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Monday, July 21st
[stutelbe], you might find the solution to Pierre's little problem
here Friday, I linked to a breaking story that David Kelly was missing. (This is the Iraq expert in Britain; I've removed that link now that I know the story.) It turns out, as many of you probably know, that Kelly was soon found dead, apparently by suicide. Here in England, the story is absolutely dwarfing everything else in a really awful way--not only is it terribly sad, but the spectacle is now of the BBC and the Blair government frantically blaming each other for what happened, which seems an inevitable but inadequate response. To say the least.
It's now Monday morning, and I'm online from a coffee shop on my way to the
British Library, to which I'll be walking from the flat in Notting Hill.
(For the record, don't think I've gone all posh--I can't afford to rent a
Notting Hill flat; I'm taking the cheap end of a shared flat with
Michael
Saturday Michael and I and a Penn grad student did a bigger and more
difficult walk from Leigh (pronounced "Lye") to Tunbridge Wells by way of
Penshurst Yesterday was all about reading and writing. Those activities and some plays will basically fill the rest of my time here. Oh, one more thing--except that I would quibble about the merits of St. Louis for a few reasons, most notably an alarming failure to develop young pitchers, I generally accept [iversonl]'s additions to my comments on baseball teams. [blancheb], take note that [iversonl] is tantalized by the wonders of Oakland even though they are his team's mortal foe! Hear the siren call! Friday, July 18th (Here I resist the cheesy mock-English greeting--"Cheerio from across the pond!" or some such--and you, in turn, wonder at my restraint.) I'm writing from a little Internet cafe in Winchester, England, which is a) where most of my conference was, b) where Jane Austen died and is buried, and c) where John Keats lived for a bit and wrote "To Autumn." The middle day of the conference was at Chawton House in Alton, the home of Austen's rich brother where Cisco founder Sandy Lerner has funded the renovation of the house and the creation of a new library of women's writing. The conference was the opening event of the house. Austen's cottage, where she lived the latter part of her life thanks to her brother, is about 200 yards away from the house, so I got to see that, too, and to talk to all manner of interesting people about books. Sweet. (Oh--thanks, [twohy]!) On the gun issue: first, I want to say that I did think of a gun-control issue that Dean didn't comment on--the idea of a national registry. Still, he does seem moderate, with the reputation of being more pro-gun than he is, and [mears] is quite right about the utility of that reputation. The perception that Gore wanted to mess with the guns of serious hunters--he didn't--was one of the most amazing PR failures of that dreadful campaign. Oh, and [gablee]: gun control as it is presently discussed is not a Constitutional issue, much as the NRA would like us to think so. Not only does a common-sense reading of the Second Amendment fail to address anything like my right to own an assault rifle without registering it, but the Supreme Court has also affirmed the government's ability to regulate guns. (In other words, this isn't just my wacky reading; it's the law.) That's why the NRA talks about the Second Amendment but doesn't get specific about it, and more obviously why the NRA funnels its money to influencing the legislative branch of government, not the judicial. The Second Amendment almost rivals the First in the frequency of appearance in debates in which it's utterly irrelevant. Small caveat: this could change if the composition of the Court changes, since some judges do seem willing to interpret the Second Amendment more broadly. By the way, I spent much of last summer reading eighteenth-century pamphets about the formation of a Scottish militia; that debate brought the language of the second amendment into currency, I found. "Well-regulated militia" is straight from Alexander Carlyle's pamphlet from the 1760s, IIRC--I'm away from my notes. Reading that stuff convinced me completely that the NRA reading of the Second Amendment is wildly different from the meaning of those words in the Founders' context. The British papers are shaking their heads about the rapidity of Tony Blair's fall from grace. Sunday, July 13th I'm rushing to finish my conference paper and leave for Moline, which will mark the beginning of my journey of perhaps 24 hours by car, plane, plane, tube, train, and taxi to Winchester. Therefore, I won't respond to some interesting comments that I'd like to--sorry bout that.
A quick word, though, on Dean and gun control, since the many comments on
that issue have made me look up some more information. What I had seen
before was that Dean has an A rating from the NRA; when asked in
this For the record, I remain undecided as I work through this stuff. Friday, July 11th [marzench] asks what my problem is with Gephardt, and he (Chad) gives some good reasons for supporting Gephardt. Side note: gracious me, Chad's a Democrat now! I had no idea. And how cool to meet the Wizard of Oz.
First, I'll say that Chad is one of the very most informed people I know
when it comes to politics, and I will watch Gephardt more closely because of
Chad's comments. One of the interesting things about the Democratic race
right now is that, IMHO, a lot of the sense of canditates conservativism or
liberalism comes from their position on the war. For example, Ralph Nader
today (in this It's hard to make sense of the current situation in some ways because the administration has taken such an extreme approach on tax cuts, balancing the budget, and international relations that it's not about Democrats vs. Republicans in any sense that I understand. Much of what's happening now was unthinkable by either party five years ago. Tuersday, July 8th I'm back from Atlanta, where I had a great time with my brother and college friends, in spite of having to watch the Expos blow a ninth-inning lead at Turner Field in excruciating fashion. (The Braves scored twice on a single, an error, two walks, and a hit batter. Barf.) Now preparations commence in earnest for the longest trip of the summer, to Southampton and London this Sunday. In the intervening week I need to submit two articles (one down, one to go), cut my conference paper down to size, and do a bunch of other scholarly stuff. Oh, and pack.
This, a Carolynk, is way cool:
make [blancheb], may I nominate a late entry into your favorite baseball team derby? I'm going to claim the high ground here: my recommendation is neither one of my own favorites (the Giants and Pirates) nor anything like a hometown team. It is the team I would choose, however, if I were in your situation, with all the world to choose from. It's Oakland. Why? Well, there are three truly enlightened teams when it comes to player development and statistical analysis--three teams, that is, that do things the right way. They are the Yankees, Red Sox, and A's. The reasons to dismiss the Yankees are obvious enough, and you show that you are doing this with a pure heart and a clear head by saying that you will consider "Any team except the Yankees." Good. The Red Sox offer a lot--a fun underdog tradition, a great stadium, the Curse of the Bambino, cool management. But they have two big problems: 1) too much money to be really fun, and 2) a fan base of rabid 17th-generation Bostoners who aren't going to welcome Midwestern newcomers to the fold. That leaves the A's, who represent everything that is wonderful about the ability of a clever GM (Billy Beane) and a little luck to overcome a relatively puny payroll. As an added bonus, you can get the scoop on how your new favorite team was put together in Moneyball, a new book that's getting good reviews. [plowman], Travesties was part of the summer Stoppard events at UI. I don't know whether it's playing again, but I know there are more Stoppard productions coming up. With Iowa City theater, I just let Carolyn and her actor friends tell me where to go, so I don't know very much. [schunaca] asks, " How dare [I] not rush out, buy, and read Harry Potter 5 at the first opportunity?" A fair question. I really don't feel much urgency about it, largely because I have so much else to read and write--I've been doing tons of writing lately and letting the reading follow from that. I never got into the HP release-day ritual because we read all four books after the fourth was released. I try to reserve my prime reading time for at least vaguely academic stuff, saving the HP books and mysteries and such for car rides with Carolyn and bedtime reading. Given the London trip, I probably won't get to the new one until August. I am, however, considering picking up the third one in paperback in London so I can see how different the British versions are.
Well, here
I did the [stone]-linked
Presidential I wonder what factor makes Kerry come closer to my opinions (and Dean's, for instance) than, say, Edwards. [stone] asked if anyone has used the weighting function. I did, a little. I don't remember how.
1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat (100%) 2. Green Party Candidate (96%) 3. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (86%) 4. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (83%) 5. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (80%) 6. Leahy, Patrick Senator, Vermont - Democrat (78%) 7. Clinton, Senator Hillary Rodham, NY - Democrat (77%) 8. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL - Democrat (77%) 9. Lieberman Senator Joe CT - Democrat (75%) 10. Jackson, Cong. Jesse Jr., IL - Democrat (74%) 11. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat (74%) 12. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (74%) 13. Feingold, Senator Russ, WI - Democrat (73%) 14. Socialist Candidate (71%) 15. Daschle, Senate Minority Leader Tom, SD - Democrat (69%) 16. Biden, Senator Joe, DE - Democrat (66%) 17. Graham, Senator Bob, FL - Democrat (64%) 18. Kaptur, Cong. Marcy, OH - Democrat (59%) 19. Dodd, Senator Chris, CT - Democrat (56%) 20. Clark, Retired Army General Wesley K "Wes" Arkansas - Democrat (54%) 21. Feinstein, Senator Dianne, CA - Democrat (51%) 22. Bayh, Senator Evan, IN - Democrat (50%) 23. Gore, Former Vice-President Al - Democrat (46%) 24. Bradley, Former Senator Bill NJ - Democrat (39%) 25. Libertarian Candidate (32%) 26. Hagelin, John - Natural Law (19%) 27. McCain, Senator John, AZ- Republican (17%) 28. Hart, Former Senator Gary, CO - Democrat (13%) 29. Buchanan, Patrick J. - Reform/Republican (10%) 30. Bush, George W. - US President (9%) 31. Vilsack, Governor. Tom IA - Democrat (3%) 32. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (-3%) 33. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (-8%) --- CGI problem solved--[stone] is a wizard. A generous, prompt wizard. Thanks! Thursday, July 3rd(c) OK, it's just a big plan day as I try to get my life together before taking off again.
[stone], I'm trying to set up some Perl scripts in my home directory on
math.grinnell.edu for
th Oh, and I also wanted to tell [stone] that I saw Stoppard's Travesties in Iowa City last night. What do you think of that one? I've never read it, but in the IC production, I loved the first half and felt much more lukewarm about the second. Thursday, July 3rd(b) [layeliz1] has some Harry Potter commentary, including a note on conservative objections to Harry disobeying his muggle family. I want to add a note that there's an eerie parallel here to Claudia Johnson's book on Jane Austen's politics, which I've now almost read through. The authority of a bad parental figure was hotly contested in the Romantic era because of the widely accepted parallels between familial and political authority. Antijacobin (conservative) novels would dramatize the terrible consequence of filial disobedience, even when a charming child defied an unsympathetic parent. If this child can disobey a parent, the implied argument ran, are we not challenging the inherent authority of parents, and therefore governments? Austen, as Johnson shows, goes to great length to head off direct confrontations between her heroines and their parents, so she doesn't quite make the radical gesture of having women flatly disobey parental authority. They do sometimes disobey figures of cultural authority, however, and Austen certainly encourages the reader to think that the heroines should take some initiative in making their own decisions. Anyway--it's amazing how much you can map out in novels if you start with the question, "According to this book, should a child obey a parent without consulting his or her own feelings?" So I end up thinking the conservatives have a point about Harry's muggle family; Rowling does indeed make the case that some kinds of authority are illegitimate, and resisting them is to be applauded. And I agree, [layeliz1], that the third one is the best yet as a self-contained novel, though I also like the sprawling, fragmented fourth. Favorite thing about the HP books: their sensitivity to the interaction of adult concerns and fears (those of parents, teachers, etc.) and those of children. Harry finding out about the school life of his father and Sirius is wonderful. Least favorite things about the HP books: the ferocious mockery of Dudley for being fat, which would have been awfully tough for me to take if I had read these books when a very self-conscious overweight kid of Dudley's age, and the continuing imbalance between the development of male and female characters. We are someday going to hear more about Harry's mom than her one moment of maternal sacrifice, aren't we? Pretty please? I haven't started the fifth one yet--no spoilers! Thursday, July 3rd
As part of the ongoing followup to the technology symposium, I got the
following links from Diane Snedden, an Academic Technology Specialist at
Lake Forest. These are applications based on Thinkmap software (see the
manifesto
As you can see, the software is based on creating maps of connections rather
than linear progressions, and each click on a word re-centers the map to
focus on that word to bring new relationships into view. I humbly submit
that this software, or other products following the same logic, could be at
least mildly revolutionary. Going back to my insurance job, I've spent a
lot of time looking at navigations systems on large websites. (One of my
tasks for a while was to design and write a monthly newsletter about
competitors' online offerings.) As you may have noticed, there is a common
method for organizing large sites that was coming into vogue then: broad
categories of information in a menu across the top of a site, with a more
specific menu running down the left side, generally with submenus appearing
on each page. (My
Connections ---
Dean is starting an
Ad
Afghanistan is a
mess
Salon has a nice piece on
The --- [hibbard], I don't think I saw the UM law school at all, though I might not have known what I was looking at. Oh, well. I'm hoping I get back to visit Ann Arbor some more. [twohy], I'm going to Seattle as Grinnell's delegate to the Phi Beta Kappa triennial meeting. Having never been to the Northwest, I'm excited to do some exploring when I'm not in meetings and such. [blancheb], does NARAL have a specific bone to pick with Gephardt, or is the reaction of the woman in your office more about personality? [schneide] asks what book I'm reading right now. I'm still moving through the Jamison and Johnson books listed below, now along with James Tate's Riven Doggeries (poetry) and, as car reading with Carolyn, the fourth Harry Potter book to gain momentum for the fifth, which we haven't bought yet. Oh, the last car book was Dorothy Sayers's Strong Poison. It's good, though not quite as good as Gaudy Night, in my humble opinion. As I've mentioned before, I'm not generally good at seeing the ends of mysteries in advance, but I had this one in some detail. I'm wondering whether it's like the problem of clichés in Hamlet; the trick of Strong Poison seems routine to me, but the book might have created the routine. Sayers is fun to read anyway. I realized for the first time how much she draws from P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster bits. --- On Self-Governance (I find my two-sentence reply to [caseevan] has grown into a little essay about my search for the meaning of self-governance at Grinnell.) [caseevan], yes, I think [allenton]'s comments make sense. On this next point I speak from real ignorance, as I'm drawing information from only a few schools: is the procedure that [allenton] describes really that different from those that would be in place at a school without self-governance? (Again, that's a sincere question.) Why, when I was in college--think of me saying that with satirical bluster--self-governance meant, for instance, that the judicial and honor systems that punished students for everything from drinking to cheating were student-run. Students voted on the rules, formed the juries, ran the selection process, and so forth. Since self-governance clearly doesn't include those functions here, I have trouble pinning down exactly what it does include. Continuing--so it occurs to me to look at the college website to see what's there on this subject. here is the SGA page. It's not helping me figure this out. In case you haven't clicked over, I'll share that there are three sections: The Concept of Self Governance, Principles of Self Governance, and (in a break from parallel structure--aren't I awful?) These principles of self-governance are supported through. OK. The first section says, "Those engaged in a liberal arts education create a community based on freedom of choice. By making individual choices, students meet the challenges of a rigorous academic and rich out-of-classroom experience. Self-governance encourages students to become responsible, respectful, and accountable members of the campus, town, and global community." That seems harmless enough, but again, what college does not subscribe to these ideas? Substitute, say, "Oberlin" for "Self-governance" and IMHO the statement doesn't miss a beat. But perhaps the next two sections will solve the mystery for me as we get down to details. The second section reads thus: * You are responsible for your community. That is, you work at a variety of levels to build, maintain, and contribute to the campus, local, and global community. * You are accountable for your choices. That is, you take ownership for your actions, opinions, and beliefs. * You are accountable for preventing your actions from infringing or violating others' rights. * You are responsible for speaking and listening to others to reach shared understandings. * You are responsible for addressing situations and communicating concerns about issues that undermine community or individual rights, whether they be your own or others. Again I find no help here: these are all admirable sentiments, but they could all apply to any college that wanted to claim them, regardless of the presence or lack of self-governance. But there's a third section still to come, and it promises exactly what I'm looking for: the specific mechanisms that support self-governance. And here they are: * an administrative structure intentionally designed to challenge and support students to govern themselves * an academic structure encouragin [sic] choice through an open curriculum * a campus community committed to social consciousness and community involvement. Well. The third one strikes me as having nothing to do with self-governance. Again, I'm happy that we emphasize "social consciousness and community involvement," but what have they to do with campus governance? The second one, the open curriculum, is its own can of worms. Our "open curriculum" has a highly qualified openness, but that's not the point here; however open the curriculum might be, its openness is only a matter of self-governance if students are in charge of the creation and enforcement of the terms of the curriculum. I see no evidence of that. So we are left with this: "an administrative structure intentionally designed to challenge and support students to govern themselves." That's circular, of course: self-governance is supported through a structure that encourages self-governance. But what does that mean? What exactly are students governing by themselves? Again, these are not rhetorical questions. I'm sincerely trying to figure this out. I should add that I'm not necessarily pushing for more self-governance; I don't know enough to have an opinion on that issue. I just want to know what we mean by the term. Oh, and why does Grinnell--uniquely, in my limited checking of the matter--omit the hyphen in "self-governance"? So many questions. Monday, June 30th My brother does social justice work at Emory, and he sent me this notice that some Grinnellians might be interested in:
The Highlander Research and Education Center, in New Market, Tennessee, is
looking for a new director. The current director, Suzanne Pharr, has asked
me
to pass along Highlander's job announcement to anyone that might be
interested.
Please tell anyone you know that might be interested. I have complete
information available in my office.
Since 1932 Highlander has promoted grassroots organizing for social and
economic justice. Highlander played a major role in the labor movements of
the
1930s, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and Appalachian
organizing movements of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. Today it has strong
programs focused on youth organizing and working with immigrant rights
groups
in the South. Salary would be between $41,500 and $50,000, depending on
experience. The application deadline is August 15, 2003. Applications will
be
accepted until the position is filled. People of color, women, lgbt, and
bilingual applicants are encouraged to apply. You can find out more about
Highlander at
www.highlandercenter.org
---
Back from Ann Arbor. I hadn't been there before except for a brief trip to
see a football game when I was 12, so this was really my first exposure to
the place. The wedding we attended was lovely, and it was the first one we
attended since our own wedding, so it was interesting to see the process
with veterans' eyes. We got to walk around the neighborhoods near the
university. Dawn Next up: a weekend in Atlanta with my brother and other college friends, then a few weeks doing research in London, then a weekend in Seattle. Whew. ---
This report They also did something more like approval voting, however, asking voters "which candidates they would enthusiastically support." (I know that's a higher standard than simple approval, but it's the same idea.) By that count, Dean still won (86.02%), but Kerry (75.29%) beat out Kucinich (68.25%) for second place. That bodes well for Kerry, I would think. Now, MoveOn plans additional primaries to get down to one candidate with a true majority. They won't be true runoffs, but they will have a similar effect. By the way, Carolyn and I went to the forum in Newton a couple of weeks ago to see Kerry, Edwards, Kucinich, Gephardt, and Sharpton. Kucinich clearly inspired the most enthusiasm from the crowd; he's a wonderful speaker and a real sparkplug. He and Sharpton impressed me more than I expected, though Kucinich seemed more serious and viable a candidate than Sharpton. I had very low expectations for Gephardt, and he managed to be a lot worse than I expected. He's slow and unoriginal and boring, like Al Gore on really bad days. I think and hope he has no chance. I've seen Edwards say impressive things at times, especially about his work as an anti-coporate lawyer, but he seems now to be fixating on one selling point: that his father was a mill worker, which he repeats over and over and then again in case we forgot. I now understand why he seems to be dropping off the map. Kerry did reasonably well when he stuck to his script, but he improvised a couple of withering jabs at Kucinich. That was a dreadful mistake, as all the other candidates refrained from attacking one another, and the crowd was clearly loving Kucinich. Kerry came off as needlessly petty and snobbish. In 15 seconds or so of straying from his prepared remarks, he fell sharply in my estimation.
Oh, and Dean is suddenly being taken very, very seriously because he
preannounced his money figures for this quarter (as covered in this NY Times
article Thursday, June 26th I've been away for a while, partly because I was at Lawrence U for a symposium on teaching with technology in the humanities. Highlights of that trip: * Seeing the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers play Peoria the night before the symposium itself. It's always fun to see a new park, and the Appleton stadium is pretty nice. Wisconsin lost 6-3 and committed six errors, two of them before the second pitch was thrown to Peoria's second hitter--the Peoria leadoff man reached on an error, stole second on the first pitch, and advanced to third on a throwing error. In the bottom half of the inning, Wisconsin's leadoff man also reached on an error. Wild. * Meeting Courtney, whose last name I don't know, a Lawrence student who knew [davisam] and [phan] at the Newberry last year. Courtney was driving one of the vans from the hotel to campus. * Seeing Jerome McGann, the teacher who most directly caused me to declare an English major. He now writes a lot about stuff like this, and he gave the keynote address. Talking to him always helps me think big about what I and we can do with technology in this business. * Looking to the future: I'm hoping to work with some other interested professors to start a workgroup to play with open-source programming for humanities classes. Natalie Gummer, a religious studies professor at Beloit, has gotten a head start on this, and she seems willing to share her work. It could be really exciting. * Meeting [damerowc]'s father, who is an instructional technologist at Beloit and a very nice man. * Seeing Grinnell become the poster child of the symposium as people were wowed by presentations of the Art Image Database, Roger Vetter's new musical instrument database, and Jon Chenette's stuff. I confess even I didn't realize how much great work was already underway at Grinnell. How exciting. ---
Here's Stanley --- Reading list update, after about a month: Still in progress Jamison, Night Falls Fast. I highly recommend this for people struggling to make sense of last term's suicides. Obviously, many questions necessarily remain unanswered, but the book sheds a lot of light in places I hadn't looked before. I'm almost done with it. Sinfield, Cultural Politics--Queer Reading. Finished Melville, Sharp, Feynman, Holes, Scott. Started in the meantime and finished Sue Grafton, A Is for Alibi and B Is for Burglar. These are commuting reading. I was disappointed by the first one and not totally sold on the second one, though it's a lot better than the first. I don't think I'll read any more of the Grafton books. Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang. This, recommended by Carolyn's father, is a lovely book. It's a Nero Wolfe mystery; Wolfe and his sidekick are clearly modeled on Holmes and Watson. This plot revolves around the abuses of the Hoover-era FBI, and it came out while Hoover was still in charge. It's an amazing piece of political fiction and a compelling story. Johnathan Arac, Critical Genealogies. A very specialized book that I read for future work on the introduction to my book. Barbara Garson, Money Makes the World Go Around. Garson tracks the consequences of a basic bank deposit and mutual fund investment. Although it takes a while to get going, the book arrives at some interesting places, and it does provide a useful labor-side introduction to the workings of global capitalism. Now underway David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day. Also car reading. Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism. Great but enormous. Claudia Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. This might be the book that finally points the way to a seminar on Austen; I've never seen quite how to put such a course together. Of course, given my teaching rotation, I won't be able to consider such a thing until 2007 or so. Oh, well. --- [Fagan], thanks for the link. [layeliz1], I haven't read any of the Herriot books in a very long time. I'm sure you're right that I would enjoy them. On the list they go. [iversonl], I think my love for Six Feet Under is less vexed than yours--I certainly think it's a more fully developed show than SportsNight, for instance, though I love that too--but I agree completely that "David's platitude-filled multi-episode conversation with the bashed gay" was awful. What were they thinking? I also agree with your mother that the show works best when it stays in touch with its lighter side. --- Now I'm off to Ann Arbor to see two of my best friends from grad school get married. Magnificent. Thursday, June 12th(b) [patnaikb], please write whatever you want. I have no interest in sharing potentially damaging information from plans with outsiders, even familial ones, and I certainly have no interest in acting as a spy for The Principal or for the financial services industry. As I've mentioned here before, I used to be in that racket, too, so I know the score. Hakuna matata.
Hey, [patnaikb] is working with my sister-in-law! She, Bess, reports that
he's representing Grinnell well at the Principal. :) She also sends me a
link (hmm--a Bess link--a Blink?) to
F
Here's a cool article about
sociable Thursday, June 12th
I haven't tossed out a nutty site in a while. Try
kissthisguy.com
I took a look at the first part of the
Grammar After seeing the boards I got to make my stereo component cart, my parents-in-law gave me an early birthday present (way early--the birthday's in November) that includes a circular saw. I realize that getting excited about power tools reduces me to a sitcom cliché, but I can't help it.
The latest Onion Tuesday, June 10th I've been a travelin' man lately, so I haven't done a Plantry in a while. Highlights from the travels, aside from the usual work on the mercenary article and such:
* Seeing Ben
* Seeing {" http://eddiefromohio.com/">Eddie
* Going to The * Buying boards at The Home Depot, also in West Des Moines, with which to build a cart for stereo components. One problem with my efforts to become handy is that I like unfinished wood so much. It seems a shame to chop it up and stain it and such. This has to be one of the worst sentences (by content, not style) ever in the NY Times, from the summer reading section last week: "This season brings us a batch of cookbooks written in the wake of 9/11, and it isn't the terrorists who've won, it's the intelligent home cook." I mean, really.
Have you ever wondered why some racehorses are geldings? Hey, me too!
here's Thursday, June 5th(b) Another update! (I'm in Grinnell cleaning my office. I need breaks.) The NY Times story (resignation of top editors--it's all over the place) is amazing. I know one newsroom editor and one NY beat reporter. I hope I can find out more about this when everything has calmed down for months or years. It must be very hard for everyone involved. Thanks, [stone], for another reason to love The Daily Show. One problem with our new schedule is that if I go to Iowa City, I'm asleep before the show comes on and on the road before the morning rerun. Yes, I have a VCR. But still--wah.
Any baseball fans following the story of Sosa's corked bat should read
this [hibbard]: Nice--a good reminder that there really are some people who can buy new cars if they feel like it. We should be grateful to them because they supply the market with the sweetest used cars. I've known a few people who have managed to discover such folks and arrange to buy their cars from them every time they weary of the new one. It's a great system if you can swing it. [weimerda]: Sorry to hear of the car trouble, but thanks for the note on western NY. It sounds like you passed north of my hometown, but it's definitely the ballpark. [sarafsau]: Hey, welcome back! Thanks, belatedly, for the Bb tip. I think I had thought about that once last year, but I never got around to figuring out the technique. I'll do it. Thursday, June 5th I wrote a poem! It's in the satirico-comic mode that I prefer when I'm doing other things.
Long Poem By Erik I long for you. That is, I long to feel Your body against My, well, body. When do I long for you? I long for you When you look at me. With your eyes. Words cannot express my longing. --- After I recited that bit of silliness to friends last night in Iowa City, one of them, J.C. Luxton, reminded me of his theory that every poem written in high school ends--explicitly or implicitly--by asking, "Why did you leave me?" That's why my first poetry teacher outlawed love poems, by the logic that nobody under 25 can write love poetry well. The next class section, she retracted that statement and read a couple of things by Keats. But we still weren't allowed to write love poems. ---
Question: is it more disturbing that a new Pew report shows that world
opinion of the U.S. has
plummeted
I'm actually not sure whether you can see
this [schunaca]: Lupin, really? Wow. Thanks. The only similar compliment I can imagine would be a comparison to the substitute teacher on this episode. By the way, I don't know much Latin, but I know enough that I really should have seen a lot of things coming in the third book that I didn't. I did a lot better with Holes in that way. I am normally very stupid about seeing plot details in advance. We're reading Sue Grafton's A Is for Alibi on the car rides now, and I have a provisional theory about whodunit, but it's very likely wrong. Oh, on young adult lit: there's now a call for papers on Pullman for a convention next year. It might be interesting for Pullman fans to see the details. Carolyn and I have a friend from grad school, Giselle Anatol, who has edited an academic book on Harry Potter. [heroldk] and [ivanovl], I find your comments on Underground fascinating, and I am utterly unable to engage them, a decade having elapsed since I read it--or anything by FD, come to think of it. I do know that I read it during my first year at college, which was an amazing time for me because I had read very little literature through high school. I had read mountains of sports books and popular science and mysteries and such, but Mrs. Dalloway, virtually all Russian literature, and a few other things really blew me away. I haven't gone back to a lot of it.
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The war controversy is really different in Britain: see
The Monday, June 2nd I took breaks from research by writing plans today, so a lot of little bits have added up to a crazy long entry. Perhaps my breaks from work can become yours. This was largely a weekend of housework and errands. We're arranging and rearranging a lot of things in the house. My favorite small project is the purging of the cookbooks. I'm sorting through them to give away a bunch (largely ones that were given to me when my parents were purging their own cookbooks) to make more room for other books, including a couple of new cookbooks. The fun part, however, is that I'm well into the process of creating a spreadsheet to index recipes I've used or want to use from the good cookbooks. Soon I'll be able to sort that spreadsheet by, say, "breakfast" or "Indian" and get all the relevant recipes with page references. Yum. Tomorrow's dinner, a ham and white bean soup, will be the first meal that comes out of the spreadsheet system. The only problem with the project is that entering the recipes makes me really hungry. [ivanovl] and [heroldk] can't stand Notes from Underground? I'm surprised! I loved it in my undergrad Russian lit class. Not as much as Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamozov, I guess, but I thought it was keen. In fact, the worst paper I wrote as an undergrad was so because I was so excited about Underground Man that I tossed a section about him into a paper on Brazilian literature. Bad idea. I share your reaction, however, to the Dave Eggers book. I read a long excerpt from it in a London paper, and I enjoyed it. Now I own the book--fifty cents at the library book sale--and I find that I have no desire to read the rest. [harrisle]: Yes, [purcelsj] talked about the drawbacks of the Sharp book. We agreed that it exaggerates and repeats its thesis about party development needlessly. For whatever it's worth, I also think that it misstates the British context in an important way: Sharp posits that the Brits accepted the idea of a loyal opposition, whereas the American "proto-parties" wanted to obliterate each other. In the 1790s, however, there was the same kind of split in British politics, with the real potential for a French-style revolution. Sharp (and many others) say that Americans were looking to France to see how the revolutionary experiment would work out; that's right, of course, but I think the idea understates the extent to which the British government suddenly looked vulnerable and experimental between 1789 and the 1830s. I did think that Sharp's general narrative of the period works well, however, and that his discoveries about the real threat of civil war in 1798-1800 are fascinating. I'm now working through parts of the mammoth Elkins/McKitrick Age of Federalism. Note: I lost some entries here because I didn't maintain my Plan properly. Bad me! Bad me!
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