2010.12.04
Days Remaining: 178
01. This particular post has been continually deferred for the past week or so. I start bits and pieces of it, and then get distracted and do something else. It's now 805pm on Saturday night, and I would like to finish this before settling down for the night to read the novel for my Native American Religions course this coming week (Susan Power's very interesting The Grass Dancer).
02. Two Wednesday mornings ago, at 430am, I drove to Wilmington for Thanksgiving. Once more, the early morning (earlier, this time, due to it being a week day, than when I drove down for my mom's birthday party) trip took almost exactly 4 hours from door to door. Clearly my previous long-delayed trips to Delaware were avoidable if only I had been in the habit of leaving before the sun rises. Live and learn, I suppose. The trip back last Sunday, however, took approximately 7 or 8 hours due to traffic, all of which started in NYC (up to that point I was only going marginally slower than my trip southwards).
03. Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday; until my mom and dad got together (when I was 15) I had never been a fan of turkey in any form. My dad's method of cooking turkey, however, changed that (he smokes it on a grill), and so my alimentary animus against Thanksgiving dwindled (it also helped that, as I got older, I came to appreciate mashed potatoes via gravy), though it never abated entirely. I still loathe stuffing and sweet potatoes and (shudder) green bean casserole. All of that said, this Thanksgiving was actually lovely. I stayed at Selena and Iunius' house, and Thanksgiving morning my various siblings and parents came over to have a leisurely breakfast (Pilsbury Cinnamon Rolls) and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. I love spending time with the kids, and it seemed like everyone was very relaxed and having a good time.
04. Then the moving started, as we all helped mom and dad begin the move to their new house. We (several siblings and siblings-in-law + me) did 3 hours on Thanksgiving proper, then I did 6 hours on Black Friday (emptying the garage), then Selena and Iunius did an enormous amount on Saturday while I helped Aurelia and her fiance move into their new house (from Newark to Kennett Square, PA), then on Sunday Selena, Iunius and I did the rest (my eldest younger sister, Agrippina, helped throughout). On Saturday my parents hired professional moves to handle the large, heavy, wicked, difficult, frustrating furniture (the movers did a fantastic job, according to everyone who saw them work). So I participated in two moves in four days, and both were close to completion (only small things and cleaning left) when I drove home on Sunday. Moving is always stressful, and especially so over the holidays. I made it through with only minor injuries: several bruises on the insides of my arms (I'm pretty sure that was the filing cabinets, Aurelia - I shouldn't have been so stubborn about moving them myself!), a pulled muscle on the inside of my left knee (still tender), and a very sore right butt cheek (I have no idea how that happened). When I got back to New Aldwych on Sunday night I showered and then laid down to sleep for a very long time.
05. This past week has been fairly pedestrian, I suppose. I think a lot about the way that my life fits together, and one of my predominant working metaphors became clear to me this week: life as a filing system. I spend a great deal of time picking up ideas, images, words, texts, social interactions, etc., and then (an often even longer) time organizing them into a system. I have a bazillion bookmarks on my browser, for instance, thousands of PDFs of scholarly articles, thousands of books, hundreds of music albums, Word files, etc. My life is a library, and keeping it going in a clear fashion is a major undertaking. There are times when I wish I could somehow simplify it, but every time I stay in one place for more than a few days I begin to acquire books. This is what I do: I intake knowledge, either directly or in a deferred fashion (writing as memory-storage enhancer). Maybe what I love about teaching is the ability to share it again.
06. I was invited to sit in for a "Theories of Religion" senior-level seminar on Wednesday, which also involved lunch at a local restaurant (I had one of the tastiest chicken gyros I've ever eaten, which was nice). I really enjoyed it; the seminar was about 3 hours long, and it was very nice to be able to talk about theories of religion, their up- and downsides, and how to apply them to actual data with folks who know what we're all talking about (which, in this case, means the professor and the students).
07. Today I went to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum (which I heartily recommend: http://www.pequotmuseum.org/) with approximately 2/5 of the students from my Native American Religions class. Originally it was all 27 of them, but attrition (read: this is a Saturday near the end of the semester) slowly cut down those who could make it. Baskerville College (go hounds!) paid for it, which was nice. This was my 3rd trip to the museum in as many years, but I'm still always impressed by it, both as a museum and as a rhetorical statement by the Mashantucket Pequots (whose Native identity is still hotly contested among the larger population around here - it's astonishing how quickly and thoroughly anti-Native American stereotypes and sentiments flared up). Anyway, this time around the museum's exhibits were expanded so I got some new information, including a more detailed (though still sadly summary) discussion of pre-Contact Pequot ritual healing experts (powwows, as opposed to the pnieses, who seem to have been hunting and war-focused). The information was very sparse, but it included mention of the spirit being with whom powwows were most intimately connected, Hobamock (spelling of this name differs wildly).
08. Now, the northeast Algonquian-speaking Native American groups at Contact (1500s) gave us the word powwow, which has had two very different descendant terms that both worked in English, though one has fallen into disuse as much as the original meaning. The first was the expansion of the term powwow from the ritual expert to the healing ceremony (usually one with music and dancing), and from there to any ceremonial dancing ceremony. Thus one can find "Powwow Circuits" every summer; a cycle of dance ceremonies and competitions held on reservations all over the country, most of which are given by groups whose non-English language isn't Algonquian. The second meaning was again an expansion from ritual expert to ceremony, but it preserved the generally occult (religious or magical, depending on who is doing the talking) character of the word, and was used to describe a wide array (sometimes a "system") of folk ritual practices derived, logically given the Algonquian term, from German folk culture. This was due to a single book called Pow-wows, or the Long Lost Friend, a recipe and spell-book originally just called Der Lange Verbergorene Freund in German. Somehow, the English translator decided to append the word "Pow-wow" to it, and so the word now exists in American folk ritual practices, though it has dwindled in popularity with the rise of Asian, Egyptian, Near Eastern, Classical, and New Age influenced ritual systems.
09. Anyway, back to Hobamock. I was certain that I'd seen that name recently, and when I got home I did some poking around and discovered that Hobamock was the name (probably a nickname) of one of the Pilgrims' Native allies at Plymouth. He was a major opponent of Squanto's, and his name is often glossed as "mischief." That said, I had a great deal of trouble squaring that historical figure with the spirit being alluded to in the powwow exhibit at the museum. So, further digging confirmed that Hobamock is also a name for a spirit being relatively common among Algonquian-speaking Native groups of coastal New England (how far inland this went is unclear, but I would imagine most of the way since these groups were all in regular contact with one another). He is sometimes remembered in New England folk tales (Native and Anglo) as a sort of giant or tricky warrior, which is striking because in colonial times he was the figure most often translated as "Devil" by the Puritans! Turns out that he was a complicated figure, who often seems to have stood in symbolic contrast with the creator figure. The creator, for instance, lived in the southwest, and Hobamock was from the northeast (source of cold and wild winter storms along the coast). Creator's color was white, Hobamock's was black. So why was he the premier sponsor for powwows? Because, as I often emphasize to my students, that which can harm can also heal. The creator was pretty much a distant (physically and temporally) benevolent figure, and Hobamock was thought to be active in the world currently. He was often associated with snakes, but could change his shape and be invisible. He both caused and cured illness, and so when someone was sick the powwows would attempt to contact Hobamock and persuade him to remove the illness from the afflicted.
10. I mention all of this because this is a very common (as in, world-wide) way of conceiving divine power: as ambivalent. Apollo was as much a plague god as a healer in ancient Greece. The god of Israel smote and blessed, fairies can harm or help, Buddhist demons are benevolent so long as they're properly respected, and so forth. The desire to morally compartmentalize a deity into a "good" or "bad" frame is very much a theological imperative articulated by, in our culture, Judaic, Christian, and Islamic concerns with monotheism (where the only true deity is inherently good, and everything else is only as good as it serves him). So Hobamock (or Abbamacko, or Hobomok, etc.) illustrates what I think is a profoundly important theological corrective to Judeo-Christian expectations: the gods are neither good nor evil in much of the world; they're just powerful.
11. One thing that my students and I discussed today was the dearth of information on pre-Contact and early post-Contact Native American religions of the eastern seaboard. Even for groups with a history of their own writing and political independence (or successful resistance), such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, etc., the missionary activities of the Spanish and English were successful enough that we often have only fragments of what existed before. I think about the difference in Native American cultural products here in New England versus, for instance, in Oklahoma and points west, where the further west you go (until you hit Spanish mission country in California) the more likely you are to find people who grow up knowing the names and rituals associated with spirit beings (this is true even though the majority of Native Americans today are Christian). In Leslie Marmon Silko's (Laguna Pueblo) books, or N. Scott Momaday's (Kiowa Nation), or Susan Power's (Lakota), it's taken for granted that references to Changing Woman, or Tai-Me, or traditional ritual expertise, will be understood sufficiently to not be disruptive to communicating meaning. But no one here seems to have any living memory of Hobamock. It's all preserved in English historical writing, not personal memory. This is, to my mind, extremely sad. But the European invaders hadn't developed an idea of ethnography yet, and even if they had, the specific purpose of the specific invaders in New England was colonization and missionizing, not recording or understanding what was already there.
12. And that's about it.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Winter Is Coming
2010.11.19
Days Remaining: 191
1. My mom's birthday was this past Wednesday the 17th. Last week I couldn't mention these matters for reasons of secrecy. Now, however, I can post about all of this freely. My dad and sister, Selena, worked since July to organize a surprise party for my mom. My dad is not...adept...at keeping secrets, but he did this beautifully. Last Saturday I woke up at 430am and left New Aldwych at exactly 6am to drive to Delaware. There I met with my other sisters, my brother Decius and his wife and her parents (all friends of the family), and we drove together to the Wilmington-Western Railroad Station off of Kirkwood Highway. There we met with various other friends of the family. My mom had been invited to a train ride by my niece, Iunia, and so she thought it was going to be a nice afternoon with dad and my sister's family. When she arrived and we (all waiting in the caboose, which was reserved for the party) all yelled "Surprise," she was genuinely surprised. Even more enjoyable was that, due to the spatial layout of the caboose, she didn't see everyone at once, so she continued to be surprised for the next several minutes as she saw who was there. The train ride itself was lovely, and I enjoyed talking to my parents' friends and finally meeting Decius' in-laws, Lulula and Bubulus. After the train ride we returned to Selena's house, and then eventually went to my parents' favorite Italian restaurant in Wilmington, then returned to Selena's. I fell asleep during the hubbub, though I can't recall if it was between the train ride and dinner, or after dinner.
2. Sunday we went to breakfast and then hung out. My sister Agrippina brought her lovely dog, Lucy, to the house, and I got to hang out with her for a while. She's very charming and affectionate. Then I went to visit Iuno and Romulus (who is recovering from ankle surgery and is basically chair-bound for the next several weeks). Then back to Selena's house, where I had a very nice time talking with my those siblings and siblings-in-law present. We watched The Amazing Race together (it was striking how much of the watching was commenting on and critiquing the contestants), then eventually all went to bed. Monday morning we got up, Selena went to work, my mom came over and we all took Iunia to her kindergarten. Then I headed north, although I stopped at the local Jiffy Lube to get an oil change before actually getting on the road proper.
3. Some random observations from the weekend:
a. That day and start-time worked beautifully for getting to Delaware from New Aldwych. It took me almost exactly 4 hours, the travel time I've been saying for years is all the trip should take. In fact, I was tired and a little enervated when I actually got to Wilmington, so I stopped at a local Borders to stretch and walk around before going to Selena and Iunius' house. The trip back took much longer due to the fact that there was a lot of traffic, but thankfully no completely-motionless jams.
b. I have, for years, been buying toy animals whose purpose is to be played with by visiting nieces and nephews (when I was a kid I loved toy animals even before I loved Star Wars figures). Euander, especially, has developed a strong liking for toy animals. Though I have not lived in places where visiting is easy, the first time he came to visit I got the toy box out, and he made an animal parade all around the room, and for a couple of days after the visit was over I would find random animals throughout the apartment. I loved it; it's just what I wanted to happen. One of the big companies that produces these types of toys is Safarai, Ltd., and while I was in Delaware it occurred to me that their 2011 line might be advertised soon. So I got online and found a bunch of pictures of the various new animals (dinosaurs, dragons, mammals, etc.) and called him over. He was very excited, particularly by the three-headed fire-breathing dragon on the list. He asked about it several times, and Selena said that he had already asked Santa Claus for a fire-breathing dragon for Christmas this year. I was careful to point out that the pictures we saw wouldn't be available until after Christmas. Hopefully he'll remember.
c. Iuno and Romulus have two dogs, Kita and Libby. I'm allergic to Kita (though the severity of the allergies seems to fluctuate somewhat), and so when I visit them I have to avoid Kita, who is miserable being excluded from the room (though if she comes in and lays down far away from me it's usually okay - I feel very badly about all of this, she's a sweetheart, and my allergies are not her fault). I'm not allergic to Libby, however, and on Sunday afternoon/evening she came over and sat with me on the couch (sometimes next to me, sometimes on my lap). It was very, very soothing.
4. So, building off of those various observations, some general remarks. The new Safari, Ltd. figures are all pretty neat looking, from the dinosaurs to the modern mammals to the dragons. I have often observed, mostly when talking to Belisarius or Octavian or Iunius, that the animal toys nowadays are far superior (in terms of phyiological accuracy, detail, and variety) than those available when we were kids. This is also true of Star Wars figures, which are now much more detailed and more highly articulated (in terms of movement). I sometimes come across images (or even actual physical examples) of those figures, and I can't believe how much progress has been made.
5. For years I expected that, when the day came, I would be a cat owner. I loved dogs when I was a kid, and have had a fairly positive history with them, but my allergies were always a major conceptual barrier. But for several years now my allergies have either moderated (lessened) or modulated (no longer so consistent), and I've had good, directly-interactive, relationships with a series of other people's dogs, eventually culminating in my partial adoption of my ex-wife's dog, Herman. Belisarius has a lovely Basset Hound, Rosie, who will come and sit with me whenever I visit them, and Iuno/Romulus' dog Libby reminded me of her this weekend. My sister's dog, Lucy, is a total sweetheart, and my parents' neighbor's recently deceased (and greatly missed) dog, Chrissy, was also lovely. I miss Herman a great deal, and am still sorry that he and I got separated in the divorce. But in the long-run, some day, I think that I'll definitely be a dog owner again.
6. Update on the perpetual disaster that is the divorce process. I asked my ex-wife last week if the divorce papers had been served yet, as I hadn't heard from her about it, and she said no. The servicing-fee check I had sent, though, had been cashed. Then, I found the papers back in my mailbox, with a note saying "address not in our county." Back in September I had called the Tulsa Sheriff's Office to get the information I would need to send them the papers, and was informed that my ex-wife's address was in Wagoner County. So I called the Wagoner County Sheriff's office, the telephone representative of which confirmed that the address was in Wagoner. Thus began the ongoing back-and-forth of sending and returning papers. This time, it turns out that the address is in Tulsa County, but after speaking with Wagoner County Sheriff folks for about an hour on Wednesday, it became clear that they had no idea where exactly the county line was. In fact, even better, the Wagoner County Sheriff rep. with whom I spoke called around to other county's to see if they knew which county this address was in. There were multiple answers, but eventually we got consensus that it was in Tulsa. The downside is that, not counting Thanksgiving holiday, the Tulsa Sheriff's office has a 10-work days turn around time for processing papers. So the Wagoner County Sheriff's representative with whom I'd been speaking offered to take care of it, personally. I'm sending the papers back to the Wagoner County Sheriff, and they are going to call my ex-wife, who will have to drive (she agreed to this) a quarter mile into Wagoner County, where a Sheriff's Deputy will meet her and serve the papers. This should have been done and finished in October, mind you.
7. Classes are done for me until after Thanksgiving. When I planned this semester I had intended to attend the annual Society for Biblical Literature conference, which is always the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. However, as the semester progressed I decided to skip it this year due to time and money constraints, but I had already canceled classes for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so my students get a day off. I'll be heading to Delaware on Monday, where I'll stay through the following Sunday or Monday.
8. I just received my copy of Leslie Marmon Silko's Turquoise Ledge, and I'll be reading it over this weekend and into Delaware. I also heard an interview (on my still-beloved NPR - Republican criticisms be damned, and Juan Williams' dismissal being a real mistake on their part) with Salman Rushdie about his newest book, Luka and the Fire of Life, which is a sort of sequel to (or shares a world with) the wonderful Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It sound either banal or silly, but I love books. I love reading and I love stories. One of the least enjoyable parts of my current apartment is that, due to its very small size, there isn't actually a good place here to read (unless I'm reading from my desktop computer screen). Nonetheless, Silko is one of my favorite authors, and I've been waiting for the Turquoise Ledge for a month, so I'll make do.
9. And that's about it.
Days Remaining: 191
1. My mom's birthday was this past Wednesday the 17th. Last week I couldn't mention these matters for reasons of secrecy. Now, however, I can post about all of this freely. My dad and sister, Selena, worked since July to organize a surprise party for my mom. My dad is not...adept...at keeping secrets, but he did this beautifully. Last Saturday I woke up at 430am and left New Aldwych at exactly 6am to drive to Delaware. There I met with my other sisters, my brother Decius and his wife and her parents (all friends of the family), and we drove together to the Wilmington-Western Railroad Station off of Kirkwood Highway. There we met with various other friends of the family. My mom had been invited to a train ride by my niece, Iunia, and so she thought it was going to be a nice afternoon with dad and my sister's family. When she arrived and we (all waiting in the caboose, which was reserved for the party) all yelled "Surprise," she was genuinely surprised. Even more enjoyable was that, due to the spatial layout of the caboose, she didn't see everyone at once, so she continued to be surprised for the next several minutes as she saw who was there. The train ride itself was lovely, and I enjoyed talking to my parents' friends and finally meeting Decius' in-laws, Lulula and Bubulus. After the train ride we returned to Selena's house, and then eventually went to my parents' favorite Italian restaurant in Wilmington, then returned to Selena's. I fell asleep during the hubbub, though I can't recall if it was between the train ride and dinner, or after dinner.
2. Sunday we went to breakfast and then hung out. My sister Agrippina brought her lovely dog, Lucy, to the house, and I got to hang out with her for a while. She's very charming and affectionate. Then I went to visit Iuno and Romulus (who is recovering from ankle surgery and is basically chair-bound for the next several weeks). Then back to Selena's house, where I had a very nice time talking with my those siblings and siblings-in-law present. We watched The Amazing Race together (it was striking how much of the watching was commenting on and critiquing the contestants), then eventually all went to bed. Monday morning we got up, Selena went to work, my mom came over and we all took Iunia to her kindergarten. Then I headed north, although I stopped at the local Jiffy Lube to get an oil change before actually getting on the road proper.
3. Some random observations from the weekend:
a. That day and start-time worked beautifully for getting to Delaware from New Aldwych. It took me almost exactly 4 hours, the travel time I've been saying for years is all the trip should take. In fact, I was tired and a little enervated when I actually got to Wilmington, so I stopped at a local Borders to stretch and walk around before going to Selena and Iunius' house. The trip back took much longer due to the fact that there was a lot of traffic, but thankfully no completely-motionless jams.
b. I have, for years, been buying toy animals whose purpose is to be played with by visiting nieces and nephews (when I was a kid I loved toy animals even before I loved Star Wars figures). Euander, especially, has developed a strong liking for toy animals. Though I have not lived in places where visiting is easy, the first time he came to visit I got the toy box out, and he made an animal parade all around the room, and for a couple of days after the visit was over I would find random animals throughout the apartment. I loved it; it's just what I wanted to happen. One of the big companies that produces these types of toys is Safarai, Ltd., and while I was in Delaware it occurred to me that their 2011 line might be advertised soon. So I got online and found a bunch of pictures of the various new animals (dinosaurs, dragons, mammals, etc.) and called him over. He was very excited, particularly by the three-headed fire-breathing dragon on the list. He asked about it several times, and Selena said that he had already asked Santa Claus for a fire-breathing dragon for Christmas this year. I was careful to point out that the pictures we saw wouldn't be available until after Christmas. Hopefully he'll remember.
c. Iuno and Romulus have two dogs, Kita and Libby. I'm allergic to Kita (though the severity of the allergies seems to fluctuate somewhat), and so when I visit them I have to avoid Kita, who is miserable being excluded from the room (though if she comes in and lays down far away from me it's usually okay - I feel very badly about all of this, she's a sweetheart, and my allergies are not her fault). I'm not allergic to Libby, however, and on Sunday afternoon/evening she came over and sat with me on the couch (sometimes next to me, sometimes on my lap). It was very, very soothing.
4. So, building off of those various observations, some general remarks. The new Safari, Ltd. figures are all pretty neat looking, from the dinosaurs to the modern mammals to the dragons. I have often observed, mostly when talking to Belisarius or Octavian or Iunius, that the animal toys nowadays are far superior (in terms of phyiological accuracy, detail, and variety) than those available when we were kids. This is also true of Star Wars figures, which are now much more detailed and more highly articulated (in terms of movement). I sometimes come across images (or even actual physical examples) of those figures, and I can't believe how much progress has been made.
5. For years I expected that, when the day came, I would be a cat owner. I loved dogs when I was a kid, and have had a fairly positive history with them, but my allergies were always a major conceptual barrier. But for several years now my allergies have either moderated (lessened) or modulated (no longer so consistent), and I've had good, directly-interactive, relationships with a series of other people's dogs, eventually culminating in my partial adoption of my ex-wife's dog, Herman. Belisarius has a lovely Basset Hound, Rosie, who will come and sit with me whenever I visit them, and Iuno/Romulus' dog Libby reminded me of her this weekend. My sister's dog, Lucy, is a total sweetheart, and my parents' neighbor's recently deceased (and greatly missed) dog, Chrissy, was also lovely. I miss Herman a great deal, and am still sorry that he and I got separated in the divorce. But in the long-run, some day, I think that I'll definitely be a dog owner again.
6. Update on the perpetual disaster that is the divorce process. I asked my ex-wife last week if the divorce papers had been served yet, as I hadn't heard from her about it, and she said no. The servicing-fee check I had sent, though, had been cashed. Then, I found the papers back in my mailbox, with a note saying "address not in our county." Back in September I had called the Tulsa Sheriff's Office to get the information I would need to send them the papers, and was informed that my ex-wife's address was in Wagoner County. So I called the Wagoner County Sheriff's office, the telephone representative of which confirmed that the address was in Wagoner. Thus began the ongoing back-and-forth of sending and returning papers. This time, it turns out that the address is in Tulsa County, but after speaking with Wagoner County Sheriff folks for about an hour on Wednesday, it became clear that they had no idea where exactly the county line was. In fact, even better, the Wagoner County Sheriff rep. with whom I spoke called around to other county's to see if they knew which county this address was in. There were multiple answers, but eventually we got consensus that it was in Tulsa. The downside is that, not counting Thanksgiving holiday, the Tulsa Sheriff's office has a 10-work days turn around time for processing papers. So the Wagoner County Sheriff's representative with whom I'd been speaking offered to take care of it, personally. I'm sending the papers back to the Wagoner County Sheriff, and they are going to call my ex-wife, who will have to drive (she agreed to this) a quarter mile into Wagoner County, where a Sheriff's Deputy will meet her and serve the papers. This should have been done and finished in October, mind you.
7. Classes are done for me until after Thanksgiving. When I planned this semester I had intended to attend the annual Society for Biblical Literature conference, which is always the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. However, as the semester progressed I decided to skip it this year due to time and money constraints, but I had already canceled classes for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so my students get a day off. I'll be heading to Delaware on Monday, where I'll stay through the following Sunday or Monday.
8. I just received my copy of Leslie Marmon Silko's Turquoise Ledge, and I'll be reading it over this weekend and into Delaware. I also heard an interview (on my still-beloved NPR - Republican criticisms be damned, and Juan Williams' dismissal being a real mistake on their part) with Salman Rushdie about his newest book, Luka and the Fire of Life, which is a sort of sequel to (or shares a world with) the wonderful Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It sound either banal or silly, but I love books. I love reading and I love stories. One of the least enjoyable parts of my current apartment is that, due to its very small size, there isn't actually a good place here to read (unless I'm reading from my desktop computer screen). Nonetheless, Silko is one of my favorite authors, and I've been waiting for the Turquoise Ledge for a month, so I'll make do.
9. And that's about it.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Solace of You
2010.11.12
Days Remaining: 198
1. No particular theme today, just a bunch of random stuff I've been thinking about over the past week. I figure for a Friday post, why not a grab-bag? If my story is disconnected and unorganized right now, at least we'll be able to see what I've been fragmentarily narrating.
2. The past few days I've had Yuletide on my mind; I've several times found myself almost playing Christmas carols on my iTunes, or humming them as I walk around. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and the past several years I sort of yearned for it earlier and earlier, probably as a comfort-seeking thing in the midst of my marriage. When my youngest sister, Silvia, had a stroke in December two years ago, and had surgery in NYC the week before Christmas, I spent an evening with her in the hospital, walking to her building across Central Park (Octavian used to live almost directly across the park from her hospital, and he and I had had dinner and hung out beforehand). After I left her hospital I walked to the subway station the long way (rather than taking a branch line and doing an exchange); it was the Winter Solstice that night, and I felt more serene in the cold, lamp-lit dark, walking through snow and over empty sidewalks, then, than I had for a long time before or since. I am not a huge fan of NYC (nice to visit, not interested in living there), but a snowy Central Park on the longest night of the year was something to behold. Today, while taking a break from grading (so much grading...) I poked around on Amazon.com and found a bunch of interesting Christmas albums that look interesting, most of them are by the Boston-based Christmas Revels but a few are by other groups, including two that are period-style Colonial American Christmas music, which I thought was neat. This is an exercise in what if, basically, frustration due to lack of funds, but I am balancing is and ought right now, to give myself something to aim for.
3. We had snow on the ground this past Sunday, though it burned off by mid-morning. I can't imagine living someplace where it never snows (or, rather, I can, but don't want to). Place is, in general, very important to me, but I am sometimes struck by how much my sense of "place" includes weather. Living in New England, excepting the obvious personal difficulties, has been very enjoyable, weather-wise. I like snow on a regular basis in winter.
Days Remaining: 198
1. No particular theme today, just a bunch of random stuff I've been thinking about over the past week. I figure for a Friday post, why not a grab-bag? If my story is disconnected and unorganized right now, at least we'll be able to see what I've been fragmentarily narrating.
2. The past few days I've had Yuletide on my mind; I've several times found myself almost playing Christmas carols on my iTunes, or humming them as I walk around. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and the past several years I sort of yearned for it earlier and earlier, probably as a comfort-seeking thing in the midst of my marriage. When my youngest sister, Silvia, had a stroke in December two years ago, and had surgery in NYC the week before Christmas, I spent an evening with her in the hospital, walking to her building across Central Park (Octavian used to live almost directly across the park from her hospital, and he and I had had dinner and hung out beforehand). After I left her hospital I walked to the subway station the long way (rather than taking a branch line and doing an exchange); it was the Winter Solstice that night, and I felt more serene in the cold, lamp-lit dark, walking through snow and over empty sidewalks, then, than I had for a long time before or since. I am not a huge fan of NYC (nice to visit, not interested in living there), but a snowy Central Park on the longest night of the year was something to behold. Today, while taking a break from grading (so much grading...) I poked around on Amazon.com and found a bunch of interesting Christmas albums that look interesting, most of them are by the Boston-based Christmas Revels but a few are by other groups, including two that are period-style Colonial American Christmas music, which I thought was neat. This is an exercise in what if, basically, frustration due to lack of funds, but I am balancing is and ought right now, to give myself something to aim for.
3. We had snow on the ground this past Sunday, though it burned off by mid-morning. I can't imagine living someplace where it never snows (or, rather, I can, but don't want to). Place is, in general, very important to me, but I am sometimes struck by how much my sense of "place" includes weather. Living in New England, excepting the obvious personal difficulties, has been very enjoyable, weather-wise. I like snow on a regular basis in winter.
4. Yesterday I had an uncomfortable incident in one my Philosophy of Religion class. (Due diligence: Belisarius heard about this in an email yesterday, so if you're reading, you can skip to topic 5, Catchpenny). As I've mentioned before, I open my classes with what I call "10 Minutes of Freedom" where the students can ask questions, or raise issues, about anything at all. Today I let that go far beyond 10 minutes because the majority of students (roughly 15 out of 22) were actively engaged with me and each other on the topics, and those particular topics were ones I found very interesting, namely the state of education in our society and, growing out of that, questions of how to effectively address problems on a campus (or in our society). I kept an eye on the class as this proceeded, because we were definitely cutting majorly into allotted class time for the actual topic (philosophical accounts of life after death - sounds interesting, really isn't). Then, when I said, "We really need to get to the readings now" I had a student stand up and make some sort of dissatisfied noise as she headed for the door (n.b. she left her belongings, so she wasn't ditching class suddenly). She then said, "I'm just really frustrated because we're not talking about the readings and we've got papers coming up and I'm just really frustrated" (I'm paraphrasing). I said, basically, "Well then, sit down, as we're going to go over the readings now." But she had to go to the bathroom. The moment she walked out, the rest of the students (who all looked very embarrassed) started back on the preceding topic, so I let them add final comments until the frustrated one came back in, at which point we went to work on the readings for today. So, I'm torn, basically, because I chose to let the off-topic conversation go on, and I spoke with several students after class who said that they actually found it really valuable. But on the other hand, it was a departure from my normal procedure and the class topic. On the third hand, the frustrated student had the option, at any point, of raising her hand and asking about the readings. I'm more annoyed that she said nothing until she made a very public scene, given that the whole enterprise was being driven by students asking questions and responding to them. But I'm also defensive about it, since this felt like an implicit ad hominem criticism of me, couched in terms of not preparing my students for papers they have to write (btw, they have two weeks to write the essays, during which time I take drafts and respond with lots of comments, so they're not simply cut adrift). Meh. I'll be chewing on this for a while.
5. Something else class-related (though very tangentially). I got an email from my Philosophy Dept. Chair forwarding a call for undergraduate essays for a special issue of a journal focused on love. My initial thought was that this would be great, but then as I read through the call I saw that they were looking for essays responding to a particular book, and when they gave suggested topics, it had nothing to do with my Love, Death & Desire class. I was, however, intrigued by the book they were organizing around, and so I did some poking (via the wonders of Google Books and Amazon.com), and found some very interesting stuff. I often, when I've taught a class for the first time, come to the conclusion 2/3 of the way through that I would do it completely differently if I taught it again. This is, so I'm told, fairly normal for professors (though I am something of an inveterate tinkerer - my classes are never completely identical from one offering to another). In this class's case, I took it over from a professor who is on medical leave; she's been teaching it for quite a long while, and it's an established part of the Philosophy Department's course offerings. Given that, I opted not to radically redesign it for this one semester, as I wanted the students to be able to engage with those who came before and after this semester on shared ground. I stand by that decision, but as often happens to me, I start to think of courses I teach as "mine," and with the stuff I found when motivated by that call for papers, I have been tinkering in my head with radically redesigning the course. Since this is my last year at Baskerville College, this is an entirely theoretical exercise, but I really enjoy course-building as a mental practice, so forward I go.
6. One of the most interesting things I discovered was that the very famous (and justly so) cultural and literary theorist bell hooks (deliberately uncapitalized as per her wishes) has been working on the idea of love in our society for some time (I knew her primarily for earlier work on deconstruction and postmodernism). From what I gather (there are several different books dealing with different aspects of this project of hers), she is suggesting that our society has been suffering from an over-focus on love as desire (and therefore selfish). Basically, we need to remember the other-focused type of love, love as acceptance and nurturing. She says this is a different type of love than desire, and one that we're sorely lacking. This struck a chord with me, because I've sometimes had moments when I'm overwhelmed by a feeling of how much I love the people in my life, and sometimes how much I love everything, how much beauty and value there is in the world and the people in it. I am, however, not following through on that in hooks' terms, because I don't use those moments as spurs to greater social activity. But I can feel, at least a bit, what she's talking about. There is so much hate and antagonism thrown around, and sometimes, she says, the best response is to love back.
You're every move you make
2010.11.11
Days Remaining: 199
1. I'm kind of wondering what my intentions are in writing this blog. I don't really update on major developments, or at least not consistently, because so far there haven't been many other than the divorce process and the start of the Fall semester. The past few days I've basically written rambling lectures about stuff I find interesting, but I don't imagine that this is very interesting to most of you who read this. I could use this as a sort of day-book or diary, just recounting stuff that happened on any given day, I've never had much interest in doing that before, and find that some days I don't feel like writing.
2. This afternoon/evening I attended a presentation by one of my colleagues in the Philosophy Department (this year I'm technically a hybrid between Religious Studies and Philosophy in my official appointment). His lecture, which was extremely interesting, was about the often-dispensed advice "be true to yourself" and why he thinks that is basically a nonsensical (in philosophical, not experiential) piece of advice. I won't go into the full argument, though he actually demonstrated his point very clearly (basically, "be true to yourself" usually means something else if it means anything, and so it's at best unclear and at worst misleading). What struck me was that I and a couple other people there (faculty and students) responded with questions about what sort of self was implied by his analysis (he granted, for the sake of argument, that we each have an authentic self to which our behavior can more or less conform). If you don't grant a stable authentic self, the "be true to yourself" maxim falls apart.
3. How is this related to my first paragraph? There's a great book by the philosopher Alexander Nehamas entitled The Art of Living in which he argues that philosophy is, in part, a project of self-fashioning, of creating who you are. Of course, that project is something in which everyone is engaged all the time if we don't have stable selves; we're all manufacturing ourselves all the time. But Nehamas' point is more about the process and how philosophy can help us do it more or less effectively (he starts with Sokratēs and runs up to Foucault, with very useful detours about Montaigne and Nietzsche). One of the most basic parts of the process is that it's largely narrative in nature - we're constantly (re)telling ourselves who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
4. Right now I'm not completely sure who I am anymore. I'm not talking about a full-blown meltdown or anything of the sort. I mean I'm trying to parse out who I have become over the past five years of being with my ex-wife, moving to New England, making the choices that I've made and working through their consequences, making new choices growing out of the older ones, and so forth. I spent a lot of time and energy working on who I was before I got married, composing rather than simply repeating the story that I wanted to be myself. I had hit a couple of rough spots near the end of my bachelorhood, which probably factored into getting married so quickly. But getting married ended up leading to either suspending or losing several key things in the life I wanted to live, or the person I wanted to be. I shifted my primary focus away from my friends and family towards my ex-wife, and became far more responsive than active. I put down lots of my basic organizing principles for my day to day life (record keeping practices, lifestyle choices, etc.).
5. One of my professors (great guy, btw) at Syracuse told me once (the only piece of positive useful information I got from a Heidegger seminar, and it characteristically had nothing to do with Heidegger) that marriage is a process of getting to know the person you married. You always (or often) marry your image of a person, and then find yourself actually married to another human being (this changes, somewhat, with the increasing frequency of pre-marital cohabitation, but the basic point still stands). That ended up being very true for me, but now I'm learning that I need to get to know myself again as a bachelor. I thought I was the person who had entered the marriage, but I think that I'll have to rebuild, or re-compose, that me. And it won't ever be the same. My story now involves several chapters that I'm still trying to integrate into a unified story, and to reconcile with the pre-married chapters. And I need to figure out how to build out from that framework. It's intimidating, actually, especially because there is no "me" that stands outside of it and makes editorial or authorial choices; I'm always already caught up in the pattern and am attempting to shape it further, but I've only got these tools and these materials right now. Reconstituting my previous repertoire, or assembling a new one ("Self" Repertoire 2.0), is going to take time, and a lot of work.
6. I hate having worked so hard the past few years, struggling through interminable fights, loving and being angry and hurt all the time. And it's not only because it was all difficult, but because it left me exhausted, and without an empty tab at the end. Instead, I'm filled up of debt, regret, and an unsteady future. I don't like this me very much. I didn't like the me I was the past few years (not total self-loathing, btw, just a general sense of "this isn't who I want to be"). And becoming the me I want to be will take effort and willingness to make hard choices, as I'm still trying to recuperate from the past several years. My therapist suggested last session that I need to "give myself time off." Set an arbitrary "restart" point in 2011, and worry about all of this then. But I can't. "All of this" is happening now. The story never stops being told.
7. So maybe this blog is, at least embryonically, part of that process. I stopped writing when I stopped doing anything but reacting a few weeks ago, reacting to my anniversary and to my workload, and shutting down from both. But shutting down isn't stopping the story, it's just hitting the space bar in unending sequence. Damn it. I have so much work to do, and I'm so tired.
Days Remaining: 199
1. I'm kind of wondering what my intentions are in writing this blog. I don't really update on major developments, or at least not consistently, because so far there haven't been many other than the divorce process and the start of the Fall semester. The past few days I've basically written rambling lectures about stuff I find interesting, but I don't imagine that this is very interesting to most of you who read this. I could use this as a sort of day-book or diary, just recounting stuff that happened on any given day, I've never had much interest in doing that before, and find that some days I don't feel like writing.
2. This afternoon/evening I attended a presentation by one of my colleagues in the Philosophy Department (this year I'm technically a hybrid between Religious Studies and Philosophy in my official appointment). His lecture, which was extremely interesting, was about the often-dispensed advice "be true to yourself" and why he thinks that is basically a nonsensical (in philosophical, not experiential) piece of advice. I won't go into the full argument, though he actually demonstrated his point very clearly (basically, "be true to yourself" usually means something else if it means anything, and so it's at best unclear and at worst misleading). What struck me was that I and a couple other people there (faculty and students) responded with questions about what sort of self was implied by his analysis (he granted, for the sake of argument, that we each have an authentic self to which our behavior can more or less conform). If you don't grant a stable authentic self, the "be true to yourself" maxim falls apart.
3. How is this related to my first paragraph? There's a great book by the philosopher Alexander Nehamas entitled The Art of Living in which he argues that philosophy is, in part, a project of self-fashioning, of creating who you are. Of course, that project is something in which everyone is engaged all the time if we don't have stable selves; we're all manufacturing ourselves all the time. But Nehamas' point is more about the process and how philosophy can help us do it more or less effectively (he starts with Sokratēs and runs up to Foucault, with very useful detours about Montaigne and Nietzsche). One of the most basic parts of the process is that it's largely narrative in nature - we're constantly (re)telling ourselves who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
4. Right now I'm not completely sure who I am anymore. I'm not talking about a full-blown meltdown or anything of the sort. I mean I'm trying to parse out who I have become over the past five years of being with my ex-wife, moving to New England, making the choices that I've made and working through their consequences, making new choices growing out of the older ones, and so forth. I spent a lot of time and energy working on who I was before I got married, composing rather than simply repeating the story that I wanted to be myself. I had hit a couple of rough spots near the end of my bachelorhood, which probably factored into getting married so quickly. But getting married ended up leading to either suspending or losing several key things in the life I wanted to live, or the person I wanted to be. I shifted my primary focus away from my friends and family towards my ex-wife, and became far more responsive than active. I put down lots of my basic organizing principles for my day to day life (record keeping practices, lifestyle choices, etc.).
5. One of my professors (great guy, btw) at Syracuse told me once (the only piece of positive useful information I got from a Heidegger seminar, and it characteristically had nothing to do with Heidegger) that marriage is a process of getting to know the person you married. You always (or often) marry your image of a person, and then find yourself actually married to another human being (this changes, somewhat, with the increasing frequency of pre-marital cohabitation, but the basic point still stands). That ended up being very true for me, but now I'm learning that I need to get to know myself again as a bachelor. I thought I was the person who had entered the marriage, but I think that I'll have to rebuild, or re-compose, that me. And it won't ever be the same. My story now involves several chapters that I'm still trying to integrate into a unified story, and to reconcile with the pre-married chapters. And I need to figure out how to build out from that framework. It's intimidating, actually, especially because there is no "me" that stands outside of it and makes editorial or authorial choices; I'm always already caught up in the pattern and am attempting to shape it further, but I've only got these tools and these materials right now. Reconstituting my previous repertoire, or assembling a new one ("Self" Repertoire 2.0), is going to take time, and a lot of work.
6. I hate having worked so hard the past few years, struggling through interminable fights, loving and being angry and hurt all the time. And it's not only because it was all difficult, but because it left me exhausted, and without an empty tab at the end. Instead, I'm filled up of debt, regret, and an unsteady future. I don't like this me very much. I didn't like the me I was the past few years (not total self-loathing, btw, just a general sense of "this isn't who I want to be"). And becoming the me I want to be will take effort and willingness to make hard choices, as I'm still trying to recuperate from the past several years. My therapist suggested last session that I need to "give myself time off." Set an arbitrary "restart" point in 2011, and worry about all of this then. But I can't. "All of this" is happening now. The story never stops being told.
7. So maybe this blog is, at least embryonically, part of that process. I stopped writing when I stopped doing anything but reacting a few weeks ago, reacting to my anniversary and to my workload, and shutting down from both. But shutting down isn't stopping the story, it's just hitting the space bar in unending sequence. Damn it. I have so much work to do, and I'm so tired.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
2010.11.10
Days Remaining: 200
1. After my post yesterday I started doing some poking around about the metis in Canada, and got to thinking about something I had thought before: it's a damned shame that we don't learn about Canadian and Mexican history growing up in the US. Why don't we know, for instance, that Louis Riel, the "Father of Manitoba" (the Canadian province) was convicted of treason and executed for leading an armed uprising (they even have a name for it: The North-West Rebellion) against the Canadian Confederation? He also heard voices and thought that God was calling him to found a "new" Catholic Church, one based in Montreal, focused upon the needs of the Metis populations of Canada. This guy was one of Canada's founding fathers. And I thought Ben Franklin was interesting.
2. Anyway, the metis are really interesting, and are a good illustration of one of my favorite analytical terms/ideas: ethnogenesis (literally, in Greek, "the generation of a people"). Basically, this is the term to describe the myriad ways that groups identifying themselves in ethnic (as opposed to national, religious, class-based, etc.) terms come into existence. This is neat because the entire underlying claim of an ethnic identity is predicated upon shared descent from a common ancestor or group of ancestors: identity is tied in with genetics. The problem, when one looks at this in history, however, is that many "ethnic" groups seem to appear rather suddenly on the stage of history without actual evidence of large migrations into an area (although migration legends are often developed as a way of explaining the presence of an ethnic group in a specific location). Even worse is that many ethnic groups, when examined closely, contain a surprisingly complicated series of apparently contradictory data that makes the idea of singularity problematic.
3. One of my favorite examples of this is that Attila the Hun, leader of the Huns (usually thought of as an ethnic group arising in central Asia) had a name, "Attila" that is actually Germanic (technically Ostrogothic) and means "little father" ("atta" was father, and "-ila" was the diminutive, usually used affectionately). So why did a Hun from central Asia have a German name? Well, because the "Huns" weren't actually a single people, probably, and as a polyglot and poly-sourced group, incorporated "Germans" (actually Ostrogoths) into their confederation. Attila was probably either partly Ostrogothic, had a (probably Turkic) name translated into Ostrogothic, or became famous first among Ostrogoths, who then had the privilege of providing his public name. In fact the "Huns" empire collapsed relatively quickly after Attila's death, and somehow this did not leave lots of stateless Huns decamped all over Europe. Instead, a lot of folks who were otherwise Germans, Celts, Greeks, etc. suddenly stopped being Hunnish and went back to whatever was going on locally. The lack of political cohesion stopped the process by which all of those disparate people were beginning to reimagine themselves as one people, the Huns.
4. Successful versions of the process underlay the emergence of the modern nationalities of Europe (most "English" people are descendants of pre-Celtic Britons or of Celts, not invading Anglo-Saxons or Normans, most "French" are descendants of Gauls and Romans, not the Franks, and so on). In those cases the leaders of invading groups were able to provide incentives to the conquered folks to move away from their previous identities and reimagine themselves as part of the invading group. This happened in Egypt, where the majority of the population are descendants of ancient Egyptians (they've done genetic testing to demonstrate this) but think of themselves on some level as being Arabs.
5. In North America, on the other hand, ethnogenesis is most readily attested for groups emerging from demographic collapse. So the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (Mvskoke), Seminole and others are all historically recent groups that coalesced out of the remnant populations of earlier groups. At the time of European (specifically Spanish) contact, there were lots of distinct groups in the southeastern parts of the continent, but epidemics destroyed their social structures and cohesion. What happened afterward is that the descendants of those who survived slowly began to form new groups with different social structures (loose confederations instead of highly organized chiefdoms, for instance, and villages instead of centralized towns) and in the process began to think of themselves as parts of new groups (the "tribes" of American history). We see this most clearly in the case of "tribes" whose members didn't all speak the same language (most famously the Creek Confederacy, where there were at least four major languages present in various Creek villages). Where's the ethnogenesis? Well, despite these internal differences, Creek folks organized themselves and identified themselves as being Creek (technically, Muskokee), albeit perhaps "Creek from Town X" as opposed to "Creek from Town Z"). They developed a whole range of common rituals and practices, including stories about their "single" origin (this also happened among the Cherokee and Choctaw), usually an emergence narrative, where Creek ancestors came into this world from another through a hole in the ground (which was the sky of the previous world). That story would suggest a single, unified origin and common descent therefrom.
6. That's ethnogenesis: the process by which disparate groups of people come to imagine themselves as part of a group united by common descent. We see traces of this in the development of ancient Israelites, Greeks, Romans, the Japanese, Arabs, etc. But we're so used to thinking in ethnic terms that it's hard to remember that ethnic identity is constantly being reimagined or renegotiated, as opposed to a natural "fact." The metis in Canada are a good example of this: there was no single origin point for them, the metis populations developed over time from an ongoing process of intermarriage between (usually French) European settlers and Native American women. As the children of these marriages grew in number, despite having a range of Native ancestries - Chippewa, Ojibway, Potawatomie, Cree, etc. and a range of European ancestries (very broadly French and English, but recognizing real differences within each of those two groups) to think of themselves as a single people. Nowadays Metis is a distinct ethnic designation in Canada, with at least one major Metis language (Michif - French nouns and Cree verbs; apparently it's very hard to learn) and a strong internal sense of shared identity. We all know that they were a very heterogeneous group to begin with, but somehow it's become normalized to think of metis as a self-evident ethnic identity, where any given metis is assumed to be more like any other metis than like a non-metis person.
7. So, that's today's thinking on a topic of no importance to the vast majority of anybody. But this is what I have been thinking about since mentioning the metis yesterday.
Days Remaining: 200
1. After my post yesterday I started doing some poking around about the metis in Canada, and got to thinking about something I had thought before: it's a damned shame that we don't learn about Canadian and Mexican history growing up in the US. Why don't we know, for instance, that Louis Riel, the "Father of Manitoba" (the Canadian province) was convicted of treason and executed for leading an armed uprising (they even have a name for it: The North-West Rebellion) against the Canadian Confederation? He also heard voices and thought that God was calling him to found a "new" Catholic Church, one based in Montreal, focused upon the needs of the Metis populations of Canada. This guy was one of Canada's founding fathers. And I thought Ben Franklin was interesting.
2. Anyway, the metis are really interesting, and are a good illustration of one of my favorite analytical terms/ideas: ethnogenesis (literally, in Greek, "the generation of a people"). Basically, this is the term to describe the myriad ways that groups identifying themselves in ethnic (as opposed to national, religious, class-based, etc.) terms come into existence. This is neat because the entire underlying claim of an ethnic identity is predicated upon shared descent from a common ancestor or group of ancestors: identity is tied in with genetics. The problem, when one looks at this in history, however, is that many "ethnic" groups seem to appear rather suddenly on the stage of history without actual evidence of large migrations into an area (although migration legends are often developed as a way of explaining the presence of an ethnic group in a specific location). Even worse is that many ethnic groups, when examined closely, contain a surprisingly complicated series of apparently contradictory data that makes the idea of singularity problematic.
3. One of my favorite examples of this is that Attila the Hun, leader of the Huns (usually thought of as an ethnic group arising in central Asia) had a name, "Attila" that is actually Germanic (technically Ostrogothic) and means "little father" ("atta" was father, and "-ila" was the diminutive, usually used affectionately). So why did a Hun from central Asia have a German name? Well, because the "Huns" weren't actually a single people, probably, and as a polyglot and poly-sourced group, incorporated "Germans" (actually Ostrogoths) into their confederation. Attila was probably either partly Ostrogothic, had a (probably Turkic) name translated into Ostrogothic, or became famous first among Ostrogoths, who then had the privilege of providing his public name. In fact the "Huns" empire collapsed relatively quickly after Attila's death, and somehow this did not leave lots of stateless Huns decamped all over Europe. Instead, a lot of folks who were otherwise Germans, Celts, Greeks, etc. suddenly stopped being Hunnish and went back to whatever was going on locally. The lack of political cohesion stopped the process by which all of those disparate people were beginning to reimagine themselves as one people, the Huns.
4. Successful versions of the process underlay the emergence of the modern nationalities of Europe (most "English" people are descendants of pre-Celtic Britons or of Celts, not invading Anglo-Saxons or Normans, most "French" are descendants of Gauls and Romans, not the Franks, and so on). In those cases the leaders of invading groups were able to provide incentives to the conquered folks to move away from their previous identities and reimagine themselves as part of the invading group. This happened in Egypt, where the majority of the population are descendants of ancient Egyptians (they've done genetic testing to demonstrate this) but think of themselves on some level as being Arabs.
5. In North America, on the other hand, ethnogenesis is most readily attested for groups emerging from demographic collapse. So the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (Mvskoke), Seminole and others are all historically recent groups that coalesced out of the remnant populations of earlier groups. At the time of European (specifically Spanish) contact, there were lots of distinct groups in the southeastern parts of the continent, but epidemics destroyed their social structures and cohesion. What happened afterward is that the descendants of those who survived slowly began to form new groups with different social structures (loose confederations instead of highly organized chiefdoms, for instance, and villages instead of centralized towns) and in the process began to think of themselves as parts of new groups (the "tribes" of American history). We see this most clearly in the case of "tribes" whose members didn't all speak the same language (most famously the Creek Confederacy, where there were at least four major languages present in various Creek villages). Where's the ethnogenesis? Well, despite these internal differences, Creek folks organized themselves and identified themselves as being Creek (technically, Muskokee), albeit perhaps "Creek from Town X" as opposed to "Creek from Town Z"). They developed a whole range of common rituals and practices, including stories about their "single" origin (this also happened among the Cherokee and Choctaw), usually an emergence narrative, where Creek ancestors came into this world from another through a hole in the ground (which was the sky of the previous world). That story would suggest a single, unified origin and common descent therefrom.
6. That's ethnogenesis: the process by which disparate groups of people come to imagine themselves as part of a group united by common descent. We see traces of this in the development of ancient Israelites, Greeks, Romans, the Japanese, Arabs, etc. But we're so used to thinking in ethnic terms that it's hard to remember that ethnic identity is constantly being reimagined or renegotiated, as opposed to a natural "fact." The metis in Canada are a good example of this: there was no single origin point for them, the metis populations developed over time from an ongoing process of intermarriage between (usually French) European settlers and Native American women. As the children of these marriages grew in number, despite having a range of Native ancestries - Chippewa, Ojibway, Potawatomie, Cree, etc. and a range of European ancestries (very broadly French and English, but recognizing real differences within each of those two groups) to think of themselves as a single people. Nowadays Metis is a distinct ethnic designation in Canada, with at least one major Metis language (Michif - French nouns and Cree verbs; apparently it's very hard to learn) and a strong internal sense of shared identity. We all know that they were a very heterogeneous group to begin with, but somehow it's become normalized to think of metis as a self-evident ethnic identity, where any given metis is assumed to be more like any other metis than like a non-metis person.
7. So, that's today's thinking on a topic of no importance to the vast majority of anybody. But this is what I have been thinking about since mentioning the metis yesterday.
A Little Bit Of Soul...
2010.11.10
Days Remaining: 201
1. First off, the title for today's blog has no great significance whatsoever. It is, however, the title of the song (by the band Music Explosion) currently playing on my iTunes program as I sit here and begin typing.
2. Second, for any of you who have tried to post a comment as per my request but were unable to do so because you didn't have a qualifying account, I have fixed the problem, and anyone can now post comments as "Anonymous" if they would like to do so. My apologies for the previous setting, I apparently didn't set this account up quite as correctly as I had thought. Anyway, it's now open season on postings, for anyone reading.
3. I got a very interesting question from one of my Native American Religions students last night; this week we're discussing Native American Christianities (in general and under the course topic/unit of "revitalization movements"). One of the essays they read was for yesterday was about the religious cultures of the so-called Old Colony (basically Masssachusetts before Rhode Island and Connecticut officially hived off on their own), and the ways in which Puritans' and Native Americans' religious traditions actually had quite a bit in common. So this student wrote and asked me if this was a religious version of a phenomenon called "the Middle Ground" (analytically developed by a historian named Richard White in a book entitled "The Middle Ground"), where two cultures (specifically French/English and Native American) come into contact and develop a whole range of shared values, institutions, etc. This student's query is such a good question! Basically, I responded that the essay we read is about what I'd call a proto-Middle Ground; there were movements towards developing shared institutions, values, etc., but the English just kept immigrating, and didn't like doing things like intermarrying, and so eventually they drove Native Americans away or isolated them in specific "Indian towns" (this happened in Delaware, home of my heart, btw). This got me thinking about exactly how much Anglos (and later Anglo-Americans of many different ethnicities) at a certain point stopped intermarrying, and how much that shaped US history and culture. We know of lots of intermarriages in the Middle and Southern Colonies from New York to Georgia up through the early 18th century, but then things get complicated. Many of the leading figures in Mvskoke (Creek) and Cherokee history in the 18th century were the descendants of European-Native marriages, but Anglo (and then American) societies increasingly viewed them as exclusively "Indians" and thus radically different from Europeans. This is particularly striking because the timing aligns well with the development of institutionalized racial slavery in Virginia in the late 17th and early 18th century (see the book Foul Means by Anthony S. Parent). So, basically, English colonial societies in North America began to shift towards racial theories of human nature (and politics) in the late 17th century, and we've been paying for it ever since. This is terrifying, but also, I think, highlights one of the key lessons history has taught me: we can't change the past, but we are gravely mistaken to underestimate the consequences of human agency. The world we live in is partly our inheritance, but it's also partly the result of our decisions, which become our successors' inheritance in turn. This, plus the realization, based on anthropological data, that there are very few (though important - physicality and location being the biggest ones) ahistorical factors determining our behaviors (i.e., culture is really important). We have options, and all we have to do to exercise them is live with the consequences.
4. This is one of the reasons why I am fundamentally not a conservative. Aside from the specific current political alignments and issues, at heart I just don't believe that it was inherently better before, or that we are best off not changing anything now. I see too many options, and too much historical contingency around me, to commit to an underlying social system as "natural." I'm also anti-authoritarian (though, in the interests of self-awareness, I admit that I have Thomas Jefferson's disease, and am really committed to the proposition that no one person should have absolute power, unless they are me), which aligns nicely with a deep resistance to conservatism, but since liberalism can produce despots just as easily, I can't be an absolutely committed liberal either, though at present many of the societal problems we're faced with are best, I think, dealt with via varying degrees of state action. On the other hand, I am committed to many ideals I see articulated in the Bill of Rights (which I see as amenable to being interpreted as either a conservative or liberal document, though its historical genesis is profoundly anti-federalist - see Woody Holton's excellent, though dense, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution).
5. Anyway, I don't have a major point there, but it's something I was thinking about today. On that note, here's something else that I've said in various contexts over the years, but which I think I managed to articulate clearly (at least for myself) when talking to Octavian about politics a few months ago. One of the benefits of a solid education is the ability to understand what and why words mean things. I don't think that there is such a thing as a "natural" meaning, but it's useful to be able to figure out what any word means in a particular context, and to be able to figure out if this meaning is intended or accidental, clear or unclear, useful or unproductive, and so on. One of my betes noirs in the past several years is the term "Islamo-fascist" (usually, though not always, used by those who identify as conservative or neo-conservative in American politics). Used as such, this term is an attempt to co-opt the general meaning of "fascism" as "un-American" or "evil" and apply it to certain groups of Muslims and their theological and political claims. I'm not in favor of those specific groups of Muslims, but in fact I can't see how the word "fascist," used with any historical specificity, actually applies to them. When the Encyclopedia Britannica (prior to WWII) included an article on "Fascism," they invited Mussolini to write it, and his essay (whatever one thinks of Mussolini) makes it clear that "Fascism" is about the relation of the state to the individual and about the ways in which the state relates to the economy. Classical Fascist theory differs tremendously from the intellectual and social theories of Communism and Socialism. What it had in common with them in the mid-20th century was that all three forms of government were eventually manifested in dictatorial states (Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's USSR, and Hitler's Germany). But conflating the three of them because of this is to ignore the socialist states that didn't become dictatorships, the complexities of how fascism (for instance) developed and functioned outside of Mussolini's Italy (such as in Peron's Argentina), and thereby to impoverish our ability to analyze and compare productively.
6. Because what we're really talking about in equating those three different types of government are two things: 1) the underlying claim, made by Americans, that anything not capitalist and democratic is bad, and 2) that dictatorships are bad. Now, I agree with the second claim, but I'm not as dogmatic on the first (especially since this country has had a mixed capitalist/socialist economy for a long, long time). The only thing that the various Muslim terrorist organizations have in common is a theocratic ideal used to justify actions by stateless actors. Compare the Taliban with al-Qaida - the Taliban had a theocratic ideal in place as a state, whereas al-Qaida is deliberately and explicitly only interested in a government if it is the restoration of their idea of what the caliphate was - anything less than that is insufficient. Functionally, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and others are alike primarily in their willingness to use violence and terror (i.e. threat of violence) to achieve their ends. But, and this is crucial, that wasn't an explicit part of Mussolini's theory of Fascism (though I would argue that any system that privileges the system over its constituent members will tend in that direction).
7. Even more interesting is that repressive states are pretty much always governed by either a monarchy or an oligarchy (rule of the few, whether a Party, a junta, a specific economic class, or a series of ministers) who use the available technology to monitor and control their citizens. It doesn't matter if this is justified by communist, socialist, fascist, or capitalist ideology. What matter is whether or not the state behaves in this fashion. By using the god awful portmanteau "Islamo-fascist" we're misidentifying al-Qaida as a state-focused group, but they have never given any indication of wanting to found a state of their own. That's important, because it means that we can very easily misidentify their goals, values, and methods. It also means it's easy to assume that what al-Qaida opposes is diametrically opposite to "fascism." But many things that we have done in the war on terror, under both Bush and Obama (elements of the Patriot Act's attempted negation of civil liberties, the use of extrajudicial torture, various powers claimed for the office of the president, etc.) are actually more aligned with the idea of privileging the state over the individual than we would like to admit. That is, some of our responses to the War on Terror actually look kind of like Mussolini's fascism.
8. On the other hand, calling Bush a "fascist" isn't right either. Cheney, you could make the argument either way. Far more troubling is the expansion of authorized state surveillance, lack of accountability or oversight, and (in Cheney's case) the collusion of industry and state to dominate major sectors of society without any public knowledge (I'm talking here about his Energy Task Force). But if we don't know what Fascism was, then we can't make a productive comparison to current events. And the use of the term "Islamo-fascism" distorts the word's meaning so much as to render it simply a synonym for "bad." And even if you were using Mussolini's definition of Fascism as your guide, it's not at all clear to me that calling someone a "fascist" would have to be an insult or accusation. We live in a democracy, we need to be able to judge between various competing choices. Being able to see what those choices involve and to characterize them in relation to each other and history is important. And precise use of language will help with that tremendously. There are things that one can say in defense of Cheney's idea of government (whether one agrees with them is a different matter) but in order to do that, we need to be able to identify what that idea of government is like in historical and contemporary terms. But we've lost the easiest way to do that by letting our terms drift into pointless generality.
9. When I spoke on the telephone with my Mom on Monday afternoon, Euander insisted that he wanted to talk with me, and when he got on the telephone he informed me that "[I] didn't come to [his] party [on Sunday]." He's four, and he has mastered Avuncular Guilt Production.
10. And that's about it for now.
Days Remaining: 201
1. First off, the title for today's blog has no great significance whatsoever. It is, however, the title of the song (by the band Music Explosion) currently playing on my iTunes program as I sit here and begin typing.
2. Second, for any of you who have tried to post a comment as per my request but were unable to do so because you didn't have a qualifying account, I have fixed the problem, and anyone can now post comments as "Anonymous" if they would like to do so. My apologies for the previous setting, I apparently didn't set this account up quite as correctly as I had thought. Anyway, it's now open season on postings, for anyone reading.
3. I got a very interesting question from one of my Native American Religions students last night; this week we're discussing Native American Christianities (in general and under the course topic/unit of "revitalization movements"). One of the essays they read was for yesterday was about the religious cultures of the so-called Old Colony (basically Masssachusetts before Rhode Island and Connecticut officially hived off on their own), and the ways in which Puritans' and Native Americans' religious traditions actually had quite a bit in common. So this student wrote and asked me if this was a religious version of a phenomenon called "the Middle Ground" (analytically developed by a historian named Richard White in a book entitled "The Middle Ground"), where two cultures (specifically French/English and Native American) come into contact and develop a whole range of shared values, institutions, etc. This student's query is such a good question! Basically, I responded that the essay we read is about what I'd call a proto-Middle Ground; there were movements towards developing shared institutions, values, etc., but the English just kept immigrating, and didn't like doing things like intermarrying, and so eventually they drove Native Americans away or isolated them in specific "Indian towns" (this happened in Delaware, home of my heart, btw). This got me thinking about exactly how much Anglos (and later Anglo-Americans of many different ethnicities) at a certain point stopped intermarrying, and how much that shaped US history and culture. We know of lots of intermarriages in the Middle and Southern Colonies from New York to Georgia up through the early 18th century, but then things get complicated. Many of the leading figures in Mvskoke (Creek) and Cherokee history in the 18th century were the descendants of European-Native marriages, but Anglo (and then American) societies increasingly viewed them as exclusively "Indians" and thus radically different from Europeans. This is particularly striking because the timing aligns well with the development of institutionalized racial slavery in Virginia in the late 17th and early 18th century (see the book Foul Means by Anthony S. Parent). So, basically, English colonial societies in North America began to shift towards racial theories of human nature (and politics) in the late 17th century, and we've been paying for it ever since. This is terrifying, but also, I think, highlights one of the key lessons history has taught me: we can't change the past, but we are gravely mistaken to underestimate the consequences of human agency. The world we live in is partly our inheritance, but it's also partly the result of our decisions, which become our successors' inheritance in turn. This, plus the realization, based on anthropological data, that there are very few (though important - physicality and location being the biggest ones) ahistorical factors determining our behaviors (i.e., culture is really important). We have options, and all we have to do to exercise them is live with the consequences.
4. This is one of the reasons why I am fundamentally not a conservative. Aside from the specific current political alignments and issues, at heart I just don't believe that it was inherently better before, or that we are best off not changing anything now. I see too many options, and too much historical contingency around me, to commit to an underlying social system as "natural." I'm also anti-authoritarian (though, in the interests of self-awareness, I admit that I have Thomas Jefferson's disease, and am really committed to the proposition that no one person should have absolute power, unless they are me), which aligns nicely with a deep resistance to conservatism, but since liberalism can produce despots just as easily, I can't be an absolutely committed liberal either, though at present many of the societal problems we're faced with are best, I think, dealt with via varying degrees of state action. On the other hand, I am committed to many ideals I see articulated in the Bill of Rights (which I see as amenable to being interpreted as either a conservative or liberal document, though its historical genesis is profoundly anti-federalist - see Woody Holton's excellent, though dense, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution).
5. Anyway, I don't have a major point there, but it's something I was thinking about today. On that note, here's something else that I've said in various contexts over the years, but which I think I managed to articulate clearly (at least for myself) when talking to Octavian about politics a few months ago. One of the benefits of a solid education is the ability to understand what and why words mean things. I don't think that there is such a thing as a "natural" meaning, but it's useful to be able to figure out what any word means in a particular context, and to be able to figure out if this meaning is intended or accidental, clear or unclear, useful or unproductive, and so on. One of my betes noirs in the past several years is the term "Islamo-fascist" (usually, though not always, used by those who identify as conservative or neo-conservative in American politics). Used as such, this term is an attempt to co-opt the general meaning of "fascism" as "un-American" or "evil" and apply it to certain groups of Muslims and their theological and political claims. I'm not in favor of those specific groups of Muslims, but in fact I can't see how the word "fascist," used with any historical specificity, actually applies to them. When the Encyclopedia Britannica (prior to WWII) included an article on "Fascism," they invited Mussolini to write it, and his essay (whatever one thinks of Mussolini) makes it clear that "Fascism" is about the relation of the state to the individual and about the ways in which the state relates to the economy. Classical Fascist theory differs tremendously from the intellectual and social theories of Communism and Socialism. What it had in common with them in the mid-20th century was that all three forms of government were eventually manifested in dictatorial states (Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's USSR, and Hitler's Germany). But conflating the three of them because of this is to ignore the socialist states that didn't become dictatorships, the complexities of how fascism (for instance) developed and functioned outside of Mussolini's Italy (such as in Peron's Argentina), and thereby to impoverish our ability to analyze and compare productively.
6. Because what we're really talking about in equating those three different types of government are two things: 1) the underlying claim, made by Americans, that anything not capitalist and democratic is bad, and 2) that dictatorships are bad. Now, I agree with the second claim, but I'm not as dogmatic on the first (especially since this country has had a mixed capitalist/socialist economy for a long, long time). The only thing that the various Muslim terrorist organizations have in common is a theocratic ideal used to justify actions by stateless actors. Compare the Taliban with al-Qaida - the Taliban had a theocratic ideal in place as a state, whereas al-Qaida is deliberately and explicitly only interested in a government if it is the restoration of their idea of what the caliphate was - anything less than that is insufficient. Functionally, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and others are alike primarily in their willingness to use violence and terror (i.e. threat of violence) to achieve their ends. But, and this is crucial, that wasn't an explicit part of Mussolini's theory of Fascism (though I would argue that any system that privileges the system over its constituent members will tend in that direction).
7. Even more interesting is that repressive states are pretty much always governed by either a monarchy or an oligarchy (rule of the few, whether a Party, a junta, a specific economic class, or a series of ministers) who use the available technology to monitor and control their citizens. It doesn't matter if this is justified by communist, socialist, fascist, or capitalist ideology. What matter is whether or not the state behaves in this fashion. By using the god awful portmanteau "Islamo-fascist" we're misidentifying al-Qaida as a state-focused group, but they have never given any indication of wanting to found a state of their own. That's important, because it means that we can very easily misidentify their goals, values, and methods. It also means it's easy to assume that what al-Qaida opposes is diametrically opposite to "fascism." But many things that we have done in the war on terror, under both Bush and Obama (elements of the Patriot Act's attempted negation of civil liberties, the use of extrajudicial torture, various powers claimed for the office of the president, etc.) are actually more aligned with the idea of privileging the state over the individual than we would like to admit. That is, some of our responses to the War on Terror actually look kind of like Mussolini's fascism.
8. On the other hand, calling Bush a "fascist" isn't right either. Cheney, you could make the argument either way. Far more troubling is the expansion of authorized state surveillance, lack of accountability or oversight, and (in Cheney's case) the collusion of industry and state to dominate major sectors of society without any public knowledge (I'm talking here about his Energy Task Force). But if we don't know what Fascism was, then we can't make a productive comparison to current events. And the use of the term "Islamo-fascism" distorts the word's meaning so much as to render it simply a synonym for "bad." And even if you were using Mussolini's definition of Fascism as your guide, it's not at all clear to me that calling someone a "fascist" would have to be an insult or accusation. We live in a democracy, we need to be able to judge between various competing choices. Being able to see what those choices involve and to characterize them in relation to each other and history is important. And precise use of language will help with that tremendously. There are things that one can say in defense of Cheney's idea of government (whether one agrees with them is a different matter) but in order to do that, we need to be able to identify what that idea of government is like in historical and contemporary terms. But we've lost the easiest way to do that by letting our terms drift into pointless generality.
9. When I spoke on the telephone with my Mom on Monday afternoon, Euander insisted that he wanted to talk with me, and when he got on the telephone he informed me that "[I] didn't come to [his] party [on Sunday]." He's four, and he has mastered Avuncular Guilt Production.
10. And that's about it for now.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
2010.11.07
Days Remaining: 204
1. To start off, happy birthday to my dad (now 71) and my nephew, Euander (now 4). Euander had a birthday party this afternoon involving a hayride and a bonfire, and this evening the family is having a meal to celebrate my dad's birthday. I wish I could be there, guys! The biggest limitation to being able to travel is money, and if/when I move back to Delaware in May, one benefit will be easy access to family and friends' gatherings. On the upside for now, this will be the first year in four that I'll be in Delaware for Thanksgiving, so that's a plus.
2. When I called Euander this morning to wish him a happy birthday, his mom Selena (my sister - remember, she self-selected her name so it doesn't follow the System) put Iunia (his sister) on the phone and told her to tell me "about the dog across the street." It turns out that their new neighbors have a Rottweiler who has the same first name as me, which made Iunia laugh. Then when I told her not to get confused and call the dog by the kids' nickname for me (redacted for anonymity purposes), she started to do her belly-laugh, which is one of the most infections sounds I know. I love those two kids. Selena made Euander a Wolverine-decorated cake, which looked fantastic. Euander is apparently a big Wolverine fan, of which I completely approve.
3. This weekend has been kind of odd, activity-wise. I've been grading and doing various types of work around my apartment, and have had Netflix and/or Hulu playing in the background throughout. Yesterday I finally watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind in its entirety for the first time since I saw it on HBO when I was very young. I was really surprised by how good a film it was. I mostly remember, as I think many of us do, the finale at the Devil's Tower, but the entire narrative worked wonderfully. In particular I thought there were very interesting psychological and existential parallels between Neary's experience and those attested by religious visionaries or prophets (Speilberg has acknowledged the parallels between Neary and Moses in the story's progression - a little-commented detail struck me forcefully with the sunburn Neary gets from being scanned by a UFO and the passage in Exodus where Moses' face, when descending from Sinai, is said to have light streaming from it). Anyway, the film struck me as nailing the attraction/fear that is often mentioned in encounters with deities (how many angels in the Bible, when they appear to a human, first say, "Fear not"?). The actual aliens were the only part that disappointed me. I remember being terrified of them when I was a kid (the late-70s/early-80s nexus of In Search Of episodes, TV "specials," etc. about alleged alien abductions reduced me to a quivering fetal position in my bed late at night). Anyway, the actual aliens in the film were somehow not believable (partly a function of the costumes - compare this with the beings in the Abyss, essentially a CEotTK knock-off, but with far better creature-effects), compared with the ships or the human characters.
4. Minor side note: when my parents went to see CEotTK in theaters on a Saturday date night, I remember asking my mom, the next morning, about the movie. I was very curious to know what had happened to the kid, Barry, who gets abducted in the film's scariest scene. My mom told me (I remember this vividly, because it was so comforting) that inside the ship there were lots of people and (this has stuck with me for 30+ years now) they also had ponies. When I was little, pony rides were a regular part of our recreational life. So the alien abductors were completely down with making sure their abductees had a rich array of entertainment on the glowing UFOs. This is even funnier to me because I now know that in the original release there were no shots of the interior of the ship(s) at all - though later during a re-release they included an entirely superfluous scene inside (which Speilberg now regrets ever agreeing to do because it lessens the mystery - he's right). Even in the re-release, though, no ponies.
5. My enjoyment of CEotTK stands in contrast to the other long-overdue viewing (granted, this is "viewing" while working on grading, so it's not the most dedicated/focused activity) from yesterday, Heavy Metal. This became, for me, a testimony to how dated a revolutionary work can become; I thought it was boring and uninteresting (and although I can post facto sympathize with the teenage boys' fantasy/over-the-top sexuality throughout the film, it struck me now as annoying and regressive). I completely missed this one growing up, although I knew it by repute (both conversationally and in relation to the ongoing publication). But by the time I had any awareness of Heavy Metal, I was already in my late teens or early 20s, and the adolescent-focused work in the magazine had lost a lot of its appeal. So I never bothered with the film, but Netflix, eh, it's there for viewing with no work, so I figured, why not? I get the revolutionary aspect (this and Fritz the Cat strike me as fundamentally similar in that regard), but I didn't enjoy the visual aesthetic at all (some of the soundtrack was still appealing, though). On the upside, this really underscored for me how generic the sci-fi/fantasy stuff continues to be in film - especially the post-apocalyptic parts. That might sound negative, but I actually found it really interesting to see how much things haven't changed, and how much of that comes out of the visual productions of the late 60s (primarily book covers as opposed to their actual contents) and the 70s (and, yes, I know that Heavy Metal came out in 1981).
6. I stand by that general historico-aesthetic assessment because I also, late last night, discovered that Hulu had some old He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoons, and I watched two episodes. These were mainstays of my afternoon viewing for much of my pre-Junior High life, and I remember them fondly. But they have not aged well. Anyway, the visual palette was almost identical with that from Heavy Metal (why do so few people in fantasy cartoons from the 80s believe in blue skies or green plants?), despite the very different animation styles. The landscapes and technology depicted were almost interchangeable. It was very surprising to see this apparently common visual culture in one of the theoretically iconic productions.
7. One of my Netflix standby shows is No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain's international food show). In the 6th Season he has had several shows based in US cities, and I've begun to collect a list of restaurants to try if I'm ever in Chicago, NYC, or DC (so far) with time to kill and money to spend. This is both diverting and frustrating, as I now wish I were wealthy and had ready access to these restaurants. Because I like my cooking, but I don't have enough money or resources to do much that's particularly interesting right now. Lately I've had a hankering for Korean Barbecue, which is available nowhere nearby, but which I can get on Kirkwood Highway in Delaware.
8. And on that gustatory note, I'll sign off here. Out of curiosity, if you read this, could you post a comment, so I can get a sense of how many readers I (still) have?
Days Remaining: 204
1. To start off, happy birthday to my dad (now 71) and my nephew, Euander (now 4). Euander had a birthday party this afternoon involving a hayride and a bonfire, and this evening the family is having a meal to celebrate my dad's birthday. I wish I could be there, guys! The biggest limitation to being able to travel is money, and if/when I move back to Delaware in May, one benefit will be easy access to family and friends' gatherings. On the upside for now, this will be the first year in four that I'll be in Delaware for Thanksgiving, so that's a plus.
2. When I called Euander this morning to wish him a happy birthday, his mom Selena (my sister - remember, she self-selected her name so it doesn't follow the System) put Iunia (his sister) on the phone and told her to tell me "about the dog across the street." It turns out that their new neighbors have a Rottweiler who has the same first name as me, which made Iunia laugh. Then when I told her not to get confused and call the dog by the kids' nickname for me (redacted for anonymity purposes), she started to do her belly-laugh, which is one of the most infections sounds I know. I love those two kids. Selena made Euander a Wolverine-decorated cake, which looked fantastic. Euander is apparently a big Wolverine fan, of which I completely approve.
3. This weekend has been kind of odd, activity-wise. I've been grading and doing various types of work around my apartment, and have had Netflix and/or Hulu playing in the background throughout. Yesterday I finally watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind in its entirety for the first time since I saw it on HBO when I was very young. I was really surprised by how good a film it was. I mostly remember, as I think many of us do, the finale at the Devil's Tower, but the entire narrative worked wonderfully. In particular I thought there were very interesting psychological and existential parallels between Neary's experience and those attested by religious visionaries or prophets (Speilberg has acknowledged the parallels between Neary and Moses in the story's progression - a little-commented detail struck me forcefully with the sunburn Neary gets from being scanned by a UFO and the passage in Exodus where Moses' face, when descending from Sinai, is said to have light streaming from it). Anyway, the film struck me as nailing the attraction/fear that is often mentioned in encounters with deities (how many angels in the Bible, when they appear to a human, first say, "Fear not"?). The actual aliens were the only part that disappointed me. I remember being terrified of them when I was a kid (the late-70s/early-80s nexus of In Search Of episodes, TV "specials," etc. about alleged alien abductions reduced me to a quivering fetal position in my bed late at night). Anyway, the actual aliens in the film were somehow not believable (partly a function of the costumes - compare this with the beings in the Abyss, essentially a CEotTK knock-off, but with far better creature-effects), compared with the ships or the human characters.
4. Minor side note: when my parents went to see CEotTK in theaters on a Saturday date night, I remember asking my mom, the next morning, about the movie. I was very curious to know what had happened to the kid, Barry, who gets abducted in the film's scariest scene. My mom told me (I remember this vividly, because it was so comforting) that inside the ship there were lots of people and (this has stuck with me for 30+ years now) they also had ponies. When I was little, pony rides were a regular part of our recreational life. So the alien abductors were completely down with making sure their abductees had a rich array of entertainment on the glowing UFOs. This is even funnier to me because I now know that in the original release there were no shots of the interior of the ship(s) at all - though later during a re-release they included an entirely superfluous scene inside (which Speilberg now regrets ever agreeing to do because it lessens the mystery - he's right). Even in the re-release, though, no ponies.
5. My enjoyment of CEotTK stands in contrast to the other long-overdue viewing (granted, this is "viewing" while working on grading, so it's not the most dedicated/focused activity) from yesterday, Heavy Metal. This became, for me, a testimony to how dated a revolutionary work can become; I thought it was boring and uninteresting (and although I can post facto sympathize with the teenage boys' fantasy/over-the-top sexuality throughout the film, it struck me now as annoying and regressive). I completely missed this one growing up, although I knew it by repute (both conversationally and in relation to the ongoing publication). But by the time I had any awareness of Heavy Metal, I was already in my late teens or early 20s, and the adolescent-focused work in the magazine had lost a lot of its appeal. So I never bothered with the film, but Netflix, eh, it's there for viewing with no work, so I figured, why not? I get the revolutionary aspect (this and Fritz the Cat strike me as fundamentally similar in that regard), but I didn't enjoy the visual aesthetic at all (some of the soundtrack was still appealing, though). On the upside, this really underscored for me how generic the sci-fi/fantasy stuff continues to be in film - especially the post-apocalyptic parts. That might sound negative, but I actually found it really interesting to see how much things haven't changed, and how much of that comes out of the visual productions of the late 60s (primarily book covers as opposed to their actual contents) and the 70s (and, yes, I know that Heavy Metal came out in 1981).
6. I stand by that general historico-aesthetic assessment because I also, late last night, discovered that Hulu had some old He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoons, and I watched two episodes. These were mainstays of my afternoon viewing for much of my pre-Junior High life, and I remember them fondly. But they have not aged well. Anyway, the visual palette was almost identical with that from Heavy Metal (why do so few people in fantasy cartoons from the 80s believe in blue skies or green plants?), despite the very different animation styles. The landscapes and technology depicted were almost interchangeable. It was very surprising to see this apparently common visual culture in one of the theoretically iconic productions.
7. One of my Netflix standby shows is No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain's international food show). In the 6th Season he has had several shows based in US cities, and I've begun to collect a list of restaurants to try if I'm ever in Chicago, NYC, or DC (so far) with time to kill and money to spend. This is both diverting and frustrating, as I now wish I were wealthy and had ready access to these restaurants. Because I like my cooking, but I don't have enough money or resources to do much that's particularly interesting right now. Lately I've had a hankering for Korean Barbecue, which is available nowhere nearby, but which I can get on Kirkwood Highway in Delaware.
8. And on that gustatory note, I'll sign off here. Out of curiosity, if you read this, could you post a comment, so I can get a sense of how many readers I (still) have?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)