2010.09.22
Days Remaining: 251
1. Clearly I've decided not to update this blog everyday. Now that the semester has started there are some days (particularly Tuesdays and Thursdays) when I know I'll be working throughout, and it occurred to me that I'd rather write less frequently but have something of substance to say, than to make a point of blathering every day.
2. For now, I'm navel-gazing because I am ill. What I thought was an allergy attack yesterday ('tis the season for it, or at least a season for it) now has me with a sore throat, low-grade fever, and an aching head, not normally symptoms of allergies. I made it through classes yesterday with my nose running like a faucet, but by the time I got home I was beginning to wear down significantly. This, because Murphy is unkind, was accompanied by a degree of wakefulness that kept me up until 130am (but, my newly recalibrated sleep cycle then had me awake by 8am). Thankfully, today I didn't need to go anywhere, and could work from my desk here. Now that the sun has set, my headache is coming back hardcore for some reason, and I may go to bed very early. Tomorrow I need to teach. Sigh.
3. Before I go further, I would like to voice a message of sympathy for my youngest sister, Silvia, and her fiance, whose father's health has taken a serious turn for the worst. They are apparently on watch for his death, something that I cannot imagine but to be terrible to go through.
4. I'm teaching a class right now called Love, Death & Desire which is sort of an intellectual history of European (mostly Christian, but with Jewish and Muslim elements thrown in) culture organized around the course title's key terms. We start with Hesiod, Genesis, Plato, etc. and then work through to the 20th century. Death has been on my mind a lot the past two weeks because of this, as we just read a very good short book by Herbert Fingarette titled Death: Philosophical Soundings (http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/death.htm ). I put that book, which is about the ways that we imagine and think with death as a fact of life, in dialogue with another text I've been reading, which probably seems far more frivolous. It's a fanfiction rewrite of the Harry Potter series called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality ). In the rewrite, Dumbledore asks Harry (who is very different from the character in Rowling's books) why he thinks that Dark Wizards fear death. And, contrary to expectations, Harry gives an impassioned plea, couched in the language of cold reason, why we should all hate death and try to live forever. This has been troubling me since I read it. The rewrite's Dumbledore argues that death is the beginning of something further, a move towards an afterlife, and Harry (quite rightly) points out that Dumbledore has no real proof of that (in this rewrite, ghosts are basically energy shadows of wizards, not autonomous spirits).
5. But I cannot apparently bring myself to agree with the rewritten Harry. It's not because I believe that there is conclusive evidence for an afterlife (though I will say that there is very suggestive, if inconsistent and unfortunately mostly untestable, evidence). I suppose that it's because I am deeply suspicious, and even uncomfortable, with the idea that humans as humans are entitled to overcome the fundamental conditions of our existence. I worry, because this seems to me to be predicated on a body/mind dichotomy that goes back at least as far as Plato (and I would argue actually to the Pythagoreans if not earlier) in the West, which not only posits a fundamental distinction between our selves and our bodies, but also arranges them hierarchically, so that bodies become at best tools for our minds, and at worst enemies to be overcome. This may sound hyperbolic, but American culture today expends enormous amounts of financial, intellectual, and technological capitol on attempting to stave off dying for as long as possible. We regularly insist that we are more than our bodies, that we should be able to have it all (that is, our desires are felt to be unjustly thwarted by material contexts and constraints), and treat our bodies like toys (think how easy it is to eat junk, live unhealthily, and then assume that medical science should be able to prolong our existences).
6. Of course, the desire to live forever is hardly restricted to Western cultures; one of my favorite religious traditions, Daoism, has as one major strand in its larger composite the attempt, via alchemical (chemical, bodily, meditational, etc.) means, to transform one's body into a state that is aligned with the Dao, and therefore enduring and (if one is really good at it) eternal. There are lots of strong overlaps here with the West, although there are also important differences. What strikes me as crucial in both, for my current purposes, is the rejection of bodily limits as either unjust or fundamentally unnatural. In either case these limits (the biggest of them being mortality itself) are to be overcome.
7. And I don't feel that way. Eternity is only conceivable to me as a negation of regular aspects of life. Eternity would have to involve non-forgetting (because what's the point if you constantly replace old knowledge with new, such that your own identity becomes discontinuous over long periods of time?), non-hunger, non-tiredness, non-etc. I simply take my actual life and then undo all of the things that make up that life. Oddly enough, it sort of sounds like death when described in that fashion.
8. I just can't imagine true immortality being positive; I keep thinking I'd get bored. I'm more philosophically Daoist about this, I see life and death being intertwined and that not being a bad thing. I worry when human beings see themselves as fundamentally outside of the world. I'll follow Ursula K. LeGuin and Phillip Pullman on this: death is part of our pattern, and salvation is something you make in this life. I sound a little like Feuerbach or Marx when I write that, but I don't know that I would ever feel confident banking on the afterlife, given how uncertain that outcome is.
9. On a much lighter note, Belisarius has a very funny post about his two kids and their interactions, via note, on his blog: http://www.loudhandle.net/ . It's entitled "Sighned" and I recommend it very highly for a laugh.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
2010.09.19
Days Remaining: 254
1. I'm back from the lovely Sea Isle City, NJ beach. I'm a bit sunburned (completely my own fault due to not properly applying sunblock), and tired, but the trip was really enjoyable and I had a lot of fun.
2. My drive southwards on Friday was an exercise in frustration, which thankfully did not augur anything at all for the weekend as a whole. In my attempt to avoid lateness, I left about an hour earlier than I would normally do, in order to have dinner with Barbatus and Livia (and their son, Caius).* But, as the best laid plans of mice are, so was mine. I ran into a traffic jam at New Haven (apparently on Fridays people in New Haven, CT get out of work en masse at approximately 1-130pm), then another one as I approached the George Washington Bridge in NYC. I am actually very fond of the GW, especially its upper level, and if traffic is moving smoothly, find that driving across it (especially at night in warm weather) an intensely pleasurable aesthetic experience. Most of the time, however, it's a royal pain in the tuckus. This time, it took me over an hour to travel approximately four miles, and once I was over the bridge and onto the New Jersey Turnpike, even at what was now quitting time on a Friday, I made great time. This, alas, conforms to my previous experience and leads to my working conclusion on crossing the GW: the bridge itself is the problem. The jam happens in getting over it, and is gone as soon as you cross. This has led me to a new plan for traveling southwards: I'm going to start using the Tappan Zee Bridge instead. I'm not sure if that will actually be any better, but the GW has been an enormous snag in travel time about 80% of the time in the past year's worth of traveling either south or north.
3. Once I got to Barbatus and Livia's house, we decided to drive into Princeton, NJ to have dinner (Livia and I ate at Panera Bread on Nassau Street, Barbatus and Caius having eaten before I arrived - Caius is a little over 2 years old, and needed to eat earlier while I was stuck in traffic). I took a class at Princeton back in my first year at UPenn, and have extremely fond memories of that semester (one of the happiest in my life), when I would take the train to Princeton each Thursday, participate in what was the single best seminar I was ever enrolled in, and then have dinner with Barbatus and Livia before catching a late train home to Philadelphia. Every part of it was good: I rode in with another student from Philadelphia (an archaeology grad student at Bryn Mawr), had the seminar, got to hang out in Princeton (often, but not always, in the bookstores) until either Barbatus or Livia picked me up, then got to spend the evening with two of my favorite people, then rode the train at my favorite time of day: late evening when the cars are mostly empty. As the semester ran on, I got into the habit of standing between cars (which you're not supposed to do) and feeling the warmer air flow past, looking at the landscape, and generally feeling like all was right with the world. Anyway, we ate our dinner on Friday night sitting on a bench by the cathedral on Princeton's campus, and it was lovely. The evening air got cooler, but I'm not dissuaded by cool air, and walking around campus, chasing after Caius (who loves to run), was a lot of fun.
4. Then I got on the road again around 830pm or so, and drove onwards. I'm not a fan of driving someplace completely new at night. The summer after I graduated from high school I went to a Longwood Garden fountains-and-fireworks display with my family and then-girlfriend. There was a thunderstorm, and after everyone left my girlfriend and I waited and walked through the Conservatory (one of my favorite places to walk). When we left, it was very foggy, and I got turned around leaving the parking lot, and we had to figure out how we had gotten lost and how to make our way back to Wilmington. I don't know if that is the source of my discomfort, but it always stands out as a point where I was very uncomfortable with not knowing where I was going in the dark (n.b., I have no trouble whatsoever getting lost and finding new ways to places during daylight hours). Anyway, on Friday night I made my way without mishap to Sea Isle City. The drive was made very pleasant by the moonlight, especially when there were no other cars around to provide light pollution. The strangest part of the drive was a visual encounter with...something. While relatively near Sea Isle City, on a stretch of road with heavy vegetation on either side of the highway, I drove past what I assume was a hitchhiker-hiker. What I saw, however, was a 6-7ft tall shape that seemed to be jogging (it was leaning forward at the top), clothed in extremely baggy attire. It basically flashed into and out of my vision in a second, but it was very jarring to suddenly register that I was not the only person on that stretch of road.
5. Sea Isle City is located, surprisingly, on an island, and as I drove closer to the beach house it became clear how very narrow the island is. The open ocean was on my left and the bay to my right, with a handful of houses to each side off the main road at each intersection. The summer's official end a few weeks ago has left the beach towns (excepting Atlantic City, which seemed to be hopping as I drove by its entrance roadway) largely depopulated, and so the final stretch of the trip was interestingly like moving into a ghost town. I arrived at the beach house around 11pm, was greeted at the door by my beloved niece and nephew, Iunia and Euander, did a quick tour (Iunia likes to show people around places), and then we all went to bed. I was very tired (I'm getting used to earlier bedtimes now), but couldn't sleep, and so I stayed up a bit to read my copy of the Evan Dorkin/Jill Thompson graphic novel Beasts of Burden (http://www.amazon.com/Beasts-Burden-Evan-Dorkin/dp/1595825134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284943883&sr=8-1), about a paranormal investigating society composed entirely of dogs and cats. Sounds silly, I know, but it's actually a horror series, and I discovered that many of its constituent stories are very, very sad.
5.2. On a sad note, my mom told me yesterday morning that my parents' next-door neighbor's dog, Christa, was euthanized last Monday (she had cancer). Christa was a 13 year old Scottish terrier who loved my parents from the moment they moved into that house, and she was a regular source of happiness to me over the summer as I was beginning to deal with giving up my dog, Herman. Her owner said that my parents' arrival was like a new lease on life for Christa, and I always took joy in the fact that she would run over to the porch whenever she saw any of us outside (sometimes she got so excited she'd come into the house, which was adorable). She loved carrots, and we had bags of baby carrots whose sole purpose was to be fed to Christa in the evenings. She was very sweet, and I know that her owner is feeling her absence terribly. I'll miss you, too, Chrissy. My ex-wife tells me that Herman, who is 12.5 years old, has had some trouble with one of his back legs the last week or so, wherein it seems to go to sleep when he's lying down, so that when he wakes up he can't put any weight on it. After a moment or two he's fine, but this is something new for him. I really miss him, and hope that he's okay. My handsome fellow (the word "guy" was used for the cats).
6. Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful, with Euander coming in to wake me up (Iunia was waking up my parents). We all went to breakfast at local pancake house and then got suited up and headed to the beach. There were very few people there, but the weather was clear and warm, the water was very comfortable, and it was wonderful. My parents sat on folding chairs talking with my sister, Selena,** and her husband, Iunius. I went to walk in the water while the kids started building a sand castle (very cutely, they started right by the chairs, probably close to 75 ft uphill and inland from the waves, and then wanted to dig a canal to bring the water up to their moat). When they saw me walking in the breakers, the kids came down, and soon Iunius came too. We spent a few hours in the surf, and the kids loved it. I was very impressed by their enthusiasm for being in the water, especially because, given their small size, the waves were very big for them. They both liked jumping over/through the breakers, and eventually Iunia started doing a low-key kind of body surfing (she'd lay on the sand in a few inches of out-going water, and wait for the next wave to lift her and carry her inward). Selena got a boogie board from the beach house (it was not a good boogie board, btw - very flimsy) and Iunius and I got Iunia on that for several rides. Selena took pictures and video of it, and I can't wait to see them! Eventually we all went and sat on the folding chairs (my parents having gone back to the beach house) and I began working on the sand castle with the kids. Finally, we went in, just in time as the incoming tide began washing up to where our seats were (the tidal distance at Sea Isle City is astonishing, probably 100+ ft from low to high tides).
7. After getting cleaned up we went to have dinner at a local pizza shop, then went driving to find ice cream. This was harder than it might sound, as most of the ice cream places were closed for the season. We drove through several towns along the island's length, and finally found a place that is closing today (the 19th). That shop was on a strip by the boardwalk (I'm not sure which town it was in), where a "season's end" fair was going on, with a DJ playing dance music for kids. We went there and everyone danced for a while (though I refrained from the YMCA). Iunia and Euander are very enthusiastic dancers, currently enrolled in a Hip Hop dance class at the YMCA in Wilmington, and they were showing off their moves last night. Then we all headed back to the beach house to relax. Iunius watched a football game and we talked for a while, and then to bed.
8. This morning we got up, did laundry (sheets and towels), and then headed out around 10am. The trip back, to be aesthetically balanced, took about 6 hours (it should have taken four) due to New Jersey road construction on the Garden State Parkway, followed by bridge trouble again, and then heavy traffic on I-95 in Connecticut. I'm just not going to win the traveling thing, I think. Octavian, who is coming into town again for business, left NYC around 5pm, and called me close to 9pm to say that he was only just getting through Lyme, CT, so the traffic situation did not improve after I got off the road. On the upside, Octavian and I are having dinner tomorrow night, which will be good. Thai food: it's awesome.
9. The only other thing of note that I can think to mention is a follow-up from last week. I did not, in fact, file for divorce on Wednesday as I had planned. This was not, however, for lack of trying. I called the Rhode Island Family Court twice in preparation to make sure that I had everything I needed, and both times the persons with whom I spoke neglected to mention that I needed a copy of my marriage certificate. I suppose, in retrospect, that it makes sense I would need this, but when I asked them what documentation I should bring, both times they did not mention it. I've been paying taxes to the state of Rhode Island as a married person for several years now, so it didn't occur to me that they'd need proof of marriage. So tomorrow morning I go back up to finish the process. It's another 2 hours of traveling, round trip. Sigh.
10. So, overall, the weekend was lovely, and I'm very grateful to Selena and Iunius for having me along. I love seeing Iunia and Euander, and had a good time talking with my mom and dad. I had fun seeing Barbatus, Livia, and Caius, and good memories were awoken on Princeton's campus. The beach is, in my experience, always good, and I couldn't have asked for nicer weather. Sometimes, things just go well.
* This post will include many pseudonyms, which may give some more data to those who are trying to figure out what my silly naming system is.
** Selena self-selected her own name, so it's not an example of my system.
Days Remaining: 254
1. I'm back from the lovely Sea Isle City, NJ beach. I'm a bit sunburned (completely my own fault due to not properly applying sunblock), and tired, but the trip was really enjoyable and I had a lot of fun.
2. My drive southwards on Friday was an exercise in frustration, which thankfully did not augur anything at all for the weekend as a whole. In my attempt to avoid lateness, I left about an hour earlier than I would normally do, in order to have dinner with Barbatus and Livia (and their son, Caius).* But, as the best laid plans of mice are, so was mine. I ran into a traffic jam at New Haven (apparently on Fridays people in New Haven, CT get out of work en masse at approximately 1-130pm), then another one as I approached the George Washington Bridge in NYC. I am actually very fond of the GW, especially its upper level, and if traffic is moving smoothly, find that driving across it (especially at night in warm weather) an intensely pleasurable aesthetic experience. Most of the time, however, it's a royal pain in the tuckus. This time, it took me over an hour to travel approximately four miles, and once I was over the bridge and onto the New Jersey Turnpike, even at what was now quitting time on a Friday, I made great time. This, alas, conforms to my previous experience and leads to my working conclusion on crossing the GW: the bridge itself is the problem. The jam happens in getting over it, and is gone as soon as you cross. This has led me to a new plan for traveling southwards: I'm going to start using the Tappan Zee Bridge instead. I'm not sure if that will actually be any better, but the GW has been an enormous snag in travel time about 80% of the time in the past year's worth of traveling either south or north.
3. Once I got to Barbatus and Livia's house, we decided to drive into Princeton, NJ to have dinner (Livia and I ate at Panera Bread on Nassau Street, Barbatus and Caius having eaten before I arrived - Caius is a little over 2 years old, and needed to eat earlier while I was stuck in traffic). I took a class at Princeton back in my first year at UPenn, and have extremely fond memories of that semester (one of the happiest in my life), when I would take the train to Princeton each Thursday, participate in what was the single best seminar I was ever enrolled in, and then have dinner with Barbatus and Livia before catching a late train home to Philadelphia. Every part of it was good: I rode in with another student from Philadelphia (an archaeology grad student at Bryn Mawr), had the seminar, got to hang out in Princeton (often, but not always, in the bookstores) until either Barbatus or Livia picked me up, then got to spend the evening with two of my favorite people, then rode the train at my favorite time of day: late evening when the cars are mostly empty. As the semester ran on, I got into the habit of standing between cars (which you're not supposed to do) and feeling the warmer air flow past, looking at the landscape, and generally feeling like all was right with the world. Anyway, we ate our dinner on Friday night sitting on a bench by the cathedral on Princeton's campus, and it was lovely. The evening air got cooler, but I'm not dissuaded by cool air, and walking around campus, chasing after Caius (who loves to run), was a lot of fun.
4. Then I got on the road again around 830pm or so, and drove onwards. I'm not a fan of driving someplace completely new at night. The summer after I graduated from high school I went to a Longwood Garden fountains-and-fireworks display with my family and then-girlfriend. There was a thunderstorm, and after everyone left my girlfriend and I waited and walked through the Conservatory (one of my favorite places to walk). When we left, it was very foggy, and I got turned around leaving the parking lot, and we had to figure out how we had gotten lost and how to make our way back to Wilmington. I don't know if that is the source of my discomfort, but it always stands out as a point where I was very uncomfortable with not knowing where I was going in the dark (n.b., I have no trouble whatsoever getting lost and finding new ways to places during daylight hours). Anyway, on Friday night I made my way without mishap to Sea Isle City. The drive was made very pleasant by the moonlight, especially when there were no other cars around to provide light pollution. The strangest part of the drive was a visual encounter with...something. While relatively near Sea Isle City, on a stretch of road with heavy vegetation on either side of the highway, I drove past what I assume was a hitchhiker-hiker. What I saw, however, was a 6-7ft tall shape that seemed to be jogging (it was leaning forward at the top), clothed in extremely baggy attire. It basically flashed into and out of my vision in a second, but it was very jarring to suddenly register that I was not the only person on that stretch of road.
5. Sea Isle City is located, surprisingly, on an island, and as I drove closer to the beach house it became clear how very narrow the island is. The open ocean was on my left and the bay to my right, with a handful of houses to each side off the main road at each intersection. The summer's official end a few weeks ago has left the beach towns (excepting Atlantic City, which seemed to be hopping as I drove by its entrance roadway) largely depopulated, and so the final stretch of the trip was interestingly like moving into a ghost town. I arrived at the beach house around 11pm, was greeted at the door by my beloved niece and nephew, Iunia and Euander, did a quick tour (Iunia likes to show people around places), and then we all went to bed. I was very tired (I'm getting used to earlier bedtimes now), but couldn't sleep, and so I stayed up a bit to read my copy of the Evan Dorkin/Jill Thompson graphic novel Beasts of Burden (http://www.amazon.com/Beasts-Burden-Evan-Dorkin/dp/1595825134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284943883&sr=8-1), about a paranormal investigating society composed entirely of dogs and cats. Sounds silly, I know, but it's actually a horror series, and I discovered that many of its constituent stories are very, very sad.
5.2. On a sad note, my mom told me yesterday morning that my parents' next-door neighbor's dog, Christa, was euthanized last Monday (she had cancer). Christa was a 13 year old Scottish terrier who loved my parents from the moment they moved into that house, and she was a regular source of happiness to me over the summer as I was beginning to deal with giving up my dog, Herman. Her owner said that my parents' arrival was like a new lease on life for Christa, and I always took joy in the fact that she would run over to the porch whenever she saw any of us outside (sometimes she got so excited she'd come into the house, which was adorable). She loved carrots, and we had bags of baby carrots whose sole purpose was to be fed to Christa in the evenings. She was very sweet, and I know that her owner is feeling her absence terribly. I'll miss you, too, Chrissy. My ex-wife tells me that Herman, who is 12.5 years old, has had some trouble with one of his back legs the last week or so, wherein it seems to go to sleep when he's lying down, so that when he wakes up he can't put any weight on it. After a moment or two he's fine, but this is something new for him. I really miss him, and hope that he's okay. My handsome fellow (the word "guy" was used for the cats).
6. Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful, with Euander coming in to wake me up (Iunia was waking up my parents). We all went to breakfast at local pancake house and then got suited up and headed to the beach. There were very few people there, but the weather was clear and warm, the water was very comfortable, and it was wonderful. My parents sat on folding chairs talking with my sister, Selena,** and her husband, Iunius. I went to walk in the water while the kids started building a sand castle (very cutely, they started right by the chairs, probably close to 75 ft uphill and inland from the waves, and then wanted to dig a canal to bring the water up to their moat). When they saw me walking in the breakers, the kids came down, and soon Iunius came too. We spent a few hours in the surf, and the kids loved it. I was very impressed by their enthusiasm for being in the water, especially because, given their small size, the waves were very big for them. They both liked jumping over/through the breakers, and eventually Iunia started doing a low-key kind of body surfing (she'd lay on the sand in a few inches of out-going water, and wait for the next wave to lift her and carry her inward). Selena got a boogie board from the beach house (it was not a good boogie board, btw - very flimsy) and Iunius and I got Iunia on that for several rides. Selena took pictures and video of it, and I can't wait to see them! Eventually we all went and sat on the folding chairs (my parents having gone back to the beach house) and I began working on the sand castle with the kids. Finally, we went in, just in time as the incoming tide began washing up to where our seats were (the tidal distance at Sea Isle City is astonishing, probably 100+ ft from low to high tides).
7. After getting cleaned up we went to have dinner at a local pizza shop, then went driving to find ice cream. This was harder than it might sound, as most of the ice cream places were closed for the season. We drove through several towns along the island's length, and finally found a place that is closing today (the 19th). That shop was on a strip by the boardwalk (I'm not sure which town it was in), where a "season's end" fair was going on, with a DJ playing dance music for kids. We went there and everyone danced for a while (though I refrained from the YMCA). Iunia and Euander are very enthusiastic dancers, currently enrolled in a Hip Hop dance class at the YMCA in Wilmington, and they were showing off their moves last night. Then we all headed back to the beach house to relax. Iunius watched a football game and we talked for a while, and then to bed.
8. This morning we got up, did laundry (sheets and towels), and then headed out around 10am. The trip back, to be aesthetically balanced, took about 6 hours (it should have taken four) due to New Jersey road construction on the Garden State Parkway, followed by bridge trouble again, and then heavy traffic on I-95 in Connecticut. I'm just not going to win the traveling thing, I think. Octavian, who is coming into town again for business, left NYC around 5pm, and called me close to 9pm to say that he was only just getting through Lyme, CT, so the traffic situation did not improve after I got off the road. On the upside, Octavian and I are having dinner tomorrow night, which will be good. Thai food: it's awesome.
9. The only other thing of note that I can think to mention is a follow-up from last week. I did not, in fact, file for divorce on Wednesday as I had planned. This was not, however, for lack of trying. I called the Rhode Island Family Court twice in preparation to make sure that I had everything I needed, and both times the persons with whom I spoke neglected to mention that I needed a copy of my marriage certificate. I suppose, in retrospect, that it makes sense I would need this, but when I asked them what documentation I should bring, both times they did not mention it. I've been paying taxes to the state of Rhode Island as a married person for several years now, so it didn't occur to me that they'd need proof of marriage. So tomorrow morning I go back up to finish the process. It's another 2 hours of traveling, round trip. Sigh.
10. So, overall, the weekend was lovely, and I'm very grateful to Selena and Iunius for having me along. I love seeing Iunia and Euander, and had a good time talking with my mom and dad. I had fun seeing Barbatus, Livia, and Caius, and good memories were awoken on Princeton's campus. The beach is, in my experience, always good, and I couldn't have asked for nicer weather. Sometimes, things just go well.
* This post will include many pseudonyms, which may give some more data to those who are trying to figure out what my silly naming system is.
** Selena self-selected her own name, so it's not an example of my system.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
2010.09.16
Days Remaining: 257
1. Oye. Sleep remains a problem, and by this time tonight I'm really falling to pieces. I spoke with Octavian earlier this evening, and he's been dealt a raw hand recently (I'd go into details as commiseration, but don't want to intrude on his privacy). Then I noted on Belisarius' blog (whereon I am known as Shrewsbury, btw), that he has contracted a cold transmitted via his Progeny and their return to public school. So, in perspective, not feeling rested is hardly a disaster. Still, I'd dearly love to sleep through a night sometime soon.
2. Classes today were by and large fine. I really do enjoy my job, and am encouraged that the Philosophy of Religion course has a very active class participation dynamic. I had two students drop this week, one frankly admitted that she wasn't really feeling the material, but the remaining 23 students are very involved in discussing the philosophical texts we're covering (today's conversation was mostly about Pascal's wager and then segued into how it could be related to Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" idea - this week has begun the question of how and why we believe religious claims). It's much more of a group conversation than I had anticipated it being, which is great. The Native American Religions class, on the other hand, though active, clearly suffers from a sub-par time slot, as the students are frequently crashing by the time they get there, so that even the engaged ones are less energetic than in previous classes. I don't know what to do about it, short of making them do jumping jacks before class to get their metabolisms to ratchet up a notch or two.
3. I received an email with the ominous heading "Houndalympics" (n.b. the name has been disguised as per usual), which I took to be one of the endless flow of "informative" emails that get sent out by the administration. Turns out, in fact, that I was wrong. Instead, the email informed me that one of the campus dorms has elected to adopt me as their faculty team member in the upcoming campus games. I was asked to either accept or decline and, if I accepted, to indicate which of the various games I would like to participate in. Given that I have a strict "Don't physically rough up, or be roughed up by, students" policy, I elected to be on the Crosswords team. So two weeks from tomorrow night I'll be basically pulling an all-nighter doing competitive crosswords and cheering on my team. The odd part is that I have no idea who these people are; I don't know where my students live, and if I had to guess, there are a three groups of students who might have chosen me. These three groups are comprised of students who've opted to take several of my classes, ask me to give talks in their dorms, invite me to their art exhibits, etc. Today I asked the first (my religious studies majors), and they said it wasn't them. So I'm left with my crunchily organic-living students, or my newspaper staff students. I've no idea which it is.
4. And that's it for now. Have a good night, all. Tomorrow, the beach.
Days Remaining: 257
1. Oye. Sleep remains a problem, and by this time tonight I'm really falling to pieces. I spoke with Octavian earlier this evening, and he's been dealt a raw hand recently (I'd go into details as commiseration, but don't want to intrude on his privacy). Then I noted on Belisarius' blog (whereon I am known as Shrewsbury, btw), that he has contracted a cold transmitted via his Progeny and their return to public school. So, in perspective, not feeling rested is hardly a disaster. Still, I'd dearly love to sleep through a night sometime soon.
2. Classes today were by and large fine. I really do enjoy my job, and am encouraged that the Philosophy of Religion course has a very active class participation dynamic. I had two students drop this week, one frankly admitted that she wasn't really feeling the material, but the remaining 23 students are very involved in discussing the philosophical texts we're covering (today's conversation was mostly about Pascal's wager and then segued into how it could be related to Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" idea - this week has begun the question of how and why we believe religious claims). It's much more of a group conversation than I had anticipated it being, which is great. The Native American Religions class, on the other hand, though active, clearly suffers from a sub-par time slot, as the students are frequently crashing by the time they get there, so that even the engaged ones are less energetic than in previous classes. I don't know what to do about it, short of making them do jumping jacks before class to get their metabolisms to ratchet up a notch or two.
3. I received an email with the ominous heading "Houndalympics" (n.b. the name has been disguised as per usual), which I took to be one of the endless flow of "informative" emails that get sent out by the administration. Turns out, in fact, that I was wrong. Instead, the email informed me that one of the campus dorms has elected to adopt me as their faculty team member in the upcoming campus games. I was asked to either accept or decline and, if I accepted, to indicate which of the various games I would like to participate in. Given that I have a strict "Don't physically rough up, or be roughed up by, students" policy, I elected to be on the Crosswords team. So two weeks from tomorrow night I'll be basically pulling an all-nighter doing competitive crosswords and cheering on my team. The odd part is that I have no idea who these people are; I don't know where my students live, and if I had to guess, there are a three groups of students who might have chosen me. These three groups are comprised of students who've opted to take several of my classes, ask me to give talks in their dorms, invite me to their art exhibits, etc. Today I asked the first (my religious studies majors), and they said it wasn't them. So I'm left with my crunchily organic-living students, or my newspaper staff students. I've no idea which it is.
4. And that's it for now. Have a good night, all. Tomorrow, the beach.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Skipping Stones (or posts, as the case may be)
2010.09.15
Days Remaining: 258
1. Well, that's done it. I've jumped the shark, and already fallen to the temptation to not post every day. Two nights ago I had one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had. It was so bad that I was almost late getting to class yesterday morning (and my class starts at 1150am, and is only 10 minutes away from my apartment) because I was stumbling around in a daze after dragging myself out of bed. Yesterday's classes were fine, though my students were warned ahead of time that I was not firing on all cylinders. Once classes were done, I got back into my car and came home ASAP to prevent me from falling asleep at the wheel later in the day.
2. Octavian was supposed to come into town last night, but his train was delayed by several hours, and he called me after his original arrival time to say that they had just left NYC. So he just caught a cab from the New Aldwych train station to his hotel, and I crashed. Hard.
3. I don't know why I'm not sleeping well this past week, but it's been consistent and cumulative in its effects. I am dreaming very vividly, but not particularly coherently or memorably. I wake up after dreams throughout the night, but then forget them almost immediately.
4. Random housekeeping/organizational snafu to be repaired today: when I packed up my office in the condo in June, I apparently didn't pack the surge protector for my computer (I must have put it with other extension cords, surge protectors, etc.). This led to me not being able to plug in all the components of my desktop, and I opted to watch films and listen to music on my laptop, and leave my desktop voiceless until I could buy a surge protector. Well, today is payday, and tonight, there will be music. And possibly Netflix. There is much rejoicing.
5. Speaking of payday, I actually enjoy paying bills. I'd enjoy it more if there were any money left afterward, but I feel a strong aesthetic pleasure in checking off the list of payments as they are made.
6. The big news today is that I'm going to Providence this afternoon to formally file for divorce. The entire process will cost almost $200, which is why I've had to wait. But after this afternoon, my part in the process will be pretty much complete. The sheriff in OK (or, rather, a sheriff - they have more than one) will serve the papers to my ex-in-process-wife, she has already agreed to sign them "no contest" and then it's just a waiting period of 3 months before we are officially unmarried. Conveniently, I have a therapist appointment directly afterward, as I expect that, even given the reasons for divorce, this will be difficult on some level.
7. I'm really looking forward to going to the beach this weekend. Tomorrow will involve a lot of grading, and then freedom on Friday.
Days Remaining: 258
1. Well, that's done it. I've jumped the shark, and already fallen to the temptation to not post every day. Two nights ago I had one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had. It was so bad that I was almost late getting to class yesterday morning (and my class starts at 1150am, and is only 10 minutes away from my apartment) because I was stumbling around in a daze after dragging myself out of bed. Yesterday's classes were fine, though my students were warned ahead of time that I was not firing on all cylinders. Once classes were done, I got back into my car and came home ASAP to prevent me from falling asleep at the wheel later in the day.
2. Octavian was supposed to come into town last night, but his train was delayed by several hours, and he called me after his original arrival time to say that they had just left NYC. So he just caught a cab from the New Aldwych train station to his hotel, and I crashed. Hard.
3. I don't know why I'm not sleeping well this past week, but it's been consistent and cumulative in its effects. I am dreaming very vividly, but not particularly coherently or memorably. I wake up after dreams throughout the night, but then forget them almost immediately.
4. Random housekeeping/organizational snafu to be repaired today: when I packed up my office in the condo in June, I apparently didn't pack the surge protector for my computer (I must have put it with other extension cords, surge protectors, etc.). This led to me not being able to plug in all the components of my desktop, and I opted to watch films and listen to music on my laptop, and leave my desktop voiceless until I could buy a surge protector. Well, today is payday, and tonight, there will be music. And possibly Netflix. There is much rejoicing.
5. Speaking of payday, I actually enjoy paying bills. I'd enjoy it more if there were any money left afterward, but I feel a strong aesthetic pleasure in checking off the list of payments as they are made.
6. The big news today is that I'm going to Providence this afternoon to formally file for divorce. The entire process will cost almost $200, which is why I've had to wait. But after this afternoon, my part in the process will be pretty much complete. The sheriff in OK (or, rather, a sheriff - they have more than one) will serve the papers to my ex-in-process-wife, she has already agreed to sign them "no contest" and then it's just a waiting period of 3 months before we are officially unmarried. Conveniently, I have a therapist appointment directly afterward, as I expect that, even given the reasons for divorce, this will be difficult on some level.
7. I'm really looking forward to going to the beach this weekend. Tomorrow will involve a lot of grading, and then freedom on Friday.
Monday, September 13, 2010
2010.09.13
Days Remaining: 260
1. Today I went to lunch with the Administrator (I suppose technically she's the Administrative Assistant, but having been such a person, knowing current and previous such people, and observing this one in her job, I can say that the "assistant" part of the title doesn't do justice) for the Humanities at Baskerville College, with whom I've worked for almost 3 years now. She took me to an "Asian Fusion" restaurant, which was basically a Chinese Buffet with some sushi, Mongolian beef, and Thai noodles thrown in. There was a time, many many years ago, when I would go to Chinese Buffets with some regularity. Then, as age began to work its slow alchemy on my metabolism, it stopped making financial sense to go (i.e., I couldn't eat enough to justify the cost of the buffet as opposed to just ordering take-out). Plus, let's be honest, the food was usually so-so. To my surprise, the food at this particular "fusion" buffet today was actually pretty good, and the lunchtime cost ($6.95) was certainly low enough to justify two heaping plates of the food. It's the first time I've seen what makes sense to me in terms of pricing in New Aldwych, where in general, despite being an economically depressed blue collar town, things (starting with real estate and trickling downwards) are surprisingly expensive.
2. The weather up here has turned cooler; the highs are in the low 70's, and the sun has been behind clouds for most of yesterday and today, which makes it feel cooler than it actually is. We also had intermittent pin-prick rain showers in the afternoon. I've discovered, over the past several years, that I have a high tolerance for cold temperatures. Today folks were putting on jackets or layering shirts, and I was completely comfortable in a T-shirt, as usual. In fact, several offices had their heaters on (which I thought was kind of silly - it was still in the 70's, after all), and I couldn't stay in them for more than a few minutes because I started to sweat. Last year I regularly took H, my beloved and far-away dog, on two walks a day, year-round. It was only on the coldest days that I would put on a coat or a sweat shirt. And even on the coldest days, it was mostly my fingers that would feel the cold (though of course wearing gloves helped with that). I wasn't this resistant when I lived in Syracuse, and I'm not sure why it doesn't bother me much at all. I don't like being freezing cold, but I don't really need a jacket most of the year, unless I am going to be outside in low temperatures for a long time.
3. I continue to move forward, in stuttering steps, on getting my kitchen in order. I bit the bullet today and did more box-juggling, enough to clear off the counter, do dishes, and find places to put a few more things. Tomorrow, after the drying is done, I'll actually have open counter space, which is astonishing to imagine.
4. This afternoon I photocopied a bunch of essays from a book I have on interlibrary loan. The book was not a sterling example of the book-maker's art; the cover was glossy/laminated cardboard, the binding wasn't terribly strong, etc. But it's a German academic press, and the book costs $238 (this is the kind of book Amazon.com does not discount). This is ridiculous. I'm increasingly suspicious of the collusion of universities, professors, and academic presses to economically restrict access to interesting work, so that only those who have an in with a subscribing school can get a hold of these sorts of texts. It's even worse for journals. I firmly believe that one of the things we can and should be doing is making these sorts of texts easily (if not freely) available to the general public. Sure, most people probably won't read them, but why does the academic world need to automatically restrict access to its productions? Especially considering the degree to which most of our work is at least partly subsidized by state funding mechanisms, even at so-called private institutions.
5. Dad, I love you and am thinking about you.
6. Tomorrow Octavian is coming back into town, and hopefully we'll get the chance to hang out again. For now, I'm off to bed.
Days Remaining: 260
1. Today I went to lunch with the Administrator (I suppose technically she's the Administrative Assistant, but having been such a person, knowing current and previous such people, and observing this one in her job, I can say that the "assistant" part of the title doesn't do justice) for the Humanities at Baskerville College, with whom I've worked for almost 3 years now. She took me to an "Asian Fusion" restaurant, which was basically a Chinese Buffet with some sushi, Mongolian beef, and Thai noodles thrown in. There was a time, many many years ago, when I would go to Chinese Buffets with some regularity. Then, as age began to work its slow alchemy on my metabolism, it stopped making financial sense to go (i.e., I couldn't eat enough to justify the cost of the buffet as opposed to just ordering take-out). Plus, let's be honest, the food was usually so-so. To my surprise, the food at this particular "fusion" buffet today was actually pretty good, and the lunchtime cost ($6.95) was certainly low enough to justify two heaping plates of the food. It's the first time I've seen what makes sense to me in terms of pricing in New Aldwych, where in general, despite being an economically depressed blue collar town, things (starting with real estate and trickling downwards) are surprisingly expensive.
2. The weather up here has turned cooler; the highs are in the low 70's, and the sun has been behind clouds for most of yesterday and today, which makes it feel cooler than it actually is. We also had intermittent pin-prick rain showers in the afternoon. I've discovered, over the past several years, that I have a high tolerance for cold temperatures. Today folks were putting on jackets or layering shirts, and I was completely comfortable in a T-shirt, as usual. In fact, several offices had their heaters on (which I thought was kind of silly - it was still in the 70's, after all), and I couldn't stay in them for more than a few minutes because I started to sweat. Last year I regularly took H, my beloved and far-away dog, on two walks a day, year-round. It was only on the coldest days that I would put on a coat or a sweat shirt. And even on the coldest days, it was mostly my fingers that would feel the cold (though of course wearing gloves helped with that). I wasn't this resistant when I lived in Syracuse, and I'm not sure why it doesn't bother me much at all. I don't like being freezing cold, but I don't really need a jacket most of the year, unless I am going to be outside in low temperatures for a long time.
3. I continue to move forward, in stuttering steps, on getting my kitchen in order. I bit the bullet today and did more box-juggling, enough to clear off the counter, do dishes, and find places to put a few more things. Tomorrow, after the drying is done, I'll actually have open counter space, which is astonishing to imagine.
4. This afternoon I photocopied a bunch of essays from a book I have on interlibrary loan. The book was not a sterling example of the book-maker's art; the cover was glossy/laminated cardboard, the binding wasn't terribly strong, etc. But it's a German academic press, and the book costs $238 (this is the kind of book Amazon.com does not discount). This is ridiculous. I'm increasingly suspicious of the collusion of universities, professors, and academic presses to economically restrict access to interesting work, so that only those who have an in with a subscribing school can get a hold of these sorts of texts. It's even worse for journals. I firmly believe that one of the things we can and should be doing is making these sorts of texts easily (if not freely) available to the general public. Sure, most people probably won't read them, but why does the academic world need to automatically restrict access to its productions? Especially considering the degree to which most of our work is at least partly subsidized by state funding mechanisms, even at so-called private institutions.
5. Dad, I love you and am thinking about you.
6. Tomorrow Octavian is coming back into town, and hopefully we'll get the chance to hang out again. For now, I'm off to bed.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
2010.09.12
Days Remaining: 261
1. Non-academic note today: I've been sleeping very poorly the last few nights. I still wake up on my own between 6 and 7am, but because I've been so tired I've been trying to stay in bed longer. Some days it's difficult to be motivated to do much of anything. I've hit the doldrums of momentum in getting this apartment set up; without another table on which to put things as I unpack I'm mostly just juggling the contents of various boxes. I've thought it before, but now I'm certain of it: a clear table or an abundance of empty shelves are absolutely necessary for a functioning household (at least for me). Without a staging area (or ultimate destination - I don't have any cabinets), unpacking makes no sense.
2. Tomorrow I'm going to Baskerville College's campus to get my Faculty ID card. Every other institution of higher learning where I've worked over the past decade has had ID cards. But BC has consistently resisted this for reasons that none of the staff understand. Now, though, in my final year here, they're up for it. And, of course, I've grown out my beard for the hell of it, so my photo ID will be me in ursine mode.
3. Sometimes it's the little victories. Before I was married I had a personal Netflix account that used my grad school email address as my login. Then, when I moved to New England my ex-wife added me to her account under my more usual email address (the one to which all correspondence to me is addressed). So now that we're divorcing I reopened my personal account, but couldn't get the usual address (which was linked to her account) to transfer to my own account. Neither she nor I could figure out a way to do this. Today I spent about 20 minutes on the telephone with a very nice Netflix customer service representative who sounded like he lived on Lake Woebegon (seriously, this call center has to be in Minnesota). At the end of it I got my account information changed, unlinked my usual email from my ex-wife's account, and was able to get it assigned to my account. It's not much, but every little step towards complete disentanglement is a step forward.
4. Random interesting URL: http://dowlingduncan.com/dowling-duncan-redesign-us-bank-notes/
5. And that's about it for now. This week I'm going to be spending some time on the new career path issue, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
Days Remaining: 261
1. Non-academic note today: I've been sleeping very poorly the last few nights. I still wake up on my own between 6 and 7am, but because I've been so tired I've been trying to stay in bed longer. Some days it's difficult to be motivated to do much of anything. I've hit the doldrums of momentum in getting this apartment set up; without another table on which to put things as I unpack I'm mostly just juggling the contents of various boxes. I've thought it before, but now I'm certain of it: a clear table or an abundance of empty shelves are absolutely necessary for a functioning household (at least for me). Without a staging area (or ultimate destination - I don't have any cabinets), unpacking makes no sense.
2. Tomorrow I'm going to Baskerville College's campus to get my Faculty ID card. Every other institution of higher learning where I've worked over the past decade has had ID cards. But BC has consistently resisted this for reasons that none of the staff understand. Now, though, in my final year here, they're up for it. And, of course, I've grown out my beard for the hell of it, so my photo ID will be me in ursine mode.
3. Sometimes it's the little victories. Before I was married I had a personal Netflix account that used my grad school email address as my login. Then, when I moved to New England my ex-wife added me to her account under my more usual email address (the one to which all correspondence to me is addressed). So now that we're divorcing I reopened my personal account, but couldn't get the usual address (which was linked to her account) to transfer to my own account. Neither she nor I could figure out a way to do this. Today I spent about 20 minutes on the telephone with a very nice Netflix customer service representative who sounded like he lived on Lake Woebegon (seriously, this call center has to be in Minnesota). At the end of it I got my account information changed, unlinked my usual email from my ex-wife's account, and was able to get it assigned to my account. It's not much, but every little step towards complete disentanglement is a step forward.
4. Random interesting URL: http://dowlingduncan.com/dowling-duncan-redesign-us-bank-notes/
5. And that's about it for now. This week I'm going to be spending some time on the new career path issue, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
How Sweet The Sound
2010.09.11
Days Remaining: 262
1. I just watched (via the magic that is Netflix) the film Amazing Grace, starring Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, the Evangelical Christian Member of Parliament who spearheaded the effort to abolish the British slave trade, and eventually slavery itself in the British Empire. It took him from 1787 to 1833 to achieve this. The film was enjoyable though it, like so many entertainment-focused biopics, is not particularly historically accurate. What struck me forcefully was the way in which Wilberforce's religion and overall political conservatism were referred to obliquely and downplayed (one almost had to know about these things beforehand in order to catch them as they occurred in the film). In fact, religiously-framed concerns were some of the main forces that initiated and energized the British abolitionists (the first petition to abolish the slave trade was presented to Parliament by Quakers), but you wouldn't know that from the film. Is this because we in the 21st century already "know" that Christianity, a full and active engagement with Christianity, is inimical to social reform? That we simply can't register any evidence to the contrary? I have been thinking about this for a few days now, after Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial and the attempts by some conservatives to align MLK, Jr.'s actions with their own. I have heard various liberal commentators aghast at this. What is fascinating to me is that few liberals have talked much about how Beck's focus on piety and religious behaviors is strongly aligned with MLK, Jr.'s own reliance upon scriptural references and a deeply held faith in human betterment as a specifically Christian responsibility (though my understanding is that MLK, Jr. did not imply that this was only achievable through Christianity - oh, the lost ecumenicism of the mid-20th Century). This strikes me as an impoverishment in our political conversations; I'm not nostalgic for religious participation, but I am frustrated to see how we unconsciously assume that evangelical (and related) types of Christianity are inherently conservative. This parallels the surprise that I've heard from people who hear about Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are opposed to Zionism; we already know the way that very observant religious people ought to feel, behave, etc.
2. Today has been pretty quiet once more. I had a very interesting email from a student who was concerned with some of the things we had read, especially an essay on who has the right to make claims about Native American religions. This is a vexed question in the field, and one which I personally manage to sidestep by usually studying dead people who can't argue back. She was earnestly concerned about whether, or how, a non-Native could study (for instance) a particular group's version of the Thirst Dance (more commonly known as the Sun Dance) and whether a non-Native could ever really understand what that was all about. This is a good question, but I worry that we are, as a culture, moving away from a theoretical commitment to translatability and commensurability in general to a way of imagining human groups as somehow not overlapping in important ways. I suppose it's a dialectic of sorts; the past universalisms in the study of human society were inherently flawed because they assumed that Euro-American cultural assumptions were "normal" and evaluated everyone else in those terms (e.g., "not a monotheist? You are superstitious and less civilized than me.").
3. That sort of narcissistic faux-universalism was justly and incisively critiqued starting in the 40s and 50s (though it took off in a major way in the academy only in the 60s and 70s, a little behind the dissolution of the British Empire in tandem with the death throes of colonialism in general). The pendulum swung away from it, and we saw the rise of group-specific claims of essentialism (a random example of how pervasive these new assumptions are: the often recurring idea of Ebonics as a "natural" way that persons of African descent speak). I'm not a fan of the fallen universalism of the 19th and 20th centuries, but neither do I like the idea of inherent mutual unintelligibility between cultures and subcultures. So what is one to do?
4. My way of thinking about this is to recognize that the fallen universalism was flawed because it confused the individual for the species: Euro-American culture was felt to be a standard, and all other cultures were measured against it. Faced with new data that didn't make sense, scholars would record (without any sort of nuance or incisiveness - I'm wildly generalizing here for rhetorical efficiency, of course) "native" perspectives, but they only asked the sorts of questions they assumed "natives" would be able to answer, and never asked the sorts of questions that they might have asked of themselves or each other if it were a "non-native" event. Then they would tell us what the natives were really doing, assuming that it couldn't be anything as sophisticated, etc. as what Europeans and/or Americans would do. Far, far better to start with the assumption (and it is an assumption, but one that can be tested and which has held up to that testing so far) that human beings have a lot in common, but are not simply identical with one another. So if you don't assume that your objects of study are a) primitive, b) childlike, c) pre-political, d) morons, e) gross, we suddenly discover that they actually do a lot of things that sound like us, but not in exactly the same way as us. Those differences are what I would call "culture," and are discernible if one pays attention to the actual people involved, and not to the theoretical "natives" of colonial-era imagination.
5. Better still, we can ground those similarities and differences in the one fact that we all share: bodies. There's a very interesting approach in the study of religion that makes bodied-ness central to any understanding of what's going on. As Kurt Vonnegut has said (in a commencement speech), our bodies are our first and best tools. I'd push that and say that they are the source of how we perceive and imagine the world (if those are two different things). And since our bodies are 99.999% identical within the species (and 99.9% between us and chimpanzees and bonobos) we probably have an awful lot in common. That doesn't dissolve difference, but it does put the degrees of difference in perspective. They're often tremendously important, but I have never seen one that is inherently insurmountable. I may disagree with someone violently, but I can often figure out where they're coming from. It just takes work. It takes respect (I can't simply assume that someone else is just like me, nor can I assume that we're completely different) and it takes a commitment to the other person's or people's individuality within the context of our shared species. The question that I will always wonder about is how it will work when we meet another species as intelligent and language-using as ourselves. Then we're likely to see some real issues of translation.
Days Remaining: 262
1. I just watched (via the magic that is Netflix) the film Amazing Grace, starring Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, the Evangelical Christian Member of Parliament who spearheaded the effort to abolish the British slave trade, and eventually slavery itself in the British Empire. It took him from 1787 to 1833 to achieve this. The film was enjoyable though it, like so many entertainment-focused biopics, is not particularly historically accurate. What struck me forcefully was the way in which Wilberforce's religion and overall political conservatism were referred to obliquely and downplayed (one almost had to know about these things beforehand in order to catch them as they occurred in the film). In fact, religiously-framed concerns were some of the main forces that initiated and energized the British abolitionists (the first petition to abolish the slave trade was presented to Parliament by Quakers), but you wouldn't know that from the film. Is this because we in the 21st century already "know" that Christianity, a full and active engagement with Christianity, is inimical to social reform? That we simply can't register any evidence to the contrary? I have been thinking about this for a few days now, after Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial and the attempts by some conservatives to align MLK, Jr.'s actions with their own. I have heard various liberal commentators aghast at this. What is fascinating to me is that few liberals have talked much about how Beck's focus on piety and religious behaviors is strongly aligned with MLK, Jr.'s own reliance upon scriptural references and a deeply held faith in human betterment as a specifically Christian responsibility (though my understanding is that MLK, Jr. did not imply that this was only achievable through Christianity - oh, the lost ecumenicism of the mid-20th Century). This strikes me as an impoverishment in our political conversations; I'm not nostalgic for religious participation, but I am frustrated to see how we unconsciously assume that evangelical (and related) types of Christianity are inherently conservative. This parallels the surprise that I've heard from people who hear about Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are opposed to Zionism; we already know the way that very observant religious people ought to feel, behave, etc.
2. Today has been pretty quiet once more. I had a very interesting email from a student who was concerned with some of the things we had read, especially an essay on who has the right to make claims about Native American religions. This is a vexed question in the field, and one which I personally manage to sidestep by usually studying dead people who can't argue back. She was earnestly concerned about whether, or how, a non-Native could study (for instance) a particular group's version of the Thirst Dance (more commonly known as the Sun Dance) and whether a non-Native could ever really understand what that was all about. This is a good question, but I worry that we are, as a culture, moving away from a theoretical commitment to translatability and commensurability in general to a way of imagining human groups as somehow not overlapping in important ways. I suppose it's a dialectic of sorts; the past universalisms in the study of human society were inherently flawed because they assumed that Euro-American cultural assumptions were "normal" and evaluated everyone else in those terms (e.g., "not a monotheist? You are superstitious and less civilized than me.").
3. That sort of narcissistic faux-universalism was justly and incisively critiqued starting in the 40s and 50s (though it took off in a major way in the academy only in the 60s and 70s, a little behind the dissolution of the British Empire in tandem with the death throes of colonialism in general). The pendulum swung away from it, and we saw the rise of group-specific claims of essentialism (a random example of how pervasive these new assumptions are: the often recurring idea of Ebonics as a "natural" way that persons of African descent speak). I'm not a fan of the fallen universalism of the 19th and 20th centuries, but neither do I like the idea of inherent mutual unintelligibility between cultures and subcultures. So what is one to do?
4. My way of thinking about this is to recognize that the fallen universalism was flawed because it confused the individual for the species: Euro-American culture was felt to be a standard, and all other cultures were measured against it. Faced with new data that didn't make sense, scholars would record (without any sort of nuance or incisiveness - I'm wildly generalizing here for rhetorical efficiency, of course) "native" perspectives, but they only asked the sorts of questions they assumed "natives" would be able to answer, and never asked the sorts of questions that they might have asked of themselves or each other if it were a "non-native" event. Then they would tell us what the natives were really doing, assuming that it couldn't be anything as sophisticated, etc. as what Europeans and/or Americans would do. Far, far better to start with the assumption (and it is an assumption, but one that can be tested and which has held up to that testing so far) that human beings have a lot in common, but are not simply identical with one another. So if you don't assume that your objects of study are a) primitive, b) childlike, c) pre-political, d) morons, e) gross, we suddenly discover that they actually do a lot of things that sound like us, but not in exactly the same way as us. Those differences are what I would call "culture," and are discernible if one pays attention to the actual people involved, and not to the theoretical "natives" of colonial-era imagination.
5. Better still, we can ground those similarities and differences in the one fact that we all share: bodies. There's a very interesting approach in the study of religion that makes bodied-ness central to any understanding of what's going on. As Kurt Vonnegut has said (in a commencement speech), our bodies are our first and best tools. I'd push that and say that they are the source of how we perceive and imagine the world (if those are two different things). And since our bodies are 99.999% identical within the species (and 99.9% between us and chimpanzees and bonobos) we probably have an awful lot in common. That doesn't dissolve difference, but it does put the degrees of difference in perspective. They're often tremendously important, but I have never seen one that is inherently insurmountable. I may disagree with someone violently, but I can often figure out where they're coming from. It just takes work. It takes respect (I can't simply assume that someone else is just like me, nor can I assume that we're completely different) and it takes a commitment to the other person's or people's individuality within the context of our shared species. The question that I will always wonder about is how it will work when we meet another species as intelligent and language-using as ourselves. Then we're likely to see some real issues of translation.
Friday, September 10, 2010
2010.09.10
Days Remaining: 263
1. I've been here for 2 weeks as of tomorrow afternoon at 330pm, and I spent an hour tonight unpacking my kitchen stuff. I've got some more to do tomorrow (there is not a lot of cabinet space, so I'm going to have to be creative in how I arrange what I've got to make it fit and be accessible). Why the 2-week delay? To be honest, because a lot of what I've got I didn't need right away. I didn't take much of anything with me when I packed up my things in Providence in late June and early July, and I'm trying to make lemonade with the tight constraints of this apartment, seeing how much, or how little, I actually need. The day-to-day answer, so far, is "precious little."
2. The unpacking also cleared up some space (2 big and 3 little boxes/bins out of the way, with more to go tomorrow), which makes the apartment a bit less crowded. I may buy another folding table to use as a staging area, since the one I've got now has my computer on it and so its surface is not really useful for spreading out stuff. And the kitchen, sadly, doesn't have much counter space, either.
3. Last year I read Peter S. Beagle's lovely and unsettling short story, "Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke and the Angel," which I highly recommend. I was reminded of it because I just read a review of Joseph Skibell's A Curable Romantic, which also included themes and ideas from Mittel-European Jewish culture, and now am remembering a book currently buried in a box somewhere in this room, The Angel of Forgetfulness, which I bought but have never had the time/chance to read. So many books unread. So much to do.
Days Remaining: 263
1. I've been here for 2 weeks as of tomorrow afternoon at 330pm, and I spent an hour tonight unpacking my kitchen stuff. I've got some more to do tomorrow (there is not a lot of cabinet space, so I'm going to have to be creative in how I arrange what I've got to make it fit and be accessible). Why the 2-week delay? To be honest, because a lot of what I've got I didn't need right away. I didn't take much of anything with me when I packed up my things in Providence in late June and early July, and I'm trying to make lemonade with the tight constraints of this apartment, seeing how much, or how little, I actually need. The day-to-day answer, so far, is "precious little."
2. The unpacking also cleared up some space (2 big and 3 little boxes/bins out of the way, with more to go tomorrow), which makes the apartment a bit less crowded. I may buy another folding table to use as a staging area, since the one I've got now has my computer on it and so its surface is not really useful for spreading out stuff. And the kitchen, sadly, doesn't have much counter space, either.
3. Last year I read Peter S. Beagle's lovely and unsettling short story, "Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke and the Angel," which I highly recommend. I was reminded of it because I just read a review of Joseph Skibell's A Curable Romantic, which also included themes and ideas from Mittel-European Jewish culture, and now am remembering a book currently buried in a box somewhere in this room, The Angel of Forgetfulness, which I bought but have never had the time/chance to read. So many books unread. So much to do.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
2010.09.09
Days Remaining: 264
1. Talking about myself gets kind of boring, and I thought that today it would be more interesting to mention some of the things we've been talking about in my classes. First, some background. I start each class, after taking attendance, with what we call "10 Minutes of Freedom." Last year it became clear to me that a lot of students are very intellectually hungry for the chance to talk about social issues, politics, etc., but that they are inundated by sound bites while lacking good models of analytical practice in handling the information overload. So the "10 Minutes of Freedom" are an open discussion session when they can ask about pretty much anything, and either I'll respond directly or I'll ask other students their ideas on the topic and I just moderate. Last year it got out of hand periodically, and we'd spend a lot of time discussing things that weren't really related to the class topics, so this semester I'm rigorously enforcing the 10 minute part of the process.
2. It's taking the students some time to get used to having the chance to talk about anything, and so far it's mostly been students I've taught before who are asking questions or raising topics. This can be very trivial (today someone asked me what superpower I'd wish for). On the other hand, some of the more experienced students have begun formulating their questions/topics in advance. Case in point: on Tuesday one of my returners asked about drug legalization. He still formulated this as "what do you [i.e., me] think about...?" but I asked for other students' responses and thoughts. In a later class on Tuesday I mentioned that question/topic, and today a student in one of those later classes brought it up, having thought about it and got to wondering.
3. The consensus of students who spoke up today in my Native American Religions class was interesting to me, but I'm not sure it's actually surprising. The majority of them seemed to be pro-legalization, although they expressed some surprise when I said that I'm pro-legalization for all drugs, and not just pot. They clearly seem to feel that cannabis should be legalized, but were very mixed about the advisability of making, for instance, methamphetamines legal. What struck me in particular was that cannabis seems to be normalized among them almost like alcohol. From what they said, I don't have any sense of how many of them actually smoke cannabis, or how regularly (alcohol use is very common Baskerville College's campus - we've had several "interventions" and "campus discussions" on the topic in the past few years due to some highly publicized medical crises). But they aren't indignant or worked up on the issue of cannabis legalization; they just take it for granted that it's not a big deal.
4. So what is the distinction they seem to be implicitly drawing between cannabis and other illegal substances? From the comments that came up repeatedly, it's all about alleged societal harm. Many of them were concerned with how drugs deform communities, and we had an interesting series of exchanges about whether drugs were the cause of such problems, symptoms, or if they were basically epiphenomena. I'm mostly in the latter camp, and it really disturbed some of the students, who seemed to think that I was nonchalant about the possible negative consequences that drug use can have. I'm not, I think that drug abuse becomes a problem in places where there are other, deeper issues that make drug use (and related black market behaviors) more appealing, and where social structures are lacking to help moderate or control said behaviors.
5. That last point managed to segue into the topic of Native American Religions, because there has been some interesting work done on ways that colonial-era Native groups attempted to deal with the influx of alcohol. The stereotype of the drunken Indian had already taken hold, and Europeans and Americans were very interested in exploiting what they perceived as an inherent weakness. This would seem to prove my students' point: alcohol led to the train-wrecking of Native societies. But the recent work to which I referred found that native groups in the Southeast (the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc.) tried to regulate alcohol consumption by integrating it into ritual life; they tried to make alcohol a seasonal consumable, or one which could only be drunk during very highly regulated ceremonies. The problem wasn't that they couldn't get it to work, the problem was that European and American traders kept working against them, smuggling in whiskey to folks who were drinking too much, or refusing to trade native goods for anything but alcohol (this is nefarious - because European and American manufactured goods had replaced indigenous production, and then even that was taken away, and only alcohol was offered in payment for things like deerskins or agricultural goods). Combine all of that with ongoing epidemics, military conflict and conquest, and the steady loss of land and subsistence independence, and it's not at all clear that alcohol destroyed (or damaged) Native cultures. It's indisputable that it didn't help, but we see in later (better documented) contact situations that widespread alcoholism actually follows the economic and political collapse, rather than preceding it. Similarly, the so-called epidemic of crack in US inner cities didn't lead to poverty, it followed. But, in both cases, after all hell had broken loose, the widespread development of substance abuse made it much harder to recover and rebuild the societies.
6. This is why my students' discomfort with legalizing (and regulating) drugs was so interesting: the War on Drugs totally hasn't worked in preventing drug use, but it has done a great job (much like earlier British and American public campaigns against alcohol consumption) in distracting people from issues of political disenfranchisement, socio-economic deprivation, and structural inequality. Again, I'm not saying that drugs are harmless, good for you, or anything like that. I've just never seen data that says that they are the cause of widespread social harm in and of themselves. This was actually shocking to my students, at least some of them, and therefore all the more important to bring out into the open.
7. We also talked about studying Native American religion, too, after the 10 minutes were up. But that's another topic, and this is too long already.
8. On a personal note, I've been invited to go to the beach next weekend with my sister's family and my parents. Yesterday I posted about loving the waterfront, today I get the invite. There's only one obvious next move: I'd love to have tons of money, if anything powerful in the cosmos is listening...
Days Remaining: 264
1. Talking about myself gets kind of boring, and I thought that today it would be more interesting to mention some of the things we've been talking about in my classes. First, some background. I start each class, after taking attendance, with what we call "10 Minutes of Freedom." Last year it became clear to me that a lot of students are very intellectually hungry for the chance to talk about social issues, politics, etc., but that they are inundated by sound bites while lacking good models of analytical practice in handling the information overload. So the "10 Minutes of Freedom" are an open discussion session when they can ask about pretty much anything, and either I'll respond directly or I'll ask other students their ideas on the topic and I just moderate. Last year it got out of hand periodically, and we'd spend a lot of time discussing things that weren't really related to the class topics, so this semester I'm rigorously enforcing the 10 minute part of the process.
2. It's taking the students some time to get used to having the chance to talk about anything, and so far it's mostly been students I've taught before who are asking questions or raising topics. This can be very trivial (today someone asked me what superpower I'd wish for). On the other hand, some of the more experienced students have begun formulating their questions/topics in advance. Case in point: on Tuesday one of my returners asked about drug legalization. He still formulated this as "what do you [i.e., me] think about...?" but I asked for other students' responses and thoughts. In a later class on Tuesday I mentioned that question/topic, and today a student in one of those later classes brought it up, having thought about it and got to wondering.
3. The consensus of students who spoke up today in my Native American Religions class was interesting to me, but I'm not sure it's actually surprising. The majority of them seemed to be pro-legalization, although they expressed some surprise when I said that I'm pro-legalization for all drugs, and not just pot. They clearly seem to feel that cannabis should be legalized, but were very mixed about the advisability of making, for instance, methamphetamines legal. What struck me in particular was that cannabis seems to be normalized among them almost like alcohol. From what they said, I don't have any sense of how many of them actually smoke cannabis, or how regularly (alcohol use is very common Baskerville College's campus - we've had several "interventions" and "campus discussions" on the topic in the past few years due to some highly publicized medical crises). But they aren't indignant or worked up on the issue of cannabis legalization; they just take it for granted that it's not a big deal.
4. So what is the distinction they seem to be implicitly drawing between cannabis and other illegal substances? From the comments that came up repeatedly, it's all about alleged societal harm. Many of them were concerned with how drugs deform communities, and we had an interesting series of exchanges about whether drugs were the cause of such problems, symptoms, or if they were basically epiphenomena. I'm mostly in the latter camp, and it really disturbed some of the students, who seemed to think that I was nonchalant about the possible negative consequences that drug use can have. I'm not, I think that drug abuse becomes a problem in places where there are other, deeper issues that make drug use (and related black market behaviors) more appealing, and where social structures are lacking to help moderate or control said behaviors.
5. That last point managed to segue into the topic of Native American Religions, because there has been some interesting work done on ways that colonial-era Native groups attempted to deal with the influx of alcohol. The stereotype of the drunken Indian had already taken hold, and Europeans and Americans were very interested in exploiting what they perceived as an inherent weakness. This would seem to prove my students' point: alcohol led to the train-wrecking of Native societies. But the recent work to which I referred found that native groups in the Southeast (the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc.) tried to regulate alcohol consumption by integrating it into ritual life; they tried to make alcohol a seasonal consumable, or one which could only be drunk during very highly regulated ceremonies. The problem wasn't that they couldn't get it to work, the problem was that European and American traders kept working against them, smuggling in whiskey to folks who were drinking too much, or refusing to trade native goods for anything but alcohol (this is nefarious - because European and American manufactured goods had replaced indigenous production, and then even that was taken away, and only alcohol was offered in payment for things like deerskins or agricultural goods). Combine all of that with ongoing epidemics, military conflict and conquest, and the steady loss of land and subsistence independence, and it's not at all clear that alcohol destroyed (or damaged) Native cultures. It's indisputable that it didn't help, but we see in later (better documented) contact situations that widespread alcoholism actually follows the economic and political collapse, rather than preceding it. Similarly, the so-called epidemic of crack in US inner cities didn't lead to poverty, it followed. But, in both cases, after all hell had broken loose, the widespread development of substance abuse made it much harder to recover and rebuild the societies.
6. This is why my students' discomfort with legalizing (and regulating) drugs was so interesting: the War on Drugs totally hasn't worked in preventing drug use, but it has done a great job (much like earlier British and American public campaigns against alcohol consumption) in distracting people from issues of political disenfranchisement, socio-economic deprivation, and structural inequality. Again, I'm not saying that drugs are harmless, good for you, or anything like that. I've just never seen data that says that they are the cause of widespread social harm in and of themselves. This was actually shocking to my students, at least some of them, and therefore all the more important to bring out into the open.
7. We also talked about studying Native American religion, too, after the 10 minutes were up. But that's another topic, and this is too long already.
8. On a personal note, I've been invited to go to the beach next weekend with my sister's family and my parents. Yesterday I posted about loving the waterfront, today I get the invite. There's only one obvious next move: I'd love to have tons of money, if anything powerful in the cosmos is listening...
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
So much depends on the weather
2010.09.08
Days Remaining: 265
1. Last night I went into downtown New Aldwych* to meet Octavian at the Amtrak station. His train was due at 909pm, and I arrived at approximately 840pm. There was a time in my life, thankfully the majority of my adult life, when I was extremely punctual, and even made a habit of arriving early. In the past five or so years (it would be convenient to blame it on my marriage, but the truth is it started before then) I have developed the very bad habit of being late almost all of the time. The downside to being late is that one is, effectively, always crying wolf and so, when one is legitimately late (i.e., there was an accident on the highway, the George Washington Bridge is backed up again, a student began crying during a meeting and needed to be dealt with, etc.), it doesn't really matter, because no one expected you on time anyway. Remember, I used (I realize that that "used" = 6+ years ago, but I still remember) to make a habit of being early, which, given travel conditions, often meant that I was just on time. But for half a decade now, I've been late. I'm trying, though I suspect this will take a while, to amend this bad habit. Maybe sometime when I'm doing a theme post I'll talk more about being late, on time, or early. Anyway, last night I got to the train station in New Aldwych 30 minutes early.
2. Yes, yes, it's wonderful that I'm trying to behave like a basically considerate adult and all, but I mentioned the above point because getting there early gave me time to walk around the riverfront area (there's a boardwalk/park directly next to the train station, and several plazas around it). I lived in Philadelphia for 6 years, and the last 4 of them were very close to the Delaware River. I loved living near the water. Most of my favorite vacations have taken place very near the ocean, and discovering last week that I'm living in easy walk of the seashore park has been a highlight of moving here. But that park is a place for mornings, and the riverside park was better at night. There is something I find inherently soothing about the sound of water rhythmically lapping against jetties and pilings concrete barriers. When I came up here to find a place to live a few weeks ago, I had hoped that it would be somewhere near downtown. The 25+ minutes I spent on the riverwalk last night reminded me why. I have heard, though I have not followed up on, a claim that human beings respond positively, in psychological and emotional states, to regular exposure to the natural world. If we become caught in artificial environments too long, we're prone to depression, anxiety, and various other problems. This is something that I've noted in my own life: proximity to the natural world revivifies me and helps me to get an even keel when in mid-crisis. Last night, and the morning walks I've been doing, reminded me that some types of (more or less natural) environment have a stronger emotional resonance than others; I would hate to live too far away from the ocean or a river flowing into the ocean. I don't even make a habit of going to the beach very often, but I think I may start doing so whenever I can.
3. Related to that is something that occurred to me yesterday while I was on campus walking between classes: I love sunlight. That probably sounds either banal or foolish, but one of the unfortunate facts of my current apartment is that it's not very bright during the day. It's not dark, mind you, but direct sunlight doesn't happen, and the brightest period is about 6 hours long, this time of year, at most. Walking around yesterday, in the open, and feeling the breezes' coolness and the sun's heat, was like eating good sushi: it kind of cleansed my palate. On class days I don't walk to the beach in the morning but maybe I need to wake up earlier and do so anyway. If I ever build a house, it will have lots of windows and ceiling fans to let in light and help the air flow freely.
4. One of my students came to office hours yesterday and asked me to be her adviser for the Religious Studies Minor. As Visiting Faculty I'm not allowed to do that, so I sent an email to the two professors who have the best reputations as advisers in the department, and recommended the student to them. One of them, who is the senior faculty member in my department, sent me an email today saying that I could send my student to him. He also said that some of my other students who are in one of his classes this semester told him about (I'm not making this up) "the bucket." This is the metaphor that I use to explain a wonderful analytical approach (itself metaphorical) developed initially by a sociologist named Ann Swidler. Her work led her to think of culture as less totalizing than many other scholars tend to; instead she developed the idea that "culture" is a repertoire; an on-the-go grab bag of various ideas, words, actions, objects, etc. that we pick up over time (discarding some things, modifying others), all of which we use to do stuff. This means that what unites people into a single culture is the number of specific things that their individual repertoires have in common. The absolutely first-rate historian of religion Robert Ford Campany took this idea and pointed out that the repertoire metaphor works for pretty much any large group of humans, in his particular case, members of "a" religion. But since repertoires overlap between individuals rather than being homogenous, that helps us think better about what people in a single religious tradition have in common, and why they might be dissimilar in varyingly important ways.
5. My students liked this idea when I went over it with them, but they struggled with applying it until I suggested that they think of all human beings carrying buckets (one per person). As they grow up, their families, friends, neighbors, etc. socialize them, which means that they give them stuff to go into their bucket. But from the beginning the kids play with the things in their buckets, they take some things back out, pick up new things (think about how many kids learn important cultural behaviors from peers at school in entirely informal interactions), etc. The process of acquiring, modifying, discarding, etc. goes on throughout our lives, and you can figure out someone's cultural background (with greater or lesser degrees of precision) by figuring out what their repertoire consists of (ways of talking, ways of moving, ideas they take for granted, skills, etc.). My students got this concept when I used the bucket metaphor, and apparently they're using it to make sense of work in other classes. That's really emotionally and professionally rewarding, but I also realized that my intellectual legacy at Baskerville College might boil down to: "the bucket." Seriously. The other professor I had emailed responded to the "they told me about the bucket" email by saying, "I don't know what the bucket is, and I'm dying to find out." This is how I'm going to be remembered by my colleagues.
6. Today has been very quiet. I'm actually really tired after staying up until 1am last night (I dropped Octavian off at his hotel around midnight, and then didn't go right to bed when I got home). I woke up on my own at 7am, and am clearly running down now. I started experimenting with Gmail's "phone" feature, and it seems to work pretty well. So if you get a call from Escondido, CA, that's probably me.
7. Happy Rosh Hashanah to all who celebrate it! I think honey at you all.
*I'm such a child. I'm really enjoying the pseudonym-making.
Days Remaining: 265
1. Last night I went into downtown New Aldwych* to meet Octavian at the Amtrak station. His train was due at 909pm, and I arrived at approximately 840pm. There was a time in my life, thankfully the majority of my adult life, when I was extremely punctual, and even made a habit of arriving early. In the past five or so years (it would be convenient to blame it on my marriage, but the truth is it started before then) I have developed the very bad habit of being late almost all of the time. The downside to being late is that one is, effectively, always crying wolf and so, when one is legitimately late (i.e., there was an accident on the highway, the George Washington Bridge is backed up again, a student began crying during a meeting and needed to be dealt with, etc.), it doesn't really matter, because no one expected you on time anyway. Remember, I used (I realize that that "used" = 6+ years ago, but I still remember) to make a habit of being early, which, given travel conditions, often meant that I was just on time. But for half a decade now, I've been late. I'm trying, though I suspect this will take a while, to amend this bad habit. Maybe sometime when I'm doing a theme post I'll talk more about being late, on time, or early. Anyway, last night I got to the train station in New Aldwych 30 minutes early.
2. Yes, yes, it's wonderful that I'm trying to behave like a basically considerate adult and all, but I mentioned the above point because getting there early gave me time to walk around the riverfront area (there's a boardwalk/park directly next to the train station, and several plazas around it). I lived in Philadelphia for 6 years, and the last 4 of them were very close to the Delaware River. I loved living near the water. Most of my favorite vacations have taken place very near the ocean, and discovering last week that I'm living in easy walk of the seashore park has been a highlight of moving here. But that park is a place for mornings, and the riverside park was better at night. There is something I find inherently soothing about the sound of water rhythmically lapping against jetties and pilings concrete barriers. When I came up here to find a place to live a few weeks ago, I had hoped that it would be somewhere near downtown. The 25+ minutes I spent on the riverwalk last night reminded me why. I have heard, though I have not followed up on, a claim that human beings respond positively, in psychological and emotional states, to regular exposure to the natural world. If we become caught in artificial environments too long, we're prone to depression, anxiety, and various other problems. This is something that I've noted in my own life: proximity to the natural world revivifies me and helps me to get an even keel when in mid-crisis. Last night, and the morning walks I've been doing, reminded me that some types of (more or less natural) environment have a stronger emotional resonance than others; I would hate to live too far away from the ocean or a river flowing into the ocean. I don't even make a habit of going to the beach very often, but I think I may start doing so whenever I can.
3. Related to that is something that occurred to me yesterday while I was on campus walking between classes: I love sunlight. That probably sounds either banal or foolish, but one of the unfortunate facts of my current apartment is that it's not very bright during the day. It's not dark, mind you, but direct sunlight doesn't happen, and the brightest period is about 6 hours long, this time of year, at most. Walking around yesterday, in the open, and feeling the breezes' coolness and the sun's heat, was like eating good sushi: it kind of cleansed my palate. On class days I don't walk to the beach in the morning but maybe I need to wake up earlier and do so anyway. If I ever build a house, it will have lots of windows and ceiling fans to let in light and help the air flow freely.
4. One of my students came to office hours yesterday and asked me to be her adviser for the Religious Studies Minor. As Visiting Faculty I'm not allowed to do that, so I sent an email to the two professors who have the best reputations as advisers in the department, and recommended the student to them. One of them, who is the senior faculty member in my department, sent me an email today saying that I could send my student to him. He also said that some of my other students who are in one of his classes this semester told him about (I'm not making this up) "the bucket." This is the metaphor that I use to explain a wonderful analytical approach (itself metaphorical) developed initially by a sociologist named Ann Swidler. Her work led her to think of culture as less totalizing than many other scholars tend to; instead she developed the idea that "culture" is a repertoire; an on-the-go grab bag of various ideas, words, actions, objects, etc. that we pick up over time (discarding some things, modifying others), all of which we use to do stuff. This means that what unites people into a single culture is the number of specific things that their individual repertoires have in common. The absolutely first-rate historian of religion Robert Ford Campany took this idea and pointed out that the repertoire metaphor works for pretty much any large group of humans, in his particular case, members of "a" religion. But since repertoires overlap between individuals rather than being homogenous, that helps us think better about what people in a single religious tradition have in common, and why they might be dissimilar in varyingly important ways.
5. My students liked this idea when I went over it with them, but they struggled with applying it until I suggested that they think of all human beings carrying buckets (one per person). As they grow up, their families, friends, neighbors, etc. socialize them, which means that they give them stuff to go into their bucket. But from the beginning the kids play with the things in their buckets, they take some things back out, pick up new things (think about how many kids learn important cultural behaviors from peers at school in entirely informal interactions), etc. The process of acquiring, modifying, discarding, etc. goes on throughout our lives, and you can figure out someone's cultural background (with greater or lesser degrees of precision) by figuring out what their repertoire consists of (ways of talking, ways of moving, ideas they take for granted, skills, etc.). My students got this concept when I used the bucket metaphor, and apparently they're using it to make sense of work in other classes. That's really emotionally and professionally rewarding, but I also realized that my intellectual legacy at Baskerville College might boil down to: "the bucket." Seriously. The other professor I had emailed responded to the "they told me about the bucket" email by saying, "I don't know what the bucket is, and I'm dying to find out." This is how I'm going to be remembered by my colleagues.
6. Today has been very quiet. I'm actually really tired after staying up until 1am last night (I dropped Octavian off at his hotel around midnight, and then didn't go right to bed when I got home). I woke up on my own at 7am, and am clearly running down now. I started experimenting with Gmail's "phone" feature, and it seems to work pretty well. So if you get a call from Escondido, CA, that's probably me.
7. Happy Rosh Hashanah to all who celebrate it! I think honey at you all.
*I'm such a child. I'm really enjoying the pseudonym-making.
Return of the Teacher
2010.09.07
266 Days Remaining
1. Today is the 2nd day of the semester for me here at Baskerville College (go hounds!).* The first day went completely fine, but it's very hard to get a read on one's students on the first day, because most of it is devoted to what I think of as bookkeeping: going over the syllabus, answering introductory questions about due dates, etc. This semester I'm teaching three classes, two of them are completely new for me (part of my contract this year is teaching in lieu of someone on medical leave and another someone on administrative leave). So I actually arrived at the classrooms today with a small degree of trepidation, wondering what it would be like to work with these students on these topics (philosophy of religion, native american religions, and "love, death & desire" - really a cultural/intellectual history course). The long and short of it, so far, is that it seems to be fine. I was very happy with the responsiveness of the students in the first two courses (PoR & L,D & D), and the 3rd ran a bit aground due to the continuing overheating of the classroom (though it was not so bad as last Thursday, when we fled outside to the "green" in order to survive). The students seem engaged, overall, and positively disposed, which last one maybe shouldn't matter but really, really does.
2. Something that I suspected would happen has already begun, now that I'm back on campus: people are asking questions whose answers necessitate some public disclosure of my divorce. It's mostly poor, innocent students who say things like, "how are your dog and cats?" or "what is your wife doing this semester?" I've tried to be gentle about it, and they're often adorably embarrassed (they mean well). I had actually wondered if anyone would ask about my not wearing a wedding ring anymore, as I've seen a few people stare at my hands in classes, but if they were, in fact, noticing the missing ring, they also probably figured that this was not something to ask about. I made this whole thing possible over the past 3 years by not refraining from mentioning details of my private life (especially the various exploits and adventures of/with the pets). Today, that comes home to roost.
3. I've also begun discussing possible alternative career paths with some of the other professors. So far the suggestions oscillate between some sort of consulting and circling back to the professoriate. This is interesting: even the folks who start off strongly supportive of finding an alternative path, if given enough time to expound, wind up back at being a professor. They seem to do this without realizing it. I'm not sure if this is because "professor" is their default career goal, or if they don't have a lot of practical exposure to alternatives, or because they can't imagine me doing something else (I'll assume, if it's the last, that they mean this in a flattering fashion). My list of possible careers gleaned so far is:
a. Political speech writer
b. Educational consultant
c. State Department analyst
d. Religion consultant (for some reason, whenever I think of how this one would work, my internal monologue sounds like Jackie Mason: "Wvat? You want to talk about religion? Wvat are ya doing? I'll tell ya something about religion..." It's functionally indistinguishable from the blue anteater in old Pink Panther cartoons)
e. Popular-audience religion book(s) author (this is harder to do than it may sound)
f. God-king (that's really my own suggestion, but I thought I'd give it a shout out)
g. Grant proposal manager for the public sector (seemed kind of random to me, but it was offered in a spirit of friendship and encouragement).
h. Professor (see, I told you)
4. Tonight my friend Octavian** is arriving for a business meeting tomorrow (conveniently, his company maintains a plant in this town, though he lives in NYC). I'm picking him up at 909pm, and we're going to a late dinner. This will be good, as my social life so far up here has consisted of me watching movies streamed on Netflix, and talking back to them. On the general topic of visiting, I'm very much looking forward to going back to Delaware in a week and a half. The Brandywine Arts Festival is this weekend, but I don't get paid until next Wednesday, so here I stay until that weekend over there. BTW, I love italics.
5. Not much else going on; right now I'm waiting to pick up Octavian, and killing time in the computer lab. No essays to grade yet, and after 3 courses in quick succession, I don't really feel like doing a whole lot of work. I watched the final ten minutes of I Love You, Man, here in the computer lab, because the RedBox disc I rented was scratched, and they had no more for exchange. Instead, I had to order it through Netflix, and it arrived today. But now, tragically, I have nothing else to watch. The horror.
6. Anyway, good night, all.
*Totally made up that name, btw.
**I've decided there will be a system to the pseudonyms I pick, but I'm not saying what it is.
266 Days Remaining
1. Today is the 2nd day of the semester for me here at Baskerville College (go hounds!).* The first day went completely fine, but it's very hard to get a read on one's students on the first day, because most of it is devoted to what I think of as bookkeeping: going over the syllabus, answering introductory questions about due dates, etc. This semester I'm teaching three classes, two of them are completely new for me (part of my contract this year is teaching in lieu of someone on medical leave and another someone on administrative leave). So I actually arrived at the classrooms today with a small degree of trepidation, wondering what it would be like to work with these students on these topics (philosophy of religion, native american religions, and "love, death & desire" - really a cultural/intellectual history course). The long and short of it, so far, is that it seems to be fine. I was very happy with the responsiveness of the students in the first two courses (PoR & L,D & D), and the 3rd ran a bit aground due to the continuing overheating of the classroom (though it was not so bad as last Thursday, when we fled outside to the "green" in order to survive). The students seem engaged, overall, and positively disposed, which last one maybe shouldn't matter but really, really does.
2. Something that I suspected would happen has already begun, now that I'm back on campus: people are asking questions whose answers necessitate some public disclosure of my divorce. It's mostly poor, innocent students who say things like, "how are your dog and cats?" or "what is your wife doing this semester?" I've tried to be gentle about it, and they're often adorably embarrassed (they mean well). I had actually wondered if anyone would ask about my not wearing a wedding ring anymore, as I've seen a few people stare at my hands in classes, but if they were, in fact, noticing the missing ring, they also probably figured that this was not something to ask about. I made this whole thing possible over the past 3 years by not refraining from mentioning details of my private life (especially the various exploits and adventures of/with the pets). Today, that comes home to roost.
3. I've also begun discussing possible alternative career paths with some of the other professors. So far the suggestions oscillate between some sort of consulting and circling back to the professoriate. This is interesting: even the folks who start off strongly supportive of finding an alternative path, if given enough time to expound, wind up back at being a professor. They seem to do this without realizing it. I'm not sure if this is because "professor" is their default career goal, or if they don't have a lot of practical exposure to alternatives, or because they can't imagine me doing something else (I'll assume, if it's the last, that they mean this in a flattering fashion). My list of possible careers gleaned so far is:
a. Political speech writer
b. Educational consultant
c. State Department analyst
d. Religion consultant (for some reason, whenever I think of how this one would work, my internal monologue sounds like Jackie Mason: "Wvat? You want to talk about religion? Wvat are ya doing? I'll tell ya something about religion..." It's functionally indistinguishable from the blue anteater in old Pink Panther cartoons)
e. Popular-audience religion book(s) author (this is harder to do than it may sound)
f. God-king (that's really my own suggestion, but I thought I'd give it a shout out)
g. Grant proposal manager for the public sector (seemed kind of random to me, but it was offered in a spirit of friendship and encouragement).
h. Professor (see, I told you)
4. Tonight my friend Octavian** is arriving for a business meeting tomorrow (conveniently, his company maintains a plant in this town, though he lives in NYC). I'm picking him up at 909pm, and we're going to a late dinner. This will be good, as my social life so far up here has consisted of me watching movies streamed on Netflix, and talking back to them. On the general topic of visiting, I'm very much looking forward to going back to Delaware in a week and a half. The Brandywine Arts Festival is this weekend, but I don't get paid until next Wednesday, so here I stay until that weekend over there. BTW, I love italics.
5. Not much else going on; right now I'm waiting to pick up Octavian, and killing time in the computer lab. No essays to grade yet, and after 3 courses in quick succession, I don't really feel like doing a whole lot of work. I watched the final ten minutes of I Love You, Man, here in the computer lab, because the RedBox disc I rented was scratched, and they had no more for exchange. Instead, I had to order it through Netflix, and it arrived today. But now, tragically, I have nothing else to watch. The horror.
6. Anyway, good night, all.
*Totally made up that name, btw.
**I've decided there will be a system to the pseudonyms I pick, but I'm not saying what it is.
Monday, September 6, 2010
2010.09.06.
Remaining Days: 267
1. We had extraordinarily forceful rains on Friday from the passage of Hurricane Earl. The rain fell so hard that (since I'm on the top floor of my apartment building) it sounded like thousands of tiny, angry drumbeats striking the concrete ceiling. The rain, despite its force, didn't last through the entire day, and by sunset (around 730pm at the latest) the sky was clearing up significantly. The weather that remained throughout the weekend was wind, huge streams of fast-moving air breaking into rapids as they plunged through the buildings and trees of the apartment complex. Things are generally still so far today, and it's actually a bit strange to not hear constant rustling and whooshing outside of my balcony doors. The skies have been clear and sunny (as they are still today), but wind was nearly constant.
2. My apartment only has a small window and a sliding glass door (which opens onto the balcony) on one wall, and otherwise is completely enclosed and inward-facing. The air conditioning unit has a "fan" function, but it's loaded into the same wall as the window and balcony, so air flow is not a strong feature of this location. The winds this weekend were all the more welcome because they pulled the air in my apartment outwards in their wake as they blew past the building, or thrust themselves inside and brought the smell of leaves, and life, into this little space.
3. I've discovered, thanks to a map placed conspicuously on the wall of the Post Office downtown, that my apartment complex is within 2 miles of the local seashore park (complete with a carousel, water slides, etc. I walked down on Saturday morning to see 1) how far it is and 2) if the hurricane had done any interesting damage. The result was 1) not far at all and 2) no. In fact, the park is lovely, with a small boardwalk, a swimming pool (rather unnecessary if you ask me, given that the ocean is right there). Even better, there is a mixed fresh/salt water estuarine cove with a very short nature walk laid out among the dunes and along the water's edge. The coast here is regularly sprinkled with rock formations, augmented by variously decayed breakwaters, jetties, pilings, etc. For the past 3 mornings I've walked down to the beach at 7am (despite this being the holiday weekend, I've avoided what I gather can be fairly large crowds), moving through the dunes, back into the neighborhoods next to the beach, up along the coast, and then back uphill and inland to my apartment complex. As near as I can figure, it's about 4 miles, round trip, but I'm unsure of the exact distance because of the time spent in the park proper, as the paths are not on the map.
4. Since I moved here I've not been able to sleep past 8am at the very latest; in fact I've woken up on my own around 630 or 645am most mornings. I set my alarm clock for 645am on Thursday for the first day of school, and then didn't need it anyway. My dad has teased me several times this summer about my repeated claims that I'd like to wake up early, which are almost always followed by not waking up early at all. It's very easy for me to be a night owl, or at least it is in some circumstances. Here, though, so far I am not. I've been in bed by 11pm most nights, and even if I'm up later, I wake up before 7am the next morning. This is entirely fine with me, as I prefer to be up with the sun, but I'm now wondering a lot about why my circadian rhythms would shift so decisively and without apparent provocation. I've traveled and lived in a range of different places over the past four years, and have not had such a definite reset as this one. The night owl tendency started when I lived in Philadelphia before I got married, so it was not simply a response to any of the life changes that involved. Maybe it's the inflatable bed I'm sleeping on, though I don't seem to be having any particular difficulties with that, and I've slept on inflatable mattresses before without appreciable changes in my sleep patterns.
5. So those are the thoughts and events of the past few days.
Remaining Days: 267
1. We had extraordinarily forceful rains on Friday from the passage of Hurricane Earl. The rain fell so hard that (since I'm on the top floor of my apartment building) it sounded like thousands of tiny, angry drumbeats striking the concrete ceiling. The rain, despite its force, didn't last through the entire day, and by sunset (around 730pm at the latest) the sky was clearing up significantly. The weather that remained throughout the weekend was wind, huge streams of fast-moving air breaking into rapids as they plunged through the buildings and trees of the apartment complex. Things are generally still so far today, and it's actually a bit strange to not hear constant rustling and whooshing outside of my balcony doors. The skies have been clear and sunny (as they are still today), but wind was nearly constant.
2. My apartment only has a small window and a sliding glass door (which opens onto the balcony) on one wall, and otherwise is completely enclosed and inward-facing. The air conditioning unit has a "fan" function, but it's loaded into the same wall as the window and balcony, so air flow is not a strong feature of this location. The winds this weekend were all the more welcome because they pulled the air in my apartment outwards in their wake as they blew past the building, or thrust themselves inside and brought the smell of leaves, and life, into this little space.
3. I've discovered, thanks to a map placed conspicuously on the wall of the Post Office downtown, that my apartment complex is within 2 miles of the local seashore park (complete with a carousel, water slides, etc. I walked down on Saturday morning to see 1) how far it is and 2) if the hurricane had done any interesting damage. The result was 1) not far at all and 2) no. In fact, the park is lovely, with a small boardwalk, a swimming pool (rather unnecessary if you ask me, given that the ocean is right there). Even better, there is a mixed fresh/salt water estuarine cove with a very short nature walk laid out among the dunes and along the water's edge. The coast here is regularly sprinkled with rock formations, augmented by variously decayed breakwaters, jetties, pilings, etc. For the past 3 mornings I've walked down to the beach at 7am (despite this being the holiday weekend, I've avoided what I gather can be fairly large crowds), moving through the dunes, back into the neighborhoods next to the beach, up along the coast, and then back uphill and inland to my apartment complex. As near as I can figure, it's about 4 miles, round trip, but I'm unsure of the exact distance because of the time spent in the park proper, as the paths are not on the map.
4. Since I moved here I've not been able to sleep past 8am at the very latest; in fact I've woken up on my own around 630 or 645am most mornings. I set my alarm clock for 645am on Thursday for the first day of school, and then didn't need it anyway. My dad has teased me several times this summer about my repeated claims that I'd like to wake up early, which are almost always followed by not waking up early at all. It's very easy for me to be a night owl, or at least it is in some circumstances. Here, though, so far I am not. I've been in bed by 11pm most nights, and even if I'm up later, I wake up before 7am the next morning. This is entirely fine with me, as I prefer to be up with the sun, but I'm now wondering a lot about why my circadian rhythms would shift so decisively and without apparent provocation. I've traveled and lived in a range of different places over the past four years, and have not had such a definite reset as this one. The night owl tendency started when I lived in Philadelphia before I got married, so it was not simply a response to any of the life changes that involved. Maybe it's the inflatable bed I'm sleeping on, though I don't seem to be having any particular difficulties with that, and I've slept on inflatable mattresses before without appreciable changes in my sleep patterns.
5. So those are the thoughts and events of the past few days.
Archai
This is the beginning of a project that I'll be undertaking for (at least as a goal right now) the duration of my time residing on the eastern coast of Connecticut. The grades for the 2011 Spring Semester are due by 4pm on 23 May, 2011. My Studio Apartment lease expires on 31 May, 2011, and it is my intention to move out during the week between those two dates. Setting 31 May as the absolute end-point, from today (inclusive), that leaves a maximum of 268 days. My project will be to post something for each of those days, though I am not sure yet as to what those "somethings" might include. At the very least, I'll use this as a diary or daybook of sorts, and I suspect that I'll probably use it for much more, at least occasionally.
A few explanatory remarks:
1). Blog Title. For anyone who doesn't know, I have a lifelong appreciation of, and affection for, Greek mythology (though as time goes by I'm more and more strongly opposed to both words in that phrase - I prefer "Hellenic" to "Greek" and think that "mythology" as a category obscures far more than it clarifies). Despite that lifelong affection, there are very few specific stories that are near and dear to my heart. One exception to this is the story of Endymion (the version, first attested in Sappho - or, as she would have written her name, Psapfo, which became canonical). Endymion was tending sheep at night near Latmos in Asia Minor, laid down to sleep, and dreamed that he held the full moon in his arms. He smiled in his sleep because of the dream, and Selene, the moon, knowing his dream and seeing his smile, fell in love with him. She asked Zeus to grant Endymion eternal life while sleeping, and so Endymion is allegedly still asleep in a cave somewhere, dreaming about loving the moon and, unbeknownst to him, actually holding her in his arms during the daylight hours.
So how does that align with blogging? In the past 2 months I've begun coming to grips with the reality of separating from my wife and going through the process of divorce. I had a respite staying at my parents' house for 6 weeks (originally supposed to be 4), near to many of my friends and literally down the street from my niece and nephew. All of those people being nearby helped me tremendously, but now I'm back in Connecticut, living completely alone for the first time in 3 years, under vastly different circumstances than any since I graduated from college. Over the past week and a half, as I've begun settling in here, I have sometimes had the distinct feeling that "I'm definitely going to wake up sometime soon." But I don't. It's very easy to go through entire days here without speaking to another person, which can increase the feeling of unreality. And, as the opening paragraph's calendrical orientation indicates, this school year feels like an interlude, rather than a proper chapter, in my life. I know that there are major changes going on and more coming, but for now, I'm still caught up in the interstices, not quite awake nor quite asleep. Hence the blog title.
2. Geographical and biographical referents. On the off chance that anyone reads this who isn't part of my extended family circle (which I draw around my friends as well as biological relatives), I'm going to be using pseudonyms for where I live and the people to whom I'll refer. This will also provide some sort of buffer if I should blog about events or issues pertaining to my job.
A few explanatory remarks:
1). Blog Title. For anyone who doesn't know, I have a lifelong appreciation of, and affection for, Greek mythology (though as time goes by I'm more and more strongly opposed to both words in that phrase - I prefer "Hellenic" to "Greek" and think that "mythology" as a category obscures far more than it clarifies). Despite that lifelong affection, there are very few specific stories that are near and dear to my heart. One exception to this is the story of Endymion (the version, first attested in Sappho - or, as she would have written her name, Psapfo, which became canonical). Endymion was tending sheep at night near Latmos in Asia Minor, laid down to sleep, and dreamed that he held the full moon in his arms. He smiled in his sleep because of the dream, and Selene, the moon, knowing his dream and seeing his smile, fell in love with him. She asked Zeus to grant Endymion eternal life while sleeping, and so Endymion is allegedly still asleep in a cave somewhere, dreaming about loving the moon and, unbeknownst to him, actually holding her in his arms during the daylight hours.
So how does that align with blogging? In the past 2 months I've begun coming to grips with the reality of separating from my wife and going through the process of divorce. I had a respite staying at my parents' house for 6 weeks (originally supposed to be 4), near to many of my friends and literally down the street from my niece and nephew. All of those people being nearby helped me tremendously, but now I'm back in Connecticut, living completely alone for the first time in 3 years, under vastly different circumstances than any since I graduated from college. Over the past week and a half, as I've begun settling in here, I have sometimes had the distinct feeling that "I'm definitely going to wake up sometime soon." But I don't. It's very easy to go through entire days here without speaking to another person, which can increase the feeling of unreality. And, as the opening paragraph's calendrical orientation indicates, this school year feels like an interlude, rather than a proper chapter, in my life. I know that there are major changes going on and more coming, but for now, I'm still caught up in the interstices, not quite awake nor quite asleep. Hence the blog title.
2. Geographical and biographical referents. On the off chance that anyone reads this who isn't part of my extended family circle (which I draw around my friends as well as biological relatives), I'm going to be using pseudonyms for where I live and the people to whom I'll refer. This will also provide some sort of buffer if I should blog about events or issues pertaining to my job.
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