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February 28, 2005
The pleasure of the book
Tracy and I both got a special delivery today: an advance copy of our book. What a pure pleasure this is! The book is Authorship in Composition Studies. As far as I know, it's the first book in comp/rhet that is about authorship per se. There are a number of fine books that contribute in specialized ways to comp/rhet study of authorship, but this is the first one about it. That's pretty neat. The book is marketed by Wadsworth as a text for advanced undergrad and grad students in comp/rhet, but it's written so that it will be useful for any scholar of comp/rhet wanting an overview of the topic.
That's not all. The book was written entirely by members of the SU doctoral program in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric. I had a remarkable group of students in an advanced doctoral course, and I got this notion that in this course—a course on authorship—each student could investigate issues of authorship in their own area of study. So Paul Butler, who had a J.D. degree before he got his Ph.D. in comp/rhet (and who's now at Montclair State), did a chapter on copyright; Susan Adams (who's finishing her dissertation even as we speak) wrote a chapter on authorship and the body; Amy Robillard (now at Illinois State) did a chapter on the dynamic of students and authors; Jonna Gilfus, who has a background in secondary ed and is now near the finish of her Ph.D., wrote about the figure of the student and the author in comp textbooks; Justin Bain (now at Westminster College in Utah) looked at representations of authorship in the writing center; Mary Queen (also finishing her Ph.D. this year) wrote about authorship and gender; and Damian Baca (now at Michigan State) challenged the Eurocentric notion of the author. Nobody in the class was specializing in technology, so Collin Brooke, who's now the Director of Graduate Studies in our doctoral program, agreed to write a chapter about that aspect of authorship.
It was a delight to develop this book. It was a thrilling way to teach a course and a deeply rewarding way to write a book. I am more proud of this book than any other.
And its cover is—orange and blue! Swear to god, Tracy and I had no idea.
Posted by senioritis at 07:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Signs of spring
This far north, you don't exactly get hit over the head with joyous signs of spring. Instead, you have to be alert for them. So far the red twig has turned really red; the Christmas cranberry has lost its red; and the sap buckets are up. But today a hit-over-the-head sign: a flock of robins! Poor souls will have a hard time of it, arriving with snow cover and more snow coming. But bless their hearts for showing up on February 28, anyhow.
Posted by senioritis at 04:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Backing standards
I'm a loyal West Virginian, but I'll readily admit that prep school rescued me from West Virginia's public school system. So I'm sorry not to see WV in the list of states that are setting higher graduation standards: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas. But then again, I'm not sure this effort is anything more than another if-you-set-the-standards-they-will-meet-them initiative—you know, one of those deals where legislators assume that teachers are slackers who must be whipped into shape, and that students will do eversomuch better if only they're given worthwhile goals to meet.
Achieving the goals the 13 states set may not be easy. Governors will have to negotiate with school districts, state university leaders, legislators and teacher unions to craft changes that can win approval in each state.
I wish somebody besides teachers understood that better education requires a lot more than "negotiations"—unless it's intended that these "negotiations" include negotiating state budgets, allocations of school funds, etc.
Posted by senioritis at 07:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2005
A particularly funny spam
Come join my network at hi5! I now have over 5 friends in my network! You can meet all of them, plus more than 7 million other Hi5 members! Once you join, you will immediately be connected to all the people in my circle of friends. Hi5 is an online service that lets you meet new people, view photos, browse profiles, and chat with your friends. I'll see you inside, Brad Simpon already has more than 7 million members! Gender/Age: Male/24 Location: Augusta This invitation was sent to rehoward@syr.edu on behalf of Brad Simpon (simpsonbr@hotmail.com). If you do not wish to receive invitations from hi5 members, click on the link below: http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayBlockInvite.do?inviteId=277731802
Okay, let's see. Friend Brad, the 24-year-old from Augusta whose surname is spelled two different ways, offers me three choices: I can join his network of 5 friends; I can continue to be spammed by "him"; or I can click on this URL. Uh, no, Brad, there's a fourth choice: I can put you through my junk mail filter. Sayonara.
Posted by senioritis at 08:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Uploading mystery
I am totally mystified. BP is copying LPs to CD. Great delight; suddenly we have Charlie Christian and Edden Hammons in our CD rotations, replete with the wonderful clicks and pops (though BP has wisely used the EQ to reduce those as much as possible). He burns the CDs from LPs; I do the CD covers. But when I do the CD covers, I also copy the CDs to iTunes, as a backup. We've had several tragedies, where a CD he's worked on for half a day has played once and then retired. So I back up the CDs until they've proven themselves through several playings.
To make the CD labels, I'm using Microsoft Word (sorry, folks, I still haven't gotten into CD Stomper, etc.), and I'm entering the album title, year, artist, and the names and times of the songs. And as I upload the CD to iTunes, I have to enter the same information. Yes, it's laborious, but it's also somehow fun. I enjoy doing the cover design, finding just the right image (often but not always the album cover itself), choosing fonts and colors, etc.
Yet here's the mystery: BP is copying the multi-record Springsteen Live 1975-85, one of the last LPs we purchased. I make the label for the first CD, as usual. Then I put his third CD into the well, and iTunes recognizes the CD, automatically providing album title, year, artist, and the names and times of the songs! How does that happen? I know that iTunes will do that automatically for commercially prepared CDs, but this one was burned at home, copied from an LP! It didn't happen with the first CD that BP made from Live 1975-85. But even that is beside the point: how could iTunes ever recognize a homemade CD?
Posted by senioritis at 08:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2005
Seeds of hope
Snowflakes drift down through the sunrise, falling on a snowpack that's great for xco but that the 10-day forecast for 13332 doesn't predict will melt as we sidle into March. It's Saturday morning; the cats (indoor and outdoor) have all been fed; I'm listening to a CD of mid-70s Kate & Anna McGarrigle that BP just burned from old LPs—as a special sprise for me, cuz he knows how I love the McGarrigles; I've got my coffee brewed from organic beans from Hamilton Whole Foods; a loaf of wheat bread is baking in the breadmaker; I've cooked a mixed-grain cereal breakfast; e4444444444444444444444tg (that's Luigi's contribution); the washing machine's going and so is the dishwasher; my concentration is sufficiently recovered that I CAN WORK ON THE HANDBOOK TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE ACCIDENT; and I don't care that there's no spring in sight, cuz my shipment from Pinetree Garden Seeds just arrived:
Nantes carrot
Swiss chard
Dwarf blue carled Scotch kale
Black seeded Simpson lettuce
New red fire lettuce
Big seeded maché
Traviata endive
Grosse bouclee escarole
Sorrel (we tore up our old crop when we expanded the perennial bed)
Rossa di chioggia radicchio
German chamomile
Hyssop
Flax
Marjoram
Anise hyssop
Burnet
Greek oregano
Lavender lavendula angustifolia
Lavender vera (the good stuff)
Pennyroyal (great for keeping the skeeters off ya)
Rue
Tansy
Eastern columbine
Rudbeckia
So I'm starting off my weekend with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, as it were.
Posted by senioritis at 08:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2005
A coach for the books
While acknowledging that he was a polarizing figure, Chaney told Comcast SportsNet, a cable sports channel, that to single out one or two regrettable instances "and say that's my complete biography, that's not right. People who know me know that's not the real me."Abducted by aliens, perhaps? Possessed by the spirit of Bobby Knight?
And what's the difference between a sportswriter and a blogger? The sportswriter repeats this with a straight face. The blogger, on the other hand, might just quietly link to coverage of Frankfurt's new book, describing the differences between lies and bullshit: the bullshitter believes what he's saying.
Posted by senioritis at 07:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Teachers vs. students
In the comp history class yesterday I was talking about the rhetoric of teachers vs. students—the rhetoric that paints students as fools/villains and teachers as heroes/victims. I don't remember the context of my remarks or actually even what I said (hey, it's 3:30 in the morning, and I'm waiting for the aspirin to kick in so I can maybe get some more sleep; sucks to be me), but the issue bubbles up again here in the middle of the night, as I come across Clancy's link to yet another example of the discourse. Like Clancy, I giggled when I read it. And then I sighed and put it on my bibliography of sources.
I've been alert to this discourse ever since 1985, when I found myself part of a staff-taught Western civ course at Colgate, and I had to suffer through weekly meetings in which ancient self-satisfied white male "colleagues" pontificated on the only correct way to teach the Odyssey and the Gospel According to Luke; ignored or derided anything I attempted to contribute to the "discussion"; and never spoke of their students in any terms other than Other. Do my remarks about that scene sound intemperate? Perhaps; but hey, at least I'm not listing their names here. That's some restraint, right?
Bibliography follows. Most of the sources are examples of the teacher-vs.-student discourse; a few analyze it. Way too few. Additions/corrections appreciated.
187. Dir. Kevin Reynolds. Perf. Samuel L. Jackson, John Heard, Ellen Henry, Clifton Collins, Jr., Tony Plana, and Leonard L. Thomas. Warner, 1997.
Clio, Max. "Grading on My Nerves." Chronicle of Higher Education 18 Nov. 2003.
English, Hugh. "Difficulty for Whom?: Teachers' Discourse about Difficult Students." Conflicts and Crises in the Composition Classroom—and What Instructors Can Do About Them. Ed. Dawn Skorczewski and Matthew Parfitt. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2003. 119-124.
Galef, David. "My 57th Recommendation Letter This Week." Inside Higher Ed. 23 Feb. 2005. 25 Feb. 2005
.
Hall, Matt. "Why I Quit Teaching." Chronicle of Higher Education 24 Apr. 2003.
Harris, Miriam Kalman. "We Are Smarter Than Our Students." Chronicle of Higher Education 11 Oct. 2002.
Harvey, Gordon. "Repetitive Strain: The Injuries of Responding to Student Writing." ADE Bulletin 134-135 (Spring/Fall 2003): 43-48.
Laird, Ellen. "Internet Plagiarism: We All Pay the Price." Chronicle of Higher Education (13 July 2001): B5.
Ruscello, Sophia. "The Perfect Job, Except for the Students." Chronicle of Higher Education 1 Oct. 2003.
Silverman, Gillian. "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Plagiarism Buster!" Newsweek (15 July 2002): 12.
Posted by senioritis at 03:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2005
"Seriously hilarious"
I'm linking this one so I'll have it in my cybercommonplace book. DigitalPenny calls her source "seriously hilarious." Oh, yeah, it is. These people have all the restraint about their intellectual property that Atrios' stalker has about his blog. I mean, people need to get a grip—even when it's a Virgo moon.
Posted by senioritis at 06:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 23, 2005
It ain't just me
A little while ago I thought about blogging about the emotional meltdown I experienced a few hours ago. You know, the one whose highlight was my slamming my study door and telling my Usually-Beloved Partner that I hoped never to hear his voice again. I mean, it was beyond hormonal, and I don't even have hormones anymore. After the fever passed, UBP pointed out that there's a full moon. I felt better; something might explain why I suddenly began howling like a beast. I mean, I just don't do that stuff anymore. Except this evening.
But I decided not to blog about it—until I read Atrios' post that reproduces raving hate E that he's getting from some stalker who's off his meds. Of the 113 hilarious responses to the post, this one's the best:
full moon fever
Seriously, everybody's freaking out today.
Well, hey, at least I kept mine at home.
Posted by senioritis at 07:52 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Earworm psychology
People who visit this blog may have noticed that in the right-hand margin I often list "A.M. earworm." It's whatever song was playing in my head when I first woke up that morning. For some reason I've become fascinated with the phenomenon. There's a lifelong soundtrack always playing in my head; even when I'd just regained consciousness after the accident and was being transported by ambulance to a head trauma center, there was a song playing! (It was the White Stripes' "In the Cold Cold Night," in case you're wondering.) For those of you who don't have a constant soundtrack playing and don't know what the heck I'm talking about, let me just say that there are some of us who are blessed/afflicted by the phenomenon. The thing about soundtrack earworms is that the person who has them has very little control over them. Hence my soundtrack includes commercial jingles; I can, for example, sing all the Kool-Aid jingles since the early 50s; and sometimes the 1950s Halo Shampoo jingle is playing on my soundtrack. Most of the time I don't really even notice my earworm, unless it's some really stupid song (like the theme song for The Brady Bunch—and yes, I know, all you fellow earworm sufferers, what I've just done to you, and I apologize! mea culpa!) that just plays over and over, incessantly. Go into a convenience store where some inane Tom Jones song is being piped over tinny speakers, and voila! you have a very unwelcome earworm for the next hour or so. You have to go home, put on the Ramones, crank it up, and drench yourself in head-banger music for 15 minutes in order to evict the unwelcome earworm. Fortunately, a lot of the time the earworm is a favorite song, something that gives you pleasure. For me, a lot of the time the earworm is an instrumental riff on continuous loop, such as the fabulous mandolin solo on Rod Stewart's "Maggie May." But it occurs to me that perhaps one of the reasons I always have the stereo on is so that I can choose the music that's in my head!
Anyhow. So since I've become fascinated by the particular phenomenon of the a.m. (wakeup) earworm, I've been using iTunes to track each day's inadvertent selection. I started it because I was curious to see if any pattern emerged. And the fact is, I don't. My wakeup earworms tend to be vocals, and they tend to be more what I'd call pop than rock & roll (but with lots of blues, R&B, and reggae), and that's about all the analysis I can come up with! Alas, no stunning personal insights. Here they are, in reverse order, compliments of cut & paste from iTunes (hence the typographic anomalies; sorry about that).
Hymn to Love Cyndi Lauper
Why Do I Love You? Bix Beiderbecke & Lou Raderman
Long Hot Summer Days John Hartford
Hot House Charlie Parker
Rain King Counting Crows
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man Aretha Franklin
Don't Worry Be Happy Bobby McFerrin
St. James Infirmary Blues Beth Scalet
Static On The Radio Jim White & Aimee Mann
My Father's Eyes Eric Clapton
Humidity Built The Snowman John Prine
Idol Amanda Ghost
With A Little Help From My friends Joe Cocker
In The Cold Cold Night The White Stripes
Schooldays Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Crimson and Clover Tommy James
Sugar & Spice The Searchers
Sweet Home Alabama Lynryd Skynryd
Come Monday Jimmy Buffett
There Will Always Be Tomorrow Buckwheat Zydeco
Why You Been Gone So Long Darrell, Johnny
Bette Davis Eyes Kim Carnes
Reggae Night Jimmy Cliff
Deb (Heart Broken) Souad Massi
Cocaine Eric Clapton
Television Dr. John
Shut Up Black Eyed Peas
Are You Lonesome Tonight? Elvis Presley
On the Sunny Side of the Street Cyndi Lauper
Woo Hoo The 5.6.7.8.'s
Montego Bay Freddie Notes & The Rudies
The Saddest Song I've Got Annie Lennox
The River März
Beyond the Sea Bobby Darin
Run Blues Traveler
Thank You (Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Again) Dr. John
Well...All Right Buddy Holly & The Crickets
In My Life Johnny Cash
Break My Stride Matthew Wilder
Squarehead Iggy Pop
It Don't Make Sense (You Can't Make Peace) Willie Dixon
Where Is The Love? Black Eyed Peas
Chain Of Fools Aretha Franklin
I've Got A Mind To Ramble Alberta Hunter
If I Could Build My Whole World Around You Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
Third Rail Ben Allison
I'm Blue (The Gong-Gong Song) The Ikettes
Ace in the Hole Paul Simon
Touch and Go Cars
Come We A Go Down A Unity/Old Lady O/Linstead Market Boysie Grant
Complicated Life Kinks
New Partner Palace
Baby Please Don't Go Them
Love Shack B-52's
I Get A Kick Out Of You Dolly Parton
Love Is A Long Road Tom Petty
A Face In The Crowd Tom Petty
Love Is a Stranger + I've Got an Angel Eurythmics
Born To Raise Hell Motorhead with Ice-T and Whitfield Crane
Maggie's Farm Toots Hibbert
Equal Rights Peter Tosh
Desert Sand UB40
I'm The Man Who Loves You Wilco
Rock Hard Times Eels
Aaj Mera Jee Kardaa (Today My Heart Desires) Sukhwinder Singh
Hey Ya! Outkast
Should've Known Better Nickel Creek
Medicine Show Big Audio Dynamite
Watermelon Time In Georgia Levon Helm
Kamera Wilco
Take It Easy Greasy Lil Johnson
Behold A Lady Outkast
Lonesome Day Blues Bob Dylan
Waster Gomez
I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love with You Tom Waits
Pack It Up The Pretenders
Happy Man Iggy Pop
On The Road Again Canned Heat
Coma Girl Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
Until I Fall Away Gin Blossoms
Steppin' Out Steel Pulse
The Medication Is Wearing Off Eels
Run On for a Long Time The Blind Boys Of Alabama
Dog Faced Boy Eels
Rave On Buddy Holly & The Crickets
The Wood Song Indigo Girls
Singing the Blues Black Oak Arkansas
Maybe He'll Know Cyndi Lauper
Children Patty Larkin
Different World Patty Larkin
Inside Your Painting Patty Larkin
Caravan [live] The Band with Van Morrison
Crackin' Up Bo Diddley
A Little Respect Wheatus
Yonder Comes the Blues Ma Rainey with Her Georgia Band
Boogie Chillun John Lee Hooker
Jazz Police Leonard Cohen
Posted by senioritis at 07:52 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 22, 2005
Fred's friends
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when you start feeding a stray cat, pretty soon you're feeding a bunch of stray cats. (Apologies to Amy!) Fred has four regular friends. Two are grey, and two are black. One of the greys is almost certainly a feral, like Fred. One of the blacks is definitely owned—the collar's a dead giveaway. They all dine regularly on our back porch, and some of them are apparently bunking in the barn with Fred.
But as of last night, Fred has yet another friend, a black-and-white one. Never saw it, but we sure did smell it when we went out on the porch this morning. >sigh< Well, we've been sharing our outbuildings with Skunkly for quite some time, so we're quite accustomed to him/her. Tom can even tell the skunks apart and is on speaking terms with them from time to time. I actually tripped over one in the dark once, and s/he just scurried off. Skunks are much like cats, actually. They eat the same things, including mice. One difference is that skunks like bananas, and that's a delicacy I've never seen a cat cotton to. But the skunks regularly dig the bananas out of our compost pile and scarf 'em down. And now, in addition to bananas and mice, the Earlville skunks are grooving on Purina. Well, Fred and his feline friends are going to have to get used to not getting an evening meal. I'm not going to be encouraging the skunks to visit our porch nightly; I don't want to stumble over the one that sprays instead of scurrying!
Posted by senioritis at 08:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 20, 2005
Connect-the-dots authorship
How was pulp fiction produced in Australia from 1939 to 1959?
"We'd be given a picture of the cover and were given the title, along with a few words," Armitage says. "From that you prepared the plot and wrote the story. One of the rules of the game was that you started off with a body - either two in bed or somebody dead."
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Of course, anything such as individual or original authorship flies out the window: "There was a certain similarity to all my books." But who cares? All that means is that the writer was aware of her indebtedness and repetition.
And interestingly, the Australian pulp fiction industry boomed in response to a morals-based ban on U.S. imports of pulp fiction. It's bad to import the stuff, but okay to produce it locally? Hey, censorship is good for business!
Posted by senioritis at 12:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
You won't find this in the O.E.D.
Probably you've been spending your sleepless nights wondering, "How old is the phrase shit out of luck?" Never fear; Senioritis has a clue for you! If, like me, you're addicted to random guessing games, you'll want to figure out your own answer before reading on—
The expression is at least as old as 1927. Treasured Partner is copying some of our old LPs and 78s to CD, and right now he's elbow-deep in jazz: Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman—and Louis Armstrong. And behold, Armstrong has a 1927 recording of "S.O.L. Blues" whose lyrics refer to being "out of luck." Now you know.
Posted by senioritis at 06:45 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 19, 2005
Pedablogging
I spent yesterday responding to the piteous pleas of my grad class: I set up an index to the class blog. Everybody in the class hates the blog, finding it too complex and too alienating. Some object to publishing in-progress, provisional work. So student work-in-progress is now going to be circulated off the blog.
The prospect of which made me realize how much I HATE email. I loathe the damned thing. I despise its demands. I wish it would crawl off into the desert and die. My students' sense of alienation from the class blog isn't even a patch on my longstanding and increasing horror of daily email invasions from the entire world—everybody from my family, to my department chair, to my students, to total strangers who want to know what my speaking fee is, to editors who want to know where my damned chapters are. And people are incensed when they don't get an answer within three hours! Email is where my overloaded life converges and shrieks for attention. It makes me want to crawl off into the desert and die!
In contrast, I am in love with IM. It's friendly. I have conferences with colleagues and students on IM, and I enjoy every minute of it--even when I have several going on simultaneously. My family has a closed chat room that we use almost daily to chatter and joke and complain about our lives. It's wonderful. Blogging? I'm crazy about it. But that one technology, email, is the work of the devil. Derek hates PDFs; Denise hates the class blog; Tom hates IM. And I hate, hate, hate email.
So are you saying to yourself, "Jeez, I'd better not send Becky any more emails"? Nah. Go right ahead and inundate me. After all, I'm still using my class blog, despite my students' objections; I'll still send Derek PDFs; and sometimes I badger Tom into using IM. Mostly I'm just intrigued by how fissured our relationships with writing technologies are. We refer to each other as tech-heads or Luddites, when it fact it's a lot more complex than that.
Just don't expect a quick response email from me; it's against my religion!
Posted by senioritis at 06:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 18, 2005
Friday cat blogging
In case you're wondering why we don't shoot Luigi for crapping on the Bokharas:
—or —
Posted by senioritis at 04:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 15, 2005
the story of The Big Day
As HBH said in an email today, "lordie pie." It's been quite a day—a blogworthy day. It was my first day back on campus since the accident (and yes, I'm willing to link back to that again). It was the first day that the doctor authorized me to drive and to go to work. So of course I did. The day was sunny and warm, so the drive was uncomplicated by snow and ice. Still, it was a 50-mile drive, very nerve-wracking. I gripped the steering wheel like an old lady who needs cataract surgery, and I actually found myself slowing down fearfully when traffic approached. Not, shall we say, my usual self.
I pulled into the parking lot and realized, "Oh, I meant to stop at Skytop and get a new parking sticker" (the old one having been destroyed in the wreck). So I turned around, feeling like a fool, and drove back to the Skytop building. But no, I drove a half mile past the Skytop building before I realized what I was doing. So I turned around again, this time getting to my destination, getting to the parking office, and getting my new sticker.
So I pull into my parking lot for the second time, stop the car, and realize, "Oh, I meant to drive around to my building and unload this crate of files for Kelly." But I just didn't have the heart to pull out of the parking lot again and go do that deed. Really, I was feeling very demoralized, wondering if at some near time someone might find me wandering around Syracuse, unable to identify myself or my destination.
So I trudged to the office, got up to the second floor, encountered Carol and Margaret in the hall, and upon being greeted by them, began crying. Really. And I'm thinking, "Oh, lord, how am I going to cope?" But Carol, god bless her, came into my office with me, sat down, and talked. And she offered to release me from all my teaching duties for the rest of the semester. Sincerely.
So I said I'd think about it, and then I went about the business of reading through my mail, delivering my poor PowerBook to The George (who was actually able to fix it!), greeting all my colleagues, filching some of Chris's and Mary Beth's dark chocolate, listening to my phone messages, getting my new long-distance access code, and just sort of getting myself grounded again. By late morning, I had figured out how best to respond to Carol's offer. My course assignments this semester are a heavily-enrolled grad class; an advanced undergrad course in style that I'm co-teaching with Tyra; and chairing the department's standing committee on the upper-division curriculum. For the grad class, I have a well-developed plan, and I also have a good sense of what needs to be done to get me and the students working shoulder to shoulder for the rest of the semester. For the upper-division committee, I also know what needs to be done. But the undergrad course was really stumping me. I'd only met with them twice before the accident, and Tyra had been carrying it solo since then. And I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by the prospect of figuring out how to insert myself into that course. Nor was it just a matter of picking up a course that was well underway; it's also an issue of how little I can work yet, and how slowly I do. I'm able to do complex intellectual work as well as I could before the accident, but at about 40% of the speed. (I'm trusting this will improve, though it's my understanding that severe concussion can take 3-12 months for complete recovery.) So it's clear to me that I couldn't successfully pick up my full load just yet.
So I proposed to Carol that she relieve me of the undergrad teaching assignment—and wonderfully, she said it would be no problem. I talked with Tyra, who's game to continue in the course solo (with me as behind-the-scenes collaborator) or with a new co-teacher. And by the end of the day, I was actually happy. I enjoyed the drive home!
Everybody everywhere always bitches about their department, about the things that go wrong. But my blog entry this evening is motivated by a day at the office in which I was really, really confronted with the very best of my very fine department. In part it's the people: Carol, Margaret, Tyra, and Dave were extremely understanding and supportive today, and really helped me figure out how to manage my re-entry into work on campus. Kristi and Lou Ann helped me get those damned files to the office. And I talked with a couple dozen other colleagues, warming myself in the glow of hugs, good wishes, and camaraderie. But in part it's a department that has a tradition of supporting its workers through illness, tragedy, and the other vagaries of life. It was wonderful to be on the receiving end of that tradition, enacted by real friends. Don't let anyone tell you that the SU Writing Program is a tough place. It's not. It's a demanding place, where one's ideas and actions are constantly scrutinized, criticized—and improved. And it's a warm, supportive place where people, and I mean lots of people, are genuinely caring of each other. I'm lucky to be here.
Thanks for listening.
Posted by senioritis at 08:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 14, 2005
Where's the shizzle?
At my house, the shizzle is not in the hizzle but on the Bokhara rizzle.
Posted by senioritis at 08:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Uh-oh.
The work is always urgently important. The wolf is always at the door. In more than one form.
Posted by senioritis at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 13, 2005
Battleship Potemkin
Restored! Boondock film enthusiasts eagerly await news of where & when it will be shown in the U.S.
Posted by senioritis at 08:48 AM | Comments (2)
Reading in Japan
College bookstores join the campaign to get students to read. So far, 100 out of 9000 have responded to the campaign. That doesn't, of course, mean that there aren't more avid readers on campus. (Some might even be checking out books from the library.) Still.
Posted by senioritis at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2005
I've resisted for a whole day
But I can't help myself; gotta follow suit w/ academom, tyratae, lyings & tirades, and the tuba player. Here's where I've lived:
Lewisburg, WV
Huntington, WV
Morgantown, WV
Princeton, WV
Seale, AL
Columbia, SC
Williamson, WV
Hamilton, NY
Fort Worth, TX
Earlville, NY
and that's all!
I've lived most of my life in Lewisburg, Morgantown, and Earlville. Long stretches in big houses in small towns. Lots of maple leaves in the fall, snow in the winter, gossip and networking the year round.
Posted by senioritis at 07:44 PM | Comments (1)
Response to Summers
Here's a link to the statement issued by the presidents of Stanford, Princeton, and MIT in response to the ill-chosen and much-retracted remarks of Lord Summers.
Posted by senioritis at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
Where the Discriminating Cat Will Crap
Luigi left a little present for me this morning. We live in a big old house, and the parlor and dining room, fortunately, have double French glass doors that potentially seal those rooms off from the rest of the house. Now, this is a boon to cat lovers who also love Persian rugs and antique furniture: we keep same behind the double French glass doors, which we keep c-l-o-s-e-d. UNfortunately, however, these celebrated double French glass doors are o-l-d, and the cats are capable, when motivated, of breaking & entering, so to speak.
And Luigi is, from time to time, so motivated. She likes to crap on Bokharas. Not just on any old Persian rug: the cat is discriminating, and craps only on Bokharas. In fact, we have a huge Sarouk-style Persian in the library, where Luigi spends much of her day, but she leaves it unscathed. It isn't a Bokhara. I've actually taken one of our Bokharas to the office to save it from her attentions. The others are in the parlor, and whenever those rooms are in use, we take the precaution of spraying a cat repellent on the Bokharas. But on other occasions Luigi does a little door-jimmying, and voila!—a little something to help me while away those empty hours.
And Luigi is a very large cat—sixteen pounds at last weighing.
Posted by senioritis at 02:15 PM | Comments (3)
February 11, 2005
Caption contest
The New Zealand Herald offers an obvious-inadequate caption for this Reuters pic: "Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles after announcing their engagement." Hence another breathtaking contest is launched at StepAside, with one of my celebrated Double Secret Rewards for the Most Improved Caption:
Posted by senioritis at 06:28 AM | Comments (12)
February 10, 2005
Pedestrian safety: A sound-bite rant
Manufacturers are moving to redesign cars so that they are less likely to kill pedestrians that they strike. Europe and Japan are making such changes a requirement. Sounds very reasonable, wot? Not in the U.S.:
But the rush to act is meeting resistance in the United States, where industry and government regulators alike say making automobiles more pedestrian-friendly is not a priority. Carmakers argue that such changes add cost and alter vehicle appearance in ways consumers might not like -- rounding off hoods and shortening front ends to lessen the danger to the human body.
I'm not proud to live in a country that puts vehicle aesthetics before human life. In the U.S. (so goes the logic), only 12% of automobile fatalities are pedestrians; so why should our aesthetic preferences be disrupted for such a small percentage? Holy crap.
Posted by senioritis at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2005
My first rock star
In 1984 I attended my first MLA, in New York. I was a pure intellectual hayseed, in the city for the first time in my life. I got on an elevator in the conference hotel, and the small woman next to me was wearing a name tag that said, "Louise Rosenblatt." And my heart nearly stopped. I was awed. And speechless.
It's good to know that Louise Rosenblatt enjoyed a very long life. Like innumerable other people in English studies, I am profoundly a better teacher and theorist for having read her work carefully during my "formative" years. May she rest in peace.
Posted by senioritis at 05:16 PM | Comments (2)
February 08, 2005
Reasons I Like Working in a Doctoral Program
- I get to exercise vast power capriciously.
- Even though I'm a terrible time manager and task planner, I can pretend that I'm a genius at it, and I can high-handedly impose schedules on examinees and dissertators and demand that they meet them.
- I'm surrounded by people who are smart as hell, fairly well-educated, and eager to show it. Few of them are publishing yet, so their intellectual energies are directed in part at what I say and write. They're delighted to catch me in error, and that keeps me on my toes.
- The people in my classes come to them motivated, even when they're only there because it's required of them.
- I get to stay fresh on things that would otherwise fall off my radar. As Denise works on Spanglish and Ruby on ESL, I get to revisit scholarship that I haven't gotten into for awhile, and I also get to catch up on what's happening in those fields--if by no other means than by carefully reading what Denise and Ruby are writing.
- I'm forced to learn things that I otherwise wouldn't have, so that I can help students through their projects. Amy worked on autobiography, for the luvva pete.
- I can nudge other scholars into addressing problems and issues that I don't have the time or expertise for. As Jen works on transnational feminism as an historical method in comp, I'm hoping she'll contribute to the differentiation of terms such as transnationalism, globalization, capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism that are generally (and erroneously) conflated in comp discourse--if they're addressed at all. So as she works, I get to poke at her to articulate these terms.
- I get to help people dodge some of the holes I fell into myself.
- Directing a dissertation is like acquiring an ancillary brain. In most cases the dissertation intersects with my own interests and work, but there's somebody else at work on those issues. But I'm not just reading about it in a journal; I get to be there for the fun and pain of the arguments as they develop, and as that happens, I hear these weird echoes of my own thoughts but I also hear things and think, "Damn, that's smart. S/he's taken this to places I never even thought of."
- Once they graduate, lots of these people maintain close working relationships with me. I get to participate in their ongoing work, and sometimes even collaborate with them on scholarship or teaching.
Posted by senioritis at 07:30 PM | Comments (3)
February 07, 2005
Fred's name
Fred now knows his name and comes when called. Mind you, he doesn't come to the person who's calling; rather, he waits for that person to step back inside the house, and then he comes to the back porch to see what sort of culinary treat that person has left for him. But he knows his name and comes when called, all the same.
(I'm not sure how to interpret the fact that I spend a lot of time blogging about a stray cat. But I just wantcha to know that I'm aware of it, even if I don't fully understand it. So quit snickering.)
Posted by senioritis at 11:24 AM | Comments (3)
February 06, 2005
Why I love peda/sylla/blogs
Now, it's true that I've accused members of my grad class of buying voodoo dolls that look too much like me, and then sticking too many pins in them. I know that our course blog is driving many of them gnutz. They have a blog-crazed prof who is not, however, blog-wise. So they have to suffer through my innumerable blunders. But two reasons that the suffering is worthwhile: as students develop their projects, they get feedback not just from me but also, potentially, from classmates (and potentially from chance passersby, as well), and not just when that classmate is their officemate or as a result of hallway/bar conversation. And students don't simply get a frozen text from me; they get to converse with me about it, and not just during office hours or over email.
And by the way, it was wunnerful to be doing intellectual work today, in little bits scattered through the day. Made me feel like I really do still have a brain. AND I got to go to a basketball game today, too! AND the women won. AND it was sunny today! and WARM—46°!
(And if you're noticing the time of this post: Super Bowl? I don't watch no stinkin Super Bowl. It ain't got no Steelers.)
Posted by senioritis at 08:01 PM | Comments (2)
Mystery; irony
Situation: I was in a wreck that totaled both cars; as the first rescue person approached my vehicle, he called me in as an apparent fatality. In the wreck, my seat broke and I was ejected into the back of the vehicle. I came to a stop with my head wedged in the back windshield. I had to be cut out of the car. The wreck drew two fire trucks, three ambulances, and three police cars, and closed the highway for up to an hour.
Mystery: I not only survived, but my worst injury was concussion. Now, concussion (as I've learned to my sorrow) is not a small injury. But it's neither a fatal nor permanent one, either. I had no lacerations, no broken bones, no internal injuries. Moreover, my iPod, cell phone, glasses, sunglasses, and Palm Pilot were unscathed.
Irony: One day during the recovery, I fell asleep in my chair, and my PowerBook slipped off my lap and to the floor. Its hard drive appears to be fried.
Posted by senioritis at 09:19 AM | Comments (1)
February 05, 2005
I thought I married an historian
But I was wrong. I married a cop in historian's weeds. It's taken him 29 years to reveal his true self, but now I am seeing it, 24-7. He prowls the house like a detective, trying to catch me in the act of thinking, working, or exerting myself—and determined to stop me. He sits like a judge over all my activities, outlawing any that involve exertion.
And I? I discover that I don't hate all cops, after all.
Posted by senioritis at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2005
fear not, Revered Readers
My silence is not from anything heinous. I wasn't making good progress in my recovery, and when I saw my doctor on Wed., he said that I must cease all work, including intellectual work, and "rest my brain" until the puking, headaches, etc., subside. The only treatment for concussion, alas, is rest—complete rest. Alas. I had a hard time at first figuring out how to do that, but Anthony Trollope's fiction plus the cable movie channels are seeing me through enforced vegetation. I'll be happily jabbering again here just as soon as I can.
Posted by senioritis at 06:25 AM | Comments (1)
February 01, 2005
Sympathy for the deluded
Fred is now a happy resident of our garage, and soldiering through those -21° nights very well. We put out food and water for him a couple of times a day (the water freezes pretty fast!) and call him to dinner. Once we're back in the house, he comes up on the porch for his meal. At first he would stay 50 yards or more away from us; now he sometimes gets within 10 yards. On an almost daily basis, Treasured Partner says, firmly, "Of course Fred isn't going to be an indoor cat. He doesn't want to come in. He can be an outdoor cat, and we can continue to take care of him."
And I nod obligingly. Why upset the man prematurely?
Posted by senioritis at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)