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May 31, 2005
The F-word
Courtesy of an SU-internal listserv, I'm sharing a link to a new feminist zine for teenagers.
Posted by senioritis at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
He's ours!
We caught him this morning, and Fred is now at the vet's. If he passes his FIV/leukemia tests, he'll get the works: neutering, shots, deworming, defleaing. And then he'll come home, to join Ruth, Teakettle, and Luigi as a house cat. Fingers crossed about those tests—
ommmmm
Posted by senioritis at 08:44 AM | Comments (6)
May 30, 2005
Day off
One thing to do on a day off: using rhubarb pulled this morning from our all-organic garden (yes, I'm bragging, even though BP does 99.4% of the gardening Chez Howard), bake the rhubarb pie that BP has been BEGGING for, plus an extra for his friend Bruce, who fell off his garage roof yesterday and broke a rib and who is just as much of a fool for rhubarb pie as is BP. Recipe below the fold, along with a couple of other rhubarb recipes that I hope to have time to try.
Rhubarb pie
Pastry for double crust pie
1-1/2 c sugar
1/3 c flour
dash salt
1/2 t vanilla
3-5 c rhubarb, cut up
2 T butter
Prepare rhubarb and cut into 1" pieces. Stir together sugar, flour, salt, vanilla. Add sugar to rhubarb pieces and toss to coat. Let mixture stand 15 min.
Fit pastry into 9" pie plate & fill w rhubarb mixture. Dot w butter. Cover w top crust or lattice top, seal and flute edges, cover edges of crust w foil.
Bake in 375° oven 25 min. Remove foil. Bake 25 min more, or till golden brown. Serve warm.
Rhubarb bread
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar
1 T grated orange peel
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 c buttermilk
2-1/2 c flour
1/4 t salt
1 t baking soda
3/4 c chopped nuts
1-1/2 c coarsely chopped rhubarb
350°. Butter bottom only of 9x5" loaf pan. Beat butter, sugar, orange peel, and vanilla till light & fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine 2-1/4 c flour, baking soda, and salt; add to cream miture alternately with buttermilk, beating at low speed till belnded. Toss rhubarb with remaining 1/4 c flour; fold into batter w/ nuts. Turn into prepared pan, spreading evenly. Bake till wooden pick comes out clean, about 80 min. Cool in pan 10 min. Remove from pan & cool completely on wire rack.
Poached Rhubarb and Asparagus Salad
Adapted from Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, N.Y.
Time: 25 minutes
Salt
3/8 cup sugar
3 cups Moscato or other sweet white dessert wine
1/4 cup juiced rhubarb or grenadine (for color)
2 1/2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns, lightly crushed
4 stalks rhubarb, washed, peeled (if stringy) and cut into 4-inch pieces
12 stalks asparagus, medium thickness
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 pound mixed salad greens
1/2 cup mixed fresh herbs (dill, parsley, chives, tarragon)
Freshly ground black pepper.
1. Place a large saucepan of heavily salted water over high heat. In another large saucepan, combine sugar with 3/8 cup water. Place over medium-low heat, and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add wine, rhubarb juice or grenadine, and peppercorns.
2. Bring to a simmer, and add rhubarb. Simmer until rhubarb is cooked through but not soft, about 5 minutes. Drain, rinse to remove peppercorns, and drain again.
3. Fill a bowl with ice water. Place asparagus in boiling salted water, and blanch until bright green and barely tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Immediately transfer asparagus to ice water. When asparagus is chilled, drain well, and refrigerate.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice and mustard. Whisk in olive oil to make a smooth vinaigrette.
5. Place salad greens and herb mixture in a large serving bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Slice rhubarb vertically into long, thin strips, and set aside. Slice each asparagus stalk into 3-inch pieces, and set aside. To serve, arrange alternating pieces of asparagus and rhubarb to make a rectangle on each of four plates. Place mound of greens near rectangle, and drizzle a small amount of vinaigrette over asparagus and rhubarb.
Yield: 4 servings.
Posted by senioritis at 09:51 AM | Comments (1)
May 29, 2005
Holy deadlines, Batman!
I'm actually sending a slug 'o chapters out to my editors on schedule. Now, to most readers of this blog, this may seem like a routine accomplishment. I'm thinking, for example, of D and J, who just seem to manage to set a schedule and stick to it and turn out really good stuff. But my several coauthors (not to mention my students) know all too well that I'm a person who works so far past deadlines that she can't even see the light from them.
So tonight I'll be able to watch part 2 of Empire Falls with a clean conscience. Tomorrow I'll be able to write letters of reference, respond to drafts-in-progress, and plant the damn pansies that have been languishing on the back porch for nearly a month. And then it's back to the grindstone and the next deadline.
P.S. Those who know both Amy and me know that I'm channeling her on that post title.
Posted by senioritis at 05:08 PM | Comments (3)
This one's for Amy
Even though I'm not sure that anyone should equip her with new crazy words—
Posted by senioritis at 03:15 PM | Comments (1)
Attending to wildflowers
There are scads of little flowers in our yard that we've only recently begun to pay attention to. Why? Because they're not cultivated, not "desired." We knew we had dandelions, violets, mustard, and dame's rocket, but this year I've undertaken to begin learning the names of the others.
Right now our yard is strewn with colonies of speedwell. The majority of the colonies are lavender, but some are an astonishing blue, and a few are nearly white. The colonies are so thick that you can see them from quite a distance, even though the flowers are very small (about 1/4 inch radius) and are only a few inches high. (What's shown in this picture is a larger, cultivated speedwell, but the formation of the blossom is the same.) And each colony seems to be a single color of flower, though we have some white colonies growing right on the edge of the lavender ones.
Why is a living flower called "dead nettle"? It's a peculiar little hooded plant with tiny pink flowers at its terminus. To see the flower, scroll down at this site.
Celandine used to be used to treat liver disorders, because the juice of the plant is bile-colored. It is still used for "indigestion"—but of what sort, I don't know. I think I'll stick with Pepto and Tums, thanks very much.
BP is allergic to garlic mustard; it gives him a rash.
Who on earth came up with the name "gill-over-the-ground"? When I posed this question to BP, he replied, "Only an Anglo."
Posted by senioritis at 07:35 AM | Comments (1)
May 28, 2005
"an object of rationalized control and management"
Yes. Tenner has got it.
What NASA did to our conception of the planet, Web-based technologies are beginning to do to our understanding of our written thoughts. We look at our ideas with less wonder, and with a greater sense that others have already noted what we're seeing for the first time. . . . .
Some universities are encouraging students to precheck their papers and drafts against the emerging plagiosphere. Perhaps publications will soon routinely screen submissions. The problem here is that while such rigorous and robust policing will no doubt reduce cheating, it may also give writers a sense of futility. The concept of the biosphere exposed our environmental fragility; the emergence of the plagiosphere perhaps represents our textual impasse. Copernicus may have deprived us of our centrality in the cosmos, and Darwin of our uniqueness in the biosphere, but at least they left us the illusion of the originality of our words. Soon that, too, will be gone.
Tenner, Ed. "Rise of the Plagiosphere." Technology Review June 2005.
Posted by senioritis at 06:13 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2005
Looking over the precipice
Beloved Partner and I are agreed: we want to capture Fred and bring him inside. The capturing should be pretty easy: he's gotten accustomed to being quite close to us. And he has spent a lot of time just one pane of glass away from the indoor cats; they are all pretty well acquainted now. Last night Fred nearly broke our hearts: he was sitting on the porch rail, exchanging pleasantries with Luigi through the window. BP was standing beside Luigi, and when he reach down to pet her, Fred was alarmed and ran several feet away, certain that BP was going to injure Luigi. Then he turned and saw that Luigi was enjoying being stroked. BP said that Fred was clearly amazed—and curious.
Just now we were out working in the garden, and he was following us around (at a respectable distance), meowing when we looked at him. He wanted us to come feed him. So when we went into the house I came back out with a can of the food he loves. And while he ate, he let me stand right beside him, leaning over and talking to him, my face just a foot from his head.
So we have a call into our Treasured Vet, and when we have his procedural advice, we'll start what we hope will become the Domestication of Fred. Film at eleven.
Update:
Now I've talked to TVo0000000=]9[[[[[[[[ (whoops; that's Luigi's comment on this whole deal. Let me try again:
Now I've talked to Treasured Vet, who says we are not insane to try to adopt a feral but that we'll have to take it slow and be patient. Get him as accustomed to and trusting of us as possible before the Great Event. Put a cat carrier on the back porch and get him accustomed to having his food in it. Get him accustomed to coming into the back room of the house. Once we get him to the vet's, TV will test Fred for FIV and leukemia, and if he's clean, he'll be fixed.
We also have to prepare for ongoing spraying. Once he's been neutered, it may take as much as 12 weeks for the testosterone levels to abate, and some cats never do quit spraying altogether. Lordie pie. TV says that Feliway plug-ins will help; we'll stock up, and soon.
Posted by senioritis at 01:52 PM | Comments (7)
Churchill!
The Ward Churchill story has (for me at least) attained a strange quotient to rival that of Michael Jackson. Now, before you get all in a huff, I am not equating the two people. I am, however, using the Michael Jackson case to indicate just how completely wacky the Churchill case is getting. Here's the latest: Churchill says that he has ghostwritten work that five colleagues have published under their own names.
Hughes, Jim, and Amy Herdy. "Churchill Says He's Ghostwriter." Denver Post 26 May 2005.
Posted by senioritis at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)
May 26, 2005
Electronic submission of doctoral theses
Sounds pretty good, eh? But wait—there's more! Grad students in India will have their theses published so that they can be checked for plagiarism.
Beam me up, Scotty.
"UGC Plans E-Theses to Tackle Plagiarism." Newindpress.com 26 May 2005.
Posted by senioritis at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
Conditioning
Five days off the bike, and it feels as if I'm starting over. It takes a lot of mental toughness to keep cycling past middle age and through obesity. The older I get, the quicker I lose conditioning when I'm away from the bike. Next winter I have to ride those damn rollers every day, or I'll never be able to get it back next spring. And the "it" I get back has changed dramatically: last year I rode only 941 miles, because my distances are so short. I would like to get back up to 20-mile rides, and I think that's realistic. But it's hard when the aging body so quickly forgets that it has muscles.
And by the way, with whom do I register a complaint about this poopy weather? Cold and drizzly, day after day, just isn't my cup o' tea.
Update: Okay, so maybe I don't have so much to complain about: those poor bastards in the Giro d'Italia are facing heavy rain and snow. But then again, those "poor bastards" are fit young male professional cyclists. Let 'em suffer.
Posted by senioritis at 05:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
Subversive photography
I've been wondering how long it will be legal to take "candid" shots of strangers on one's cell phone. This doesn't answer that specific question, but it does address the larger question of whether the law might begin to constrain the production of images. It has; under the rubric of the GD Patriot Act, officials are restricting photographers from taking pictures—on the frickin subway.
Part of the problem . . . is police officers and security guards who are uneducated about the law.The USA Patriot Act, with its broad definition of "suspicious activity," has cracked the door wider to individual interpretation.
Via Copyfight.
Posted by senioritis at 08:33 AM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2005
If you think your life is tough,
Just consider: you could be a starling—a homely, messy, noisy, silly bird—and you could be fighting with all the other starlings for the right to choke down the cake of suet hanging from our bird feeder.
OR you could be a woodpecker—a really beautiful, interesting bird—for whom the cake of suet is intended but who never, ever gets a chance at the suet because the danged starlings are always fighting over it.
Posted by senioritis at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
The economics of prosecuting plagiarism
This just in from the Sydney Morning Herald: Teachers can lose their jobs or paychecks for charging students with plagiarism, and institutions can lose the income from student tuition if those students are failed or dismissed. The issues are very real for institutions and for teachers, and they aren't limited to life Down Under. Hmm, let's see: ethics versus economics. Which d'you spose might win? And what might we expect in increasingly corporatized universities?
And those economic issues come into play even when the ethical choice is apparently being made. I'm speaking, of course, of Turnitin.com and other plagiarism-checking programs. These services are incredibly expensive, but not nearly as much as would be the faculty development bucks needed to commit to authentic pedagogy in which students would learn the desired textual practices and would find the educational experience so meaningful that they would want to do their own work. If I sound discouraged, it's because I am—at least sometimes. But I keep jabbering, in SU committee meetings, in my scholarship, in faculty workshops, and on this blog. What I try to do is aid and abet people who are interested in educating, who aren't interested in simplistic property-based representations of textuality, and who aren't willing to stick their heads in the sand and ignore the fact that our ideals of academic integrity are insupportable when it comes to our oh-so-clean definitions of plagiarism.
Posted by senioritis at 04:53 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2005
"Inelegant footnoting"
When you copy from another author and don't let your readers know it, it's called inelegant footnoting, not plagiarism. Got that?
But still. There's a worthwhile issue here, and that's the ways in which plagiarism charges can serve political rather than intellectual or ethical ends. In fact, plagiarism charges can themselves be unethical: when they are selectively used against people who are out of favor for other reasons. This student at Wells College believes that she is being persecuted for her political beliefs. I've wondered about the real motives for charging Ward Churchill with plagiarism. True, according to the rather garbled Post-Standard story, 90% of the Wells College student's work came unattributed from other sources. Well, yeah, you say (or at least I sure did)—that's plagiarism! If it's true, then yeah, it is. But the question is, are these charges being more energetically pursued against this student for other reasons? Same question with Churchill: given how many incidents of professorial plagiarism are reported, and how few seem to be actually sanctioned, what does it mean that the politically egregious Churchill is being investigated for plagiarism? In a similar vein, Ernest Miller laments what he characterizes as the decision of St. Lawrence University to use its copyright as a means of exercising censorship.
Chris Anderson seems fairly well-organized about using his blog to write his book. Me, much less so. Too many episodes with cats, music, and what not intervene. But yes, I'm most certainly using the blog in a highly erratic way to work out passages of arguments that will indeed be in the book currently titled Plagiarism and Privilege in the Academy. (Ye-haw, I have a leave next spring for the purpose of finishing that book!) And yes, I'm choosing this public form of prewriting in hopes of getting others' reactions to and evaluations of my claims and evidence.
And yeah, yeah, I know all y'all are snorting when I make this longish post after bidding farewell to my Beloved Blog. But we all knew that I'm incapable of borg/blog resistance. It's futile, man. Besides, I put three handbook chapters to bed today, and that's what I call a good day's work.
Posted by senioritis at 09:55 PM | Comments (2)
Invasion of the Voice Snatchers
Sandra and I have done so much collaborating and coauthoring that sometimes it feels as if I'm inhabiting her, even when I'm (allegedly) composing solo. I'm just re-reading a drafted chapter of the "solo-authored" handbook, and Sandra might as well have written it. I must have been channeling her when I drafted it; it's her voice and her jokes, not mine.
Posted by senioritis at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2005
Grindstone tracks
A few weeks ago I was lamenting that I didn't have any groovy plans for summer. Well, now I do. It's called Nose to the Grindstone; the handbook work is now on a very—um, shall we say, "ambitious" schedule, and I need to be an ambitious writer to meet it. Sayonara, blog!
Posted by senioritis at 08:45 PM | Comments (1)
May 20, 2005
Love letter
I returned from NYC to find that BP had written me a musical love letter, in the form of a compilation tape that he'd already transferred to CD:
Night Ranger, You Can Still Rock in America
Jefferson Airplane, If You Feel
Wingy Manone, The Isle of Capri
C.C. Adcock, Runaway Life
Johnny Jenkins, Sick and Tired
C.C. Adcock, Y'all'd Think She'd Be Good 2 Me
Queen Ida and Her Zydeco Band, Every Now and Then
Queen Ida and Her Zydeco Band, Faix Deaux Deaux
C.C. Adcock, I Love You
Johnny Jenkins, Down Along the Cove
Bob Dylan, Down Along the Cove
Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Sizzla, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Luciano, Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Fontanella Bass, Rescue Me
Velvelettes, Needle in a Haystack
Rock-a-Teens, Woo Hoo
5,6,7,8s, Woo Hoo
Charlie Feathers, That Certain Female
Alan Jackson, Mercury Blues
The Seldom Scene, I Know You Rider
The Seldom Scene, Baby Blue/City of New Orleans
Arlo Guthrie, Won't Be Long
Bright Eyes, Another Travelin' Song
Alberta Hunter, St. Louis Blues
Whitney Houston, So Emotional
The Rolling Stones, Emotional Rescue
Peter Tosh w/ Mick Jagger, (You Gotta Walk and) Don't Look Back
C.C. Adcock, Good Loving
C.C. Adcock, Stealin' All Day
AND he had uploaded two Seldom Scene LPs to CD: Live at the Cellar Door (their best) and The New Seldom Scene Album.
I like that.
Posted by senioritis at 10:09 PM | Comments (4)
Churchill defense
Not much information here, alas.
Posted by senioritis at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2005
Travel signage á la NJ Transit
BRAKE EMERGENCY USE ONLY
It is a violation of federal regulations for an unauthorized person to open side doors or to cause an emergency brake application when no emergency exists
CAUTION DOOR CLOSES AUTOMATICALLY
P.S.
Good for getting work done on the trip home: Beethoven's 7th; Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana; and an inland window, with its concomitant reduced level of visual distractions.
Bulletin:
iPod earphones work even after having been briefly soaked in Diet Sierra Mist. I like that.
And finally:
Best thing about the very good trip = three consecutive mornings of W's coffee. Bliss.
Posted by senioritis at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
A good day's work
S and I have spent the day in her kitchen, planning and debating our various solo and collaborative projects, dividing tasks and figuring out timetables. We both have a better sense of control over our work now, and if it's delusional, it's nevertheless comforting. As a reward, I'm now on her back porch, sitting on a bench in the evening sun. It's warm. It's warming my feet and hands. She has bleeding heart, petunias, and lobelia blooming. Right in front of me are enormous dogwoods and azalea harboring a bird feeder that cardinals, sparrows, grackles, and catbirds are visiting. Beside me is the screen door to the kitchen, and one of her housecats periodically comes to it to check on me (or on the birds; try to guess which).
This is a fine reward for a good day's work. Tomorrow, it's back to Earlville. Tonight, dinner at a good Indian restaurant.
Posted by senioritis at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
Visiting cats
At home I have Luigi, Ruth, and Teakettle to keep me company indoors, and Fred and Geraldine outdoors. So traveling involves a bit of angst, as I must sleep without being covered in warm fur and must eat without cat hair garnishing every dish. BP has all these joys to himself (along with cleaning up hairballs, keeping food dishes full, and changing litter boxes.)
Fortunately, at the moment I'm visiting Nedjma, Katie, Frieda, and Kateb, and they are preventing me from being too lonely. They're not allowed in the part of the house where I sleep, but they're right there at my elbow as I eat, offering to supervise and even share the burden if I feel that I have more food than I can handle alone. And Nedjma has thoroughly marked me, sending many eloquent messages back to the Earlville kitties—most of those messages no doubt consisting of the feline equivalent of four-letter words.
And guess what: I don't have to clean up hairballs, keep food dishes full, or change litter boxes. And I'm thinkin, Why go home?
Posted by senioritis at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
The sophisticated provincial—not
When I'm in NYC, I doubt that anyone mistakes me for a local. There's invisible yet perceptible and persistent hayseed behind my ears. But I do try not to embarrass the cosmopolitans I'm with. I try to hold the volume down on the laugh that C has characterized as a "cackle," and I try to dress presentably. Today I thought I was pulling it off reasonably well. Ah, vanity. After I arrived at the publisher's office, my editor had to take me aside and alert me to the fact that the bottom two buttons of my shirt were undone. ::sigh:: I might as well have been wearing bib overalls.
Posted by senioritis at 09:47 PM | Comments (5)
May 15, 2005
Amtrak #282, Utica - Penn Station
Amtrak takes me along the Mohawk River from Utica to Albany. Abandoned factories; lilacs blooming in what is now wild, unused land but which must at one time have been inhabited; railroad rubble (chunks of asphalt, discarded rails, and heaps of outsize gravel); red-tailed hawks, mallards, redwings, and Canadian geese in the swamp land that lies between the river and the railbed all the way from Utica to Amsterdam. The Killers blasting on my iPod while the train blasts at every upcoming work crew or highway intersection. Speed: that sucker gets up some steam between Amsterdam and Albany.
And then it plunges down the Hudson, only a few feet above the water level, the railroad sometimes so close to the river that not even trees intervene. We are in the river.
South of Albany, there are very few houses along the river—I don't know why. Fields of last year's reeds not yet overtaken by this year's generation. Buoys, bridges, and lighthouses. Huge towers to carry the electricity from upstate to the city. "Manufactured Gas Plant Site: Remedial Construction"—WTF? A scientist in bib waders, raking the riverbottom with a long pole. She stops to squint at the train as we pass; have we disrupted her work? Strange masonry abutments (parts of long-gone piers, perhaps?); rusting cyclone fence; riverside buildings abandoned in days gone by; a decaying duck blind. Anglers standing patiently, two or three to a boat; an occasional doughty kayaker for variety.
As we approach Poughkeepsie it's sailboats rather than fishing boats; there's a kayaking class in a cove; the hillside on the far bank is peppered with mansions; and the wharfs are bustling rather than rotting. Deliberate herons, grackles, and seagulls give way to a sense of drama, purpose, and inevitability as the river gets wider and the city approaches. Swans and jetskiiers share the river now. The honeysuckle and touch-me-nots are in bloom down here, and wisteria, as well. The maples are in full leaf already; this climate is that much warmer than in the center of the state, where the maple leaves have just unfolded and are still obscured by the clumps of seeds.
At Peekskill, yacht clubs, parks, and condos line the river. Along the tracks, though, still the refuse of discarded railroad ties, broken bottles, chipped concrete blocks, and empty creosote cans. Some of the tracks have been abandoned, overgrown with vines and shrubbery.
At Greystoke, tugboats and heavy-laden barges ply their trade. (Once I was on the train with the captain of one of those barges, and he told me a lot of interesting stuff about Hudson River commercial transport, none of which, alas, I now remember.)
South of Riverside, the train moves slower, approaching the city with caution. Even its whistle is softer, I swear. Homeless people sleep on mattresses and in makeshift tents on the bank. (I've never seen them before.) Cyclists follow a paved bike path. It's 4:30 p.m., and traffic is backed up at the W 125th Street bridge.
I took the train rather than the shorter, less expensive drive because I needed to work. Instead, I've been seduced once again by the experience itself. This is not transportation from one place to another; the train ride from Utica to Penn Station is itself both place and time. It's a pageant staged for those fortunate enough to come to the city by train from the north. I still have to catch New Jersey Transit's midtown express to Madison, and then drive through the Great Swamp (we're taking a detour so I can see the roosting egrets) to Plainfield. I'll be up late tonight, getting ready for my meetings on Monday and Tuesday. But it will be worth it. Today's New York Times had a piece on how baby boomers like the Stones (in their picture, Keith look like a doddering old fool) are staying active rather than kicking back as they approach retirement. I'm teaching myself to kick back, to enjoy the moment every now and then. The Times says I'm "old-fashioned." Humph. Hey, I did take a bike ride before leaving for the station this morning.
Posted by senioritis at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2005
Contextualism
Increasingly I find myself an advocate of contextualist historiography, especially (at least) in comp/rhet, in whose histories "context" has too often meant little more than passing references to the Morrill Acts or to the German research university model. So it's heartening to encounter over H-RHETOR a link to this rich site. Compositionists need a sense of the discipline's history that extends beyond scholarship and textbooks and into the social milieu that supports and is supported by composition instruction.
Posted by senioritis at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2005
Compilation tapes vs. mix CDs
I had a lovely birthday, thanks in no small part to the well-wishes blogged here—especially from Gabe the Cat. I've never had a cat wish me happy birthday before; ya never quit having new speriences. I also got my new glasses (I'm HEALED! I can SEE!); was showered with bouquets of tulips and daffodils from the garden; was treated to a damned fine home-cooked meal; and received three CDs burned from LPs: Desire, The Basement Tapes, and Before the Flood.
I spent a good part of the day making a compilation tape. Not a mix CD, and I'd like to explain why. In High Fidelity, John Cusack has a transcendent moment where he explains the zen of compilation tapes and prepares to make one to mark an important passage of his life. I love that movie and especially that scene; I know zakly what he's talking about, and it makes me smile to know that some screenwriter shares the enthusiasm that BP and I have for compilation tapes.
I also make mix CDs, and I like them, but they are totally different. The compilation tapes are far more intense and important. The mix CD is simply a matter of choosing songs and deciding their order. Actually making the CD takes a matter of moments. Making the compilation tape, in contrast, requires that you sit there in real time through the making of the tape; you are physically part of the music. As you do so, you're working the equalizer (and we have a doozy of an EQ; our stereo system has been assembled one expensive component at a time over a number of years, and at the far end of it is a pair of concert-quality Klipsch La Scala speakers; yeah, we take music s-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y) so that you're tweaking the instruments and vocals—or correcting muddy or scratchy recordings. And you're remedying volume inconsistences; groups like White Stripes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club consistently issue CDs whose volume is too high to be played compatibly with other CDs. Most of all, you're establishing the transitions between songs. Will you cut one song off before its end, interrupting it with another song whose lyrics or melody makes an interesting intertext? Will you bang one song right up against the other, or leave a little white space? Will part of the tape be a pastiche of bits from several songs? Sometimes we'll scatter bits from familiar comedians like Bill Cosby, Firesign Theatre, or Tom Lehrer (well, okay, you have to be of a Certain Age for them to be familiar) through a compilation tape, giving a whole new context to the music. Or we'll use serious spoken word; we have, for example, a copy of Nelson Mandela's speech upon his release from prison, and we have an interview with Charles Mingus. One interesting challenge is when there's crowd noise at the end of one song and also at the beginning of the other. You can't let that crowd noise fade all the way down from the end of the first song, because it creates too much of a lull in the tape. So you need to find the spots at the end of Song 1 and the beginning of Song 2 where you can match the level of crowd noise; then you cut Song 1 and begin Song 2 right there; and you work the transition so there's no white space between, and it sounds (as nearly as possible) as if it's one crowd.
And then, when you're all done with the tape, you make two CDs: one that has side 1 of the tape, and the other that has side 2.
So here's the tape I made on my 59th birthday:
Kinks, Living on a Thin Line
R.L. Burnside, Been Mistreated
Tom Waits, Hold On
Killers, All These Things That I've Done
Eric Clapton, Drifting
John Prine, The Accident
Beatles, Birthday
C.C. Adcock, Y'all'd Think She'd Be Good to Me
Eels, Losing Streak
Moby, Lift Me Up
The Band, Shine A Light
George Harrison, My Sweet Lord
Grateful Dead, Touch of Gray
Crosby Stills & Nash, Wasted on the Way
Eels, Good Old Days
Maria Daines, Turned October
Eels, Friendly Ghost
Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley
Eliades Ochoa, Por Culpa de las Mujeres
Los Lobos, Come on Let's Go
Green Day, Time of Your Life
Duke Ellington, Money Jungle
Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs, Wooly Bully
The Kingsmen, Louie Louie
Iggy Pop, Louie Louie
Jefferson Airplane, If You Feel
Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Walkin' Down the Road
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Zephyr Song
Thelonious Monk, Nice Work If You Can Get It
Bob Dylan, Oh, Sister
Ramones, Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Bob Dylan & the Band, Highway 61 Revisited
Barbara Martin, I'm An Old Woman
Patty Larkin, All That Innocence
Alberta Hunter, I've Got A Mind To Ramble
Hank Williams, Settin' the Woods on Fire
Posted by senioritis at 10:04 AM | Comments (2)
May 11, 2005
Spa day
The beginning of the twenty-first century wasn't very auspicious for me. In each of the first three years, I had a surgery, a family member died, and a cat died—events ranging from unhappy to traumatic to heartbreaking. Clearly the toughest year was 2002, in which I had heart surgery and my beloved 20-year-old companion Fink died. Both of those pale in comparison to the death of my sister, the family member on whom I had always most closely relied. She had become the center of the family, and her out-of-the-blue ruptured brain aneurysm, stroke, coma, and death—all in the space of nine days—nearly did us in. The following month, I had the heart surgery.
By fall I was a complete basket case, and I was desperate for aid. I began getting every type of therapy I could—psychotherapy, physical therapy, massage therapy, you name it. I had never done any of those things before, but my depression and pain drove me to it. Plantar faciitis had gotten so bad that I was walking with a cane.
Although the car wreck this winter was something of a setback, things are a lot better now. I've learned to deal with Sandy's absence in my life and the unfairness of her death. I've rehabilitated the foot that I was ready to cut off. I've learned how to recognize the onset of depression and head it off before it makes too big a mess of my life. And I've learned how to be nice to myself.
I now get a manicure every week. It's like a discipline for me, a discipline to be good to myself. Manicures are entirely frivolous things, and it's easy to tell myself that I don't have the time or money, or that women in my social class don't wear nail polish, anyhow. Yada yada yada. So I keep going, every week.
And I get an hour's massage every week. It is amazing, how much it keeps the pain at bay, how much it disciplines me to relax and not be producing all the time, and how much it reminds me that I deserve to take good care of myself.
And I get a pedicure every third week—that's "spa day" when I get the manicure, pedicure, and massage all in one day.
Today, on the eve of my 59th birthday, I did what will now be my annual "super spa day": manicure, pedicure, hot stone massage, and hot stone facial. OMG, do I feel terrific. I'll admit, I was getting a little antsy by the end of a 2-hour stint on the massage table, but holy cow, there are zero knots in any muscles in my body. Nothing hurts.
It amazes me that it took me so many years to figure out that feeling good is okay and that spending time and money to feel good isn't a sin. Today for the first time (I suppose I've blocked it out till now) I began imagining the conversation between the members of my now-deceased extended Calvinist family. How would they react to my weekly salon trips and my tri-weekly spa day? They would be disgusted. I would have demonstrated my non-membership in the company of the Elect. I would have demonstrated my low class and low character.
If this is the road to hell, I am firmly set on it. I am only sorry that it took so many years and so much trauma for me to discover that I don't have to earn peace of mind.
Posted by senioritis at 04:40 PM | Comments (7)
May 10, 2005
Why marry?
Everybody knows that government controls women's bodies through abortion legislation. There are other, less-recognized ways, as well—such as laws against cohabitation.
North Carolina is one of seven states that have laws prohibiting cohabitation of unmarried couples. The others are Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota. North Carolina appears to be the only state where the law is being challenged.
These laws are, of course, applied to the detriment of women. In 1977, in fact, BP and I decided to marry because of the cohabitation legislation in the state where we lived, West Virginia. I was divorced; my starter husband ("known as 'the rat'") and I had split custody of my son; and BP and I decided that a year of cohabitation was all the risk we should run. Yes, in West Virginia in 1977 I could lose custody of my child and even visitation rights if I was cohabiting. Hence I am married.
And incidentally, if anyone's ever wondered about the apparent contradiction of my referring to my spouse as my "partner" yet having his last name: yep, once again, it's state control of women's bodies and lives. When I divorced in 1976 in West Virginia, I had a child and therefore could not regain my maiden name. (When I was first married in 1966, it absolutely did not cross my mind to keep my maiden name.) So when BP and I married, I could keep the starter husband's name; pay a fortune to regain my maiden name (which by then was legal in that state); or take BP's surname. I picked Door Number Three.
Posted by senioritis at 07:56 AM | Comments (4)
May 09, 2005
Crawling back to the surface
Been feeling pretty poopy the past few days, but not even the worst whiner (a title for which I am surely a contender) can maintain illness in the face of a sunny 70° day. And there's nothing like a long bike ride for getting whatever ails ya out of your system.
Posted by senioritis at 03:28 PM | Comments (2)
May 05, 2005
New glasses
I've been complaining—to my students and on this blog—about still not being 100% since the accident, with the problem being concentration, especially reading concentration. Finally C suggested that perhaps what I needed was new glasses.
So hmm, I thought, and I moved up my annual opthamology appointment by a month. Saw the opthamologist on Tuesday, and yep, I need new glasses. No permanent damage from the accident, though I had blurry vision for several weeks. But something (the accident, I'm a-thinkin) kind of accellerated the vision degeneration that will eventuate in cataract surgery and that right now means I need trifocals.
Saw the optician today, who fitted me for the new glasses that I'll get next week, and she cautions me that the change in prescription will take some getting used to. Bring it on, sez I: I'd a lot rather have the shock of the right prescription than the strain of the wrong one.
Future blogging will be coming from today's symposium. But after a day of opticians, symposium, commuting, and entertaining five dinner guests—and a blood sugar crash resulting from Dieting Whilst Diabetic—I'm packing it in for the night.
Posted by senioritis at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2005
WRT 105
In the early stages of thinking about my fall FYC. I want to put my money where my mouth is in terms of writing and diversity; this is something I've been thinking about since the formative stages of our department's diversity grant, but I was on leave as that grant took shape and then was never able to catch up. I'm thinking about a course that explores the linguistic construction of identity and difference. (That's what I was alluding to when I referred to what I see as the necessary connection between writing and diversity.) My assumptions here pretty much cohere with poststructuralist orthodoxy. But I want to design a class that's fully accessible to first-year students. I also want the class to have the illusion of multiple topics; I've never taught a single-themed FYC in which the students weren't sick of the topic by the end of the semester. I also want the class to be inquiry based; while I have my own convictions and while they are explicit in my classrooms, I don't see this class as one of indoctrination.
So I'm thinking of three units: Identity, Difference, and Diversity. In each of these units I'd like to pursue questions of how our language constructs the topic in question. And I'll really appreciate suggestions.
NB to non-Syracusans: my audience will be almost entirely white middle class. SU's writing instruction is, by curricular default, racially and nationally stratified. A great many of the students of color take writing in a summer preparatory program, and the majority of L2 students take it in ESL sections. Which whitens and Americanizes the students in WRT 105.
Posted by senioritis at 09:33 AM | Comments (4)
May 03, 2005
Plagiarizing profs
The Christian Science Monitor has a worthwhile story on plagiarizing professors. The very fact that they run a story on this topic is heartening evidence of increased attention to textual transgressions as they occur throughout the culture, instead of fetishizing the transgressive student. Now, that's not news; in 1988 Thomas Mallon (Stolen Words) took delight in cataloging culture-wide transgressions.
Mallon's point was that plagiarism is bad and we have to stop it. My retort (think here of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction: "Allow me to retort") is that we have to ask whether we are misunderstanding what we are defining as "plagiarism" and hence as "bad." I won't recount that argument here; it's taken me two books and about a dozen articles to work through it, and I'm still not done. The point I want to make here is that maybe a culture-wide recognition of the culture-wide practices that are classified as plagiarism will provide the kairos for culture-wide discussion of how we define plagiarism and why. And behold, here's the Monitor doing some of that work, noting that plagiarism is not an eternal, foundational category:
But the rules have become more rigorous in the past three decades. Standards for footnotes in research papers are tighter.
"What was considered sufficient attribution in pre-[World War II] research would almost all be considered plagiarism today," says Jon Garon, dean of the School of Law at Hamline University.
Update: BP observes that Darwin seems to be instrumental in the move toward greater attribution of sources: he provides a seemingly complete trail of bread crumbs that step by step reveals the reasons for his assertions. This became the standard for the sciences almost instantly. Contemporary academic culture has made him the standard for researchers in the social sciences as well as the sciences. As time goes on, too, the operation of the researcher's intelligence is increasingly subordinated to the authority of his/her sources.
Posted by senioritis at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2005
The varmit report
Tom saw a big coyote in the back yard today. Maybe he was hunting the turkeys that have consumed one of our three big beds of tulips. And we've discovered that Fred likes potato salad. Just another dull day Chez Howard.
Update: Ohhhhh, this is not good: BP says that there's also a significantly enlarged groundhog hole in the south pasture.
. . . their young are born 60-63 days later, usually in a ground den (often a renovated woodchuck or fox den), but sometimes in hollow logs or rock caves. Litter sizes vary from 2-10, with 5-6 being the average.
I do not want Fred, Geraldine, and the neighbors' cats to become coyote lunch. Time to get out the old .22:
The Environmental Conservation Law allows ‘problem coyotes' to be killed at other times of the year. Section 11-0523 says coyotes that are "injuring private property may be taken by the owner, occupant or lessee... at any time in any manner."
It's a jungle out here.
Posted by senioritis at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
Project Afghanistan
Guess what these guys are up to. It's not on their website yet, but it's a partnership with the University of Kabul, to move all science and engineering courses to English-only instruction. Wowzer.
Posted by senioritis at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
Adopting Fred (& family?)
Our now-beloved Fred allows us to get quite close to him, but not to touch. We want him indoors. He would be our toughest project ever, so we're approaching the question slowly, gathering information.
And Fred's not the only "question." There's also Geraldine. We don't believe she's ever going to let us get close to her. But Fred and Geraldine were busy mating last week, so we're figuring there may be feral kittens on the premises soon. They are the second question.
So I'm collecting here some links that I'll be referring back to as we deliberate these questions. And I'll appreciate any advice that experienced others may have.
Feral kittens
Directions for trapping
And finally, something that grieves me deeply and that I just can't be silent about: a bumper sticker I saw last week, on a car driven by a young man: "Can't find your cat? Check under my wheels."
Posted by senioritis at 09:20 AM | Comments (2)
Reading manuscripts
Why I love reading manuscripts, whether as a journal reviewer or a teacher:
Because I learn so much from them, about the topic and about writing, and because I love collaborating with other writers.
Why I hate reading manuscripts, whether as a journal reviewer or a teacher:
Because I learn so much from them, about the topic and about writing, and because I love collaborating with other writers, and so spend as much as half a day reading and responding to a single manuscript.
Why journal editors and students hate having me read manuscripts:
Because I learn so much from them, about the topic and about writing, and because I love collaborating with other writers, and so spend as much as half a day reading and responding to a single manuscript, and so am never on schedule with doing the reading.
When I do TA training, I tell people that they have to learn how to spend no more than 20 minutes on a paper. What a liar I am.
Posted by senioritis at 08:19 AM | Comments (1)
May 01, 2005
“Insufficient Information Anxiety: Rebuilding Pedagogy for Researched Arguments”
An improvement, I'm hopin'.
The term "Information Age" has been in circulation since 1982, yet its implications are just beginning to be integrated into composition instruction. Important though it is, incorporating new media into the curriculum is only a preliminary step, because technological literacy is but a part of information literacy. Composition teachers and students alike need to develop new intellectual skills in order to become critical managers of information so that they can find information efficiently, manage it effectively, and transform it into usable knowledge. Drawing on the work of critical literacy theorists such as Manuel Castells, information architects such as Richard Saul Wurman, and information technology specialists such as Michael B. Eisenberg, this presentation will (1) draft an information literacy agenda for college composition curricula and will (2) demonstrate how the pursuit of this agenda can not only help writers find, manage, and critically evaluate information, but can also address contemporary concerns about information ethics and online plagiarism.
156 words :)
Posted by senioritis at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)
The trillium ride
One of the highlights of my life has been cycling with Martha. From 1991 until I moved to Texas in 1997, she and I put in thousands of miles together on the upstate New York highways and byways, riding as much as 100 miles a week in the summer months, riding in bitter winter despite the snow and cold, riding side by side and talking, talking, talking. On weekdays we'd ride 15 miles together before work: Martha would start out in the dark from her house in Hamilton and stop at my house in Earlville; then we'd ride back to her house; and then I'd solo home.
Martha and I are cycling soulmates, and when I went to see her in Seattle (she's now at UW) last spring, we of course rented a bike for me, so that Martha and I, with her partner Ted, could spend a day cycling the Burke & Gilmore Trail, stopping for lunch at the Red Hook Brewery. Along the way (this was on May 9, 2004) we saw herons, killdeer, redwings, geese & goslings, ducks & ducklings, white-crowned sparrows, gulls, robins, and wild chickens & chicks. The dandelions were blooming, and so were the rugosa roses and Scotch broom. Cottonwood seeds drifted through the air and accumulated along the edge of the trail.
Back when Martha and I cycled together in New York, we had names for a lot of our standard rides. This part of the state is veined with hundreds of wonderful little roads, some flat, some hilly. One of our favorite rides was the "trillium ride," a very tough 16-miler that went through woods that were literally filled with trillium in early May.
I'm no longer tough enough for that ride, so each year now BP and I make sure we drive that route in May to see the trillium. And behold, they were in bloom today: white, red, and yellow. (No purple today; I suppose they must open a day or two later than the others.) And every year, when I see the trillium, I remember stopping with Martha at the top of that hill to admire these gorgeous, reclusive woodland flowers. Those were definitely the good old days.
Posted by senioritis at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)
What I did this summer
Suddenly I realize that I don't have a single plan for the summer that I would describe as "cool." That's just disturbing. There are lots of appealing things: rest, gardening, writing, cycling, visiting with family. But not one cool thing. I think I need to hear other people's cool summer plans, so that I can appropriate someone else's.
Posted by senioritis at 12:47 PM | Comments (9)