flaneuse.org

I don’t know what I did, karmically, but the last few days have been a nightmare. Daily. Migraines. I am seriously at the end of my rope with all the ideas and medications and everything. And the throwing up. I HATE puking.

I also hate being this much behind. I’m still here, I promise, and I have been reading blog posts but not able to comment. I can only read for a short time on the computer right now. So I know all of you in my classes are out there and working hard and don’t worry, I’m not missing it. (One thing I am learning for next time is when you have 43 blogs to read each week across two classes, how do you do it all? Suggestions?)

Well, the altercation with the local police was because they were pulling *everyone* over that morning to check for expired registration. My registration was fine, my civil liberties are not. It’s against the law to pull *everyone* over unless there’s a threat of imminent danger (as in drunk driving) or you’re at a border (and possibly an airport, under the Patriot Act). Otherwise, you have to have a reason to pull over a specific person. Just check out the written text of Delaware v. Prouse if you want to know more. But needless to say, when I pointed out to the kind officer that this was against the law, he first accused me of not being able to read the sign (which I didn’t take well, as you can imagine) and then gave me the choice of leaving or spending some time with him in some sort of institutional setting. I left, but was pissed about it for the rest of the day….

Seemingly strangely upset, actually. I meana, things like that bother me, but I felt oddly intense. Within a couple of hours, I had thrown up twice and barely managed to get myself home before a long, drawn-out nasty migraine. Aftershocks of smaller migraines throughout the weekend. Argh.

On a high note, though, Chris and I still managed to see Zodiac (very good), an exhibit of Jeff Wall’s work at MOMA, Sardi’s, and the end of the Freaks and Geeks DVD set (google it if you don’t know about Freaks and Geeks. Excellent, excellent television). Willa and I got a nice hike in with Livia and Bella and got plenty muddy and happy and tired out. Oh, and I got hooked on Diner Dash.

And I’ve decided to start trying to keep track of what I read, on a weekly basis. I’m curious how many books I consume (it seems like consuming, sometimes). This week:
Death of Innocents (almost all), Helen Prejean
Buffalo Soldier, Chris Bohjalian
Julie and Julia, (second time on this one) Julie Powell
Half of Jane Tompkins’ book about teaching

What’s on the plate for next week? Hmmmm. Only time will tell.

When you get stopped at a roadblock in your town, and you get into an argument with the cop about the purpose and legality of said roadblock…

Hello? Civil liberties? I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get to go to jail this morning instead of coming here to teach, but I have to say I worry more and more about the direction the courts are going in terms of protecting our rights. More on this later, I promise.

I’m no better than my students. Here it is, a couple of hours before class, and here I am, blogging the posts my students assigned (they’re leading paired discussions in Basic Skills, and assigning blog posts to go with them):

OK, the first presentation had to do with if I think there are hidden or deeper messages in fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood or Beauty and the Beast. Kenny and Taryn presented alternate versions of each, which had to do with darker intensities — like what if the wolf was just a hairy man and he had sex with Red? Or what if Beast left Beauty because it was so important to her that he turn back into the handsome prince? Well, the sex one makes me cringe a bit because this is a story we think of as pure and innocent, a girl finding her way through a dark forest and yet I have to be aware that one of the dangers that lurks for a girl wandering alone is possible rape. Red is fragile, a potential victim, and for some reason the story appeals because of that. So yes, I must admit that there are underlying meanings to any of these stories — Cinderella will be saved not through her own abilities but the intervention of a fairy godmother, Belle has every right to want the outside of the Beast to match the wonderful person he is, and in Peter Pan, Wendy is the responsible one. Interesting, indeed.

The other group presented on the phenomenon of American Idol, wondering what is behind the overwhelming popularity and the strangely inept voting system. I really don’t know, but given that I know waaaaaay more about Antonella than I ever wanted to, this show is a machine that just keeps on working. Do I think it’s about looks? Of course. Should the voting system be changed to voting someone off the island? Hell yes. Vote them all off, actually. Short of the auditions, which are supposed to be painful, the whole thing is much bigger than it deserves to be and twice as shudderingly bad. Fox has preempted a whole week of television (along with it, House and my love Hugh Laurie) and I could give three turds in a box about the winner of the contest. That being said, I also know that Chris Daughtry and many others who don’t actually win go on to do quite well. But did it have to take over everything? And can’t you find another woman besides Paula Abdul to be on the panel? She’s really too silly for words.

I’m writing, I’m writing. Dammit. The house is a mess (No, really. I think the pile of laundry is so big that it’s going to show up on Google Maps pretty soon). This is the time of the year, the March through May stretch, where both endurance and short spurts of energy come in handy. Now if I can only remember this counts well past May into that first day of my fifth year, when I submit my tenure app…..

There is so much I want to do — and not only not enough time in the day, but no possibility of doing it all. Someday I want to write a novel, stage a gallery show of my photography, go to cooking school in Tuscany, travel and write through Afghanistan, Iran, and the Middle East (yeah, I know. Odd choice).

But those aren’t the things I’m worrying about. The last couple of days have been laced with conversations about tenure — getting it, having the right kind of publications more than just publishing, having the freedom to do what I want. At our school, we go up on the first day of our fifth year, and this is the second term of my second year. I should feel like I have all the time in the world to build a publication history, and yet I worry about how long things take to work through the pipeline and if I have too many book chapters as opposed to peer-reviewed journal articles. These seem like crazy things to worry about — tenure is about more than doing your job well, I think it’s about going above and beyond your job to make a name for yourself in the wider academic world. Can everybody do this? Is it realistic to expect them to?

My school is no worse than many others, and is probably much fairer — given our focus on teaching as well as research, and the supports of my colleagues in my department. I have no grudge to grind in particular — just a struggle with making sense of the larger question of tenure in light of the day to day activities of my life. How do you do it all, keeping your eye on the ball in the daily game and your mind on the prize at the end of a years-long race?

I stupidly thought that when I graduated, life would get easier when what it got was different, and more complicated. But it’s the life I have, and the one I love, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything — but I also wouldn’t mind understanding it better.

Make sense? I wonder.

I asked my graduate students to post a response to this question the week before Spring Break, and I realize that this is one that I need to answer myself. My own conceptions about reading and readers have a lot to do with what I do and how I do it, whether I realize it or not.

I am an avid reader. Actually, avid doesn’t cut it. Reading, more than cooking or hiking or even photography (or other things I will not mention here), is what I love to do. I do it as an escape, for when there’s things I should be doing or facing. Right now, as I blog and intermittently grade 30 papers, there’s two books at my feet on the floor that are all but calling to me: ‘Tis, by Frank McCourt and Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell (I will not get distracted into talking about plots and high points, I swear I won’t…)

Anyway. I read like I breathe. I do it when drying my hair (seriously) and sometimes when I am cooking, which has disastrous results. I would rather read than watch tv, but I have had to cut down on screen and page time with my migraines and so now I know much more about pop culture than I used to. I can read a book in a night, and I read just about everything. This weekend, I read John Grisham’s latest, which was a nonfiction book about a wrongly convicted man, and quite good. I have read all of the Harry Potter books several times, and War and Peace. I have started loving graphic novels, but I also really like philosophical fiction like that of Richard Powell. My favorite book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I know I have read it more than 100 times. And with the advent of the internet, I really do read constantly and about everything. A true nerd’s paradise, I must say.

So I am someone who loves reading, but who has taught middle schoolers and struggling readers and I can understand why someone might not like it. But I never give up hope that I can find that one book that will change a person’s mind and make him or her love reading, just as I do.

Well, I am back. The cranes were amazing and I took lots and lots of pictures that I am waiting to develop (ten rolls of film x a crapload to get developed = more $$ than I currently have). I fell in love, all over again, with Taos and Northern New Mexico — and decided someday I want to end up out there. The light is just totally different, and the wide-open spaces with few and far between made me feel new all over again. One night I wrote in my journal that “My soul expands to fit the sky” and I meant it. I don’t think I am destined for more compressed spaces here on the populated East Coast. Not forever.

On a shopping note (and why I am completely broke), I finally got some more dress clothes for colder weather after two seams disintegrated in my favorite pair of wool pants… and a great western belt that the amazing man who owned the shop *custom* fit to me. Seriously. Now I have holes on either side of the one I currently use, which is a good thing for a girl with serious weight fluctuations. I read much more than I had any right to, given the amount of work I should be doing, and last night we celebrated St. Patty’s Day in high style. All good, so to speak.

And my best friend Joe is getting married in June!!!! All things seem possible, in these cold days right before spring comes….

So I leave on another trip, at the very crack of dawn Friday to head west for a long weekend. It’s Spring Break next week at the college and I am taking advantage of a slight lull (self imposed, really. Even without classes I have enough work to keep a six handed monkey pretty entertained). Am meeting up with my parents and aunt (and my parents’ Schnauzer puppy Huck) to head south into New Mexico to see the cranes.

To do what? You may well ask. I am not a birdwatcher, although my father raised me to keep a keen ear and eye out for wildlife. While living in NYC, I’ve even seen hawks, eagles, and once a very big, very live turkey in Harlem. I kid you not. But I’ve never gone to anything like this — the migration of sandhill cranes through the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to it — seeing the birds, heading home to wide open skies and prairie winter.

Whether you agree with Keith Olbermann or not, this is a diatribe of the first order. I don’t think he even takes a breath through this rather long clip, and the phrase about “Google It” is classic. Wordsmithing, my friends, this is wordsmithing and broadcast writing at the top of the game and you have to admire a man who can deliver a vituperative (whether earned or not) speech like that one …