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For all of you who are enjoying a brief respite from all your teaching responsibilities and yet still cannot quite work up the energy to tackle that stack of serious novels that’s been sitting by your bed all year …
Alison Bechdel’s “Compulsory Reading”
(Thanks to Bookslut!)
UPDATE: Ah, the irony! A post about reading great literature and a link to one of the most provocative queer writers of the day has managed to attract an inordinate amount of people searching for porn. I’ve revised the title of the post in an attempt to put an end to this unwanted traffic. If you have inadvertently ended up here in your search for under-age girls showing their breasts, please fuck off as quickly as possible.
A few years ago, I went to one of those NEH summer institutes. It was a great experience: I learned a lot, met some really interesting and smart people, and got to add a line to my (at that time, rather sparse) CV.
But, aside from all of these expected rewards, my favorite part was that it was basically an elevated form of summer camp. We had “field trips” to historical sites — even riding in a huge school bus and getting “snacks”. We had guest speakers who gave us inspirational talks. The twenty or so participating academics lived and ate together, walked everywhere together in a big group — the only thing missing was matching t-shirts but I’m pretty sure any spectators could have told that we, the big geeky group of us, belonged together. We developed inside jokes, stayed up late at night talking, went on beer runs … you get the picture.
It also had all of the downsides of summer camp: we lived in a shitty dorm, shared dorm rooms, ate in the cafeteria of the college — which meant, yes, shitty food — and, because the seminar was a month long, we all got homesick and cranky and missed our families/pets/beds. Not to mention, the loved ones we left behind were not always pleased with the arrangement; Golden Boy was not happy about me leaving him to deal with everything on his own for a month. A month is just a very long time to be away from home.
So, even though I really enjoyed myself the first time around, I swore that I would never again do it if it meant being away from home for a whole month. Guess what? I’m goin’ to summer camp again! In a few weeks, I leave for another academic institute (not NEH sponsored this time) — but only for a week. I’m really looking forward to it. I got my “homework” in the mail yesterday — all the assigned reading — and this morning I am punching holes in all the articles and putting them in a binder. It’s so much fun being a student again!
There are so many things about academia that I love to complain about but this is one of the things that makes me pause and reflect: what could be better than spending a week sitting around a seminar table with a group of smart, curious, and (hopefully) nice people, talking about an intellectual subject about which I don’t know much but want to know more … and getting paid to do it! (Yep, there’s a stipend involved — not much but enough to add a cherry to experience.)
For all you young academics out there, I’d really encourage you to keep an eye on the NEH summer institutes list: it has a very easy application process, makes an impressive addition to the ol’ CV (administrators love any funding from national organizations), and can a good place to start making career contacts.
Plus, you might get to go on some fieldtrips!
I’ve finally worked up the moral fortitude to read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. As I’ve said before, I admire Mr. Pollan and think he may be one of galvanizing forces in shaping a new awareness of environmental issues in our nation. That’s pretty grandiose: I also think he’s a great writer, able to be engaging when writing about really technical (read: boooorrring) matters.
But, boy, is he depressing. I am so depressed reading Ominovore’s Dilemma, I have to parse it out in little bits so I don’t sink into a catatonic state.
Here’s what’s got me depressed: when you read OD, it becomes clear that there’s practically nothing that you can eat that’s not compromised in some way. I consider myself a relatively savvy consumer of food stuffs: I buy as much local produce as I can at a locally-owned market. I buy organic as often as I can. I rarely eat meat but when I do, I try to eat only “good” meat (farm-raised, grass-fed, etc.). I never eat fast food unless I’m travelling and stuck in the middle of nowhere or in a crummy airport terminal, which is to say: rarely. So, while I am not lucky enough to have my own vegetable garden (how I envy Redneck Mother’s Victory Garden!), I do what I can to stay out of the evil, corporate food chain.
Or, at least I though I was doing so. But, what Pollan has revealed to me is how much I remain absolutely stuck inside of it. Pollan’s account of how Big Corn has infiltrated every aspect of our lives — basically, how almost every food product on our shelves is somehow composed of genetically modified corn (in sometimes frightening franken-corn forms) — is chilling to me. Even my favorite cereal, purported to be whole grain and organic, is made (in part) out of corn. Oh, and the unremitting pervasiveness of High Fructose Corn Syrup!
If you need to know why Big Corn is so evil, you’ll have to read the book. To summarize: bad for environment, bad for animals, bad for humans. Very, very bad.
So, what’s an ethical eater to do? I’m considering an all oatmeal, salad, and water diet.
To hell with Big Corn.
I joined Facebook about six months ago because my university uses it to announce events and I was curious about what other potential uses it could be put to. So, basically my attitude towards Facebook was: it’s a teaching/event planning tool. I certainly wasn’t thinking about as a personal networking app.
However, almost as soon as I set up my account, I started getting found by my students, colleagues, fellow academics and, most surprisingly, friends from graduate school, college, and high school. I use the word “friends” here in the broad sense that Facebook does — often random people that I may have known only slightly but who are enthused to count me as another “friend.”
To say the least I am not part of the target Facebook demographic — but my unscientific observation is that my generation has discovered Facebook in droves recently and is taking it over. All I know is that an inordinate number of people from my college years have been signing onto Facebook and getting in touch with each other. I’ve received numerous messages from old “friends” telling me all about their spouses/children/jobs.***
The problem is that I had a pretty terrible college experience where I fell in with a bad crowd — a really destructive environment that traumatized me greatly. It is no exaggeration to say that I ran away to graduate school to get away from these people (and threw myself into literary studies as a kind of salvation). Other than a handful of friends I kept from those years, I made a pointed decision to cut off all contact with this crowd and haven’t seen, spoken to, or thought about them in years.
Now, suddenly, I can’t seem to escape from them. I Facebook “friended” one of my old college friends only to discover that she was “friends” with a whole host of people I wanted to avoid. Now they’re all asking to be my friends and — silly as it may seem — I am fraught about it. Just seeing their names and faces (in their profile pics) has caused me to revisit all the dark years of my past — to remember poor choices, regret my foolishness, and resent the people who played a part in encouraging my unhappiness. I’ve had some very grim “remembrance of things past,” all thanks to the wonderous power of Facebook.
*** The funny thing about Facebook is that it seems to faciliate only the initial re-connection message — the “Hey! How’s it going? Are you married? What do you do? I’m happily married to Spouse, we’ve got X great kids, I’m a Whatever Profession. It’s so great to see you again!” — and that’s the extent of the interaction. Because, really, that’s all that Facebook is designed for.
Not as in “Help! My grad students are making my life miserable!” — although I have been known to frequently utter those sentiments.
Rather, as in “I need help from grad students in dealing with a difficult grad student situation.” Actually, I’ll take advice from any of the wise readers out there who can help me sort through this thorny problem.
I have a smart, promising grad student — let’s call her Esmerelda — who wrote and prepared to defend her thesis this semester. Things did not go well at the thesis defense — largely due to behind-the-scenes department politics of which Esmerelda was merely an innocent victim.*** In other words, despite the fact that her thesis adviser (that’s me) had repeatedly and enthusiastically told her that she had produced good work, she was not allowed to pass. She was required to revise, resubmit, and re-defend. As you can imagine, Esmerelda was devastated by this news. (I could say more about how this experience made me feel like an absolute failure as a professor, but I’m trying to stay focused on the problem at hand — but, really, it was one of the low points of my academic career, and that’s saying a lot.)
Esmerelda is enrolled this summer with the intention to submit and defend her revised thesis — revised according to very specific requirements by the thesis committee. But, she’s basically disappeared, gone underground, won’t return phone calls or emails, and is quickly running up against the deadline for submitting her thesis this semester.
Okay, here’s where my question comes in: Given my complicity in her failure to pass (specifically, that I allowed her to go to the defense, believing she would pass, and was unable to make sure it happened), I’m having a hard time being the deadline-enforcer that I need to be. But, that’s what I should be doing, right? I should be hunting her down, harassing her, being a complete pain in her ass — whatever is necessary to make sure she gets the work done ASAP? Even though she has every reason to despise and disrespect me, I still need to play the bitch adviser role — right?
*** To any grad student readers: yes, this shit does happen.
UPDATE: I shook off the shackles of my guilt and tracked Esmerelda down. We had a good conversation in which I tried to put everything in perspective — what she really needs to do (minor revisions) versus what she felt like she had to do (start from scratch). But, she’s still working against a tight deadline and I’m still waiting to see a draft.
Tis the season for blog reflections, it would seem. From Hilaire to Dr. Crazy to New Kid, everyone’s meditating on the nature of blogging.
Jumping on the bandwagon, I’ve been thinking about the anonymity question. This is an issue that has been addressed extensively in the ol’ blogosphere — and I doubt I have any particularly new insights to add to what has already been said … but here goes:
To me, being anonymous is central to my blogging. I break out in a cold sweat at even the possibility of being “outed” by readers who recognize me. Actually, one of my biggest fears is that somehow some of my graduate students will find this blog, figure out that I’m the author, pass the URL around to all the other grad students, and they will sit around reading my meandering posts, and laughing unkindly. How’s that for a nightmare scenario?
But, even though I want to remain anonymous, I’ve also discovered that trying too hard to be anonymous means not actually saying anything about myself. The blogs that I read most often and enjoy the most are the ones in which the authors share some part of their lives. I don’t have the illusion that what I’m reading is the whole picture or even the “true” picture of the blogger’s life — but I have a sense of connection to them. I’ve been making more of an effort to blog more about myself, including what Golden Boy disdainfully describes as “ham sandwich posts” — those posts that describe the absolute triviality of the day, such as what you had for lunch. In doing so, however, I have had the sense that I am treading closer to the edge of anonymity — making the possibility for discovery/revelation more likely.
My most recent post, on the wondrous front steps I helped to build, comes terribly close to self-revelation because basically anyone who comes over to my house will recognize those steps. (They are pretty amazing, aren’t they? Momentary pause to enjoy the fruits of my labor.) Ironically, I am having a couple of colleagues over for dinner this weekend. I don’t have any reason to think they are blog readers or, even more improbably, readers of THIS blog — but I suppose it’s a possibility and, if they have a look of recognition on their faces as they come up the steps, I’ll have to rethink this blog permanently.
Yesterday, I read this quote from the nineteenth-century poet Lucy Larcom: “I could never understand a girl feeling any pleasure in placing herself ‘before the public.’ The privilege of seclusion must be the last one a woman can willingly sacrifice” (from her memoir, A New England Girlhood, 1889).
Larcom is endorsing an old-fashioned sense of feminine deportment, in which women are properly ensconced in the private sphere — but doing so rather ironically, by stating it in her published memoir. I see a truth in her statement: that privacy or, as I’m extrapolating it here, anonymity is a “privilege” that grants the power of self-definition. While privacy has, historically, been a characteristic imposed on women as they were relegated to the domestic and excluded from the public, nevertheless, some were able to locate the seeds of empowerment within the bounded space of the private. It seems to me that anonymous blogging treads a similar terrain — making it possible to play around with identity and voice precisely by adopting the mantle of privacy.
Or, as Dr. Curmugeon so succinctly put its, “I’m anonymous for a reason, sucka.”
It may only appear that this post got misplaced from one of those home-improvement blogs. That’s right, kids, the Bittersweet Girl did home improvements! I spent the weekend drenched in sweat, covered in dirt and sawdust, bruises and mosquito bites … but, boy, do I have something to show for it.
Some background: The front steps of my house were built out of railroad ties — which must have seemed like a good idea at some point in the distant past. But, over time, the steps had begun to rot and collapse. Not to mention, they were narrow, uneven, slippery when wet, and the handrail was broken. In other words, they were incredibly dangerous. Both myself and my partner, The Golden Boy, had fallen down the steps several times, with injuries to prove it. We always had to warn guests to be extremely careful as they entered and left our house — not the best impression to make.
Really, these were our stairs
Clearly, we needed new front steps but, as you homeowners know, something as simple as new steps is bound to be extremely costly and, frankly, we had too many other — more urgent — house expenses to worry about.
Enter my father, handy-man/carpenter/jack of all trades. My dad can fix or build just about anything and he volunteered to rebuild our steps for us. Even though he’s not as young as he once was, my dad has an incredible, truly awe-inspiring stamina and just cannot stop himself from taking on another project. He’s one of a particular generation of men who have a great deal of practical fix-it knowledge, who tinkered with cars and gadgets as kids, who put all their knowledge to work on their own homes, and cannot imagine hiring someone else to do what they could do themselves. (Jo(e)’s dad sounds like a similar type.)
Neither Golden Boy nor myself are skilled in the house-repair arena but we were as helpful as we could be, which generally consisted of standing around and watching my dad do all of the work. Actually, we did our fair share because there was a lot of “unskilled” labor involved: deconstructing the old stairs, drilling, holding things, handing things to my dad, bringing him glasses of cold water.
Stairs, deconstructed.
Did I mention it was hot? It was so incredibly hot.
One of my friends quipped that we had found an unusual way of celebrating Father’s Day, by making my dad do manual labor in the sweltering summer sun. In a way, though, it was a wonderful father/daughter experience — we spent three days together, working closely, laughing at each others’ mistakes, encouraging each other … and we never lost our tempers. Golden Boy did some cursing at a tricky screwdriver, but otherwise it was a harmonious if exhausting time.
And, look at the result. Can you believe I helped to build these stairs?
The (Almost) Finished Project. Please note the stone wall in the background, built entirely by GB and myself.
Golden Boy and I keep looking outside the window to see if the stairs are still there, like they might magically walk away — probably to another, nicer house where they would be more at home. But, no, they’re settling into their new role as the critical link between us and the outside world.
One of my cats, using my yoga props for his own form of feline enlightenment …
This summer I am starting a NEW project — a big, ambitious, extended project. Attentive readers know that my OLD project is still under review at University Press. I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed that the OLD project will soon become the PUBLISHED Project and I can very quickly begin to forget all about it.
In the meanwhile, I’ve started on the NEW project … and I’m remembering what it’s like to be at the very inception of something. Because I worked on OLD project for so goddamned long, it had become an albatross and there was very little that I enjoyed about it. But, at least I knew what I was doing — I knew the field backwards and forwards. I knew where I was going — well, eventually, I figured that out. I knew what the end goal was: publication, then tenure.
It’s both wonderful and rather terrifying to be working in an entirely new realm. I have a distinct feeling of humility about how little I know about this New Area; there’s a lot I need to learn very quickly. But, it is also incredibly liberating to be doing something completely new. For me, it is also meaningful to be embarking on an academic project that is not directly tied to tenure. Of course, this work will help me make a case in my tenure file but it’s unlikely to be completed by the time I submit all my paperwork — and, more importantly, in my own mind I am aware of the fact that I’m not doing it because I have to — which was my generally pouty attitude about OLD project: I don’t wanna do it! Why are they making me? Is it any wonder I had a dysfunctional relationship with OLD project, with an attitude like that?
NEW project is entirely of my own creation and instigation. It is a work of scholarship that will make a specific and important contribution (if I may say so, myself). It builds upon recent developments in the materials available in my field. Okay, I admit it — but only to you — I am actually excited about my research.
No one has tagged me for this meme so I’m tagging myself because I cannot resist weighing in on a topic so near and dear to my heart. This is the HISTORIC FIRST MEME at The Bitter and the Sweet.
Name five books you read (either present or past tense read) when in need of consolation. They can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry or other. (Seen at New Kid on the Hallway and, in slightly different form, at Ferule and Fescue.)
I am a big believer in the use of literature as a comfort during sadness, illness, or nights of insomnia. I have read all of these books multiple times under adverse conditions and they never fail to remind me that it’s worth waiting to see what the next day will bring — hopefully something better, something beautiful.
1. My Number One Go-To book for sleepless nights is Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword. One of the best fantasy books ever written, takes the familiar formula (young girl discovers magical powers and saves the world from evil) and elevates it through an innovative setting (British colonialism, anyone?), wonderful characterization, and beautiful writing. I must also mention two other favorites by McKinley: The Hero and the Crown (prequel to The Blue Sword) and Beauty (a smart, wry retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story — long before Disney got its icky, saccharine hands on it).
2. Anything written by Mary Stewart, but especially her 1960s girl adventure novels such as: This Rough Magic, My Brother Michael, Thunder on the Right and especially Madam, Will You Talk? Love the international settings, the bold but ladylike heroines, the romance with a dash of mystery … Again, Stewart elevates the familiar storylines through her amazing skills as a storyteller. I also like Stewart’s retelling of the King Arthur/Merlin story but my late-night preference is for these shorter entertainments.
3. Guy Gavriel Kay’s A Song for Arbonne. Or, also top contenders, his Fionavar Tapastry series and Tigana. Another fabulous fantasy writer who steeps his stories in richly imagined historical environments.
4. The complete oeuvre of Rosamunde Pilcher. As comforting as a rich cuppa, a scone warm from the oven, and a kindly grandmother knitting by a crackling fireplace.
What’s the common thread here? These are all books that I first read when I was younger — so perhaps they transport me back to simpler times. They’re also all works of formula fiction that somehow transcend their genres — so perhaps its the pleasurable juxtaposition between the familiar and the innovative that I enjoy. At any rate, I have intense gratitude for these authors for writing the kinds of books that can provide comfort during times of hardship. I suspect I will read these books many more times in my life and always find something within them to help me survive.
I’m fighting off the need to conclude with some defensive statement about the fact that I do, really, read “serious literature” too. The fact is, while I love, admire, learn from, and teach a lot of “serious literature,” it’s not what I turn to when my heart is broken, my stomach aches, or I cannot sleep.
