do we know each other?

A dear friend sent this over e-mail, and I'm posting it here because, well, I'm lazy and I want a two-fer out of it. So, welcome to anyone I sent the e-mail notification to; I hope you enjoy the blog. And here are the answers to the circulating questions (hmm, is this a meme?).

1. What time did you get up this morning? 7:00, after Mark and Mariah left the house.

2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds AND pearls. (Stole this response--but really, why choose?)

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Umm, "Sideways." Twice. How did that happen?


4. What is your favorite TV show? The West Wing, or NBA basketball.


5. What did you have for breakfast? Oatmeal with raisins and soymilk, coffee, also with soymilk.


6. What is your middle name? Rose.


7. What is your favorite food? Just one? really? Depends on the day. So, hmm, maybe homemade pizza with caramelized onions and smoked mozarella? Chocolate guinness cake? Lemon linguine? The last couple of days I've been making these really tasty spinach salads, with bacon and hard-boiled egg…mmm, I'm getting hungry!


8. What foods do you dislike? Melon and liver (Stole that answer, too!)


9. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? mocha almond fudge

10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? I think it's a mix CD that I burned out of iTunes. Some of Mariah's stuff, some stuff I like. Laura Nyro, Bonnie Raitt, Maroon Five…


11. What kind of car do you drive? 2002 Volkswagen Jetta Wagon, a diesel. Unless I get to drive the beetle convertible, which is much more fun!

12. Favorite sandwich? the cheese columbo at Coppola's.


13. What characteristics do you despise? Whining (except when it's me). Narcissism. (OK, yes, I suppose blogging is narcissistic, or could be…)

14. Favorite item of clothing? Black cashmere v-neck. New lavender sweater.


15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would go? the beach


16. What color is your bathroom? Green. It was supposed to be blue-green, but that whole color thing is hard!


17. Favorite brand of clothing? Every single item of clothing I'm wearing today is from Target: Mossimo, Merona, Mizrahi (all those Ms!). Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren make pants that fit me. And I do like Eileen Fisher and J Jill on sale…

18. Where would you retire? California. The Bay Area or SoCal beach.

19. Favorite time of day? early morning when no one else is up, early evening in the spring/summer when it's warm but no too hot and we can eat dinner on the porch.


20. What was your most memorable birthday? 30th

21. Where were you born? Oceanside, NY


22. Favorite sport to watch? basketball (see above), or baseball during the Series.


23. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? I don't imagine anyone will. Surprise me!



24. Person you expect to send it back first? see above.


25. What fabric detergent do you use? whatever's on sale


26. Coke or Pepsi? water


27. Are you a morning person or night owl? I usually stay up too late but early mornings are lovely. Afternoons are for naps.


28. What is your shoe size? 8.5 in high school, 10 now. Wanna make something of it?

29. Do you have any pets? Anna the cat.


30. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us: I already blogged about finishing the clapotis--what could be more exciting? Oh, yeah, we're spending the summer in Oxford. That's exciting, no?

damned if you do...

OK, let me get this straight. Women writers are "disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking - as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell." (From Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Women writers: dull, depressed and domestic)

But let a woman writer take some risks, risks especially with the very notion of domesticity and motherhood, and all hell breaks loose.

Hmm.

I admit, I found some of Waldman's self-revelations to be--disturbing would be too strong, but maybe unseemly? (I'm from New England--we don't do self-revelation.) But in the main, I'm grateful to her for violating these taboos. Careful readers will note she does not hate her children, threaten suicide, or otherwise commit the atrocities of which she's being accused. Yes, she does mine her children's (and her husband's, and her own) lives for material. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, but she's hardly the first writer to exploit the people she knows best for her work. Mostly, I just think we have an amazing double standard--an unexamined one--when it comes to what we want women writers to write about.

There are lots more links on this one, but I'm too lazy to find them all right now. I did like this one, though.

a post about hair

Mariah got her hair cut yesterday, after cluttering my bookmarks list for weeks with things like "short cute" and "good bangs" and "AWESOME." (I swear, her vocabulary is really better than that!) She got, in fact, a cute short cut. Ten inches came off--enough to donate the shorn pony tail to Locks of Love, which she will do. (I thought they couldn't take dyed hair, but apparently they can.) Now her blackish purplish goldish hair (black dye, followed by some bleaching to mask the growing-out roots, followed by red streaks which are purply now) is shorter and therefore more streaky-looking. It's a choppy, piecy bob--very Julia Stiles. Or, I fear, Courtney Love, but not really.

I've been thinking about hair lately, and not just because of Mariah's hair cut. It started when I was watching The West Wing recently. Mary McCormack, playing Kate Harper, National Security Advisor, has this total Sheryl Crow-thing going on with her hair. (Not in the imdb picture, but try this one.) Last season whenever I saw her she had it pulled back in a bun or a pony tail, something sort of severe and non-sexual. And now it's all Sheryl Crow, really. So I began to wonder what other professional women I could think of with long hair (besides me)? And there aren't too many, really. And certainly, among the highly-visible classes of professional women, the Condi Rices and Sandra Day O'Connors of the world, are there any? Would a National Security Advisor really have Sheryl Crow hair, in other words? Are they trying to say something about this character, or about women in power, with this hair thing? And if so, what? I know, Janel Maloney/Donna Moss has long hair, too, but it's straight and usually pulled back or at least sleek-looking. Remember all the attention Hillary's hair got? (And still gets, I assume, though not being in NY I see a lot less of her than when she was first lady.)

Me, I've had the professional-woman bob, and I'm just too lazy. It has to be cut so often, and cared for so much more carefully than my artfully messy (or maybe just messy) longer hair. I suppose I could go for an artfully messy short hair look, like Mariah's, but why? Long hair can be pulled up off the back of the neck when it gets really hot and sticky, for example. Plus I'm pretty sure they'll never make me a dean if I keep it long and unprofessional-looking, which is a plus. (OK, they'll probably never make me a dean anyway, but that's another issue...)

Enough about hair.

spring

Spring hits hard and fast here in central Virginia. Saturday was cold and wet: downpours blown sideways by wind, umbrellas turned inside out. I wore the clapotis and wished I had worn a coat. It was that cold.

Today the cherry tree outside my window is in full, glorious bloom. Clouds of puffy faintly-pink blossoms are massed on the otherwise bare branches. My students asked to go outside and I said yes, knowing they wouldn't pay attention, knowing I wouldn't either. We needed the sunshine, the warmth. We soaked it up.

There are little tiny daffodils all over campus, and now there are bigger ones as well. The little ones are all yellow, and even in the sunshine they look a little peaked, a little as if they came out too early and haven't gotten over it. The big ones hold back, come out slowly, yellow and white, standing tall on green stems. They're in charge right now.

I drove Mariah's friend home to Petersburg yesterday and the interstate even looked good. (This is one of the ugliest stretches on the Eastern seaboard, and I've driven most of it.) There were masses of purple and yellow flowers everywhere: plum trees and forsythia, tulip trees and daffodils. White Bradford pears and pinkish cherries. Purple misnamed redbuds.

I've never lived anywhere with so many flowering trees, all out at once. Soon the yellow-green pollen will cover our cars, the front and back porches, the walkways all over campus. But right now it's all good.

Literary Mama Blog

Check out the new Literary Mama Blog

whew!

My clapotis, c'est finis.

It's huge, and purple, and I love it.

And now the weather is guaranteed to warm up. 70 tomorrow, no kidding.

gone

deleted that duplicate post. sorry!

why I don't watch TV

So over the weekend my sister was watching Andi's panel on BookTV, and she said she felt like she was in a time warp--Rhoads (and some of his interlocutors) sounded like something out of the early eighties. (Didn't help that many in the audience appeared dressed in fashions of the times...) And that was kind of hopeful, right? Rhoads is a throwback, these attitudes are really on the way out (or all the way out), etc.

Maybe. But last night I watched Everybody Loves Raymond. I've never actually sat through an entire episode before. (And really I didn't last night, either. I was doing laundry and knitting and just wanted company on the tube, all right? Just so you don't think I really watch this stuff...)

Anyway the premise of the show was that the wife (Deborah? Debra?) had PMS, but wouldn't admit it, and that Ray was trying to deal. OK, so she was a screaming shrew, in front of his friends (unforgiveable, of course), and he tried to get her to admit it, and take some OTC meds ("with St Johns Warts!" he said) and feel better. Oh, it was awful--every stereotype in the book. Ray's father counseled him to take action, on the theory that what's now a mood later becomes a personality.

I was getting all incensed at the stupidity of it all, when there was a moment. Ray's feeling all put upon because Debra went out shopping, leaving him with the kids and dinner and baths to take care of. Debra really lets Ray have it: she does this every day, after all, and he's having problems with just one evening? And then she goes on: he's a slob, she picks up after him, watches the kids, cleans up after them, etc., etc., and why shouldn't she be pissed off? I was really on her side here. She wasn't even shrewish as she went through her litany. It seemed pretty reasonable to me. Could it be a little feminist moment on CBS here?

Well, no. In fact that passed over almost unremarked, and in the next scene Ray is reiterating that Debra goes a little crazy on her "ladies days" (!) and pulls out a tape recording of a rant about the lint trap to prove it. The only ray (sorry) of hope was seen in Ray's parents: Ray's dad tries a similar thing with the tape recording but it has only picked up his mad rants. But poor Debra ends up pilloried for her mood swinginess, Ray is the good guy, the end.

Sigh.

I know, anti-feminist crap in pop culture should be no surprise. But still, it was.

best houseguests ever

We hosted the best houseguests ever this weekend, and I'm not just saying that because they're a) related to me and b) likely to read this. Really. They arrived Thursday morning on the red eye, just in time to watch Nick for me (he had a cold, I had to go to work). I spent a long day in the office, and they cooked dinner. (Remember, they'd come in on the red eye. From the west coast.) They brought presents, including this. They brought chocolate.

Visits with my sister involve lots of cooking. Together or separately we made chocolate guinness cake (which was just as good as Becca said), trifle (from this cookbook, very easy!) , strata (we made basically this recipe, only tried some variations with plain cheese, artichoke/mushroom, and fresh spinach instead of the frozen called for here), and lemon linguine (another Nigella favorite), just to name the linkable recipes. Much of the cooking is ad hoc, though, and since they are vegetarians we end up eating better or at least more interestingly than usual. Maybe it's not because they're vegetarians; maybe it's just because they have a different repertoire. In any event, it was fun.

I had too much work to do, and there was too much else going on, for it to be one of those long, lazy visits that are so satisfying. We did that last year when we shared a beach house for a week. This time, though, it was Easter, and Mariah's confirmation, and an Easter brunch for a group, and way more church than any one weekend should be required to bear, and lots of coughing and sniffling (everyone had some kind of cold thing going on). Still, it was fun. And I was actually prepared for class today, against all expectations. But now I need some rest.

just like my day

click the pig

(Thanks, Susan!)

fun with generalizations

So Andi Buchanan was on BookTV the other day. Really! (Click the link to watch it. It cuts away briefly for an emergency senate session, but then comes back--just fast forward for a little bit and you'll catch it.)

Her post really tells the story, but I want to add my two cents here. My favorite part is the guy (maybe a plant?) who asks Andi's adversary if women don't actually have all the power in the world because they get to make decisions about when to have sex, have children, etc.

Umm, right.

Even Rhoads didn't buy that one, I have to acknowledge. It was a truly funny moment, though. And I know, there are certainly disempowered white men in the world, ones who have for one reason or another not benefited fully from their racial or gender privilege. Ones who aren't rapists or anti-abortion activists or Randall Terry, either. But to claim that women have all the power...well...it was really quite stunning.

OTOH, Andi looked great, kept her cool, and made some really good points. Of course she didn't bother to argue about the whole poop smell-diaper changing thing (after the senate break, and well worth waiting for).

Some other time I might post more about why female academics might be likelier than male academics to claim that they like the hands-on work of parenting. But, for the record, I want to say that I did not, always, like the hands-on work of early childhood parenting. I remember days and days of only saying things like "where's your pretty smile?" (in my best "parentese," of course) and really really wanting to talk to an adult about adult things. Even stupid adult things, like what was on TV that day. ANYTHING!

in the news

This morning I had Morning Edition on, as usual, as I was getting Nick and me ready for school. I usually listen with about half an ear while I make oatmeal and coffee, nag him to eat, dress, and brush teeth, make his lunch, get lost in the blogosphere, etc. Usual morning stuff.

Sometimes Nick asks me about the stories he hears. I remember one morning there was a story about expensive concert tickets and he commented that "those tickets better be made of gold!"

Some mornings I'm glad he doesn't ask me. Like this morning. Nina Totenberg had a long story about restraining orders that involved a Colorado women whose three daughters had been killed by her estranged husband, their father. Gut-wrenching.

And then of course there's Terri Schiavo. (Link courtesy of Alas, A Blog) How can I explain this case to a 7-year-old? Mariah and I have talked about it, actually, and she is pretty thoughtful and sensitive. Like Becca, Mariah and I mostly find outselves talking about how sad it all is--how hard it must be to be anyone involved in the case. (OK, except Randall Terry. I don't care if it's hard to be Randall Terry.)

I am glad that hilzoy at Obsidian Wings (linked above) raises the bulimia question. There's not much in the press about this now, though it seems to me central to the whole story: what put Terri Schiavo in this state? But of course bulimia's a "woman's issue," and this stuff, this is serious politics, right?

Yeah, right.

(My token political commentary, here only to prove the already over-proven case that, yes, women talk about politics. (There's more, but that link will get you started.) Though of course not in such a way that anyone would take them seriously.)

so that's how they do it

I had pretty much given up on this week. I hosted a big event on campus Tuesday and I was wiped out at the end of the day, then taught all day Wednesday. Had an obligation Wednesday night. And another tonight. For tonight, I was supposed to provide bread, which at one time I had planned to bake.

By Monday I had already given up on the baking. It was just not going to happen, along with the midterms that weren't going to get graded, the dinners that weren't going to get cooked...where do all those things go, anyway, those things you planned to do that don't get done? I began to imagine this lovely clean place, somewhere, with piles of graded exams and the aroma of freshly-baked bread wafting through. Mmm.

Anyway. I was coming down with a cold on top of everything else and I was jettisoning responsibilities right and left. And it was starting to feel good. I was starting to think I might get through the week after all, and the kids would still be alive and I would still be married and I would still have a job. And that was really as high as I needed to set my goals.

Then a mail truck stopped at the four-way stop on our corner this morning at 4:40, downshifting as it slowed into the stop. And then it started up again, which is when I consciously heard it.

By 5:30 I realized I really was not going to sleep any more, and by 6:00 I was out of bed. And baking.

Well, bakers are early risers, right? And which would you rather do, grade midterms or bake bread? In a sleep-deprived fog?

It was Irish soda bread, so no yeast or rising time or anything. By 8:00 I had four loaves baked. And the thing is, I feel a tiny bit guilty taking them to this event tonight. Some other parent who didn't wake up at an ungodly hour is going to have brought bread from the bakery (which will, by the way, taste terrific), and is going to feel judged when s/he (ok, I know it's going to be a "she") sees my home-baked loaves. Which were really just early-morning therapy.

I'm sure that other mom has a much cleaner house, though.

Children's Lit Book Group: Wondering About Alice

My new column is up.

Salon.com Books | The author's daughter

Speaking of writing things that will embarrass children...

Salon.com Books | The author's daughter

you may have to watch the little ad thingie

Anonymity

I was composing a post much like this one: Half Changed World: Anonymity in my head this afternoon. I'm not fully anonymous, not fully public, myself. And I was thinking today about why that is.

I don't tell my students about my blog, but I know at least one of them found it last semester when I asked them to read a piece I'd written elsewhere. And I haven't told all of my family about my blog, though they can click the link at the bottom of my bimonthly column and find it themselves. And I've told more of my internet than RL friends (a distinction I find it ever harder to maintain, but that's another topic for another day). Internet friends already know me in this medium, after all, or one much like it (I've met them on various groups here and there), whereas the folks I have coffee with regularly are not actually my writing community. RL friends with whom I don't have coffee regularly--folks who live in far distant cities and towns but used to be my constant companions--are more likely than locals to read me.

And I was thinking about blogging rules in relation to this. I don't, like Becca, promise to blog every day I'm in town. (I do promise to make up for it by blogging several times on some days...) I don't blog about my marriage, though I do blog about the people in my life. ( I am fascinated and impressed, by the way, by other people's ability to be honest and open about their marriages and other relationships--because this blog is not all that anonymous, however, I'm just not going there. ) (Actually the real reason is probably that my marriage isn't all that interesting to anyone but us, now that I come to think about it.) I don't blog about work politics, though I'll mention my work. I try not to tell embarrassing stories about my kids, though I can't promise that it won't happen. I don't mention people by name unless they say I can. Except if they're members of my family, whose names have appeared here on occasion.

I can't claim that these rules are logical or coherent; they're just how things have turned out here. I'm an ad hoc blogger much as I'm an ad hoc parent, it turns out. I do what works until it doesn't. And so far that seems fine.

But if I know you and I don't know you're reading my blog, I'd love to hear from you! Just because, you know, I'd like to know.

not spring yet

We've had a couple of warm days this week, and a couple of other days when it snowed. This is Virginia, for heaven's sake! Where's the spring?

I'm ready.

OK, yes, to be fair, there are some daffodils peeking their heads up, and some plum trees just about ready to burst into flower. I think they were ready last week and then it snowed and they got confused. I don't blame them. I am ready to put the coats away, to pull out the t-shirts from the storage box under the bed, to stop wearing socks, all that. So ready.

I know, I should stop whining. But it's the end of spring break and I still have midterms to grade (many, many midterms). And, I know, I gave them so I brought this on myself, so I'm whining about the weather instead. Get it?

There's lots of fun with student evaluations floating around, by the way. Two of the ones melinama quotes are actually mine, but I'm not telling which ones. You can figure it out if you're really determined.

mmm

That smell wafting through my house right now? That would be this: FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE ESPRESSO CAKE WITH RASPBERRY SAUCE Recipe at Epicurious.com. OK, I'm not smelling the sauce yet, as I haven't made it, but the rest? Mmmm.

I make half a one, in a 7-inch cookie tin lined with parchment paper. I made one for Christmas and it served 8 people and half of it was left over. And it takes all of about 10 minutes to put together.

fun with mammography

I spent 2-1/2 hours at the doctor's office today for a mammogram. It was a repeat one--I had one about a month ago, on the day when they have no doctor there to interpret results. Usually they put the results in the mail and say, fine, but this time they said, come back. When I called they said it was probably no biggie, so I didn't worry. Really.

But Mark decided to come with me for moral support anyway. I figured we'd be in and out in half an hour. He brought grading, I brought knitting.

They called me in right away. Impressively fast. I was ushered into a cubicle and told to disrobe above the waist and put on the lovely gown with the opening in the back. I was informed that I might wait there, or in the chairs right outside the cubicles. I was also informed that someone would be "right with me." This would turn out to be a lie.

I chose the cubicle. I got out my knitting and set to work.

I knit a lot! I'm back at work on the infamous clapotis. This is actually clapotis #2, for anyone who's been following this disjointed saga, as clapotis #1 had dye lot issues and I had to abandon it. Clapotis #2 is knit of a lovely soft purple-with-flecks-of-other-colors merino wool. I like it very much.

I knit a lot more! It was now over an hour since I had originally sat down in my cubicle. Finally someone called my name and I was ushered into the dark, cold, mammography room. I was pushed and pulled and (mostly) pressed down into plasticky things while the perky technician kept up a running commentary. She was quick, quick, quick. I don't think she took a breath while I was in there. No kidding.

I was then returned to my cubicle to wait some more. But! The technician returned to tell me that she had found a note--in red crayon (she repeated this several times)--to take another view. So I was ushered back into the dark cold mammography room for the other view. Quick quick quick again.

Back again. This time I decided to sit in the chairs. I got my knitting out and watched people. Mostly they seemed fine. One really attractive woman worried me--somehow she seemed to be expecting bad news. She left before too long. Two women sat down. Evidently they were sisters--one chatty, one not so much. The chatty one told me she'd been knitting for a little while, too. An eyelash scarf. We bonded over knitting. She confided in me that she had several grandchildren and, though she had always wanted daughters and had had only sons, she was now finding that she enjoyed the grandsons more than the granddaughters. This seemed to disturb her. Then she went and had her mammogram. Then her sister did. Then the chatty one was told she could go get dressed and go home. Hmm.

At this point I began to invent scenarios. Something was obviously terribly wrong. Someone would be coming to get me soon, to talk to me with a sad and serious face about my options. Mark would be called in from the waiting room. I would be scheduled for surgery next week. We would probably cancel our dinner party (see above). I would take a medical leave for the rest of the semester. This was starting to sound good. Who would finish my grading for me? I didn't much care, as long as it wasn't me. I couldn't do it, I had breast cancer! (Yes, I know this is sick. But, in my defense, I really do have a lot of work to do right now!)

Only, of course, I don't have breast cancer. Which is, of course, good news. Before long (before, for example, the non-chatty sister), I was given a piece of paper that said, good news, come back in a year, and told I could get dressed and go home.

The End.

updates

I haven't been adding books to the reading list if they're just novels I'm re-reading for class, and that's shortened the list considerably. But I did read March: A Novelover the weekend, and I'm still mulling it over. I like the genre, if that's what it is, of "the other side of the story": Wide Sargasso Sea was probably the first one I ever read, but there are many others now: Foe, Mary Reilly, etc. This one is the story of Mr. March, off being a chaplain in the Civil War while his four daughters are being Little Women. It's brutal--as, of course, the Civil War was. And it's got some gorgeous writing. And it deals with Marmee's anger, something I've often wondered about as I've re-read Little Women over the years. (Brooks doesn't come up with the same explanation I would, but that's ok.) Something bothered me about the novel, though, and I haven't quite put my finger on it. I've got to ponder for a while.

Shockheaded Peter - Little Shubert Theatre

Mariah and I had a blast at Shockheaded Peter. Think Edward Gorey, Tim Burton...maybe a little Lemony Snicket, some high camp, and great puppets.

Bitch. Ph.D.: Spoiled students, part 3; or, what kind of student was I?

Here's a great entry by Prof. B. on elementary (and later) education. Bitch. Ph.D.: Spoiled students, part 3; or, what kind of student was I?

I was a very different kind of student than Prof. B, and maybe I'll go into that later. But I do feel we're providing the kind of education for our kids that she got--and a little better, as we've mostly managed to avoid the nightmares of middle school that she mentions. We had some of that with Mariah, pulled her out into private school (gasp!) for two years, but she's back in an integrated, very diverse high school. And I mean diverse in every way: racially, academically, economically, etc. She's learning about power, believe me.

So, more on this another time, I hope. But now I'm off to the big city for the weekend, and maybe some blog-worthy experiences.

A Small Crime

Check out this piece by Susan Ito. And thanks to Kate for reminding me about it!

Actually, this whole site (VerbSap) is really cool. I notice a lot of names I recognize from Readerville there. I used to spend a lot of time at Readerville, and then life intervened, or I started blogging, or knitting, or something. Anyway I don't hang out there much any more, but it's nice to see the names again.

I know other people write about virtual communities and the internet, and some day I'd like to learn more about them. I have several small virtual communities online--two writing groups and Literary Mama, as well as the blogosphere, where I mostly still feel pretty marginal (by choice, I hasten to add). I still feel a certain unreality about these communities, though one of my writing groups now comprises some of my closest friends, less than half of whom I've met in person.

Ah, I've come a long way from the piece I started out by linking to. As a professor I once TA'd for used to say, I've opened an associative vein and just let it bleed all over the screen (he used to say paper, but, well, you know...). Time to stop the bleeding and go read something now.

commonly confused words

I'm an English Genius, apparently:
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 88% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

So, good thing I went into English, I guess.

You can take the test here: OKCupid! presents: The Commonly Confused Words Test

Link from Diane, who aced the test, too.

more on mommy wars?

I keep wanting to pick up Becca's useful comments about the mommy wars, and how the issue needs to be reframed. Because it's true, if we only talk about moms, then what are we really talking about? Same old, same old. The SAHM/WOHM (really?) "wars" are just another way of dividing women into "good" and "bad" categories. Madonna/whore, anyone? Of course the thing with the mommy categories is that you can't win with either of them--as way more people than I can begin to credit have already noticed, welfare mothers are called "lazy" for staying home while middle-class women are labeled "selfish" for going out to work. Neither one is true, but this is not about truth, it's about making us feel bad so that we buy stuff, and about shifting focus from the real issues, which have to do with creating a climate in which men and women can work and parent equally.

In our case we've come close. For several years I was the sole wage-earner, one year Mark was primary, most years we both struggle along together. When Mariah was born we combined our two half-salaries and made do on that. Now we are both working full-time, but next year he doesn't have a contract and so far we're thinking we may just go with that for a while. No one needs full-time care at home anymore, as Nick did the last time Mark was home full-time, but it's still really helpful to have one person whose time is flexible and who can therefore do the weird errands that crop up, take the kids to the doctor, etc., etc. If more work turns up he'll probably take it, though, because at some point (sooner than we are ready for) these kids are going to want to go to college or something and it would be nice to be able to pay for it. But what we really would like is to share about a job and a half. Two incomes is nice, don't get me wrong, but with 1.5 and more time, things would be better--the house might be cleaner (no promises from me on that one), the refrigerator would stay stocked, the laundry would get done, and we'd both have time to do our creative work.

And I don't think we're the only couple who would make this choice if we could. I'm lucky, I know, that I am married to a man who is not putting his career first, who has always, in fact, put us (marriage, family) first. But actually that's not pure luck--he's who I chose, after all, and --though we didn't talk about it at the time-- I'm not at all surprised that this is the choice he's made, or really that we've made together. But it's not like we've had a whole lot of support for our choices, or for our wish for more time and a more flexible work environment. That's just not the way the world is set up for us right now. But that's what it will take, I think, to end all these "mommy wars."

This feels disjointed and not quite as forceful as I want it to be, but I'm too tired to change it now and I'm afraid if I wait until it's perfect I won't remember what I wanted to say. Sigh.

to-do list

When your to-do list has "think about sending out essay" on it, you're not likely to do it.

I'm just saying.

Mommy drive-bys

Others have already commented on the comments stacking up at Chez Miscarriage in her "Mommy Drive-By"post. They are funny and sad, but mostly sad. I initially read these thinking, "no one's ever said anything like that to me!" But then I remembered a couple--the guy on the Venice boardwalk who said "Hey, you're frying your kid!" when he saw Mariah in what we used to call the "baby-dragger" attached to the back of Mark's bike, sound asleep in the sun. With a floppy hat and lots of sunscreen on, but what did he care? But he went away quickly. Then of course my mom mentioned --on seeing me in maternity clothes with #2, at something like, oh, two weeks along-- that she had never needed maternity clothes before the sixth month. Can this even be true? Did I invent it? Probably.

The thing is, the first guy, well, a) not a mom, so it's not really a mommy drive-by and b) he did go right away. And my mom is, well, my mom, and if she even said that (I am more and more doubting it), but if she did, so what? That was in the days when --as she's also told me-- her doctor told her that if she gained more than fifteen pounds in her pregnancy he'd put her on a diet. Now, seeing as I weighed over eight at birth, well, you do the math. Of course she wasn't in maternity clothes!

I did a lot wrong --still do-- with both kids, and some things right, and I am never quite sure which is which. So I try (I'm sure I often fail, but I do try) to be humble about it, and apparently I mostly hang out with others who do the same.

Oh, and my own worst (I hope!) example of doing a mommy drive-by myself, was when my friend mentioned that her daughter (then about four) was up almost every night, and she had to get up with her. To take her to the bathroom or something, as I recall. I said (I cringe now), "Oh, I'd never put up with that!"

Famous last words. My own four-year-old daughter developed night terrors not long after. We dealt with them off and on for the next five years. Getting up only once a night would have been a dream in those days.

(Oh, and Caroline? I apologize for any insensitive older-sister mom remarks I may have made, or will make in the future. I think that's a whole other category...)

this woman's work: I'm back with tips

Do you ever read something and just think, yeah, what she said?

Yeah, what she said:

this woman's work: I'm back with tips

mom stuff

Hmm, nothing here reflects the title. Time for a new title, or new interests? Obviously I'm too self-centered to blog about my kids, or something, when things like the clapotis obsess me. (I found a picture of one where someone else had the dyelot problem and she just went on, so I think I will, too. But I bought new yarn, too, just in case.)

OK, so, some mama stuff. Yesterday the kids didn't have school (President's Day, you know), but we did, so Nick came to class with me. He could have stayed home with his sister, and he could even have stayed in the office with Mark, who was done teaching already, but he wanted to come to class. Everyone went "aww" when he walked in the room, because, you know, he's so cute. And seven. And did I mention cute?

He sat at a table and read Grimm's fairy tales and drew for the entire fifty minutes. I almost forgot he was there.

This is a major milestone. The last time I brought him to class I had to write an essay about how difficult it was. (The essay got published, though, in this book: Three Ring Circus, so it wasn't a total loss. But it was hard, hard, hard.)

rookie mistake

on the clapotis, which I'm sure you're tired of, though I'm not (yet). Sigh. I bought yarn in two different dye lots, and it matters. I have just knit up a few inches of a second skein, and it's markedly different from the first.

So. Do I:
1) keep going, hoping no one else will notice? (They will; it's pretty obvious.)

2) go look for two more skeins of the old dye lot? (Yes, I bought two of one and then started with the third...just didn't look.) Then rip out a few inches and re-knit? That could work: I ripped out a whole (sleeveless) sweater last summer, so I'm not afraid of that. Though this is a mohair blend (oh, don't even tell me how mohair is not a great choice for clapotis. I already know how hard it is to drop the stitches...) so the ripping out won't be easy.

3) go look for one more skein of the first dye lot, and hope that a middle section that doesn't match is just a cool effect?

4) go buy some different yarn and start all over? Yes, that would mean trashing over two weeks' work (I'm slow), but...the opportunity to buy more yarn is tempting. Sigh.

Stay tuned.

I think someone's watching...

Or reading. My students, maybe. Because, since I put up the link to Dr. P's rules for papers, I collected a bunch. And you know what? Only one paper clip, and one folded-corner, among them. Lots of lovely staples.

On the other hand, the first paragraphs may still need some work. I'm not sure. I haven't read them yet.

Really, I don't endorse all of Dr. P's rules. I don't actually care that much about the staples, for example. I happen to have a stapler in my office, and I know how to use it, so the unstapled papers are only a minor irritation, if even that. No biggie. The plastic report covers have been mercifully killed, apparently--I almost never see those. And when I do, it's because they are big long papers that might not even hold together with a staple, so, again, no biggie.

If only rules for papers were easy, in other words, I would have some myself. And my students would follow them, because my students almost always follow the rules, and then they'd all get As and we'd all be happy. Well, the grade-inflation police wouldn't, but everyone else.

But, alas. Not so easy.

stupid legislation update/2

Cooler heads have prevailed. This bill was killed in committee, as was the bill banning gay adoption. Nice to see the democratic process work every now and then.

Scottish Nous: Professors Work Only 6-9 Hours Per Week

From Scottish Nous: David Horowitz graced (or profaned?) the campus of the University of Colorado on Monday night, exercising his right to free speech by spewing his hackneyed, corn-fed claptrap.  Ward Churchill's wannabe arch-nemesis demonstrated that he has zero understanding of the academic life, which is no surprise given the quality of his benighted attempts at "scholarship".  From the Daily Camera:

University professors are a privileged elite that work between six to nine hours a week, eight months a year for an annual salary of about $150,000, according to David Horowitz.

Um? No. Scottish Nous speculates that maybe Horowitz means business school professors. Maybe. It's sure not us humanities types.

I really got this from Dr. Pretorius at applecidercheesefudge.

applecidercheesefudge: Rules For Papers

applecidercheesefudge: Rules For Papers
Sigh. Wishing I had the guts to speak like this sometimes.

my favorite valentine

Roses are red, violets are blue
Candy is a treat, but you are sweet
So you deserve a treat.

Don't you love that play with form, that casual disregard of convention, that internal rhyming?

Yeah, me too.

Polygraph Lounge:

Here's a fun date: Polygraph Lounge

why knitting is like writing

1. Both start small (letters, words, sentences; stitches, pattern repeats) and build from there.

2. Both can be done with relatively inexpensive tools, though someone will always sell you something pricier.

3. There are rules.

4. The rules matter.

5. Once you know what you are doing, you can break the rules.

6. Sometimes.

7. Pretty soon, you will make something that looks like something.

8. But it can take years before you make something you're proud of.

9. If it's not working, you can trash it and start again.

10. Often that's a good idea.

11. Sometimes you trash something accidentally. Stitches fall off the needle, you lose the scribbled piece of paper, the computer crashes.

12. This is very sad.

13. The thing you make to replace the thing you trashed will not be the same.

14. You will always lament that.

15. Even though the thing you eventually make might be better.

16. Some people will never understand why you do it. They will say that you could buy it for less, that it takes too much time, that other people are doing it better.

17. They will be right.

18. They are missing the point.

clapotis update

I got to drop stitches today!

And you can tell how exciting my life is by the exclamation point above, can't you? Sigh. I spent Friday night and Saturday at a vestry retreat and it was all fine, and I got to knit, but I'm glad it's over.

Many chapters of Jane Eyre await me now. Not to mention stacks of papers. The clapotis interests me more at the moment.

Alas, a Blog » The office of the future

Alas, a Blog » The office of the future: "Our economy - and, in particular, our workplaces - are still modeled on the “Father Knows Best” model, in which all workers are implicitly assumed to have wives at home, taking care of the babies. This model of the workplace is costly to women who’d like (or need) careers but are economically punished for being mothers, and also costly to men who’d like (or need) careers but wind up being alienated from a family they barely ever see."

Great discussion in the comments of various models of balancing work/family. I haven't looked at the photo-essay yet, but I find the discussion heartening: we just can't assume that the standard "Father Knows Best" model works for everyone. On the other hand, neither does bringing kids to work. I'm about to do it this morning for an hour and that's about as long as it works for me.

Now Norma Knits 2: SEMPER UBI SUB UBI

[edit:] this just in: the bill was killed in the legislature today. Guess they didn't like the publicity they were getting. Now let's work on those other stupid bills!

Norma doesn't like the Virginia legislature.Now Norma Knits 2: SEMPER UBI SUB UBIYes, I'm embarrassed to live in Virginia. See, other stupid legislation, below.

stupid legislation update

The bill I posted about before has been amended. Now, rather than banning GSAs (sorry, "club[s] or other group[s] ...focused on supporting, assisting, or justifying any lifestyle involving sexual behavior") the bill allows local school boards to "prohibit school facilities from being used by any student club or other student group that encourages or promotes sexual activity by unmarried minor students." I think this is progress, though it's still stupid. The basic misconception, that GSAs promote sexual activity, remains, though I think perhaps a GSA could challenge a ban by proving that it did not do so. Right? Anyway, there's still time to contact your state senator and encourage him/her to vote against it (HB2868), if you live in Virginia.

bloglines

[edit]

Switched to blogrolling because it gave me a few more options. And allowed me to subscribe to diaryland.

[edit]

So I got a bloglines subscription, which means I can click obsessively on that rather than on my own site to get to the various blogs I read. Apparently this is progress.

Weirdly there are a few blogs I read that I can't subscribe to. I'm not sure why, though clearly diaryland is one problem. (I keep wanting to type "dairyland" for that, as if it were where the cows came home.)

The bloglines subscription, of course, encourages me to add more to the list of blogs I read. Sigh. This could be a full-time job. But it's not.

this is not a knitting blog...

...which may explain why I really don't have anything to say. I spent the weekend casting on and knitting 12-20 rows of clapotis, over and over again. Well, not over and over, but more often than I care to say. I have learned that I don't know how to knit. Actually, it's even weirder than that. I apparently knit European style, with the yarn held in my left hand, but then I knit into the back rather than the front of the stitch (believe me, this doesn't really make sense to me, either), which leaves my stitches twisted. Or something. I found this out because this pattern requires me to knit into the back of a loop as if that were unusual--and I had to figure out what the pattern thought was usual. Not what I do. Sigh.

Which raises an interesting issue: I don't know when I learned to knit. I learned to crochet one summer when I lived in Ogunquit, Maine, and I had a roommate who crocheted. She taught me and I made several afghans, learned to read patterns, etc. But I don't remember learning to knit. My mother knits, or once did (she tells stories of knitting argyle socks in college lecture halls--shudder!), but I've never seen her do it. I have or had a couple of aunts who knit but I don't think they taught me. My best guess, actually, is home ec class in 7th or 8th grade, but I obviously didn't follow up on it then, and am not sure how I got back into it. I know that I knew how to knit in the mid-80s, because I knit Mark a sweater then. Who taught me? And why did they teach me this weird way?

It seems very strange to me that I have a skill that I can't remember acquiring. I can't really remember learning to read, either, but it's pretty obvious that I don't remember that because I was so young when it happened. I'm guessing I was about four. But I was, I'm quite sure, significantly older when I learned to knit. Or. sort of learned to knit.

Anyway. Any knitters who want to help me with this front-of-the-loop thing, be my guest. It's going to bug me for a while, I can tell. I'm thinking about ripping out (again) my progress to date on one of the two clapotis (clapotises? clapoti?) that I've started, and trying it "my" way, to see if it makes any difference at all.

Or maybe I'll just chuck the whole thing and go back to thinking about books. That would be the smart thing to do.

falling into an abyss

I've spent the last two days completely obsessed with this. I have now begun knitting it--about four times, because apparently I can't count. I think I'm doing OK now, but I'm not going to say any more about it until it's actually looking like something.

It's Stephanie's fault, because she collected all those fabulous pictures of other people's beautiful work.

I want to talk about Princess Mononoke, and about Jeopardy, but those are going to have to wait.

movie night

Am I the only person in America who didn't really like Napoleon Dynamite? (Well, no, I'm not, because Mark didn't like it either...) I mean, I get the attraction to the "geeky guy makes good" storyline, and the flat affect is--interesting, at least, for a while, but I found it hard to get really invested in the outcome of a story involving a guy who looked like he had his eyes closed half the time.

The next night we watched Gregory's Girl, which Nick dubbed "the worst movie ever made" because it was "no action, just kissing." That's a fair assessment from a seven-year-old, I suppose, but I thought it had pretty much the same storyline as ND, and I liked it a lot better. I especially liked the scene where the three girls hand off Gregory, one to another, until he ends up with one who actually liked him and whom he ends up liking as well. The cooperation between them was refreshing--unlike stereotypical depictions of competitive girls (you know, like Cinderella, or Mean Girls, that sort of thing). And it was sweet.

Maybe it was just my mood. Enlighten me, if there's something terrific I missed.

banning the GSA

My daughter is in the Gay-Straight Alliance at her high school. She came home today upset about this bill, currently under consideration in our state legislature:Bill Tracking - 2005 session : "D. In the exercise of their authority to protect the well-being of students as recognized by federal law pursuant to 20 U.S.C. § 4071 (f), local school boards providing equal access and fair opportunity to use school facilities or to distribute literature shall not allow such access or opportunity to use such school facilities or to distribute literature to any club or other group that is focused on supporting, assisting, or justifying any lifestyle involving sexual behavior."

OK, leaving aside the complete stupidity of the language of the bill (clubs that justify lifestyles involving sexual behavior? What about the 4H club? Does that count?), the point of the bill is to ban GSAs at public schools. So she and her friends spent their meeting time this afternoon writing to their representatives, encouraging them to oppose this ridiculous bill. (And the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, in a state that has already--yes--banned gay marriage.)

So. I'm really proud of her, and encourage you to take action as well, if you live in Virginia. You can do it here.

biology test update

Either I'm not a complete loser or, more likely, Mariah knew more than she thought: she got a 97 on that test that we were struggling over.

it was bound to happen

I can't help Mariah with her homework any more. Today I "helped" her study for her biology final (postponed from last week because of snow days) by posing her old test questions. Since she got some of them wrong the first time around, and wasn't quite sure what the right answers were, I ended up googling chemiosmosis and acetyl-CoA. Apparently what we found helped, but the whole thing was pretty humiliating for me. I took high school biology in 12th grade (I took two languages up until that year, and my high school only required one lab science to graduate), and I never understood it either. It seemed to me that everything I needed to know wouldn't be explained until I took chemistry--which I never did. I chose a college based on the (lack of) requirements, and never took another science course.

I sometimes regret it, as when I'm unable to help Mariah, or to answer Nick's incessant questions. I wish I'd learned physics, for example. But I didn't really have the math skills.

I supposed this could all lead one to suggest that I don't really have the cognitive ability to do math or science. That's what Mariah tells me, channeling Lawrence Summers unwittingly. I'm not so sure. I was always actually pretty good at both math and science (I got good grades, anyway, even if I didn't always understand it). But I could never figure out why I should be interested. In a way, I think that's a failure of teaching--now, I can see why biology, and chemistry, and physics could be interesting, but at Mariah's age the idea was beyond me. I could "get" why books were interesting--they allowed me to experience things outside myself, to understand myself better, to explore emotions I wasn't really ready for (this concerns a lot of parents, but I'm glad I read romances before I got romantic, myself). A lot of this was my parents, too--neither of them is particularly interested in anything outside of the humanities, although my mother was good enough at science to at least start nursing school. (She quit when they got to patient care--she liked the book stuff better. Hmm.)

I also do think that I knew no one expected me--as a girl--to be good at this stuff, so I didn't bother. In many other ways I liked to upset people's expectations--I had aspirations to be the first woman priest in the Episcopal church, at one time, but I was too young--but I certainly didn't need to work at it with the math/science stuff. I also had a math teacher humiliate me once, though I don't know really how formative that was. He asked for a definition of "symmetrical," adding--as I already got my hand up--that people often said the human body was symmetrical. I offered, "perfect?" and he just looked at me and said, "Is your body perfect?" OK, it wasn't, but I'm not sure a male teacher should point that out to an eighth grade girl, in front of kids who were already disposed to tease her. Yeah, it wasn't pretty. But I think I was already ready to give up on math anyway.

Obviously there's a whole complex of things going on here: nature and nurture, cognition and conditioning. But I do wish I could be more helpful about the biology test.

snow (?) days

School let out early Wednesday because of the snow, and hasn't let back in again yet. It snowed Thursday, sure, a bit, and then Saturday we had an ice storm. But we've been out on the roads every day and it's not that bad, at least not where we are--but the kids are out of school again. Fourth day in a row, plus the weekend--too long for siblings to be in the house together (or too long for me?).

Nick has a playdate tomorrow, though, hallelujah! And the temp's supposed to be up in the 40s. Surely, surely, they'll go back to school Wednesday?

movie night

A few weeks ago we (ok, Nick) decided we should have movie night on Friday nights. That's right, we would all sit down together and watch a movie. It's not easy satisfying two parents in their 40s, a 15-year-old girl, and a 7-year-old boy, but we thought we'd try. "Waking Ned Devine" worked, one weekend. The next weekend Mariah was at a friend's house and the three of us watched "Toy Story" for the first time in a long time, and I've got to say, it held up just fine. (I particularly enjoyed the video of Randy Newman and Lyle Lovett at the end...)

This weekend we did it on Saturday afternoon instead of Friday night. Mark and I went to an art opening (oh, yes, we know all the swells) on Friday, but Saturday it was icy out and we hunkered down with a video. An oldie from our vast "collection": "Midnight Run." Yes, the DeNiro/Grodin buddy movie from, what, the early nineties? Dated in many ways--no internet, no cellphones, smoking everywhere--it still made us laugh in all the ways it used to.

So, ok, it's rated "R." Mark had a little talk with Nick before the movie began. He said, "Nick, there are lots of words in this movie that you probably shouldn't use at school, because you would get in trouble." That was about it. Yes, the adjective of choice in the movie is f-ing. It comes up repeatedly, sometimes modified with "mother" (only the really bad guys say that, though--it's kind of cute.) But otherwise, really, it's a Road Runner/Coyote movie, writ large. So if you think car chases and explosions and repeated failures on the part of the pursuer are amusing--as Nick definitely does--it's really a winner. Of course it's not all car chases and explosions--there's also Charles Grodin offering life advice to Robert DeNiro, which is just funny on the face of it, you know? I don't think Nick got that part of it, but that's ok with me.

In fact, in some ways it was more fun to watch it with Nick. There's the great moment when DeNiro says to Grodin, "I got two words for you: Shut the f- up." And Nick goes, "Ha! That's really funny, because it was really four words!" See, when a seven-year-old explains the joke, it's definitely funnier.

What made me think of this was Becca's post about movies with kids. I'm not sure our choices would work for everyone--ok, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't--but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well they worked for us.

snow day

Snow days in Richmond are funny. First, the weather guys start talking about possible snow a day or two ahead of time. 20% chance, they say. Maybe 40. So folks head out to the grocery store for milk and bread. (Why milk and bread? We don't know...)

Then nothing. Usually. Or maybe a little something. But often, nothing. Does this mean we won't trust the weather guys the next time, though? No, of course not. Anyone can make a mistake.

A couple of days ago they said, yes, maybe 40% chance of snow on Wednesday. And, for once, they were right. It started snowing at about 11:30. I was walking over to the Commons for lunch and it was pretty, just a little flurry. It started to stick, and that was nice. We'd heard there might be a dusting, less than an inch.

By the time lunch was over there was an inch where it had drifted, but really no more than a dusting most places. But the snow was still falling. By 2:00, the public schools had announced an early closing--half an hour early. What is the point of that? Everyone's schedule gets disrupted, and the cars and buses are still out on the road in the snow. But it's so much safer half an hour earlier, right? Sure. (I'm still trying to work that one out.)

Mark picked Nick up. His dentist's appointment had been cancelled anyway--they closed the office early because of the snow. Mariah only had a half day anyway because of exams, so she was already home (or, technically, at a friend's house, but whatever). I decided I couldn't make my late afternoon meeting, and still get home safely in time to have dinner and get out to an evening meeting, so I sent an e-mail saying I'd miss it. By the time my late class was over, though, that meeting--and the evening one--had been cancelled.

I left campus at about 4:30. The snow had stopped. There was maybe a little more than an inch piled up on my windshield. (By the way, there is a serious design flaw in my Jetta wagon. When you open the driver's door after it's snowed, all the snow falls IN to the car, right onto the driver's seat. Is this deliberate?)

The roads were slushy but passable on my way home. WIth evening activities cancelled we settled in for a quiet dinner. Mmm, pasta carbonara. (All dietary rules are suspended on snow days.) No more snow, though it's cold out.

So, to sum up, maybe an inch. Maybe a tad more. And, guess what? Both kids are off school tomorrow. Because? Apparently this city has no snow removal budget (or none to waste on an inch of snow) and if any roads into subdivisions are impassable, the buses can't run.

Luckily my classes don't meet on Thursdays. I guess I'm working at home tomorrow.

I'm not the only one...

...annoyed by Caitlin Flanagan. Ayelet is, in this lovely snarky comment, and so is Ms. Magazine, in a nice piece by Hilary Frey. (OK, yes, Ayelet is really being snarky about David Brooks, which actually makes for a terrific two-fer.)

Sometimes I worry that I should quit subscribing to The New Yorker in protest over their hiring of Caitlin Flanagan as a staff writer. But then they publish something lovely like this week's piece by Margaret Talbot (a truly wonderful writer) about Hayao Miyazaki (and if you haven't seen My Neighbor Totoro yet, stop reading and put it on your netflix queue). Talbot did a Q&A about the piece here.

new column

Here's my latest on children's lit and motherhood:
"Mother Love in Children's Literature"

grateful, even so...

For reasons I don't want to go into here, but that have nothing to do with teaching or what I think of as the real part of my job, I'm less than thrilled to be going back to work this semester. (Again, let me stress that the classes are great.)

But I have to say, there are advantages to the flexible schedule of college teaching. Yesterday Mariah's biology teacher decided she should go home early--he felt her forehead and reportedly said, "Jesus, Mariah, you're burning up! Go home!" Mark was able to head down to Petersburg and pick her up, because his classes were over for the day. Today, the school nurse from Nick's school called at around 11 with a similar message--he was coughing and seemed tired and "uncomfortable"--though, no fever. This time it was my turn--I don't teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Later today I head down to Petersburg early again, to get Mariah for a previously-scheduled doctor's appointment. I actually tried to get her to stay home--seeing as she'd been sick yesterday and had a doctor's appointment today--but she didn't want to miss school. So Nick will come with me to get her in an hour or so. In the meantime I'm sitting in my living room preparing tomorrow's classes (ok, yes, and blogging) instead of sitting in my office.

The downside of the flexible schedule is that you're never off work. There's always something you could be doing and you can do it pretty much anywhere. But today I'll take the trade-off. Check with me again after a couple of snow days, though--I may be feeling differently.

First day

I met my new students for the first time today. I already know a few of them in the upper division class, and one or two in the lower-level classes, but mostly they're all new and I'll spend the next couple of weeks trying desperately to learn 75 or so new names. And failing, inevitably, with a few. Partly it's the similarity--I have a basketball team's worth of Rebeccas, a brace of Amandas, etc. Partly it's me--I have trouble recalling the name of someone I've just been introduced to when there's only one, so dozens put a strain on the brain.

But I'll work at it, and I'll get them all by the end. Usually by midterms.

Bad Writing and its causes

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: You Talkin' to Me?: " I CAME across the following sentence in a term paper recently. The student was about to describe how she had arrived at her conclusions. This is what she wrote: ''The following methodology was utilized.'' I see this kind of thing all the time. Not ''the following method was used''; not ever ''this is what I did.'' Like nearly all the students I've taught, this young woman has learned to believe that the English language does not have room for her. That it is a secret code known only to the initiated. That the language she speaks is uneducated, inferior and incorrect. Hence the corseted tone, the vocabulary that strains at sophistication, the way she absents herself from her own writing. This is a student who has been taught to worship the volcano god of Correct English."

I hope Deresiewicz is right, because if our students are really simply trying to be correct, they can perhaps be corrected. But more often I think such formulations ("the following methodology was utilized") combines two equally problematic but different issues. One is the student's impulse to try to sound "important," often scientific. "Methodology" sounds scientific, "method" or "technique" doesn't. Ditto "utilized." Maybe the difference between "Correct English" and "scientific language" isn't significant, though--both are (futile) attempts to sound like an "in" when you're not.

The other is a creeping problem in speech as well as written language, however, and it's the problem of agent-less prose. Who "utilized" those methods, anyway? The sentence is passive--the agent is obscured. Or, more actively: the student has obscured the agent, that is, herself. She used the methods, but she doesn't want to say "this is what I did" because then she has to take responsibility for it. "Mistakes were made" is the classic example of the agency-obscuring passive, but you see them everywhere: in advertising, PR, sociology articles, everywhere. When I (briefly) worked in marketing for a large conference hotel in the mid-eighties, I rewrote lots of their PR pieces to be more active. This had two effects, neither of which was appreciated by my bosses: it made the letters shorter, and it made them responsible. They asked me to change them back.

I can usually get creative writing students to rephrase their work more actively; they understand that they need to develop their own voices in their work, and that "who did what to whom" is important. It's much harder to get the literature students, or the composition students, to do this. They are trying to fill the requisite number of pages, and often they simply don't know who did what. Did Shakespeare create that effect, or is it just in the text? They are afraid to say "I"--I blame their high school English teachers, but it probably goes back further than that--so they simply leave the subject out. "The book was read." Blah.

Deresiewicz's essay is intriguing nonetheless, and I'm all for outing the prescriptivists as the snobbish protectors of their own privilege that they were/are. But, like so many problems, I think this one has multiple causes, and he's only identified one.

If Stanley Fish says it, is it true?

Chronicle Careers: 01/07/2005: "Announce a course with 'religion' in the title, and you will have an overflow population. Announce a lecture or panel on 'religion in our time' and you will have to hire a larger hall.

And those who come will not only be seeking knowledge; they will be seeking guidance and inspiration, and many of them will believe that religion -- one religion, many religions, religion in general -- will provide them.

Are we ready?

We had better be, because that is now where the action is. When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."

I'm a bit chagrined by this piece, but also intrigued. Fish began his career as a Milton scholar, of course, and if no one else in English departments takes religion seriously, Milton scholars should. So perhaps this isn't surprising coming from him. But it's a bit surprising to me, because I find myself about to be "in" on the next big thing, apparently. I've never been there before, but my interests are increasingly taking me in the directions Fish suggests: taking religion seriously as "a candidate for the truth." Specifically, I'm trying to look at the ways in which children's literature tackles theological issues, and especially how children's literature and feminist theology may be mutually informing.

My best students over the past few years have been moving in the direction Fish outlines here, as have I. What's curious to me is why we're all here at once. Is cultural determinism true after all?

books, books, books

I've written two book reviews in the last week, and read another book, Housekeeping, that I'm not reviewing but maybe should. What a wonderful, lyrical, novel! Why did I not discover it before?

Actually, I know the answer to that. It came out when I was in college, and in college and for many years afterward I read only books by dead people and genre fiction--pretty light stuff. When I wasn't studying I needed a break. Now I read more widely, I think (check my lists and see if you agree), and among other things I'm catching up on contemporary fiction.

I still read more children's literature than anything else, I think. I'm educating myself so I can teach it responsibly, for one thing. I've got big gaps to fill. I just made up my syllabus for this semester and I realize that there are no books between about 1910 and 1950, and again none from about then until the early 90s. There are books in those gaps that I'm familiar with but don't teach (especially the first gap), but there are also just lots of great books out there that I haven't read. I'm great on the 19th century, though, and pretty good on recent stuff, and a lot of the pre-1980 stuff that I do know just isn't that great, or doesn't fit my syllabus. Ideally, thought, I'd like to have things spread out a bit more, so I'm working on that as well as keeping up with new stuff. Luckily children's lit usually reads relatively quickly. Still, there's plenty to do.

Anyway, back to Housekeeping. I read it because I read terrific reviews of Gilead, and I wanted to know her other work first. So now I can read Gilead. When I find the time.

And a bit about one of the books I reviewed: I just finished From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography, and I am delighted to have finally gotten around to it! Cameron is intriguing both for her accomplishments (she was a fabulous photographer) and her associations (she was Virginia Woolf's great aunt, among other things). But I also want to adopt her as a role model because she didn't begin her photographic career until she was 48, after her six children were old enough that she could direct her energies elsewhere. This means I've still got a few years before I need to get started on my artistic career. I love late bloomers.

how cool is that?

Ayelet Waldman has this funny post about not feeling cool enough, and all I could think as I was reading it was "she chose the same template I did! How cool is that?"

OK, I'm totally lame. But really, if Ayelet Waldman isn't cool, what hope do the rest of us have?

(Did I mention that I interviewed her once? Twice, actually. For this piece. It was fun.)

a new year

All my favorite bloggers have been busy this week and I have not. Or, actually, I have, just not here. We celebrated Christmas, we traveled, we celebrated some more, we commiserated with my sister and family who had no luggage for a week (I won't mention that my pregnant sister fits quite nicely into several of my non-pregnant tops...), we had snow, we traveled some more, we ice-skated, we had New Year's Eve with friends, we drove home. The week in a sentence.

Oh, and the tsunami. It's just...unimaginable, really, even still. The numbers boggle the mind.

Somehow the fact that it happened during that liminal week between Christmas and New Year's, when it always feels like time has stopped and nothing can happen, seems even worse. As if it may too soon be forgotten as we all go back to school, work, our regular lives. It didn't erupt into the middle of our work days, as 9/11 did. It just--well, it just happened somewhere else, to someone else, to thousands of someone elses, and we are left helplessly donating to the Red Cross and imagining--weakly, vainly--the suffering. And hoping it will end.

Still, the turning of the year always leaves me hopeful. 2004 wasn't that great, as years go. For starters, we re-elected GWB, we tortured Iraqi prisoners, we failed to protect the environment or provide adequate health care to the poor or decent child care to pretty much anyone or any number of other things I'm forgetting right now. The first one was the worst, until the tsunami hit. I'm hoping 2005 will be better.

a post about cookies

In case I haven't alienated the few readers I have with that last one, it's time now to blog about Christmas cookies. I baked two batches this evening, with limited assistance from Nick. The first, Chocolate Revel bars, came from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, of which I unaccountably have two copies. The others, Brown Sugar Cranberry cookies, came from the Domino dark brown sugar bag.

I am a sucker for recipes from magazines, labels, bags, etc. This despite the fact that I must have some three dozen perfectly lovely cookbooks--really really good ones, like Donna Hay ones, not just Better Homes and Gardens ones, as well as funky ones like The I Hate to Cook Book. All kinds of cookbooks. Yet I cook and bake from labels and magazines at least as often--maybe more so--as from the cookbooks. This can cause problems. Some time recently I made a fabulous (in my memory, anyway) pork roast stuffed with prunes. I believe the recipe came from a magazine. Can I find it? Alas, no. I was thinking about making it again for Christmas, but it is not to be found. Yet.

Anyway. The Chocolate Revel Bars (a rich oatmeal bar with a fudgy topping) are really really sweet. Diabetic coma sweet. And tasty. And the cranberry brown sugar ones are tasty and soft, at least so far. (I ate one that was still hot.)

Tomorrow, spice cookies. But first I need more butter.

Diversity in the Academy

The Economist jumps on the bandwagon:Economist.com | Lexington: "Academia is simultaneously both the part of America that is most obsessed with diversity, and the least diverse part of the country. On the one hand, colleges bend over backwards to hire minority professors and recruit minority students, aided by an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy of “diversity officers”. Yet, when it comes to politics, they are not just indifferent to diversity, but downright allergic to it."

Well, maybe. There have been several articles like this lately; the Republican professor lamenting in The Chronicle that he's in a minority on his campus, and a more reasoned piece by Mark Bauerlein before that, "Liberal Groupthink is Anti-Intellectual."

While I agree with Bauerlein that groupthink--of any stripe--is anti-intellectual, I think all of these pieces overstate the case. The piece in The Economist, for example, claims that in college one can only learn that "abortion is good" and "the rise of the West" was bad. Hardly--at least on any college campus I've ever been on. (This piece seems to be drawing its data from Tom Wolfe's novel "I am Charlotte Simmons," by the way--hardly the most reliable source.)

Of course the subtleties of academic argument are often reduced to "abortion=good; West=bad" by students and reporters alike. That's much easier than actually listening to the debate in a classroom and getting a sense of what's really going on. I used to sympathize when students told me about horrible things happening in their classes, until once something was reported back to me that I had personal experience of. The difference between what I knew to have happened, and the report--several times removed--from the student was like the difference between a Big Mac and a filet mignon. Both came from the same source, but there the resemblance ended. So that's one problem with these arguments. They're necessarily reductive and reported by biased and sometimes sloppy thinkers. Not always, though, so let's move on.

Another is the irony that the right seems to be using the term "diversity" pretty loosely here. How can those who have protested and legislated against various protections for diversity now complain that they are the diverse who are being discriminated against? There seems to be a logical inconsistency here.

And, remember, colleges and universities are institutions of liberal learning. We study the liberal arts, we promote the values of a liberal education. It is hardly surprising, then, that we in the academy are predominantly liberals. We aren't surprised when social workers are predominantly liberal, or stockbrokers are predominantly conservative--we recognize that these professions, by and large, attract a certain temperament and with that a certain political persuasion. Why should the academy be any different?

Of course we don't want to intimidate or harass, but I've got to say I haven't seen that, and the anecdotes I hear have so far failed to convince me. It's easy for an 18-year-old to say "I was afraid to speak up" when a professor's question raises hard questions; it's harder to engage in the debate. And yet I think most genuine intellectuals (and, yes, I know not all faculty members can be--or would even want to be--numbered among that group!) welcome honest debate in their classes. A faculty member is likely to "win" such a debate by virtue of greater education, greater experience, etc., but it's certainly possible to set up a debate between students and allow it to run its course. Not only possible, but I think more frequent than these commentators suggest. And it's long been true that the College Republicans is one of the largest student groups on almost any American campus, including bastions of the left like Berkeley, and they certainly don't lack the requisite faculty sponsorship. (The College Republican National Committee claims it is "the oldest and largest grassroots political organization on America’s college campuses," with over 120,000 members. The College Democrats, by contrast, claim only "more than 50,000 members by the 1992 election.")

Among faculty members the issues are different. While we may be less likely to feel intimidated than our students, so debate theoretically could take place, there are (as I've indicated above) real reasons why liberals outnumber conservatives in the academy, and I would expect that to continue. If that makes conservative professors feel uncomfortable, that's pretty much their problem. Education happens when people are jolted out of their comfort zones, doesn't it?

I do agree with Bauerlein (who, by the way, preceded me in grad school by a few years, so I can put a face to the name) that "we can't open the university to conservative ideas and persons by outside command. That would poison the atmosphere and jeopardize the ideals of free inquiry." Exactly.

He goes on to claim that "Leftist bias evolved within the protocols of academic practice (though not without intimidation), and conservative challenges should evolve in the same way. There are no administrative or professional reasons to bring conservatism into academe, to be sure, but there are good intellectual and social reasons for doing so.

Those reasons are, in brief: One, a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity. Two, facing real antagonists strengthens one's own position. Three, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion."

Again, I haven't seen the intimidation that he mentions, but let's grant it. Certainly there's been intimidation, throughout history, on the other side, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised. When I started graduate school teaching at UCLA I had to sign a loyalty oath--is that intimidation? On what side? Was I being indoctrinated into a certain political mindset? Not hardly. But anyway, even granting the intimidation, I can agree that "a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity"--though, again, I must note the irony of the call for diversity issued from the right. And I might remind Mr. Bauerlein and his colleagues that there is hardly a wide spectrum of opinion in the mainstream media, so perhaps our narrow band within the academy can be seen as one of many narrow bands, all of which together build the wide spectrum he desires. I'd rather see a wide spectrum in the mainstream media, but the fragmentation of American culture has been going on for some time, and it's not going to change first in the academy, I believe.

So we need to engage other opinions, but they need not come from within the academy. After all, if academics only talk to themselves, we all lose. This goes to his second point as well: we do engage real antagonists, even if they aren't on the same campus with us. The right in this country is hardly voiceless, and liberals on campus engage it routinely. Really, his third point is the same as his second: engaging the full range of public opinion doesn't mean representing it, or embodying it, and we can engage it wherever we find it, even if that's not in the academy.

Yes, I am one of those liberal professors. I can admit to it and even be proud of it. But I utterly reject the notion that I am squelching debate, and I'm certainly not apologizing for my position. Liberals have been marginalized in American public discourse for so long that we have become defensive, I'm afraid, and thus open to these attacks. We need not be.

Christmas, I mean Holiday Parties

Well, the pioneer party went fine. There were Christmas carols playing in the background but otherwise no mention of the holiday we were/weren't celebrating at all. The kids pulled taffy, ate cookies and beef jerky (mmm, authentic!), drank cider, and made little "jumping jack" toys out of cardboard and popsicle sticks. Pulling taffy took the longest, and most of the kids didn't like it--the flavor of the molasses was too pronounced. But they enjoyed getting their hands all sticky anyway.

I don't mind that they don't call it a Christmas party. Some people don't celebrate Christmas and it's not right to make them feel left out. But it's odd, when some public schools have Christmas trees (my daughter's, for example) and others (my son's) don't, when Christmas carols are OK some places and not others. Mariah's holiday concert was all Christmas music, and most of it sacred--pieces from "The Messiah," a gospel piece called "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child," "Lo How a Rose," etc. The only non-Christmas piece was "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," and the only secular Christmas piece was "The Carol of the Bells." I never heard that anyone complained, but you'd never get away with that at Nick's school.

We put our tree up yesterday. I even put lights outside the house--first time ever! The kids were stunned. I tend to be an anti-display type, but we had these lights (we intend, eventually, to put them up around the back porch for late summer evenings...) and they look really cool. So I put them up around the banister in front. The tree smells nice and we may even get it decorated one of these days--after Mark gets his grading done. (I turned my grades in Thursday but I'm trying not to gloat.)

more

The cards are now beyond counting. (OK, maybe ten or a dozen--we're not THAT popular.) It's time to do something with them. Open them, read them, staple them to ribbons and decorate the fireplace? Something like that. So far I have opened and read them. It's a start.

I have, however, turned in my grades. So now the festivities can begin. I also found Christmas cards in my drawer where I keep ornaments and the like. They must have been on sale last year. So perhaps I will send some. Not until after New Year's, however. So if you're hoping for one from me, just sit tight.

I baked cookies with Nick's class today for their "pioneer party" tomorrow. I find this odd. It is, of course, a Christmas party, but they can't or won't call it that. Public school and all that. I'm fine with that, but the charade is weird. It's a pioneer party because they're studying the pioneers right now. So we baked--pioneer cookies? Not so much. We creamed butter and sugar together with an electric mixer, for starters. (Though the butter was soft enough that we maybe could have been more pioneer-ish about it.) The dough for the first batch came out sort of sandy--I had scanted the butter and carefully added only the yolk of an egg, as the recipe said, and we got sand. So I had the kids squeeze it in their hands into little balls and put the balls on the cookie sheet. They looked lame, but the kids got a kick out of getting all messy.

The second batch came out better. I had enough butter for that one, and we added the whole egg, so the whole thing was moister. The cookies came out perfectly round and browned around the edges.

Still, the kids who made the first batch seemed perfectly satisfied with their misfit cookies.

We get to eat them tomorrow at the "pioneer party." Will we be wearing gingham? Not me.

The Writer's Almanac - DECEMBER 6 - 12, 2004

Grace Paley said it (about baking, not knitting) better than I could. Read the whole poem here: (scroll down to December 11)

The Writer's Almanac - DECEMBER 6 - 12, 2004: "The Poet's Occasional Alternative"

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

it begins...

We've gotten three Christmas cards already. Four, if you count the one from a former student that came to me in the office today, but that one's not freaking me out so much. That one was newsy and fun. The others sit on my dining room table rebuking me for not writing a Christmas letter yet, not even thinking about holiday cards (maybe I have some left over from previous years in a drawer in the bottom of the chest in the living room?), not buying a tree, not having Christmas presents already bought and wrapped...

It's Advent. It's a season of waiting, of anticipation, of preparation. For me that preparation involves grading and planning next semester and taking a few days to bake cookies, in addition to (sometimes instead of?) some quiet meditation, some time spent contemplating the darkness of the season. It's too soon for lights. It's too soon for cards. My letter usually goes out in January, before Epiphany, still during the twelve days...

I haven't opened the cards on the dining table yet. They can wait another few days.

knitting

I was just checking out how people get to this site, and a couple have come from Yarn Harlot. Maybe if you're one of them you're surprised to find yourself here, since I don't have anything (much) to say about knitting. But I link to her site because it's so well-written, and because I laugh when I read it, and because I knit her poncho (though I didn't fringe it, because I used this really fuzzy yarn, and fringe seemed like overkill).

So, anyway, I thought I would write briefly about knitting. I am currently engaged in three projects: socks and two scarves. Yes, this is the level of my knitting expertise. In a past life (before I had children) I made a few things that actually required some shaping. They were intended to be sweaters for actual human beings, though all three of them came out shorter and wider than the actual human beings for whom they were intended. One of those human beings was me, and I still have my sweater in a closet. One was my mother, and hers came closest to fitting, and she wore it for a while. Maybe she even still does! The other was my (now) husband, who was then a boyfriend. He gallantly wore his blue cotton orangutan-sweater a few times and only recently asked if my feelings would be hurt if he got rid of it. What a sport!

But the lesson I took from this was to go back to knitting things in which the size didn't matter. So: ponchos, scarves, and the like. The socks are a stretch, really. (See below.) But I'm soldiering on, hoping that the one I finish next will be roughly the same size and shape as the one I already finished.

My point? I like the feel of knitting, of making something, of paying attention to directions and having them (mostly) turn out right. Much of what I do in my everyday life doesn't work that way--there are no directions, or the directions are inadequate or misleading, and my labor is either not recognized or has an effect that can't be measured or could always have been more. So I accept my imperfections in knitting because at least I have a product (I think it's like cooking for me in this way--near-instant gratification, a product that others appreciate, and a limited exercise of creativity).

One day I may learn to do cables. And maybe I'll even try to shape something again one of these days. But in the meantime I'm pretty satisfied with what I'm doing. But read Yarn Harlot if you actually want to find out something about knitting!

movies

Two weekends, two movies. This never happens! Last Sunday it was Finding Neverland, with Mariah, her friend and her friends' mom, who is also my friend. Mariah's friend liked it for Johnny Depp, and--while I'm not above that--I also liked it for the way it worked. I liked the mixture of realism and fantasy, the way the film moved from seemingly realistic depictions of a world outside JM Barrie's head, right into his imagination. I like films that actually use the way film can, say, depict one's imaginings as real--why not, after all? You can't do it in a novel--bring something to life like that--so why not use the ability when you have it? I also thought the film really got something fundamental about Peter Pan, which is how death-haunted it is. It is a creepy, sad little book, and it's somewhat astonishing to me that the character has become synonymous--at least for some people--with a kind of happy childhood. The way both Peter Pan and Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) have been detached from their contexts and turned into icons of childhood innocence reflects both a fundamental misreading and, I think, a sort of wish-fulfilment. We want childhood to be about happy innocence, these are stories about childhood, ergo they are icons of happy childhood innocence. Well, they may be about childhood innocence ( in fact, I think they are), but it's pretty destructive and aggressive. Which is an interesting take on things, and surprisingly honest from writers who a) didn't have children of their own and b) lived in a time when (so we now say) children were idealized. Not as much as now, I think.

Then today I got a call from another friend who wanted to see Sideways this afternoon with me. I had planned to spend the afternoon grading--and there's certainly plenty to do--but this seemed far more important. It's a pretty depressing film, one in which it's hard to find anyone to like, but well worth seeing. The scenery is fun--both my friend and I are familiar with the area, up around Solvang--and the characters are well acted. It's not that one would really want to spend time with any of them (maybe the women, who seemed far more appealing than the men), but they were interesting to watch. And the whole thinking/feeling dichotomy gets a new twist here, in some ways. The main characters, an actor and a writer, epitomize the split, but the film resists any easy choices: you can't really say one is better than the other.

There's still grading to do, however.

TCS: Tech Central Station - Faculty Clubs and Church Pews

TCS: Tech Central Station - Faculty Clubs and Church Pews: " Most of my Christian friends have no clue what goes on in faculty clubs. And my colleagues in faculty offices cannot imagine what happens in those evangelical churches on Sunday morning.

In both cases, the truth is surprisingly attractive. And surprisingly similar: Churches and universities are the two twenty-first century American enterprises that care most about ideas, about language, and about understanding the world we live in, with all its beauty and ugliness. Nearly all older universities were founded as schools of theology: a telling fact. Another one is this: A large part of what goes on in those church buildings that dot the countryside is education -- people reading hard texts, and trying to sort out what they mean."

OK, there are important differences, too, and as a non-evangelical Christian I can't help but think the kind of education going on in those church buildings is pretty important...and sometimes, to me, threatening. But this is still a pretty interesting article.

Advent Calendar

This is a nice link if you observe Advent:Advent Calendar