Thursday, July 17, 2008
Endless Summer
H ere's a delayed release video clip from our stop at Hershey Park two weeks ago. Noteworthy not only because I tuned it using the new version of iMovie, but also because I discovered just how easy YouTube has made it to add annotations to video clips (which, I'm sorry to see, don't seem to be showing up on this embedded version of the clip). If that's not enough, there's body surfing, too, much of which Ph. is quite proud.
Reminds me of the rocket-boat scene from the 1:43-1:57 mark below, only longer.
Posted by at Saturday, June 28, 2008
Digital Canvass
I s. has been asking lately--passionately--to paint. In fact, "paint" is one of those five-alarm words around the house: we know that saying it will tip Is. into such intense determination that, once it is said, there is no getting out of some sort of painting. D. will happily set out the water colors for her on the kitchen table (at breakfast this morning, Is. pointed to lingering brush marks on the wall and proudly claimed it: "Baby paint!" But she is almost as content with the graphics tablet and digital canvass. I can map the tablet to the exact size of the blank canvass on the interface and assist her (by mouse) with choosing colors--all a far better match with my own material preferences when it comes to painting. Whatever else can be said of it, Is. is picking up on subtle distinctions between colors (i.e. dark red and what she calls "yellow-white," although I'm still not always sure what this latter one is). And, on any given day, she gets enough of the water colors and enough of the graphics tablet to refer to them both as "painting" (a word you must not mutter in our company unless you want to alter the course of our lives for an hour).
Above, the first is just some futzing around with colors. The second looks to me like the end of the purple dinosaurs or the smoke monster from Lost knocking Mr. Echo onto his back.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Terminal Mesterbation
I am out of patience for coinages that use "-mester" to name some new period of time for college study. Semester, trimester: I can live with these. Even "Maymester," has a certain ring to it, although it could just be that I was born into May that it sounds okay. May might be the only month that works with "-mester." Syracuse offers a Maymester. Quadrimester, no. Mester is, in effect, a Latin root meaning month, right? Consider a few of the possible, if redundant, blends:
Janumester
Februmester
Marchmester
Aprimester
Junemester
Julmester
Augmester
Septembestermester
Octmester
Mercy already! You get the point. Yet today I saw promotional materials that use one of these identifiers for a four-week term of study. If you don't believe me, Google all of them and you will see.
Did you look them up? It's Julmester. Julmester?
In fact, two of these--Julmester and Junemester--are in circulation now as I blog. The only place we even find "-mesters" are in the academy and in the maternity ward. Higher ed, in my opinion, does not need to be any -mesterier than it is already. Perhaps listing a few more -mesters will keep their great awkwardness out of play, maybe even make those who think them up pause when they search to see which -mesters have already been scooped. More to chill your spine:
Here-today-gone-tomorrowmester
Lakers-in-a-sweepmester
I'm-a-lousy-tester-mester
Winchester-Cathedralmester
Karatemester
Extracreditmester
Yestermester
Jägermeistermester
Earthwidemothmester
Who-are-you-the-mester-police? Yestermester.
Put-a-forkester-in-memester
By now you have thought of one or two others to claim so nobody else ever ever tries to use it to identify a new! improved! term of academic studymester. If so, feel free to add them in the comments.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Groceries, Lot
A
one-hop red-eye from Seattle to JFK to Syracuse delivered us--splat!--into
Hancock International Airport yesterday mid-morning. With a stroke
of good fortune
(what some would call a blessing), Is. slept for the
entire route, but the rest of us are still returning to shape from the weakened
and dismantled lumps of exhaustion we were transformed into. In the spirit of
slowly rebuilding, yesterday early afternoon I dropped Ph. at school (on his
insistence), retrieved the dog from his generous caretakers, and later chased
down a meal's worth of groceries. The grocery trip:
Since early March I have been experiencing what I can only explain as "dairy cooler" trauma. That's what happens when, upon returning from some time out of town, you gather up fresh groceries only to realize that the milk (soy, organic whole, etc., whatever dated stuff you consume) cartons are all up in your face with expiration dates that foretell another trip (or deadline, as may be the case) on the horizon. I withstood another such milk aisle assault yesterday when the cartons all bore the date I will be leaving (in appr. two weeks) for Albuquerque. On the bright side, it beats drinking curdled whatnot. Although it would be nice if the milks would lay off.
Today, after a meeting with one of my committee members about more or less successful Chs. Zero and One, and after I few errands, which included replacing a cell phone whose display has been on the blink (i.e., has been blank) for ten days, I stopped through a different grocery store for a second consecutive day of one-meal shopping. After offloading the foodstuff, I wheeled the empty cart toward the corral, where an old man was gathering them. He said, "Thanks," as I rolled the cart toward him, and then, "Hang in there, okay?"
Okay. Strangely nice to hear, and when I least expected it.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Challunge!
W rapped up my first ever RSA late this afternoon with a role on O.09 on textual machinery and the interrelationship of agency and automation. Good company, smart papers, and an alert, question-raising audience: what more can you ask for? My list of (entirely self-inflicted) concerns is short, but I left with the sense that I fumbled through parts of the Q&A. Nothing horribly embarrassing. Just rambly-schmambly, swing-and-miss kinds of half-answers. There was a lot of rich conversation during the Q&A, but, frankly, I would like to have do-over tokens for some of it. Another do-over: while I was giving my paper, I was so distracted by the fact of not having water at hand that I was focused on the moisture levels in my throat almost to the total neglect of what I was saying.
Once rested, maybe I can push on through a couple of blog entries that will make up for some of my loafing through it today: on the long tail of citation freq., on automation/agency rel. to colloids and compounds, on letting concepts get away from us (or being understood as if). Or not (like I really need to promise more phantom EWM entries?). For now, I will drain a Lazy Boy IPA to celebrate the end of the 07-08 conferencing tour and then look ahead to enjoying another two days of visiting with family before jetting back to CNY.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Contains Less Than 1% Juice
M aybe I can hoist up an entry in the few minutes I have between halves of the Pistons-Magic series opener.
I've got one more day's worth of antibiotic to take tomorrow, but I can tell I'm leaving Chest Crud in the dust now that I'm getting my usual energy back (not that my usual energy is like jet fuel, but anything beats on-your-back full-body lethargy). I have an absolutely sluggish week to show for it, but I knew that would be the case after all of the driving the week before. I managed to bike to campus and back on Friday for the semester's final 2.5 hours in the Writing Center: three appointments with students I've come to know fairly well this semester. I was winded on the ride home after consulting; could tell I'd been sitting around for a week, especially after I held on through the one bona fide hill on the route. Probably would've been smarter to hop off and walk my rickety wheels to the top. Today I went out twice with Is. in the bike seat for short spins around the neighborhood. Nothing too rigorous, but Is. has become quite the personal trainer with her motivational "That way!" and "I want more!" every time we coast back into the driveway, no matter how long we've been riding. Her tirelessness helps me forget my own tiredness.
Looks like I will be returning to the Writing Center for SU's Summer 2 session: six weeks of 15 hours per week beginning in late June.
The title above refers to how I have begun to feel about May conferences. RSA is up in three weeks, and it involves cross-country travel. I still have a bit of work to do on the one presentation. That one still suffers from too broad of a scope for the eighteen minutes I'm aiming for. And the other piece--an installation of sorts--is close, close enough that I need only to resolve myself to the premise of amateurism grounding the gathering and not fret about perfecting it over the next three weeks. I'm looking forward to RSA, but the last two years have given me reason to re-think May conferences. Of course, about the title: orange blossoms, too, don't contain much juice, but we all know how that turns out with a little bit of time.
Late yesterday I scraped together a draft-entry about the Sneakitin.com kerfluffle re: sponsored CCCC panels. An interesting set of issues here, but I haven't given it the nuance it deserves, especially when there seems to be a fair amount of strong objection percolating on the lists. Much to add? No, not me. But I do think it brings up some fairly timely national convention what ifs about the proposal system, etc.
Second half's underway...
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Quite Rightly
J ulie's "consider yourself tagged if you are so inclined" contaminated me with the song chart meme. Of course, I am not the only one so afflicted.
.
As for the meme, its followers are putting together charts or graphs motivated by song lyrics. "Consider yourself tagged if you are so inclined."
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Blogue Overdue
- C ongratulations to Billie for crushing the competition in the fifth annual E.W.M. NCAA pick 'em thingamerbob. I had to wait a few days to announce the congratulations because I wanted to be mathematically certain I was out of the running. So I finished tenth? Tenth: that's behind someone who didn't pick a champion and someone else called "Booger."
- Slowly I am recovering from yesterday's round-trip car ride to Buffalo for NEMLA, my first ever MLA experience (regional or otherwise). Alex's paper gave me a lot of good ideas to think about, the panel was well-received overall, and I think my paper came off alright, even if I didn't field any questions directly about it per se (I did chime in on some other stuff in the Q&A, such as multi-modal composition and demonstrable proficiencies).
- JetBlue has won me over as a long-term customer. How? Well, after last week's return-from-N.O. debacle, not only did they put me up in the JFK Best Western (I mentioned this earlier in the week), but on Thursday they sent me an email telling of a reimbursement voucher for the full cost of the trip, which I can use in the next year toward trips to Louisville, San Francisco, or wherever.
- Every so often I think about dropping out of Facebook.
- I took a couple of other photos while I was in New Orleans: another of 822 St. Charles, hotel sign, Maserati, and repairs order. Said I would post them and so they are.
- Coming spring and summer of '08: Berthoff L.O.A. Series Cup bolo toss. Watch for it. It's going to be b-i-g BIG.
- I am, for the rest of the day, suspending all thoughts about planning for the week ahead. In any possible order, it's a week that will involve (some but not all) of the following: getting my RSAct in gear, revising C. 2, revising that article, cooking up a little MayFest promo video for the Writing Center, and drafting on C. 5. The video is marked urgent. Plus, I have ten hours of consulting time due this week and a couple of other back-burner things yet to do. All of this while everyone else in the house basks in Spring Break (I'm not saying they don't deserve it, of course).
Monday, April 7, 2008
CCCC Recap
D igging through notes and receipts (expense report style):
- Out of sixteen time slots with sessions, I attended eight panels, including my own. Spread across those panels and also the Opening General Session, I listened to 26 talks.
- Twelve of those talks were accompanied by something visual beyond the person presenting (i.e., a slideshow, an overhead).
- 5/26 provided a handout. Just one dealt in both: a handout and a PPT.
- Some of the slideshows were what Garr Reynolds calls "slideuments" (text-heavy rather than letting the visuals be picturesque). Just one of the slideshows was, at the last minute, withheld from the audience, even though the presenter continued to look at it and describe for us what we weren't seeing because a projector wasn't available.
- Out of those 26 presenters, fourteen were people I'd met before, and I would describe several among them as friends. None of the eight panels consisted entirely of people I hadn't met.
- I ate lunch or dinner with someone from each of the following institutions: Wisconsin, Western Illinois, Syracuse, Purdue, Pepperdine, Missouri, Saginaw Valley State, Duke, and North Carolina. I was alone for every breakfast in New Orleans; every lunch and dinner was with one or more people. On the shuttle rides to and from the N.O. airport, I chatted with conference goers from Minnesota State, California-Santa Barbara, and Kent State.
- Bloggers I finally met: George, Dan, Michael, and Cheryl.
- I had coffee, Coke, and Bedford h'ors doeurves with folks from my MA program (some of whom are now elsewhere, such as Ohio State or Western Carolina).
- The cheapest meal I enjoyed was $7.87; the most expensive, even if the food wasn't especially titillating, cost considerably more.
There were many highlights, good conversations, etc. As for my own talk and presentation, I was, as I have already said, pleased with the turnout and also with the unplanned synch of the presentations. I was also happy that I stuck with one small gamble: whether or not I would be able, upon arriving in N.O., to find and photograph the apartment buildings that grace the cover of Stewart Brand's book How Buildings Learn. I could have gotten by with out this reference, and I had been warned that it might seem as though I'd written my paper while at the conference if I included a day-before photo of those buildings at 822 St. Charles Ave. But I went ahead with it, even scripted my talk so that the paragraphs where the buildings came up could be trimmed at the last minute without the rest of the spiel folding in on itself--in case the buildings were not there or a photograph was not possible. Here are the images, first of Brand's cover, and then of the same buildings on Thursday morning, just before 8 a.m.
I have a few more photos to post, and a small bundle of uneven notes to sift through before deciding whether there's anything more to post about the conference. I'm sure I'll get those photos up, at the very least, and also engage the question grounding C.15: Where's the "rhetoric"?--a question that resonates for me with a couple of thoughts on the Where are the numbers? puzzle (Where is rhetoric? Wherever you left it.) and also on the (inter)relationship of rhetoric and composition as gestalt.
Friday, April 4, 2008
CCCCleepy
T his morning's session behind me, I'm now suffering a stiff wave of Presenter's Drain, the lethargies that sneak up on me after I have presented at a conference. To compound the Drain, I changed into more comfortable attire after I completely and thoroughly Coked my shirt and pants while sitting at the hotel bar with a former colleague and mentor immediately after my session. Coking: that's what it's called when, while describing your dissertation project and gesturing enthusiastically with your hands, you catch the straw sticking out from the fresh glass of Coca-Cola that bartender placed in front of you moments earlier, only to have the cold cola splash onto your crotch and backpack. A sympathizer: "You alright?" Me: "Yeah, yeah. Fine." There was nothing to feel panicked about after presentation, which went fairly well (check out CGB's portion, if you missed it). The panel was well-attended, engaging through Q&A, and so on . Goes without saying about the soda-pants kerfluffle: I'm still enthusiastic enough about my diss that I can dump a full glass of Coke into my clothing and continue the conversation without even standing up.
Anyway, by the time I walked a few blocks in these Naw'lins winds to grab a Peace Maker Po-Boy (w/ Tabasco infused mayo) at the Acme Oyster House, the Coke had dried. The sun peaked through the clouds. The sandwich was excellent. And now, to see whether the Presenter's Drain lifts in time for evening activities.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Comfort Inventory 5
L et's call this the "How Much I Delight in the Overlooked Fleck of Eggshell in the Egg Salad" Edition.
- There was occasion at 5:00 a.m. to answer D.'s comments on a second wooded-side-of-the-house skunk fumigation with a sleepy but bold declarative: "Bad!"
- My NCAA bracket has sunk like a heavy ball to the middle of the pack. On the bright side, this means that I can refocus all of the time I have been wasting puttering around with basketball games on the tube.
- We went to church this morning. The U.U. folks don't do Easter in typical fashion. The "interim" pastor read a kids book about memory and aging (the subject of the story--a woman who was young once and who grew old and eventually died); she also brought up the myths about the parting of the Red Sea. Today the U.U. felt to me like it should be pronounced "uh-uh". Happy Easter to you all the same.
- I'm about 85% pleased with my CCCC presentation. It is more or less together, but I have yet to share it with another person whose assenting nod would quickly put to rest any worries I have that it builds up reasonably well (through the early framework to the examples). Some of us are doing pre-conference run-throughs on Wednesday, just in time to correct any presentational wobbles.
- Time for paying March bills. D. usually handles most of this, but there are weird ones this time. Stuff that requires phone calls. One of them, a bill for $53.01, I paid using online bill pay. Everything went through smoothly. But a paper copy showed up in the mail showing that $53.01 was received and that $53.01 was due. This isn't an ongoing service or anything; more of a one shot payment. I logged on to the system for this particular biller. Shows a zero balance. What could this mean? The bill was produced in those few moments between the posting of the payment and the zeroing out of the account's bottom line. Perhaps I'm not alone in feeling impatient with paper bills that reflect system glitches.
- One week after I present at CCCC, I will drive over to Buffalo to present at NEMLA. On the one hand, I don't mind the back-to-back conferences because I am working with similar ideas and materials that are very much a part of the diss. But I've never done two different conferences on consecutive weekends, and I doubt I'll do it again soon because of how much I dislike the way NEMLA (from my presenterly standpoint) is obscured by CCCC. I mean that I have not been good about giving the second conference's preparations their proper due because the first conference is standing in its way.
- We ate brunch at a place called "Egg Plant." Not Eggplant. Nothing eggplant in the place. But "Egg Plant." As in egg-foods factory or something. Ph. recommended it. They had framed "Best of Syracuse" awards on the wall, but the longer I live in CNY, the more suspicious I am of "Best of Syracuse" wall hangings. Looked to me like they were done on a 16-pin dot matrix printer with PrintShop Pro Deluxe. Lending support to this speculation was the faintly sour smell of the "Keep Refrigerated" coffee creamers which sat (deteriorating?) on the table in a dry, unrefrigerated ceramic bowl.
- Y. made a cute little throw-up on the kitchen floor late this afternoon. With Is. and groceries in my arms, I happened to step in it, which dialed my stress level up a full notch because I happened to be wearing socks.
- A small dose of snow is coming tomorrow. Dreadful: that's what I think of snow in late March--after it's officially "Spring."
- Just to make sure I don't have an over-productive March, I'm reading Iain Banks' The Steep Approach to Garbadale--a holiday gift back in December. So far, so good.
- The next commenter (i.e., first on this entry, if there are none to other entries) will win a decorative "E.W.M. 2000th Commenter" button. Quite the conversation piece, that one will be.
Monday, February 18, 2008
An Event
T wo tables over from the place in Panera where I am working this morning--hi-ho, hi-ho, they are planning an event:
"Dick said he didn't know pickles and potato chips were important.
They are!"
"They were chocolate covered nuts, and they were delicious. I have been eating one or two a day just to make them last. Just one or two, and that was enough."
You can, of course, see why it has been impossible for me to concentrate. Perhaps the event they are planning is a (surprise?) party for the more or less completed draft of Chapter Four later this month, in which case, I should resolve to work elsewhere for the next two weeks.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Where Has the Month Gone?
Where Has the Day Gone?
Saturday, December 29, 2007
It Is a Lot to Think About
I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep for about 90 minutes. Coincidence?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Voracio.us
O ver the last three days I have read more than twenty books from beginning to end. Granted, not one of them was more than ten or so pages long, and few of the pages were covered with words alone. In fact, fifteen of those books were Frosty the Snowman (Is. refers to this one as "Mona;" all snowmen, for that matter, are "mona" or more likely "monae"). Frosty the Mona, fifteen times. You've forgotten it?
She probably didn't realize (or care that) anybody was watching when I snapped this one while she flipped through the latest CCC, turning, no doubt, to the Revisions piece by Anne, Collin, and Jeff for something to relieve the mona earworm (what's more accurately an earfrog when I am the one sing-reading the lyrics, fifteen times over).
Few other events and curiosities to report about this quiet, restful week. I am back to ±90% of full strength and energy after a surprisingly intensive bout with the flu (an after-semester flu-crash has become an annual pattern by now, our fourth year in Syracuse). Ahead, a couple more days of laying low, flipping back and forth between sporting events on the television, and not feeling bothered that large blocks of time slip by without anything work-like to add value to them. In fact, so that Y. is not bored, I am obligated to at least eight or nine more hours of sitting on the couch and holding his new football toy just out of reach between now and the kick-off of Saturday evening's Pats-Giants game. Would it be too much with the dog-toy voodoo to call Y. "Tom Brady" for the next three days and then let him hold the ball just long enough that I can rough him up and force him to fumble?
Nah, I probably won't do that.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Blogabilia
[we]blog · a · bi · lia (n.) [blog-uh-bil-ee-uh]
-plural noun, singular -a · bi ·
le
1. digital scraps, orts.
2. points worthy of posting to a blog, esp. when they are underdeveloped and
list-like.
[Origin: 2007, Earth Wide Moth; n. use of L blogābilia things to be blogged, neut. pl. of blogābilis blogable]
Tonight's will be a ten item list:
- Blogabilia reminds me of the local liquor store chain in and around the Kansas City area called Berbiglia. The cut-off for friends who were drinking in college was when they could no longer mutter Berbiglia without spit flying from the mouth. Rarely, rarely did it come to this.
- Bird Library sent me an automated message this morning explaining I had accumulated $30 in late fees for books due on 11/30. I jumped on the phone to the circulation desk and explained that up until this last summer, overdue notices arrived by email in time such that I could either 1.) renew online or 2.) expediently return the books to our fine library. The system has changed, I explained. On the other end: "We'll look into it. The software was updated over the summer." Aha! And so the debts were forgiven. I am once more in Bird's good graces.
- Ph. has a chemistry project coming up that requires a caloric and substance analysis of a homemade goodie. It must include at least five ingredients. Up to five more ingredients will count toward extra credit. I'm open to any and all ten-ingredient suggestions you can make (in part because I don't feel like messing with the gingerbread cookies).
- Yesterday I learned that PHP has an "explode function" for those arrays that reach a max size of 100,000. The factoid effectively detonates a planned portion (ciao, so long, arrivederci) of the diss.
- I renewed the domain name earthwidemoth.com, which means this blog will carry on through yet another year. Blog Day's not until after the New Year, but today's hosting renewal had to come first.
- Today is the tenth birthday my mother has missed since she died suddenly and unexpectedly in the summer of '97. I still pause when I reiterate "suddenly and unexpectedly," as if I cannot mention her death with any other adverbs. There is a dull timelessness in those descriptors. I have dwelt on this before. Also, because she was a 12/12er and I am a 5/5er, I am especially keen on birthdays with a day/month match, like the one belonging to my nephew T., 11/11.
- I was on campus earlier for a pair of practice job talks.
- While I was on campus, I printed the first sixteen pages of chapter three. There is a certain shadowy corner to this moment in the chapter. The shadowy corner? In pre-dawn basketball workouts the shadowy corner was the part of the track where coach could not see whether we were actually running on the track or cutting the corner and running on the grass. Many of us kept to the track; a few did not. Nobody said anything about it. Describing this section of chapter three as a shadowy corner does not resolve for me whether I am thinking of it as a coach who cannot see or as a runner who faces the dilemma of either keeping to the paved lane or straying for efficiency's sake. It is worth mentioning in these terms because it is both (and, therefore, mildly conflicted).
- Tonight I re-read Matsuda's chapter, "Coming to Voice: Publishing as a Graduate Student." I ran across it when I was leafing around in a pile of materials from the genre course I took in the summer of 2005. He writes: "Now that I have a tenure-track job, however, I have come to think of being a graduate student as a somewhat privileged status. At Purdue, I was only teaching three courses per year. I had no obligation to administer programs, serve on academic committees, or mentor graduate students, although I did so voluntarily" (50). Lest, in the fogs of dissertating, I forget.
- The blogobilia were going to be ten-long. Was? Were? Was, I think.
Was going to be ten-long.
Maybe not.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Earthgoogle On Merucy
N ever underestimate the profound self-knowledge that comes of reflecting on the server logs. Two days into NaWrLiYoHaSoImToSaMo, "Piaget" is the supreme attractor to E.W.M., five seductions ahead of "addams family house." Sometimes when I'm really at a loss for what to do next (you know, in my spare time), I re-google a couple of the oddities in the list to see what e-calamity I have brought about. And then, moments later, I sigh a deep sigh of bloguilt and follow it up with an entry like this one which will sooner or later tell the search engines to look here for acute insights into adequation (i.e., dead metaphors) or Vygotsky coordinates.Worse, this route credibility is underwritten largely by link-capital accumulated over years of haphazardly piling on blogroll addition upon blogroll addition.
12 12.77% piaget 7 7.45% addams family house 4 4.26% wheelbarrow full of sand border crossing. smuggler 3 3.19% the photographic message 2 2.13% adequated 2 2.13% barthes third meaning space 2 2.13% concepts vygotsky coordinates- 2 2.13% digital convergence kittler gramophone 2 2.13% earthgoogle on merucy 2 2.13% earthgoogle.com 2 2.13% http://www.earthwidemoth.com/ 2 2.13% moth bikes
Any chance I can win back a small measure of digital karma by directing those who sought "earthgoogle on merucy" to Google Mars? I'm not implying that it should count as an act of community service; but maybe "network service," or some other ironic gesture.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Was Here
A side from the unmistakable Kilroy pose, most striking about this one is that we have no idea how Is. managed to set up the tripod, touch off the timer, and climb to the other side of the gate again before the camera did its thing.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Nost Algos
S everal weeks ago, I was standing around at an outdoor get-together (picnic-like, the scene). A small gathering with people I know at a small distance. They were mostly associates of D.'s. But I got into a conversation with someone I'd met before, partner of another colleague. Whatever. These details are less important than what he said. "The -algia in nostalgia is a kind of illness." It wasn't out of the blue, this comment. And there was more to it than this. An interest in words, recollection: a passing moment in college when someone was gushing nostalgic but insisting that nostalgia was good, good for its embrace of memory. Nost-. To return home. Algos. To feel pain or sickness.
The return home can be temporal or spatial, home to moment or home to place. And the nostalgia I've been weighed down by this afternoon is a little bit of both--a chronotopic noodle-bowl, returning me to a time almost exactly nine years ago when I was in the first year of my M.A. program. What was different about my M.A. program--different from any program I was in before it or after--was that I didn't belong to a cohort. I entered the program singularly, at mid-year, called upon at the last minute when another TA slipped their obligation (an early applicant, I hadn't intended to enroll until the fall; ten days later I was teaching and taking courses). A few years before as an undergrad, there were others in my class with whom I shared a major. They were my cohort. There were two of them (three of us in all). In my current grad program, my cohort is also three. But the M.A. was different. In terms of cohorts, I was odd-out, in-between, an isolate. And so I folded in with those who came to UMKC later, in the fall of '98.
One of them emailed me today to report that another member of the cohort--the '98 M.A. group--was killed tragically over the weekend, murdered, in fact. The local news has carried a few small reports. Googling Rick's name, I found that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America posted a note about it, too. He was, as you might expect from the SFFWA reference, a sci-fi creative writer. Today I learned that he wrote a short story titled "The Gas Man" that was a hit in 1988 (contest-winning, anthologized, etc.).
Anyway, this is all just to say that I've been thinking a lot this afternoon about this awful, tragic event and also by some association about UMKC, about the second-floor open office we all shared (a large room, 20' vaulted ceiling, full-height windows, six desks, a couple of couches, file cabinets, and bookcases; also multiple copies of Writing Without Teachers on the shelves). Shared by ten or twelve TAs--two to a desk. My nostalgia is for that space, a space long since re-claimed for other uses, I imagine, and also a time when I can remember Rick very much alive and working feverishly on a short story (desk closest to the door), conferencing animatedly with a student (his conferences were some of the best, every exchange worth eaves-dropping), or kicking back and whiling away an hour talking pedagogy--those were some of the best conversations about teaching. Nostalgia. It was a good time to be at UMKC, a good time to be an M.A. student in that particular program, good as much for those reasons as for being in the company of Rick and others.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Field & Bleacher
W hat the kids were doing today:
I didn't get around to taking any photos of Ph. until the second half, and although he played well, the unseasonably warm temps (a record, 85F and balmy) had everyone on the field pretty tuckered out by then. The topmost photo is of him running the right wing, getting ready to receive a pass from a teammate. The bottom photo came at the end of the match, which turned out to be a 4-1 win over Binghamton despite wrapping up seven minutes ahead of schedule due to lightning on the horizon. The middle clip--that's Is. carefree-stepping to the end-of-game tunes. She's been going to Toddler Tango sessions on most Saturday mornings, and this footage does indeed suggest that the sessions are paying off, no?
Friday, October 5, 2007
Recap
A run-down of the week:
It helped to read "How To Grade A Dissertation" as I launched into chapter one.
Writing this week was B or B-. The ongoing decisions are piled thick; one of the more challenging layers of decisions for me is just how polished to make the first draft. How will revisions go? I have to draft more before this can be settled.
Wednesday I attended a colloquium on my program's qualifying exam process. I was invited to share a select few insights into the process. When it was my turn to talk, it seemed like others had covered everything already. I talked anyway. More than anything else, I was in it for the face time. I have so few occasions to interact with those who are in coursework. Plus, with the diss, I appreciate excuses to get out of the house.
A meeting with my chair turned up some promising ideas for the first chapter. I was having a hard time differentiating the first chapter as an introduction from the first chapter as a part of the diss where I set up why this? why now? I'm fairly sure that I'm still overshooting in my sense of what chapter one can accomplish, but I have a better plan as of Wednesday than I had on Monday or Tuesday. The writing I did on those days will wind up in the actual introduction--a short introduction that will be a mini-chapter unto itself. More of a teaser and an abbreviated overview of what follows. So the few pages from early in the week will be appropriate for the intro, but I don't need to mess with that section any more until I've finished drafting and major revisions (June or July?).
Other than the diss? Shoot, let's see. I missed another of Ph.'s soccer matches on Thursday evening because I was teaching. His team won, 3-0. The class I'm teaching this fall is the best teaching I've done since I arrived in Syracuse in '04. Every session has lift to it for some reason or another. Spatial analysis projects (a defensible fit with the shared syllabus). Recently we read a chapter ("Thrashing Downtown") from Steven Flusty's The Spaces of Postmodernity. Thinking...thinking. I bought Y. a new bag of dog food this week. And a new ball. We play fetch in the back yard just about every day. But he won't fetch the new ball. He runs it down and then returns without it. What the heck, Yoki? I'm trying to cuss less. Is. is acquiring the language at a supersonic pace. And you never know who is reading the blog. What else? I swept under the couches today. Quite a few Cheerios under there, and also several of Is.'s small toys piling up out of sight. What else? At the water/sand table in the back yard this afternoon, Is. shoveled a heaping helping of sand into her mouth. Nothing can be done about this. I'm forgetting some stuff. I didn't run as far as usual this week. I've been covering 2.7 miles up to five days per week. But I ran it just three times this week. I don't know whether it's seasonal allergies, a head cold, or some other phlegmatic whatnot. Been getting roughed up in Facebook Scrabble. I'll keep playing the tiles I've got and then give it up for good.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Pumpkins Weighed
I s. is fourteen months today, and my dad, he turned fifty-eight (uh, 696 mos.). I talked with him on the phone earlier this evening, and he shared with me a maxim from his brother (my uncle) who lives in Marquette, the metropolis of the U.P.: You're not old until your dead. Fifty-eight is the new forty, I guess.
The "pumpkins weighed" photo reminds me again of Latour's gem on scale and slowciology. I was writing about scalability last week and re-encountered the passage then, just after D. snapped this photo on an excursion to Something-or-other Farms in Cazenovia. Speaking of writing, I topped off chapter two this morning. Saved it away where it will ferment, awaiting revisions. Tomorrow, chapter one. And once again, I have a nagging sense that I should take a month just to read dissertations (ridiculous, right?...right!?). I'm not sure that I've have read one from cover to cover. Only in the case of the monographs that come out of revisions. Most of the diss-to-books are overhauled from their earlier versions. The pumpkin photo reminds me of Latour on pumpkins, which in turn reminds of me of Latour on accounts: "And most of the things we have been studying, we have ignored or misunderstood" (122).
There's so much more to say--a perfect sweet potato and ginger soup, am I getting a cold?, the great Scrabulous distraction of 2007, the Lions are 3-1 (sign of the end times?)--but I tend to feel consumed, exhausted just by writing a little bit each day toward this project. Plus I have one more conference proposal to tune up and send away this week--the last one for a while. Maybe I'll aim for a ten-entry month? Twelve?
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Pre-band
P h. picked up a lawn-cutting gig yesterday morning. I dropped him off and proceeded to Starbucks, where I grabbed a venti Joya, doctored it up with sugar and cream, and then wandered out to a table in the sun along University Ave. Wasn't any chair at the table, so I interrupted somebody reading a newspaper--"Mind if I take that chair?"--carried the chair to the table, and sat alone with Signs Taken for Wonders, awaiting Ph.'s call for a ride home again in, say, an hour or so.
I sat next to the table where four people were meeting about forming a band. The luck! And then I tried to read, swooping in on the text momentarily only to be seduced back into unintended eaves-dropping.
The meeting involved two established members of the band--a manager (mother) and musician (daughter), and two new prospects. They were interviewing or recruiting (Concentrating on the reading: "Rather, it will be treated as a legitimate act only if it contributes towards improving the total knowledge of the text..."), engaging in cross-talk about who makes decisions, how the gigs work, how the future is wide open. Something fascinating about the pre-band, the probing and speculation, will we be famous?
I've never been in a band.
Elliptical conversation: around and around it went, and then it tightened. One of the prospects said he wanted to be on the road a year from now, whether with this band or another, didn't matter. Tension. After that, the manager asked, "If God wants you to move to Binghamton, will you?"
Spiritual rock, I guess. I didn't hear the prospects' answers. Ph. called to say that mower was leaking oil. After just 20 minutes of mowing, a moat of dark oil encircled the mower engine. And then I left with the sweet coffee, having only read a few lines, gone to pick him up again from where he'd cut half of a lawn.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Fairwell, Summer
F or the third consecutive year (what has happened!?), we ventured out to the NY State Fair and returned with photographic evidence of the carnivralous scene. We did not, however, make any purchases at Fairgaritaville, which proves there are still deeper depths to which we could sink.
Glancing back through the photos, we appear to have keyed on moments of judgment (the gnawed grade report commenting "white spots", the intensely focused goat judge), but we also took part in pulling fish from a trough, witnessed a train ride being repaired and reset to the tracks, and spotted the Sugar Shack where we a small bag of cotton candy won us with its spell.
We're just putzing around, setting the
I
have a web cam connected to my laptop. It reports to me that I look
like this tonight. And I had an email from the parent of a player who was on
the basketball team I coached in K.C. a few years ago. He'd
