San Diego State University Emerging Trends Blogs

I'm sure this is just part of being 45 and wondering what it's all about. Getting older. Last night I caught Sharon Stone on Dateline. I've thought she's hot from the get go. I think so more because she's 48 and still looks hot AND she says she's 48. I just now caught Debbie Harry performing, you know from Blondie, she's 60. Carol King just produced a live album, she's 62. I guess I'm still just getting used to the idea of getting older and how that fits into some bigger picture of people being 70 and people being 10. It's an orientation thing too. And a contextual thing. I don't have a day to day existence surrounded by generations. My grandmother doesn't live down the street; I don't have children. I wonder if Debbie Harry has grandchildren. What an odd thought on the one hand, on the other, she's Debbie Harry to me, singer of Blondie. Maybe the thing is the roles we play and the ones we don't.

I just came across this site, memeorandum

About it:
Online news is changing. Increasingly, stories are broken and analyzed in near real-time and away from established news sites. memeorandum offers you a window into this new world of news, focusing primarily on U.S. politics and current affairs.It auto-generates a news summary every 5 minutes, drawing on experts and pundits, insiders and outsiders, media professionals and amateur bloggers.

Autogenerating, I'm guessing is another word for an RSS feed. What's interesting about this site is that you get various perspectives on a topic. This is part of what's called Web 2. Here's an insightful article on Web 2 for teaching and learning. I think it's interesting that they've actually distinguished between amateur and professional bloggers. At blog conferences, (yes they exist) that's nothing new. I believe it started around the Tsunami, when "amateurs" started being quotes and linked to in the press.
I'm on the fence about the underlying issue. It's not new to me personally. As a "professional" musician/songwriter, (meaning actually got paid repeatedly for my work) I did and do distinguish myself from a)people who play for their friends and b)studio musicians and trained concert performers. I was always uncomfortable with the ambiguity and qualified myself as soon as it was appropriate. And from knowing other writers/artists/musicians over the years, I still take the same stance. In the end it's about quality for me. And expectations. I think it's great that anyone can blog, paint or write a song. I like reading "amateur" blogs that are well written. Most of those I read are just that. Ok most of them are informational and knowledge sharing kind of blogs, but if they were poorly written, it's uncomfortable. And I get a lot of pleasure from the work of amateur photographers on Flickr. No disrespect to those with expertise, but you don't need years of training to produce a well composed digital photo. In fact because you can snap endless-free photos, the practice-factor can be reduced significantly. Music is another story, but not entirely. Particularly in pop-music. You need modest training. Basic musicianship cuts it when you're playing with Itunes, but that's it. Performing for an audience....?
The underlying belief I suppose is that anyone can be a star and everyone is special. Isn't the concept an oxymoron? I think it's difficult to convey that to young people here, now; they're so innundated with the notion.
One of the first of many rude awakenings I had in this realm occurred when I was 21. Smack-dab in the beginnings of my singer/songwriter "career," a roommate and musician himself, told me that I couldn't write an original song. It just didn't exist. A debate resulted and in the end I got it. A second was 2 years later, in Red Tape, the first cover band I was in. We thought we were really good. Our singer could do Pat Benatar songs with ease, our guitar player had a degree in guitar. We auditioned for a local club and got a lukewarm, basically you're not ready, no thankyou response. I was devastated. But I got it.

Volvo to start Chinese production

Dell to double Indian workforce

Walmart to hire 150,000 Chinese

not too obvious...something's going on.

about how much time I spend with "work-related" stuff outside of work. It's an odd relationship and it has everything to do with this culture. When colleagues put in 50+ hours a week as the rule, even when there is no expectation that you do, I wonder if there is? I might be shooting myself in the foot for a future job by saying publicly that such a climate is unproductive, unhealthy personally and societally, and as as a result unsustainable. An organization that relies on unpaid "labor" in the form of unaccounted overtime cannot be well-run. If it can't properly staff, its books can't really be balanced because it can't accurately account for the cost of producing its widgets. What is it that drives people to work for free and get fat and ulcered doing it? I really don't get it, although I can guess. Ambition? Joy? A sense of pride in a job well done? I rarely work for free, as much as I think I could sometimes. I can't. Something in me clicks; it's like the Get Smart doors that clamp shut behind me from every direction. It's an ENOUGH feeling which when not acknowledged becomes a resentment so fierce, it blemishes everything I do. That's not to say I won't put in 12 hour days...but endlessly? then in the end to feel guilty for wanting to take 3 weeks holiday. Give me a break. Let's be fair. I am.
Fortunately, my work environment isn't so ruthless. Staff by and large, do their job and go home at a decent hour to have dinner with their kids. Faculty, like business owners are another breed. Even if I were to be compensated for 50 hours, I'd only rarely rise to the occassion and probably only out of necessity.

Among my personal list of “most overrated books� is Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I regularly force myself to teach those poems; they’re very popular, for whatever reason, with my students. I dislike Sylvia Plath's poetry; her poems are full of self pity and full of accusation at that poor father who “abandoned� her so selfishly by dying on her. So much blame. And so much of today’s poetry is the same. Every year I read the latest award winners--the Breadloaf Prize, the Whitman Prize--and every year I gag at what I read. I don’t want to hear about some guy’s adulterous wife. I don’t want to know what her nipples looked like. I don’t care if she left him for his best friend. These are things you don't want to discuss with people, if, say, you’ve just met them at a neighborhood party. Too Much Information, you shriek! But if it’s a poet, then hey! All that personal garbage is right out there for everyone to wallow in.

I recall one instance in a certain well-known MFA school--the name of which, of course, will remain a secret--in which some poor instructor tried to turn the tide: a female student came in with an Ariel-like poem lamenting the “three lost pearls� which somewhat leadenly symbolized her three lost babies, lost through her three abortions. “Three abortions!� the instructor scoffed. “What idiot could have so little self control as to need three abortions? It’s not even believable!�

Even as he spoke students in the class were gesturing wildly to him to stop, to no avail. The would-be poet’s eyes filled with tears. She refused to speak further. It was all so true, don’t you know.

And this is why I loathe contemporary poetry. Whatever happened to imagination? To art, for god’s sake?

And it's all Sylvia Plath's fault.

Do these things happen in real life?

I spent this past weekend in Salt Lake City, attending an academic conference. I’ve never been to Salt Lake before. I’ve never had any desire to go, either. But now that I’ve been there, I have to say there’s something to the place.

I’d taken a bus the last few blocks to the conference buildings, having managed to walk most of the way from my hotel. And then, in that brief space of time, I managed to leave my bag on it—the bag with the paper I was supposed to deliver in less than two hours (not to mention my iPod, the loss of which grieved me, if possible, even more). I didn’t miss the bag until about a half hour later, when I was sitting in a panel. I panicked, visions of half-assed explanations to my disapproving audience frolicking through my brain. Isn’t a lost paper the equivalent of, “The dog ate my homework?� And stupidly, I’d brought no other copy.

I left mid-panel, returned to the reception area, and called the bus’s lost and found. They were very polite: the woman there told me she’d contact the busses and try to figure out which one I’d left my bag on….I hadn’t even noted the number of the bus or the route. It could have been any of three. Things didn’t look good.

So I went back outside to the bus stop, thinking I’d just flag down the busses as they came by and hope for the best. What else was there to do? Maybe mine would circle back again.

I crossed the street; a bus was coming my way even at that moment. The driver pulled up. It was the same driver—the nice man who hadn’t even charged for my ride the first time. He leaned out the door without my asking and said, “I was hoping you’d remember.� He handed me my bag and drove away.

I had been waiting hardly thirty seconds.

The one Aesop’s fable I come back to again and again is the one about the frog and the scorpion (which I understand might not even be genuine Aesop, but whatever):

________
The Scorpion and the Frog (from the Aesop’s Fables page):

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
_____________

It just explains so much.

You can find things like:
"During World War II, the United States Government financed its own newsreel for overseas viewers, entitled THE UNITED NEWSREEL. This is selection of government produced newsreels, deposited in the National Archives, was produced by the Office of War Information and financed by ..."

I'm going to check out Outdoors in the Garden State produced by the Department of Interior. 1937 video of New Jersey, where I spent my childhood, 30 years later after the buffalo left.

During World War II, the United States Government financed its own newsreel for overseas viewers, entitled THE UNITED NEWSREEL. This is selection of government produced newsreels, deposited in the National Archives, was produced by the Office of War Information and financed by the U. S. government. A typical newsreel issue, shown in U.S. theaters and abroad, averaged 10 minutes in length and consisted of several short stories concerning allied military operations in the various theatres of war, as well as stories of events taking place on the U. S. home front. The extent of the coverage and the quality of the combat photography was excellent in most cases as culled from footage shot by military combat photographers. Designed as a counter-propaganda medium, this newsreel series totaling 267 issues was reportedly released in sixteen languages and was distributed in friendly and neutral countries, but was also dropped behind enemy lines in a German language version.

Every once in a while I become completely disgusted with my inability to find anything, and I spend a morning completely organizing, alphabetizing, and discarding. I think I’ve even read a few books on how to do this, and all those books are full of assurances on how great it is to be able to find that book you need right there on the shelf where it’s supposed to be, those car keys right on the table where they always go, etc. Being organized is the key to efficiency, they say. It’s the key to maximizing your time. It’s the key to zen-like peace and serenity as you wave goodbye to the frustration of lost shoes when you’re already ten minutes late and trying to get out the door.

So I’ll begin.

And then, once I start, I realize how truly wonderful it is to be disorganized. Because then, at the moment when you suddenly take yourself in hand, you get to have the pleasure of discovering lost stuff. You experience serendipity.

Isn’t serendipity a lovely word? I think this may be one of my favorites in the English language. And it’s a word you’ll never really get unless you’ve actually experienced it for yourself….like the word “ticklish.� Serendipity is a delightfully satisfying word--the word that alone in our capacious vocabulary embodies that feeling of possibility and renewed chances. Serendipity is that lovely surprised feeling you get when you find all sorts of stuff you’d entirely forgotten about--all those projects that I meant to do that seemed so brilliant or inspired at the moment, but alas! No time. So into the inbox they went….never to be thought of again.

All these ideas resurface when I organize. So I find them and remember, and I feel invigorated and motivated and as if life is a full and surprising thing as I clean out, thinking about how great it’s going to be to actually do these things once I have all that extra time, because I’ll be so organized.

Unfortunately, after that there’s the next day--the organized day. The day when there’s nothing lying around to surprise me. Nothing to think about but efficiency and work.

And then I get depressed.

Anyway....

So in the 99cent store on the corner of 30th and University, I found this kid's identity card thing. $1.69. I can even shove my earphones and credit cards in its back pocket. Kinda stylish AND multifunctional.


Then onto my favorite thrift store, the one with sales and discounts. This one is my Nano winter sock. The lanyard I got at NP Hardware. I think this one might be my favorite.


This one is my summer Nano sock. Oh I just noticed that's a tractor not a train.

Well as you can imagine, both pairs of teeny-tiny infant socks, brand new, were on sale. Marked down from 49cents to 30cents a pair.
So let's see. I've got 4 Nano socks to cover 2 seasons, and a Nano multifunctional case, 5 choices for the incredibe price of $4.50. And to boot, I had a lot of fun doing it.

fact or fiction?

Look who's calling the kettle discredited. The gall of the US to utter any rebuttal to criticism on activities at Guantanamo Bay.
Read about it

I'm collaborating on the creating a course on global awareness/global citizendry. My greater task is going to be turning down the fire on my critique of the US and Americans so that I can gently and cleverly turn up the fire on those very same issues in a more constructive way. I won't meet with resistance I don't think. What can happen is a kind of 'eyes glaze over' efffect, with colleagues and students. It happens when you challenge someone's belief system. And I think it happens in particular to people who blindly believe. It's the stuff of how governments, political and religious regimes control "the masses." Our particular problem is that we're so hung up on and distracted by individual-freedom rhetoric, we fail to see how that's also manipulating. Case in point: I just got an Ipod. It's taken me some time to load my music on to it, after figuring out I need to compress the files so they'd all fit. I took me some time to find a decent pair of earbuds for it too. Now, I could spend another 10 hours of my life or more, considering what kind of Ipod skin/cover/protector/accessory I want and need.
How utterly inane and embarrassing.
We've created and continue to create a reality show in which no-one really knows who's doing the editing. Who's behind or in front of the camera. To truly put oneself in another's shoes, to begin to be aware of how others might perceive the world, you've got to leave the show completely. And then shut up, and look and listen. And then ask questions that are framed by a curiosity that doesn't immediately relate back to one's self. Leave these statements in your nightstand: "Back home we ..." "Where I come from ...".
From here, the world is so very far away, and for many just a by product of our lives. To understand multiculturalism within our borders is very different than in a global context. And when we don't bring a desire to understand power relationships into the conversation, then we our time might be better spent at the local Apple Store.

Graduate students, as everyone knows, are completely paranoid. They worry about everything: whether they can compete against others at better institutions; whether their professors think them worthy; whether they'll ever get a job; whether their colleagues appreciate how truly witty they are in comparison with the rest of the mundane world. And in between, they phantasize about the life of a professor--a life filled, they think, with free time, with ingenious ideas about literature, with intellectual conversations and inspired drinks with friends.

And so. It was with the full knowledge of all these hopes and fears, I freely confess, that I embarked upon what was probably the best practical joke of my life.

What happened was that, long ago, as a graduate student, I observed that an up-and-coming hot grad student, J., had recently befriended my office mate. And together, indulging in all those phantasies about professorhood, they had conspired to smuggle a small bottle of fine whisky into the office, which--in flagrant disregard of school rules but in utter fulfilment of the professor-phantasy they held in their minds--they would periodically drink together, while I, meanwhile, studiously advised my students and plotted my revenge.

What I did was compose a brief memo that looked and sounded very much like the memos we were accustomed to receiving from the nazi-director then supervising our work. I risographed the memo on cheap pink paper, using the very machine that all our memos were printed from, and I mimicked the tone of our director to the best of my abilities. The resulting memo said something like this:
______

To All TAs:

It has come to our attention that certain TAs have been drinking alcohol in their offices. The consumption of alcohol on campus is in direct violation of code 10A5094P. Any teaching assistants with information about this violation should come to our office directly for the purpose of snitching.

Signed,

Senior Nazi Supervisor, Ph.D.
_____________

Despite the header "To All TAs," I put the memo only in my office mate and friend's mailboxes. I knew it was certain to inspire panic--graduate students are a paranoid bunch, after all--but I thought that last line about snitching would certainly give away the gag.

But I was most satisfyingly wrong.

J., upon reading the memo, went into the immediate hysteria I'd expected. She promptly assumed the memo was about her, and went around querying her friends about whether they'd heard anything.

And what she found out, of course, was that no one had received the memo but she.

When I returned to my office by about 4 pm that afternoon, she was in a complete panic, desecrating the said supervisor, calling him a liar for attempting to draw her out by such means, and consulting the university Ombudsman at periodic intervals about her future as a Graduate Student Abruptly Thrown Out of Her Program for a Drinking Problem.

I was rather horrified at the damage my gag had accomplished--and in such short order, too. Although I must admit to a certain feeling of gratification....a feeling, indeed, which lingers still?

I did eventually confess the prank. I confessed at the point at which J. had decided that her best recourse was talking to the Nazi Director in person to explain her lapse.

I must admit her willingness to confront the situation scared me: what if our supervisor discovered that someone had been forging official-looking memos in his name?

But it all ended well. We're best friends now. Seriously. J. is probably my best friend on the planet.

And it all started with that memo.

Thomas Foster, in his How To Read Literature Like a Professor, has a funny point to make about literature: it's all about sex, unless, of course, it is about sex, in which case it's about something else.

Take Yeats' "Leda and the Swan," a rather dangerously erotic poem about Zeus's rape of Leda in, well, the guise of a swan. Yes, it depicts a rape. But it's not really about the rape; it's about the devastation of entire civilizations that can result from a single act of indifference. In other words, it's a poem that describes a sex act, but it ain't about sex.

But....sigh. There are only so many arguments you can win in a lit class.

I had a student a year or so back, who came into every office hour I had so that he could assiduously study the meaning of each line of poetry. He was a nice kid. But sometimes I wondered.

“So what about this line,� said D., pointing to the second stanza--the one that describes the rape. “The part where it says, 'How can body, laid in that white rush / But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?’�

“Um, yeah,� I said cautiously. Seemed straightforward enough to me...does a line like that need unpacking?

“The white rush. What is that?�

“Well, that’s like the rush of the white feathers of the swan, smothering the girl.�

“Huh,� said D., looking at me speculatively. I hate it when they get that look. It means things are getting out of control. “Could the white rush be something else?�

“Like what?� I asked.

“Well, I think that’s kind of a climactic moment. And when I see those words, I think they might be like...� he paused. “How do I put this. You know, the money shot.�

“The money shot?�

I'd never heard of a money shot. But it sounded bad.

“You don’t know what a money shot is?� D. asked incredulously. “Oh wow. How can you not know what that is!�

I gaped at him.

“Okay, so there’s this guy in my frat who’s really into porn. And he told me there’s this one star who’s really famous for his money shot. It’s like when...�

“Ooooooh,� I said, blanching. “Okay.�

Yes, okay. Stop already. There's D. sitting there grinning at me--it's so much fun to make your professor uncomfortable! And at this point I'm thinking, dude, you have just crossed my Line of Inappropriateness: the Boundary Which No Student Shall Ever Transgress.

I opted for the direct, no-nonsense approach.

“Semen,� I said knowledgeably, sounding, I hoped, as unfazed as a medical professional, undeterred by direct references to human fluids or acts. (You know we professors have many ways of talking around these objects. We prefer not to refer to them point blank at all, if possible; instead we talk vaguely about "the phallus" or "the patriarchal other.")

D., however, was not to be deterred. He proceeded to describe his knowledge of this arcane term in some detail, and, even though the door was open (it always is) and other students were milling about outside, I was powerless to stop it. It was way more information that I wanted or needed.

Besides, what if he was on to something?

“Well,� I said, raising my eyebrows. “I guess you learn something every day.�

Over the years I've found myself sometimes entrapped by student requests that somehow were never made of me, but instead assumed: recommendation letters I perplexedly found myself writing, Masters Theses I inexplicably supervised, etc. I'm a sucker for a good manipulator.

But I've learned to be a bit smarter about this lately. Now when things seem to be going unsaid, I rudely say them.

Example:

Student: So I just wanted to talk to you about my Masters Thesis....(fifteen minute explanation of goals and aspirations ensues).

Me: That all sounds very nice. So, who did you say is directing your thesis?

Student (wide-eyed): Well, YOU are, Dr. Amtower!

Me: Really! Well, that's quite interesting. Yes.

(Pause.)

Me: So. Did I actually agree to this request?

Ouch!

Yes, it's harsh. But I had a grad student a few years back who tried this exact approach....first she wanted to just "talk" about the process of writing theses; next she started talking about all the people who were on her committee--one of whom turned out to be me. Okay, this was already all wrong, but I don't mind being ON a grammatically-challenged person's thesis committee; I just don't want to DIRECT it. Because directing in such cases does not mean supervising so much as it means actually writing the project for the student. And I've got problems of my own, thank you very much.

Anyway, soon after this the said student appeared with the great news that she'd been accepted into a Ph.D. program, but this really put her under pressure because now she needed to get that thesis done very quickly.

And here's the manipulative part: it was at this point she handed over the paperwork for me to sign, and I realized, with horror, that I was listed as the supervisor of the project.

Now, understand that this student had been accepted into her Ph.D. program already under the guise of writing a Masters Thesis under my supervision. Which meant that if I now said, "Hey, wait a minute!", her entire future was going to flush right down the toilet. So there I was, feeling entirely trapped, with this student sitting there looking at me expectantly.

And it only got worse from there, believe me.

To be fair, from the student's perspective, asking a professor to supervise your project must be rather like asking someone out on a date. There's such potential for rejection. It's so much easier to pretend you're not REALLY asking for a date...the nerve! Who would suggest such a thing! It's only COFFEE, fer cryin' out loud. My goodness, what an ego you must have, thinking something like that.

But I can't afford these kinds of dances....I get stuck in them way too often. So now I go ahead and jump the gun prematurely, if that's what it takes. When weak-ish students come to me asking for "advice" about their projects, I ask them outright whom they're thinking of asking to be on their committee. It's no good sitting there hoping they won't have you in mind, or wishfully thinking that perhaps they won't quite get up the nerve to ask; it's better to face the pain now.

And most of the time it's all right...I've got some very strong students, and I'm more than happy to work with them. For those students, too, it's better for me to know right now what's expected.

Just say it already.

I use recommendations/reviews of products quite often when I'm buying stuff on the internet. I've only written one. I should do more but I haven't picked up the habit. I just bought some music in Itunes and I wasn't quite as open to the reviews, I noticed. Music, more than headphones and telephones, is about taste. But I thought I'd give it a whirl, interact with the Net in yet another way. I really wasn't sure where to begin. What to pay attention to. I was looking for more music by Bjork, so I was looking for tips and hints. I ended up picking the best of album because of the way it had been compiled. Bjork asked her fans what songs to put on it. Who better to ask. Even if I had had the time, I wouldn't have had access to this info in a music store. I'm in the process of moving all my music (CDs) to an Ipod/Itunes and not buying anymore. What's the point? I get everything I need and more on the net.

I was sitting towards the back of the bus today, in the raised seats, above those in front. About 10 minutes into the 17 minute ride, I began noticing the shapes of the backs of people's heads and how and where their ears attached. Mostly on the men. Because of their short hair. It was easier to see. The ears of the older men were huge and in comparison much more interesting to look at than the younger ones. It's true your ears keep growing till you die. I wonder how big their ears were 20 years ago. I really wanted to take a phone photo, but I thought the people sitting behind me might not understand and I didn't want to explain or draw attention to myself. So I just kept looking at those backs of heads with ears attached up and down the sides. I guess that's the kind of stuff that excites geneticists.

Once, many years ago, my dentist had a very strange patient, a woman, who'd asked many personal questions that had made her quite uncomfortable. The interrogation apparently ended when the woman began licking my dentist's fingers as she worked in her mouth.

Yick!

I laughed so hard upon hearing this that I think my poor dentist was a little insulted. I can't help it. It just cracks me up.

Is there some sort of faun fad going on with young men these days? Perhaps it's just because I watched The Chronicles of Narnia and so am in the right frame of mind to notice, but I swear I'm seeing these effects everywhere as I walk through campus: curly hair, little goatees, slightly slanted eyes, and--I swear it!--pointy ears.

How are they doing it?

"According to the Sleep Foundation, 73% of people have competition which interferes with their sleep." ~ Doubleups for Beds.

Sheet stealers?
Tuck in/Tuck outs?
Hot/Colds?
Sleep with pets?
Kids and friends?
Read more

Amanita tagged this one random "via strange new products"
I agree.

On the same page though she's got How products are Made.
That's kinda cool.

" . . . explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step by step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams) Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc."

Some days are just jinxed. Every project fails; things that were once working begin to break; it rains; etc.

I had one of these yesterday. I didn't realize at first it was a jinxed day. I had great plans and ideas. But it all went wrong pretty much immediately, beginning with my accidental smashing of a large (expensive) Tuscan vase when I decided it would look better in the bathroom than the dining room.

Yikes.

My husband called from the other room, "Please tell me you didn't just drop that vase."

Well, I did.

After that things just continued in the same vein. My husband quickly realized that I was jinxed, and so wisely forbade me from undertaking anything that might have serious consequences (like, say, painting the livingroom walls red, which was another early idea). So I just jinxed little annoying things instead. I bought some long-needed necessities in the wrong colors and sizes; I had to make returns when I hate returning things; I shattered a water glass; daughter got an earache; I spilled red wine on a pair of white cargo pants.

And the final act of the day? I threw the white cargo pants into the laundry, without looking to see what else might be in there first.

And now they're pink.

One mutated gene decides.

There’s a psychologist seated in the bookstore coffee shop. He eyes me speculatively behind his client’s head as I check out the magazines, which bugs me. I duck out of sight, but I can now hear his conversation with the timid man sitting opposite him. Why does he speak so loudly? Why position yourself in the middle of a restaurant to give your “session� at all? Everyone in the area can hear him, and there are more than a few. The projected voice seems for our benefit, as if the psychologist wants me and the others aimlessly taking their coffee to admire his advice, his ability to see through people, his control over the minor problems and irritations that plague the rest of us in our lives. Perhaps he wants us to stop by and ask for his card, so that we can then pay him to look up to him, too. We can hear him giving the standard advice, the condescension about “controlling your energy.� His slightly bored tone indicates he’s heard it all before, seen it all before, why can’t you, my idiot client, see it too instead of drowning in your own problems. He reminds the man opposite him—balding with a faint curliqued tonsure rimming his round face--of his continuing failings, the “problems with your sister and brother-in-law, your boss.� The man protests slightly…I can hear the edge of that’s-not-fair in his voice, though I can’t hear the exact words. Surely all life’s difficulties don’t stem from our own inabilities to handle annoying people? Surely not all stress will disappear once we learn to control the energy around us? But the shrink will hear nothing of it. His authority merges into browbeating, distilling further his client’s self-esteem. Leave this man, I want tell to the sad client opposite. Shave your head. Get a new hat. Tattoo a large heart on your upper arm. Anything that’s yours—just don’t give your life to that man.

my "nice/positive things about the United States" post. To make up, publicly, because I'm not weak-kneed...I'll tell this incredible story.
I recently received a letter from Bluecross, my former healthcare insurer, asking me if I cared to have materials sent to me in other languages. Below were listed about 15 different languages. There's more. The rest of the letter, including the back, (Note that they printed 2-sided) was filled with I'm guessing the same information, written in the characters of 3- 4 Asian languages. I don't think that happens very many other places on the planet. I was so impressed, I tried to take a phone photo of it, to post. It didn't work.
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I'm not sure how I feel about 2nd hand cigarette smoke being classified as a toxic pollutant. Sure I hate cigarette smoke in California; it seems utterly out of place. It doesn't bother me nearly as much in Europe. Why is that? I feel sorry for smokers in California. I do. I'm glad none of my friends smoke though. I had 2 overnight (hardcore, longtime smoker) visitors recently. My place is very small; they smoked outside. Still, I was amazed at how everything about them reeked of smoke, new and old. I never noticed that before because I've either seen them at their smoked houses or out and about. Still, toxic pollutant? Like aerosol sprays, and DDT? Isn't there another term?

I’ve been reading a book on “soft addictions.� These are the harmless little things we do during the day to take up time: things, the author avers, that suck the life blood out of our souls and relegate us to a life of materialistic unmeaning and unthinking.

There is something to what she says, of course. Hours can be spent browsing the internet for everyone’s opinions on just the right fragrance, just the right book, just the right car. So much better to be certain before one buys, you tell yourself. But then of course the browsing is a time-filler, just as the materialism itself and the consumerism that such browsing implies are also time-fillers (i.e., soul suckers).

But there are many diversions the author would insist be cancelled out. Anything, in fact, that one enjoys to the point that the task becomes, perhaps, mindless. She lists all of these things as bad: video-game playing, reading “the same genre,� drinking (of course), but even fantasizing. Too much sex--definitely a soft addiction, she says. At what point does the pleasurable thing become something compulsive that must be weaned out of one’s life?

I can’t help but think there’s a certain amount of puritanicalism at stake here. I can see our author’s point: If one’s soul-sucking time-waster is preventing one from doing something meaningful, then of course that’s a problem. But must all fantasizing go? All drinking? Even if the drinking is done, as the author purports, to “take the edge off the day?� Taking the edge off is so very pleasant. And so very noticeable and present, too. It’s not as if the day disappears magically. It’s the pain that lessens. Is that really so bad?

Which takes me to the importance of downtime–the invaluable time we should probably all be giving ourselves-–the time we don’t have to think. At times this has meant for me setting aside ten minutes or half an hour for a drink (cosmos are nice). I have a feeling our author would say this type of thing is very bad. The fact that I look forward to it probably makes it even worse.

But I think she has it all wrong. There is already too much insistence these days placed on the absolute importance of making certain of every hour, every minute. There was an interview out recently on that financial advisor, Suze Ormond (what kind of pretentious idiot spells her name Suze), about her drive--how she never multitasks; how she always insists when she hires someone that they put aside weeks of their time for no other project but hers; how her singlemindedness has led to her "success." She has no family, admits to spending little time with friends; I'll bet she drinks(!) but I doubt very much she drones out in front of a TV set. Ouch--who wants that? It's just part of this culture out there that insists on the unrelenting speed of our days and the amount we must cram into each of them.

Some of it is necessary, of course: There are children to pick up, classes to teach, books to read and courses to prepare. Meetings to stew about, minutes to write up afterward. Problems to discuss. With so much to do, few of us can afford, I suppose, to idly browse away a few hours on the internet.

And yet how important it is to be mindless. I remember way back when I was still playing the piano (I suppose I could take this back up again if I put my mind to it) that playing itself was mindless. For most other people, of course, it is not–playing demands absolute being in the moment. But I was never there. I was always floating around freestyle while my fingers moved about. That was the joy of playing–it meant downtime.

Now, instead of the piano, I have drinking and--occasionally--smoking (which I understand is apparently linked to depression...this explains a lot). Of course one must be careful with these little vices. They can get to be too much. But one of the things that makes them so effective, I'll bet, is their very vice-ness–the knowledge that they must be done alone, that anyone in my circle would violently disapprove if they knew what I were doing. So that I can’t even confide what I have done to them afterward. All of this makes the time spent particularly mine and mine alone.

If only I could manage to do it guilt free?

Waiting for my daughter, I hover in the shadow of the stucco building, away from the other parents. The children begin to appear, all with tiny backpacks strapped to their backs. They wear them importantly, their signal that they are schoolchildren and old enough now to learn. Madeleine doesn’t have a backpack. She comes out with her Hello Kitty red lunch box instead. She stands out from the other children with their ponytails, sneakers, and plans. “It’s time for gymnastics,� she says importantly, like a little girl who has appointments to be kept. She marches me over to a far gate, where children are lining up.

I feel a stab through my chest. I delay, looking at the other children, then back down at Madeleine’s expectant face. “We’re not signed up for gymnastics, honey,� I tell her.

As always when I let her down, Madeleine’s flash of disappointment is only momentary. She looks down at the ground for a moment, digesting what I’ve said, then she looks up at me.

“Okay, let’s go home,� she says.

Hahaha! Revenge is sweet.

I was very taken with this story about the snake who was given a hamster to eat, but decided to make friends with it instead. Ever since then I've been thinking about what might have been going on in the snake's head. Did it actually like the hamster? Was it lonely? Or was it one of those things where the hamster just looked overly fluffy and perhaps thus too big, intimidating the snake until he forgot that the hamster was also food? Does it bother the hamster when it watches its pal inevitably swallowing down other rodents whole?

Perhaps it was the hamster's inately bad temper. I've had hamsters before; I know about this first hand. Or perhaps it's their smell. Hamsters really don't smell all that good. Not nearly so good as, say, mice.

Not that I'd know what smells appetizing, not being overly given to eating rodents of any ilk. I'm just trying to imagine.

Anyway, these unlikely friendships do seem to occur among animals. I've been much impressed with the friendship between my rowdy little corgi and my bad tempered elderly cat. The cat has always been a loner; when we tried to introduce other cats into the mix, for example, she'd nastily chase them up and down the hall and then box their ears for them. When I met my husband, my bad-tempered cat was obliged to live in harmony with his sweet (though powerfully empty-minded) old Persian. My cat lived upstairs in the closet for two whole years while we had that Persian, coming downstairs only to use her catbox, glower at the other cat, and then return to her hidey-hole.

I regret to say that the day of the Persian's death (from old age) was one of the happiest of my cat's life. She came downstairs in her usual sulky way, paused at the bottom of the steps, took a good sniff and had a look around, and chirked up immediately.

"Wowwow," she said.

And she never returned to that closet again.

But she's quite fond of the corgi. I don't get this. They sit cozily next to each other on the sofa; they jostle comfortably against each other as they walk down the hall; the corgi even periodically washes my cats ears for her. I really don't get it. Sometimes my grouchy cat even purrs for the corgi.

Of course, it's clear in this relationship who's boss. Maybe that's the secret.

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies. LATimes

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I begin to suspect that there really is such a thing as luck. Some people are lucky. I'm not talking about people who make good choices and seem to lead charmed lives. I'm talking about people who, say, buy a raffle ticket and then win a sofa. Or go to Las Vegas and come home with $500 in their pockets. The people who actually win lotteries--those kinds of people.

I think it's safe to say that I've never won a raffle in my entire life. However, I have a friend who always wins prizes in raffles. I remember sitting in the audience of some fundraising project or another, waiting for the raffle prize announcements, and her boyfriend told me she would win something, because she just always does. And sure enough, she did. She won a big glossy book. She's just one of those people who wins things.

So what's up with that? I read an article a while back--your typical "there-is-a-rational-explanation-for-everything" scientific article--which claimed that there is no such thing as luck. It's just that some people consider themselves lucky, and so, even though they have no greater or lesser chance of winning something than anybody else, they tend to overvalue the wins as opposed to the losses.

That sounds so rational. But it just doesn't quite explain the situation of my friend. After all, I would consider myself a pretty lucky person in the grand scheme of things: nice opportunities have come my way, I'm not dodging bullets in a war ravaged nation, etc. But I don't win anything. Does that have to do with my perceptions of myself? Or is it simply a bald fact that if I buy a raffle ticket, I can be reasonably certain that my name won't be drawn, because this is what experience has taught me? Whereas my friend sits there, confidently expecting to win a TV set, a trip to the Caribbean, whatever. And then she does.

Yep, I think there may very well be such a thing as luck.

It's difficult to judge the point at which you should be concerned about BigBrother spying. With a 60% chance of having an FBI file, I'm more concerned on principle that the adminstration wants access to Google searches. They're refusing to give it. MSN and AOL complied however. No surprise. I know that the everything I do online at work is monitored. I don't care really. It's too easy slide into dystopia when it comes to this kind of stuff. As long as there are organizations like Google setting precedents, I'm satisfied.

I have decided to combat the government's request for all Google search data--a request I find frankly offensive--by conducting at least one silly Google search per day. Today's search: "Do dogs have belly buttons?"

Ok. I'd rather live here than Russia because there are more kinds of jobs I think I'd enjoy. It's also nice that you can walk on the grass and nobody cares. It's nice too that the supermarket aisles are so wide, you never feel boxed in. I also like that the cars are clean and shiny. They're nicer to look at than dirty cars. I especially like knowing that I could go grocery shopping at 3am if I wanted to. But because the aisles are so wide, I rarely have the desire to. And I like it that you can have green hair and nobody cares. Finally, I like the movie popcorn here better than in Germany, where it's sweetened.

that "I choose (fill-in-your infinitive)" has come to garnish so much of our oral speak; I just now read it in a colleague's write-up of a technology project. Eek. In writing it's worse, sitting there, taking up precious real estate and mental resources and giving nothing in return except an insight into someone's psychological state or better yet TV habits. Did it start with Oprah? NLP? Does Dr. Phil do it?

"I chose to eat a hamburger for lunch today."
"I chose to go to the mall today."
"I chose to be nicer to my annoying neighbor."

Does saying you made a choice do something to it? Am I, the listener, suppose to respond in a particular way like, " Great! Isn't it wonderful having choices and making them."
Is it one of the I love being an American things I missed out on while abroad?
You'll never hear a recovering alcoholic say "I choose not to drink today."
And I never heard a Dutch, German or French person say it in those languages either.

I may be ascribing a history to the phrase that's incorrect and I'll apologize for that. On the other hand, if it's not sacharrined empowerment speak, then I'm baffled and I may have to ask the next time I hear it.

I'm sitting on a hard and cramped wooden bench in a smelly historical building, listening to a group of teenagers tell me about their summer raising pigs and goats. This is not what I came for (well, obviously....would anyone volunteer to listen to teenagers for two hours?). I am here to register my 7-year-old for the 4H Club. Except that these teenagers recognize they have a captive audience, and they are not going to let us go as easily as that. First we have to listen to THEM.

In fact, when we get fidgety (the room is full of parents with small children), the teenagers huff and roll their eyes. The president pouts purposefully and refuses to continue; then, when she finds herself still ignored (some people never do take a hint), begins banging her gavel. Her mother glares at her across the room. A mother-daughter spat ensues, in front of fifty irritated onlookers, who really just want to sign their kids up for goat camp and go home. It is clear that if we do not hold our tongues and suffer willingly, the torture will continue indefinitely.

I can't stand it when someone wastes my time. Why is it that so many meetings are like this? Here are a gaggle of sixteen and seventeen year olds, primed already for a lifetime of board meetings designed specifically to ensure that work never gets done.

View and listen to commentary on Lewis Carol's orginal Alice, Jane Austin's early works, sketches by De Vinci and more at Turning pages.

true it is. and there's a cyclopic goat too.

If there isn't a golden rule I'd like to suggest it be "Delete it." Delete regularly. It's cathartic for me, like throwing stuff out or "moving in on."

I also use folders and rules and programs like Outlook or Entourage.
I've been using Entourage, the Mac version of Outlook. It creates projects and categories to which I can associates files, mails, notes and tasks.
I love the Tasks function. I can cross them out when they're done and feel good about myself. Here's my list since the beginning of November. I'm just now thinking about when I'm going to delete those done-tasks. Or maybe I already have and have forgot.
The tricky thing about data management is your naming conventions. You've got to put some thought into it to make the whole thing work. I don't have a system per se, but I do think about it.
Some people naturally enjoy doing this kind of stuff, some abhore it. I get satisfaction from getting things done so I can have time to explore and meander. An overly organized world confines me as much as an overly kaotic one.

I had an encounter with an alpha mom yesterday. Usually I have a pretty good radar for these people, but this woman caught me by surprise.

"What are you reading?" she asked me. I showed her my book: part III of the Bartimaeus Trilogy (and a most worthy read it was, too).

"Oh yes," she says. "My daughter and I read that one."

Really? I ask, surprised. After all, it only just came out this weekend. But, unsuspecting, I nevertheless rhapsodize about the book, and ask her about how her daughter has handled the reading. I mean, this isn't a friendly book. It's cynical and nasty, with lots of scatalogical humor. Not to mention all the scary demons. Just my kind of thing....but maybe not my daughter's?

"Oh, well, MY daughter read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when she was six. So she can pretty much handle anything."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Yeah, so your kid can read the words, so what. Do you really want her reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when she's six years old?

I begin to suspect this woman.

"OH, well she's already earned her black belt in karate, of course." (Careless laughter ensues.) "It's not like anything fazes HER. Hah! Hah! Hah!"

I am saved (saved!) by the approach of another mom. This one looks more normal, and asks in a friendly voice how Alpha Mom's holiday went.

"WELL! We took our daughter skiing. She went right up to the highest hill right away, even though she's never been skiing before. On the way down she stopped to tell another girl, in Spanish, how to slow down!!!"

By now I am wondering if I'm somehow wandered onto the set of Desperate Housewives. Do people really act like this? The other mom pretends she has spotted her child and drifts away. Alpha Mom is unfazed by the defection and keeps going. Too bad I'm sitting. She's got a captive audience.

"THEN we made these Christmas cookies and there I was, wrapping them all up in these elaborate cellophane decorations, and I'm looking around for the rest of them, and my daughter points out I've already done them all! Hah! Hah! How would you ever believe I made it through Law School?"

I decide Alpha Mom is schizophrenic and begin to edge away nervously. Perhaps this is one of her personalities...the dysfunctional, compete-with-people-you-don't-even-know personality. Whatever it is, it isn't an enjoyable personality, and I've had enough. I, too, pretend to spot my daughter (heck, it worked for that other woman), and wave gaily goodbye.

And already I am plotting what I will write in my blog about her.

Today's words of wisdom: "'Professors often say that students need to learn how to use feedback more effectively,' [Stephanie Pitts] writes. They also seem to view feedback as a bureaucratic exercise, 'with perhaps the implication that giving feedback is an administrative task, rather than a teaching task,' she says. But, she asserts, 'teaching, learning, and assessment are intricately linked.'

"Professors need to go beyond just writing better feedback and meeting more frequently with students, Ms. Pitts says. If professors truly want to empower their students to be 'critical learners,' she writes, then they need to develop their students' ability to evaluate their own work, increase the effectiveness of the drafting process, and make assessment criteria 'more accessible and transparent.'"

Well, duh. What else is new? Now, if these advice-givers could just follow their own advice and make this process more transparent for those of us who really do give a hoot?

Photo courtesy of Minjuan

The Chronicle has just announced some of the major new perspectives on academia and the humanities that were opined at the recent MLA Convention in Washington. Since I've been mulling many of these issues myself, and worrying more and more about the role of a professor who teaches a field so outside any practical application, I was happy to find that I'm not alone in my concerns. And I'm even happier that many in academia are thinking practically and inclusively rather than politically and elitistly.

Some of the topics: rethinking the role of the intellectual in the 21st century and coming up with a new set of ideals "adapted to modern times"; adopting, for that matter, a new vision of modernity "which is neither hostile nor indifferent to religion" (Julia Kristeva); and, best of all, seeing language and literature "as a way of connecting to the rest of the world" (Domna Stanton).

I like all of that very much. Now, how to transform all this talk into classroom practice?

I do both, and for the record, the mom's work is harder. Forty hours a week on campus never tires me so much as a single afternoon at home with three strong-willed children. And they're always hungry? It's a full time job just keeping them fed. I feel like one of those mama birds who keeps frantically jamming worms down all those open cheeping throats.

Thank god they're not all mine. I'd have keeled over from a stroke long ago.

Who cares about the political message? I hated it. Okay, maybe hate is a strong word....I was just very, very disappointed, especially after all the hype.

Munich is just a very flawed film, with all the typical Spielberg warts: lots of loose ends, characters who go nowhere; too much reliance on cliched dialogue and stereotyped characters--including the protagonist who's basically made sympathetic via the fact that his wife has just had a baby; stupid and obvious symbolism (my favorite: the scene in which the protagonist has hot sex with his wife, interspersed with cuts of the Olympic massacre--isn't the massacre strong enough to stand on its own, fer cryin' out loud?); and, deadliest of all, the typical unedited mishmash. Three whole hours of it.

Spielberg's greatest flaw as a film maker, in my opinion, is his inability to edit himself, as if every line and every shot is just too good to go. It's the ultimate sin of good storywriting. You _have_ to be able to throw out what doesn't belong or what seems superfluous, even if you love what you did. That's the staple of good writing--and good film making.

My husband asked why I was so pissed after seeing this movie. I think it's because I'm a professor, and thus these really basic writing problems seriously bug me. And they're so easy to fix! This could have been a great movie, but it's just not.

But instead I'm musing about how mind boggling language is.
I was supposed to have wanted to work today.
How would you explain what this sentence means to someone learning English?

Our governor has been erased from the annals of his home town in Graz, Austria.

I started a couple of pre-Christmas rant posts about my discontent with the season. I never got to post them for one reason or another and in a way I'm glad. I'm not sure if rants are more like enemas or diarrhea but in the past couple of years I've been noticing that I'm better off chosing my purges thoughtfully. So I've dropped 'em. The only remain is this Daily Om.

Other tidbits:
I've been exploring Second Life and that is wild.
"A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe"

And I've decided to pursue a PhD and that's exciting.

I enjoyed my 1st Hanukah celebration on the 26th, and discovered there IS a Christmukkha.

In writing classes nowadays students tend to get taught that grammar is not as important as content. They're told to concentrate on their argument and the rest will just magically come (or something). I'm grading papers now, and feel the urge to tell the world how very untrue that is. If anything, it’s the other way around: great writing can carry a crappy idea any day. Look how many times this has happened in history! But without grammar, and without attention to a varied and interesting style, you get nowhere.

Bad writing just makes such a very bad initial impression. I imagine it's much like meeting any new person: say this person hasn’t brushed his teeth; he smells bad; you shake his hand and it’s greasy. How much more do you want to know about this person? Do you want to know anything at all? This person may be perfectly great on the inside. But you’re probably never going to find out, because you were so put off by his appearance in the first place that now you’re just anxious to get out of there.

That’s what writing and grammar are to a paper. And the shame about bad writing is that no one has to be a bad writer. A little practice and effort--and the reading, perhaps, of a good grammar handbook--can make anyone into a passable writer. Not a great writer, maybe--writers have degrees of talent, just like musicians or artists. But just as anyone can learn to play an instrument, anyone can also learn to write, and, moreover, write reasonably well.

So, for any of my students out there, here it is: when I read a paper full of dangling modifiers (even one is a pretty bad sign, actually), that paper just dropped to a maximum grade of a B. And the ideas therein better be pretty darn good to get that, because that’s how low my overall impression of the paper has just dropped. It’s going to take a lot of effort to overcome that initial bad impression--effort that an elegant writer doesn’t have to make. Sadly, a poorly written paper with bright ideas will probably get a lower grade than an elegantly written paper with average ideas.

That may be wrong and sad, but there it is. I can’t help it; I’m human. But so is everyone else, and every student should be aware of that. Bad writing is a real crippler.

We have a scary elevator in my building. It is often being worked on, which I find alarming. I wonder what it did this or that time to warrant a rebuke. Frequently there is just a long yellow piece of cautionary tape strung across the doors, warning you not even to think about getting in, because you don't know what will happen if you do. Remember that episode of LA Law, the one where the disliked female lawyer made to step into the elevator, stepped into open space, and crashed to her death? This is that kind of elevator. It's temperamental; sometimes it decides to come down when you call it, sometimes it doesn't. If it does come, it may or may not obey you once you're inside and the door is closed. Sometimes you just sit there.

So anyway, I tend not to use it that much, unless I'm really in a hurry. Which I was the other day. So I stepped inside; the doors shut, and the elevator lurched and plunged. I thought, Oh shit--I'm dead.

Fortunately I did not crash to the bottom of the basement (obviously). Instead the elevator caught itself and I just stuck there, three feet lower than level, with the doors jammed shut. After ringing all the requisite buttons and banging for help on the doors, I pried doors apart about three inches--not enough to get out.

There were two students, female, standing out there, just looking at me.

I couldn't believe they were just watching this whole thing with this complete sense of detached interest. They knew I was in there; they could hear me ringing the panic button (which, inexplicably, does not apparently ring in to someone who might be able to help) and banging away. And yet they just stood there, watching.

"Can you GET ME SOME HELP?" I asked them--yes, I confess it--a bit rudely. (Can you blame me?)

And they still just stood there.

I asked them again, louder. Then I told them in no uncertain terms to go upstairs, get the secretary, and have him call for someone to get me out.

One of the girls turned around and just left. This still stuns me!

The other, bless her slow soul, finally went upstairs and tried to find someone who would listen to her. I found her there a few minutes later when the doors suddenly released and freed me. She had a trail of helpful professors who had similarly had this experience tailing along behind her. I'm not sure what any of them could have done, but it's nice to know that not all SDSU inhabitants will run away rather than lose five minutes helping someone.

Needless to say, I'm back to taking the stairs. I figure it's better on my thighs, anyway.

Well, here I am, pretending I don't have flu, and noting the irony of my last post, where I spoke of the inevitability of flu. This is definitely the flu. Flu is the one where you're sitting there chatting and having a perfectly good time, and all of a sudden you feel like someone smacked you with a large bat. You ache all over, horribly, and then you go to bed for three days. It's unmistakable.

I would have to call this a mini-flu, though. I am able to minimize that steamrolled sensation by swallowing lots of tylenol and advil simultaneously. And then I'm almost normal again. I had the flu two years ago (and, like this time, I had had the danged flu shots and got it anyway!), and that was perfectly miserable--this is nothing like so bad. So maybe that flu shot did some good after all?

Lately I've been thinking each night on my bike, blazing through North Park: What do I want to eat when I get home. At one point I realized that it's often some version of bread and cheese. Pizza always sounds good, but that's it, and good bread isn't easy to come by at 7pm. Cheese and crackers, yeah. The corner market has enough cheese and cracker choices for me. Wheat Thins and mozzarella are fine or some premium cracker all make me really happy.
It's a nice feeling to know what you want to eat and to eat it. Most of the time I eat what I should, which over time has become a habit of wanting to.
I'll be going to a new doctor for a physical in January. I know she's going to look at my inherited high cholesterol and I'm going to have to say: Yes I eat variations on cheese and bread and damit I'm not going to stop!"

Does anyone else ever have those crawl-under-a-table-and-panic kinds of moments, or am I the only one? I don't have them very often, but they do seem sort of inevitable. Like getting the flu.

What never fails for me is finding yet another book review out there. I think book reviews must be the gods' punishment for being so brash as to even write a book (but I only did it for tenure! I swear it!). I knew when I published my first book that it would be hard for me to take the evaluations; the way I managed to convince myself to do it anyway was by promising myself that I just wouldn't look at the reviews.

But that was before the era of the internet journal. It seems as if every blasted academic journal is now online. Which means all my reviews are, too, and every time someone calls up my name on Google--which they do, because I can see them on my statcounter--up come all the reviews, too. Talk about public humiliation. It doesn't matter if the review is positive, either--its the public scrutiny of something that seems so private that makes me writhe.

I wonder if any other profession has as much public judgment out there? Most people never have to endure the kind of public scrutiny that professors get. Celebrities do, of course. But they sort of ask for it. Professors are hardly celebrities. They're mostly shy sorts who really don't get along very well in social situations. Yet there it all is, all those gossipy comments, all protected in the name of "free speech": the appraisals by students, the judgments from critics, you name it. Every aspect of a professor's person is considered fair game.

I think that's one reason I started blogging...it's kind of like at least having a say in what everyone is already saying about you?

Yesterday our dog was obviously feeling poorly. She was lying very still--unusual for her--with a pained expression. I kept prodding her to make sure she wasn't dying, and was just about to haul her off to the vet when....she threw up. And do you know what she threw up? A screw. A plastic one, but still, a screw.

Geezums--no wonder she felt bad.

But I ask: what animal is stupid enough to swallow a screw whole? And not just a screw, mind you. Also seen in the vomit: a pony tail bobbin, two plastic fake gems from my daughter's collection, and about a quarter-cup of wool from the carpet. All of these things were entirely intact, and not chewed in the least.

We fear that at this rate, this dog may not be destined for a long life.

I don't know if this is dirty laundry material; many people in the business of education don't know much about education. I don't think the field's yet recovered since teaching became woman's work. I'm not a scholar in education; I'm thinking about becoming one although I'm not sure that it'd add to my episodic frustration. On one side of the fence, (I heard on the bus) that SDSU was recently rated one of the top 10? Party schools by Playboy. On the other, we have a institutional research agenda that feels like the chest of an inflatable Incredible Hulk. (Carnegie has recently rearranged it's classifications of universities and stuck a pin in it.) Still another interesting twist is that we're unlike all the other cashes in that we DO have a research agenda. I guess they don't. Oh. They must pay more attention to education then.
I like to succeed in life but I often find myself in these kinds of predicaments, the odd-one out. There's a handful of us concerned about real student learning at SDSU and we're not in the decision making seats. There's a slew of new mega-large lecture halls to fill and I suspect faculty will just have to figure out how to teach in them. Or not.

Hate 'em. Especially when they don't bring cookies. I had one of the latter sort this week: I arrived late, starving because I'd been in meetings all day long, none of which had had cookies, and noticed, once again, that this one, too, had no cookies. Thus this particular meeting sent me into an even deeper torpor usual. I dropped by bag, dumped stuff on the floor, had my cell phone go off in the middle of the thing, etc. It was bad.

But at least I didn't make THIS pointlessly time-lengthening remark: "It's a small part of the total consideration, which is to say it is not all there is to consider, but still, it is a small part of what we must consider."

One of my colleagues gets the credit for that one. Whew.

Last weekend I was hiking in eye-shot of the Hollywood sign. This morning I was introduced to Bollywood in a BBC article about a Bollywood star. The few Indian films I've seen, I've really enjoyed, like Monsoon Wedding. I'll have to keep an ear to the ground on Bollywood.

Most people are out shopping for xmas gifts; I'm out for upgrades. A couple of weeks ago it was all those long handled tools -- broom, mop, rafter duster. The past couple of days it's been stuff like pillow, kitchensink sponge holder and my very favorite--the plastic-bag holder thing.

It has a name but I've forgot it. I applaud the American ingenuity in this thing. I think we produce and waste the most plastic bags the world over; the least someone could do and did, was create something that makes us feel ok about it. My plastic bag of plastic bags shoved between the sink cabinet and wall never really bothered me, but now that I have a somewhat permanent job so I thought I'd live-in a bit. I hope it works. I really hate it when gadgets are all show.

We get a variety of exhortations from the teaching gurus on high: "Professors should be coaches rather than lecturers." "Students need to be taught life-long learning, not a list of facts." "Lectures are an inefficient means of teaching. Students need hands-on learning." And yet at the same time we are told, "Grade inflation is out of control. Start lowering your grades." And "You will now teach classes with 250 students in them." And my favorite: "We fear instructors are not using Powerpoint effectively in the classroom."

Is it just me, or do these demands seem utterly contradictory? How can you be a "coach" when you've got 250 students--and you've got them for only one hour at a time, three days a week? How can you implement "hands-on learning" in a classroom of that size? Even if we are lucky enough to have "regular"-sized classes of only 45 students (my average seminar size), how is it that we're supposed to both give up lectures and at the same time use more Powerpoint?

And most of all, I struggle with the grades. We're supposed to coach and teach students how to learn for themselves. Then we're supposed to grade them--for what, exactly? Don't grades become utterly subjective and meaningless at that point?

Argh.

There's an old saying that you should always be careful whom you abuse on the way up, because you'll see them again on the way down. In general, it's safest to be nice. I learned this to my detriment a couple of years ago when I wrote a negative review about a book in my field. I thought I was as generous as I could be while still being truthful, but sometimes the truth doesn't matter. When my own book eventually came out, this author slammed me as hard as she could in a negative review of her own. Would she have been less vindictive if I had been more generous myself the first time around? It's hard to say....this person has a reputation for being a bit off, and truthfully I've never seen her write a kind review about anyone she sees as a threat. But still, if I'd been nicer myself, I would have to be having these second thoughts about it now.

What got me thinking about this was a dream I had last night about an old acquaintance from graduate school...someone who had, I thought, been rather aloof and patronizing, though I was never sure why. I looked her up this morning to find out what had become of her, and behold! Nothing at all had become of her. She had ended up in a non-tenure track lectureship teaching writing--a field far outside her area, and for most of us who pursue Ph.D.s in literature (a completely different field from Rhetoric), sort of a last resort.

Anyway, after discovering what had happened to this old acquaintance, I had a momentary spasm of guilt....because years ago (at a different institution) I happened to be on the review committee that screened incoming applications for a position in the department, and her application was in the pile. Because I thought she was patronizing, I said nothing when her application came up. I could have spoken for her, but I didn't. I said nothing at all.

And so she didn't make the first cut.

This is not to say she'd have gotten the job; there are multiple levels of screening, and this was only the first level. But it's important who speaks up for you in these things. A helpful word or two makes the difference between having your chance or not.

So now there she is, in a lectureship outside her field. I feel bad for her, actually...is she happy there? Would she have wanted to be in that first institution after all?

Still, she had her chance once, too. She should have been a bit nicer.

It's a sad thing when you find out your own brother bought a new car by reading his blog. Fer cryin' out loud. This just shows how completely out of touch with everyone I've become.

Which is just to say that EVERYONE should have a blog....so that those of us who keep in touch, say, only once a week (and less when there's an emergency, holiday, death, etc.) can still feel like we're part of our loved ones' lives. We can read those old posts and feel like the news is, well, new.

Not that I've been very good about keeping blogs myself of late...because my own life is zipping by at an unfathomable speed. Things that I know happened only a few days ago (at least, I register this when I look at a calendar) seem like they're already a month away. And I'm always a day late and a dollar short at just about everything. Like, say, these exams I fully intended to have graded last week.

I hope none of my students are reading this? Because I've just committed the cardinal rule: never admit to anything. Especially in writing...

Maryanne & Heather in SD

I'm sitting here in my office on the day before Thanksgiving--nominally a teaching day--and this campus is EMPTY. As empty as if someone suddenly decided to call off all classes and forgot to tell me. Most of my colleagues, I know, cancelled their classes; my students, whether their classes were cancelled or not, casually announced to me weeks ago that they'd be gone all week long regardless. My child got the entire week off from school.

So is this something new? This is the first year I've seen anything like this on the SDSU campus. Students have always been present Thanksgiving week. I've always strongly suspected that the reason students stick around is because this is largely a commuter campus, and they're eating in town anyway--but that meant I could count on them to be here.

But perhaps that has all changed?

Anyway, all I can say is that it is creepy here, and I'd rather like to go home.

Before today, I had none. Now I have 3 and they're all different. I'm suppose to keep them to "tighten up" the furniture I assembled with them. I had a successful assembly session; they can be frustrating. Ikea doesn't do it for me really. It's convient and at this point an upgrade from the the hand-me-downs I'd inherited--a wobbly picnic table repurposed as kitchen table and a small bookshelf that I've not turned into a shoe rack and replaced with a tall, slim book shelf.
Life is good.

The new table

I'm not sure what to think of Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel and the government's grand coalition.
Horay that a woman is in the lead? Well, yeah a little. She's from their more right party the Christian Democrats, though. And while I like the idea of a grand coalition I'm not sure it's what the world needs right now. Will it weaken Europe in the global picture? Or does that matter? I'm not cheering for the US, but I've heard more than once and from various sources that it's Asia who's our main opponent. I'm reading The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman, NY Times journalist. It's about globalization; and so far, he's talking more about India than any other country.
Here's an interview with Friedman in the Harvard Review.
When was the last time you talked to someone in a call center about something, like a flight or a credit card bill? S/he may have been sitting in Bangalore, India. Does it matter that call-center jobs have been outsourced and offshored? Well that depends. What kind of jobs are left?
Friedman's book is a light read about a complex theme. It's worth it if you're interested in a simplifed story about the bigger picture.

Who'd have thunk there was a word meaning "having shapely buttocks"? The English language never ceases to amaze me. Now we need only the perfect illustration for the word....one that, optimally, obviates any need for a verbal definition...

Will this one do?

AfterHerSoup.

I'm not superstitious but I pay attention. Critbritlit AND Aminita, 2 of the 3 personal blogs I subscribe to, posted about cats ye