Baskerville College's Center for Teaching and Learning, an in-house group focused on improving teaching skills for professors in order to make the classroom experience as productive as possible. I've been invited to participate in several their programs, once as a presenter, and have generally enjoyed it. I've also noticed that the same people (about a dozen professors) tend to come to the sessions, which someone else commented on as indicating that the people who care are already there, whereas folks who don't care about teaching as much aren't motivated to attend. This is troubling on any number of levels, but I suspect it's true.
06. I've been spending a lot of time the last several weekends going over rough drafts of essays by my Supernatural students. Their weekly essays started off strong but then began to decline in quality after about a month, and I began requiring rough drafts from those who were declining most precipitously. Literally, for the past three weekends, I've spent at least 8 hours a day going over rough drafts (sometimes multiple iterations of one essay) and working to instill in my students a better understanding of how and why to write some things and not others. I commented to Belisarius the other night that I'm trying to cram four years of Mt Pleasant's honors writing courses' content into a single college semester. I'm not a huge fan of repetition and enforced structure, but I do believe that they are necessary, even if only as a stage from which one eventually graduates, having internalized the important conceptual and practical tools they require you to learn. My students don't accidentally write good essays, and they often have not received anything like the basic training in writing that I did in high school. And, on the upside, it's working. The rough drafts are overall improving, several students require fewer of them to get to a good final draft, and they are clearly seeing the benefit of it in their grades, having done the extra but necessary work.
07. This year's vernal allergy season has been particularly awful, and I've been taking Benadryl (or the Target generic version, which is much less expensive) daily for almost a month now. I've actually woken up a few times from a sound sleep asphyxiating because the mucus membranes in my nose are swollen completely closed, which has never happened before that I can recall. I love spring time, and we seem to finally be moving into steadily warmer weather (yesterday was the only exception to this), but the allergies are hell.
08. Something that occurred two Fridays ago, and which I feel deserves some mention: I received an email from my exing-wife saying that her cat, Jasper, had died. He was 18 years old. I am not aware of the specific circumstances of his death (I assume he was euthanized), but I had known that his condition was deteriorating this past year. He and I lived together for roughly 3 years, and knew each other for a year before becoming housemates. He was a grumpy, gluttonous old bastard (Iunia and Euander, in particular, found him frightening and ogre-like), and I'm sad about his death. He loved my exing-wife ferociously, and she loved him; they were together for 18 years, longer than any other relationship she's had. Whenever she was traveling he would stop eating for the first couple days (and this cat loved food only slightly less than he loved her) until resignation kicked in and he took solace in eating. One of my great fears throughout my marriage was that he would die while she was away, and so I'm glad they were together when he died. I know he'll be missed.
401 Days Remaining
01. A lot of interesting things have happened during my two month blog hiatus, and I don't know if I can recall all of them at the moment. For now I'll focus on last weekend, when my Supernatural in American Popular Culture class did our overnight Ghost Hunting (in an auditorium/theater on campus which is reputed to be haunted). We were accompanied by a Campus Safety officer who has his own paranormal research group, and who is the other guy who does scary storytelling sessions for dorm groups around Halloween each year. We got started around 10pm (having had to wait for the Dance Department's rehearsal to end), and kept up all the way to 4am. The officer and I took groups of students (from 6 to 12 per group) onto the stage of the auditorium in the very low light, and proceeded to run through a series of observations (looking for shadowy figures, odd lights, etc.) and questions ("is there anyone present?" etc.) which are typical of the ways that most pop cultural paranormal research groups operate. The students seem to have had a good time, and I found it fascinating to observe, firsthand, exactly how silly these procedures are. I'm not in any way opposed to paranormal research, but if this is how these groups operate, they aren't actually doing paranormal research. We were three steps away from Spiritualist seances, in terms of method. Still, it was a great deal of fun and pedagogically very useful.
02. Last night I returned to the auditorium to attend the Senior Thesis Dance Concert held by the Dance Department each Spring (three of my students were in it and they invited me). I am uncertain how to describe the experience; I suppose the easiest thing to say is that I don't speak dance. I was often confused or unsure what, if anything, I was supposed to be getting out of the performances. I don't mean that they were unpleasant or nonsensical, I really felt like I was not speaking the language, because the rest of the audience (made up of non-seniors, professors, and family members) seemed to laugh all at the same times, or to find the same moves or sequences meaningful in a way I did not. I was most impressed by a few pieces which were rather atypical of the performance as a whole; two were solo pieces and the other by a trio (that one was not set to music and was apparently originally choreographed by Twyla Tharp).
03. One sequence (in one of the pieces I couldn't substantially grasp) in which several dancers were encouraging someone else (who was clearly, at that moment, the audience's intended focal point) to do something...it got me thinking about visual and somatic ways to represent the theory of mind I've been developing for a long while, where "ego" is a position rather than a thing, and the various internal sub-personalities which constitute us (all of our discrete drives, memories, aversions, habits, etc. are fragments out of which each one of us is constructed) contest one another to occupy the lead position. I may go and talk to the Dance Department faculty and see if anyone has worked on using dance to communicate and explore ideas like that. I've seen someone use masks to make a similar (but not identical) point.
04. Something else that has been on my mind lately: the new Arthur film (about which I've heard consistently bad things). At some point when I was a kid I saw (at least large parts of) the original Arthur, starring Dudley Moore, but I was too young (or my viewing of it was too fragmented) for me to have anything more than a vague sense of the characters or plot. I noted weeks ago that it was available for streaming/viewing on Netflix, and so I watched it while working on other things (mostly grading). I remembered a few scenes with some vividness, but upon watching the film now I have discovered that I mis-remembered their sequence, significance and, in one case, the characters involved. The movie I partially mis-remembered was somewhat more complicated regarding character development (Arthur's fiancee, Susan, is more sympathetic and rounded in my imagined version). There is one scene where Arthur's prospective father-in-law, Burt, tells Arthur that, when Burt was 11, he killed a man who tried to steal food from Burt's family. For reasons I cannot imagine, in my inaccurate memory I thought that scene was an important point in establishing Burt as a character with perspective and sympathy who was encouraging Arthur's maturation (in my mis-memory the scene occurs late in the film). In fact, in the actual movie, Burt was threatening to kill Arthur if Arthur hurt Burt's daughter, and was infantilizing him in the process. I still prefer my mis-remembered version of that scene.
05. Over the past few weeks I've somehow drawn the attention of several of the faculty involved in Baskerville College's Center for Teaching and Learning, an in-house group focused on improving teaching skills for professors in order to make the classroom experience as productive as possible. I've been invited to participate in several their programs, once as a presenter, and have generally enjoyed it. I've also noticed that the same people (about a dozen professors) tend to come to the sessions, which someone else commented on as indicating that the people who care are already there, whereas folks who don't care about teaching as much aren't motivated to attend. This is troubling on any number of levels, but I suspect it's true.
06. I've been spending a lot of time the last several weekends going over rough drafts of essays by my Supernatural students. Their weekly essays started off strong but then began to decline in quality after about a month, and I began requiring rough drafts from those who were declining most precipitously. Literally, for the past three weekends, I've spent at least 8 hours a day going over rough drafts (sometimes multiple iterations of one essay) and working to instill in my students a better understanding of how and why to write some things and not others. I commented to Belisarius the other night that I'm trying to cram four years of Mt Pleasant's honors writing courses' content into a single college semester. I'm not a huge fan of repetition and enforced structure, but I do believe that they are necessary, even if only as a stage from which one eventually graduates, having internalized the important conceptual and practical tools they require you to learn. My students don't accidentally write good essays, and they often have not received anything like the basic training in writing that I did in high school. And, on the upside, it's working. The rough drafts are overall improving, several students require fewer of them to get to a good final draft, and they are clearly seeing the benefit of it in their grades, having done the extra but necessary work.
07. This year's vernal allergy season has been particularly awful, and I've been taking Benadryl (or the Target generic version, which is much less expensive) daily for almost a month now. I've actually woken up a few times from a sound sleep asphyxiating because the mucus membranes in my nose are swollen completely closed, which has never happened before that I can recall. I love spring time, and we seem to finally be moving into steadily warmer weather (yesterday was the only exception to this), but the allergies are hell.
08. Something that occurred two Fridays ago, and which I feel deserves some mention: I received an email from my exing-wife saying that her cat, Jasper, had died. He was 18 years old. I am not aware of the specific circumstances of his death (I assume he was euthanized), but I had known that his condition was deteriorating this past year. He and I lived together for roughly 3 years, and knew each other for a year before becoming housemates. He was a grumpy, gluttonous old bastard (Iunia and Euander, in particular, found him frightening and ogre-like), and I'm sad about his death. He loved my exing-wife ferociously, and she loved him; they were together for 18 years, longer than any other relationship she's had. Whenever she was traveling he would stop eating for the first couple days (and this cat loved food only slightly less than he loved her) until resignation kicked in and he took solace in eating. One of my great fears throughout my marriage was that he would die while she was away, and so I'm glad they were together when he died. I know he'll be missed.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Stil Restless, Still Dreaming
2011.04.13
Days Remaining: 405
01. It's been almost two months since I last posted to this blog, and that lacuna reflects a major change in my plans for the future: my contract at Baskerville College was very unexpectedly renewed due to the generosity and patronage of my Assistant Dean of Faculty, Department Chair, and various other professors all pulling together a funding package sufficient to support me for another year. What that did, however, was completely rewrite this blog's raison d'etre, as suddenly the countdown before leaving Connecticut was radically reset and expanded.
02. Although I was very grateful for the extension of my contract, all the more so because I had not been able to find a self-supporting job in Delaware, I ran aground, emotionally, on the fact that I'd be here in New England for another year. I have been drifting, a bit, in emotional and psychological terms, coming to grips with the implications of that, and of the impending deadline for my divorce, which weighs heavily on my mind the past few weeks especially. It has not been easy, and I got out of step with blogging. But I will now aim to restart the practice and be more communicative.
03. So, I'm still here, and still restless, and still dreaming like Endymion.
Days Remaining: 405
01. It's been almost two months since I last posted to this blog, and that lacuna reflects a major change in my plans for the future: my contract at Baskerville College was very unexpectedly renewed due to the generosity and patronage of my Assistant Dean of Faculty, Department Chair, and various other professors all pulling together a funding package sufficient to support me for another year. What that did, however, was completely rewrite this blog's raison d'etre, as suddenly the countdown before leaving Connecticut was radically reset and expanded.
02. Although I was very grateful for the extension of my contract, all the more so because I had not been able to find a self-supporting job in Delaware, I ran aground, emotionally, on the fact that I'd be here in New England for another year. I have been drifting, a bit, in emotional and psychological terms, coming to grips with the implications of that, and of the impending deadline for my divorce, which weighs heavily on my mind the past few weeks especially. It has not been easy, and I got out of step with blogging. But I will now aim to restart the practice and be more communicative.
03. So, I'm still here, and still restless, and still dreaming like Endymion.
Friday, February 25, 2011
WHOOPS
2010.02.25
01. Quick Correction: I said in my previous post that my cell phone number is up and running and referred to the 338 number, but that was my old number and is now G's. Not having used my cell since the end of November, my memory apparently reset to the status quo prior to July. My (fully operational) number is 401-225-8441. Sorry for any confusion.
01. Quick Correction: I said in my previous post that my cell phone number is up and running and referred to the 338 number, but that was my old number and is now G's. Not having used my cell since the end of November, my memory apparently reset to the status quo prior to July. My (fully operational) number is 401-225-8441. Sorry for any confusion.
Catching Up
2011.02.25
94 Days Remaining
00. Lots of things to talk about since my last post. I started to compose this in some sort of chronological order, but it didn't make the variety of topics any clearer, so I'm just going to present the content topically/thematically.
94 Days Remaining
00. Lots of things to talk about since my last post. I started to compose this in some sort of chronological order, but it didn't make the variety of topics any clearer, so I'm just going to present the content topically/thematically.
01. Accounts of Humanity
01.a. One of the academic or intellectual projects in which I am engaged on an ongoing basis is (very loosely) a theory of humanity, a kind of unified field theory of who and what we are. This is my version of the general humanist project initiated repeatedly in human history (with varying emphases and methods), although I am clearly operating within a specific tradition inaugurated in the European Renaissance (with roots in ancient eastern Mediterranean cultures), influenced by Indic and Chinese traditions, and permanently (since the 16th and 17th centuries) engaged with issues raised by the Scientific Method and epistemological skepticism. I am, methodologically, an eclectic who draws on sources from a range of academic disciplines (which I justify by arguing that all of our disciplines except the hardest of hard sciences - and I pick their brains too - are struggling with the same family of underlying questions such as "what are we?" "why are we here?" and "what should we do?").
01.b. I recently, while perusing the Baskerville College Bookshop between classes, found that another professor here is teaching a book entitled How We Get Along by J. David Velleman. This book argues that we can understand our activities more clearly using the metaphor of humans as improv actors engaged with other improv actors. To quote the book's description "He argues that we play ourselves - not artificially but authentically, by doing what would make sense coming from us as we really are. And, like improvisational actors, we deal with one another in dual capacities: both as characters within the social drama and as players contributing to the shared performance." That may sound obvious, but the implications he works out are very interesting, especially in terms of morality (what one can expect, how one ought to act - we have a sense of outside standards that we may or may not choose to manifest or to which we may conform, etc.).
01.c. The idea of improvisational performance working within a semi-constrained situationality was really intriguing to me because it dovetails nicely with an idea that I have found enormously productive for thinking about cultural activity (which, for humans, is any activity, but which differs from culture to culture), the idea of culture as repertoire developed by Anne Swidler (most fully in her book Talk Of Love), where culture (this is what my students refer to as the bucket theory) isn't a set of rules so much as a set of tools that we use to solve problems and negotiate situations. Velleman's idea, in conjunction with Swidler's, suggests that we could productively think of those tools as not being only instrumental (we do things with them) but also semi-constraining (if you use Tool X, then using Tool Y next would feel more logical than using Tool W or Z, let alone Tool Θ, even though technically you could use any of them).
01.d. I have only begun to think about how this works, but it's very exciting to me when I feel like I'm seeing a new angle on the way that humans are, or a new way to understand us.
02. Telephone
02.a. Last week I followed Iulia's advice and called Verizon to see if they had any recommendations about how to replace my cell phone with something inexpensive (since the contract is up in July and I'll be getting my own plan at that time instead of remaining on my exing-wife's). To my (largely comical, in retrospect, though it was annoying at the time) surprise, I discovered that my cell phone account is not with Verizon. The only reason I thought it was is that years ago, when I switched onto my exing-wife's account (from being a subsidiary line on Iulia's and Romulus' account - which was and is Verizon), my exing-wife and I talked about carriers and she indicated that it was the same for her and for my old line. Now, this is my memory, and a matter that was not of major importance, so it is entirely possible that I'm misremembering, or that she just slipped and misspoke, so no hard feelings on my part about it.
02.b. Once I knew the situation I called AT&T (the next-most common carrier) and found that they were the right carrier. And, thankfully (again, somewhat annoyingly given the issues since Thanksgiving with getting a replacement phone), their stores cell very inexpensive "Go-Phones." I bought one at the Christiana Mall AT&T store this past Sunday, and it works and I now once more have full cellular service (from my 338 number - please remember that I switched numbers when I separated from G this past summer). I will still probably make some use of the Gmail Phone function, as it is far more convenient to not have to physically hold the phone when sitting at my computer, but I will also now be able to make phone calls while traveling, etc.
03. Delaware Trip
03.a. I had a lovely time, spending most of it with Iunia & Euander at my sister's house, but also seeing my parents, Iulia & Romulus, and (on the trip back on Sunday) Barbatus, Caius & (very briefly before I left) Livia. Barbatus and others commented that I seemed "better," and I think that is entirely due to the positive benefits of spending time with people I love.
03.b. Among other things, I took the kids and my parents to the Delaware History Museum on Market Street in Wilmington (where works a woman for whom I used to babysit when her kids - now in their mid-20s - were Iunia and Euander's ages). The Museum was far larger than I expected (Momula tells me it is located in what was the original Woolworth's Department Store building), with very interesting stuff both on the trains and on the history of Delaware. Euander preferred running around and climbing on stuff, while Iunia was more interested in the content of several of the exhibits. One display featured life-sized papier-mache statues of colonial figures of importance (from New Sweden, through Dutch and eventually English rule under William Penn), and I explained to her that one side of our family is descended from the head of New Sweden, Governor Printz. There was also an exhibit about the Lenni Lenape, and I told Iunia that we are descended from Nanticokes on Momula's side of the family. I loved being able to share that with her, and near the time we were leaving she walked over and asked which one of them was our "great-great-great-great grandfather" again. I love feeling physically connected, over several generations and hundreds of years, to the place that, in my heart, is home. And I loved being able to tell Iunia about that connection. I was also very interested to see her struggling to think about the historical fact of slavery (something she, to her credit, finds appalling and very upsetting), as it was mentioned in several exhibits (though there was no mention of the extraordinary fact that, prior to adopting the US Constitution, some Delaware laws recognized property-owning women and free, property-owning blacks, as having the right to vote - which right was denied after adopting the Constitution, perversely).
03.c. We also went to Hibachi Steakhouse for dinner on Saturday (something Euander and I had been discussing since my arrival on Friday morning), and on Sunday we went ice skating at the Rust Arena at the University of Delaware. I haven't been ice skating in over a decade, though I used to go weekly when a student at UD, and I had a blast. Most of the time I skated hand-in-hand with Iunia, but I eventually (with Selena's help) convinced her to skate on her own (something she can do - but she's very nervous about falling, so she prefers to have someone help steady her). Euander, on the other hand, was very focused on going solo, and fell a lot but always got back up and kept at it. I was very impressed with both of their skill levels, especially because they've had no lessons and have been skating weekly only since the beginning of January.
03.d. Saturday night I spent a few hours with Iulia, Romulus, a grad student friend of theirs from Iulia's department at UD, and their dog, Libby. Romulus, who had the major ankle surgery in the Fall, has made an amazing advance in his recovery. He is now able to stand up on his own, and walk around with either a cane or a crutch (I'm emotionally and ethically obligated at this point, R, to remind you to use either of them when walking no matter how short the distance). The difference is astounding, and I cannot be happier about it (apparently he is right on track for the recovery process, so a lot of my shock is really just having missed the intermediate steps). Libby, the dog, was kind enough to come and sit with (and at one point sleep next to) me on the couch, which I always appreciate.
03.e. I also spent some time with Momula and Dadulus, though less than I would have liked (it was mostly while visiting with the rest of the family), and Momula made me chocolate chip cookies, of which I was able to preserve most for my trip back to Connecticut (apparently love for those cookies runs in the family).
03.f. On my way back north I stopped at Barbatus and Livia's house, and went to dinner with Barbatus and their son, Caius, before picking Livia up from her school (she was arriving back from a band trip to Spain), and then heading back onto the road. I actually left in a hurry, which I am sorry to have done, because I suddenly realized it was getting close to 7pm and I still had 2 hours of driving to do, and was feeling very tired. As it was, I made it back here by 11pm, and then went immediately to bed.
04. School Matters
04.a. We got formal approval to do Ghost Hunting on campus for my Supernatural class, and I was interviewed for it yesterday for the campus student paper. I have also had several former students come by or email to ask if they can sit in on the class meetings, which I've said is fine. This past week we talked about the ways that ghost stories give people in our society ways to express and work through anxieties or questions about embodiment, and next week we'll be looking at the ways that ghost stories provide a way of thinking and worrying about memory.
04.b. During both the interview and class yesterday I was asked (this happens periodically) if I believe in ghosts, and I explained in both cases that I am an agnostic on this question. I explain that I have personally had one extremely clear experience in which I perceived a being (with what seemed to me a definite sense of presence and agency) which I could not physically see but which I could physically delineate in space (i.e., I knew where it was and where it wasn't). I was one of two people who perceived it at the same time (the other was Iulia), and numerous other people had experiences of invisible presence and agency in that house (and even near that location). I am comfortable saying that my experience falls into the parameters of what is usually described in our society as "seeing a ghost" but with the caveat that i) those parameters are very broad and include a wide range of experiences, and ii) I make no claims (and could not, based on the actual content of my experience) about the nature - or even ontological independence - of what I perceived. It is entirely possible that I was completely mistaken or that I had a brain malfunction. On the other hand, I don't know why Iulia would have the same malfunction at the same time, but even if we didn't, a shared experience still does not mean that what we perceived was the "spirit" of a dead human being.
In fact, I believe, based upon examination of evidence, that the majority of alleged ghost encounters (both direct and indirect) can be debunked, and I think that they ought to be. On the other hand, I also know that there are a range of experiences which have thus far resisted successful (or persuasive to all) debunking, and I think that we overstep the scientific method if we simply assume that they are also debunkable without being able to demonstrate that they are. I neither affirm nor deny the existence of spirits, and neither do I make positive statements about the nature of what such spirits might be (dead humans, fairies, angels, demons, elementals, psychic energy signatures, etc. all having been proposed as possible identities). This is worth reiterating in my class because I take peoples' reports seriously as cultural products capable of being analyzed, which is not the same as affirming the ontological claims that such reports involve (e.g. that humans have immaterial souls which exist post-mortem in a disembodied but perceivable state). I am also interested in the ontological (do spirits really exist?) and taxonomic (if they exist, what are they?) claims, but this class is not really the best forum for reaching a final conclusion on those matters. I worry sometimes that people think that the class is an exercise in credulity, when in fact I want to sharpen my students analytical abilities and habits.
04.c. The Religious Studies department at Baskerville College has asked me to teach 2 courses next year, Christian Traditions and Jewish Traditions, both in the Spring semester. Classics has 1 course available, also for the Spring, but so far no other departments (Philosophy, Anthropology, and History) have anything available for me to teach. The Associate Dean of Faculty, who is my institutional (as opposed to departmental) boss, is trying to find some way to keep me here, but unless something changes very soon, it looks increasingly likely that this will be my final semester. I've continued to be asked by other faculty if I'm staying, and they have all been very positive and generous in their wishes that I could, which is professionally rewarding, at least.
05. Final Thoughts for This Post
05.a. I really enjoyed seeing everyone in Delaware last weekend. Euander remarked to Selena, as they were driving to the ice rink that, "When my favorite people get ready to leave, it makes me feel weird inside, like I'm sad." Kiddo, I know. You're one of my favorite people, too. Someday maybe you'll know how much it means to me that I'm one of yours.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
2011.02.16
103 Days Remaining
01. When I compose these posts I often find myself uncertain how to begin. I was talking with Belisarius yesterday on Gmail chat and thought about the fact that if one of us (via that medium) wants to talk with the other, they usually just send a message saying "Hey" (which is what I did yesterday). Beginnings are surprisingly difficult if you're either not comfortable (on any given day, or with life in general) or at all distracted. Actually, if you're distracted the problem is that beginnings are too easy, the more frivolous the endeavor or activity, the better. Also, as a serial procrastinator, I've often noticed that the actual procrastinating lies almost entirely in getting started: once work is underway, I have no trouble doing it.
02. Which is not to say that this blog is work, but I don't always feel like it's connecting with many people, and I often feel vaguely strange re-treading ideas and thoughts I've had on any given day (it feels either narcissistic or parochial). Does it really matter, for instance, that I am still dealing with the lingering infection from last week? That another professor and I were stood up for a presentation on Monday night by a student who couldn't get her schedule straight? That yesterday was bitterly cold when the wind blew, and the sun's light, though clear, was no match for it?
03. What do I think about, here all by myself for most of the day and night? Yesterday morning I woke up, completely and wide awake, at 313am (I could see the time on my alarm clock) and I spent the next three hours thinking. Thinking about everything from moment to moment. Ideas for stories, for essays, worries about everything from my back (which has been feeling strained lately) to Iunia growing up in our so very sexist society to the increasing variance between the wealthy and everyone else in our society, memories of a joke a student told, a passing thought about food, and so forth. All sort of swirled around in my head for hours and hours, and I never got back to sleep.
04. Random musical reference (not safe for work, though only in the latter third of the 10:16 song). This is Reggie Watts (a musician/comedian who is also the lead singer for the great soul-rock band Maktub; here's their song "You Can't Hide" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWgfl-E0v7g) and this song, "Thus Far," makes no sense (he does stream of consciousness performances, which shouldn't work but do) but is full of really funny lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0cp3eK9hI0 . There is one line, near the beginning, that is lovely to hear in sound terms: "want some treasure?/Here you go/at the end of the rainbow."
05. Despite yesterday's bitter cold, today was back into the 40s and sunny, and the temperature is supposed to stay warm (at least the upper 30s, and on one day into the 50s) for the next several days. I am starting to feel a strong desire for spring, as this particular winter hasn't been much fun (though I've had plenty of other winters where the weather is enjoyable - this year it's mostly been a pain - which probably more reflects my overall mood).
06. I'm going to Delaware on Friday morning, early (as in, leaving by 430am). Tonight I need to finish grading so my weekend is free, since I'll have to go to bed early tomorrow.
103 Days Remaining
01. When I compose these posts I often find myself uncertain how to begin. I was talking with Belisarius yesterday on Gmail chat and thought about the fact that if one of us (via that medium) wants to talk with the other, they usually just send a message saying "Hey" (which is what I did yesterday). Beginnings are surprisingly difficult if you're either not comfortable (on any given day, or with life in general) or at all distracted. Actually, if you're distracted the problem is that beginnings are too easy, the more frivolous the endeavor or activity, the better. Also, as a serial procrastinator, I've often noticed that the actual procrastinating lies almost entirely in getting started: once work is underway, I have no trouble doing it.
02. Which is not to say that this blog is work, but I don't always feel like it's connecting with many people, and I often feel vaguely strange re-treading ideas and thoughts I've had on any given day (it feels either narcissistic or parochial). Does it really matter, for instance, that I am still dealing with the lingering infection from last week? That another professor and I were stood up for a presentation on Monday night by a student who couldn't get her schedule straight? That yesterday was bitterly cold when the wind blew, and the sun's light, though clear, was no match for it?
03. What do I think about, here all by myself for most of the day and night? Yesterday morning I woke up, completely and wide awake, at 313am (I could see the time on my alarm clock) and I spent the next three hours thinking. Thinking about everything from moment to moment. Ideas for stories, for essays, worries about everything from my back (which has been feeling strained lately) to Iunia growing up in our so very sexist society to the increasing variance between the wealthy and everyone else in our society, memories of a joke a student told, a passing thought about food, and so forth. All sort of swirled around in my head for hours and hours, and I never got back to sleep.
04. Random musical reference (not safe for work, though only in the latter third of the 10:16 song). This is Reggie Watts (a musician/comedian who is also the lead singer for the great soul-rock band Maktub; here's their song "You Can't Hide" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWgfl-E0v7g) and this song, "Thus Far," makes no sense (he does stream of consciousness performances, which shouldn't work but do) but is full of really funny lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0cp3eK9hI0 . There is one line, near the beginning, that is lovely to hear in sound terms: "want some treasure?/Here you go/at the end of the rainbow."
05. Despite yesterday's bitter cold, today was back into the 40s and sunny, and the temperature is supposed to stay warm (at least the upper 30s, and on one day into the 50s) for the next several days. I am starting to feel a strong desire for spring, as this particular winter hasn't been much fun (though I've had plenty of other winters where the weather is enjoyable - this year it's mostly been a pain - which probably more reflects my overall mood).
06. I'm going to Delaware on Friday morning, early (as in, leaving by 430am). Tonight I need to finish grading so my weekend is free, since I'll have to go to bed early tomorrow.
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