Little Boxes on the Hillside

One of the things I like about me is my finely tuned sense of wonder. I try to remember the usually small simple things that make me wide-eyed, turn them over in my head frequently enough to stave off the doldrums of normal life. For example, the pods, carpeting my backyard, that fall from the sky and crack open to reveal pecans. Wonder! Suspension and drawbridges, both of which I get to see regularly - wonder! Broadcast TV and terrestrial radio - total wonder (sometimes you don't know where the wonders are til you have to explain to your kid how something works). I've ben reading about gravity in my "spare time" lately - WONDER.

Occasionally, one has to know how to preserve/protect a sense of wonder. You don't want to know how everything works, where's the magic in that? Which brings me to one of my favorite seasonal wonders - spreadsheets. I'm not one of the liberal arts types who knows nothing about math or science or computers; I'm good at math, I love trigonometry, I do leisure reading on gravity, and I know how to use a computer in an above-average way. But I don't have a clue about Excel. Not that its hard, I doubt it is. But for years, Mr. V has created my final grade spreadsheets for me and I never watch or try to do it myself. I just what and then - voila! Wonder. I put in the numbers and they calculate themselves up. It pleases me so much that I refuse to use the Blackboard et al grading function; I like my wonder-filled spreadsheets.

Which brings me to my actual point, which has nothing to do with wonder. I watch a lot of TV/movies when I am data-entering my spreadsheets. This week I've been re-watching old seasons of Weeds via my Netflix watch instantly queue, which is finally Mac friendly. The thing I like about that show is that despite the pot-culture and the life-of-crime satire and the snark about suburbs, the show is really about being a working mom. Nearly every episode is about or partially about balancing the demands of work and kids. And while Nancy Botwin is probably not an especially fantastic mom, the show never ask you to indulge in judging her parenting. Instead, I think it pretty explicitly asks you to sympathize with the impossibility of balancing a career and kid-raising, and to cheer on Nancy when she manages to squeeze in a minute to awkwardly encourage her son not to flush his jerk-off socks down the toilet. And I do sympathize with her. And working mom as drug dealer seems the perfect metaphor for a show about working moms (I know it doesn't have to be metaphor; I know there are plenty of moms who are drug dealers) - yea, I'm going to teach, not to sell weed, and I have an office not a grow house. But when I can't come to a special event at school or I can't be there to get my kid when the place dismisses early or when I can't play with her in the morning because I ned to finish prepping, I *feel* like I'm dealing in contraband. And when Nancy clearly enjoys her illegal drug-dealing job, even though she thinks she's not supposed to, well, that resonates with how I imagine a lot of working moms feel during especially successful or hectic weeks. The metaphorical illegality/danger of being a working mom.

So anyway. That's what I was thinking about last night.

Please, think of the children

Most of you probably know about Scarleteen, the absolutely fabulous online sex education site for young people. I've recommended it to my teenage niece, I plan on giving PK the link in a couple of years, and I can't too highly recommend doing the same for any adult who wants to be a cool aunt or a supportive uncle or a responsible parent and give their kid a source for healthy, feminist, LGBT-friendly sex and relationship education. With all the cultural anxiety about kids, sex and the internet--pedophiles, porn, sexting--I like being able to tell the young people in my life that the internet can also be a healthy medium for sex education and exploration, and to be able to give them a specific link that'll help them learn how to tell the difference.

All of which is to say, please, please, if you care about young people, consider supporting Scarleteen's fundraising goal. The site is trying to expand its reach with a dedicated interface for browsing by cell phone (which all the kids are doing these days), building a Find A (non-judgmental) Doctor database, giving wee stipends to their volunteers (mostly young people), and increasing their coverage of resources for readers around the world. They've just added a "text your question" feature, too.

Until Thursday, they have a special giveaway for folks who donate $75 or more (see the sidebar on this page, below the "support-o-meter")--and as I write this, they have had ZERO* $75 donations. Which means (1) if you can swing it, you're almost guaranteed to get one of the giveaways; and (2) that Scarleteen is not supported by big, deep-pocket donors. This is really a cause where every little bit--$5, $10--helps provide a really fabulous resource to young people everywhere. There are directions at the bottom of the linked page for ensuring your donation is tax-deductible, too.

*You will gather from my saying that that I have not yet myself made a donation. This is true. I plan to do so as soon as we get paid on Friday, though--which means I won't be in the running for the freebies. So I really hope some of you go and grab them.

Taddy the Conqueroo

The first time I ran away from home was in 1966.

My best friend, Dee, and I hitchhiked to Green Bay and caught the train to Chicago to see Muddy Waters at the Arie Crown Theatre.

Now, we didn't run away because we had a terrible home life or because of adolescent existential anxiety or because we were cruelly exploited or some shit like that.

We wanted to see the Blues Show in Chicago. We knew our parents would never permit it. So, we decided to skip all the whining and wailing and gnashing of teeth and just go. The way we looked at it, we were actually being quite considerate.

Also, the very idea of asking for permission offended our emerging sense of manhood. Men came and went as they pleased. If our coming and going displeased others, well, the best thing to do was avoid them and their unpleasantness.

We knew there would be hell to pay on our return but that would be, you know, later. On the seventh hour of the seventh day or something like that. And later, when you're 16, is almost the same as never.

So, off we went.

We had a ball.

That Blues show changed my life, it really did. I caught the Blues and never got over them.

I got hold of a sensibility that, for the first time in my life, was entirely outside of my home and my family and school and church and everything that had been familiar and safe and routine.

Like any 16 year old kid, I had a formless wish for adventure. After seeing Muddy, I felt like that desire had a shape and a flavor and a weight. I didn't just have a longing to do something, I had an appetite for it.

Not a gluttonous appetite. A healthy appetite. It was still grounded in the virtues I'd been brought up on; modesty, cooperation, work, respect. Its just that it seemed to me those virtues could also be expressed as confidence, assertiveness, pride, achievement, leadership.

All this I explained to my Dad. Much to my surprise, he did not whup me to within an inch. He listened to me, thoughtfully. When I recall the incident now, I think he was seeing me, maybe for the first time, as a man.

Well, not a man, entirely, but an incipient man. A potential man.

He did jab me in the chest over and over and over while making some point about the difference between being a man and being a mannish boy. I don't remember what it was he said exactly but I do remember that finger hammering my chest like a pneumatic jack.

The only thing that really pissed him off about the whole affair was the worry and dread I had caused my Mom. He gave me hell for that and made me feel pretty small. He told me I needed to apologize to my mother and do whatever was needed to do to make it up to her. And he never said another word about it.

A little over a year later, I was in the USN and on my way to Vietnam. My parents' worries for me were orders of magnitude over what they had ever been before. When I came home on my first furlough, my Pop treated me like a full grown man, respecting me as an equal and even showing me a certain deference.

Funny thing was, I just wanted to be his little boy for a while.

But that's the Blues for you. You got to pay the cost to be the boss.

"The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high"

If y'all haven't yet seen Scott McLemee's review of Cornel West's latest book, you really should treat yourself. As the critic in Ratatouille says, reviews like this are "fun to write and to read." And yet I ignored the first few mentions I saw of it because, like McLemee,

I would much prefer to think that all of this is a matter of his life being in turmoil throughout this decadei [academic envy and/or anti-pop culture snobbery] , rather than Larry Summers being right about anything.

But that's probably just because, again quoting McLemee, I myself have harbored fantasies of "popping a cap in a fellow faculty member’s ass."

In any case, you should pour yourself another cup of coffee and read the thing.

(early) December state of mind

Things that I cannot say to the intended audiences but that need to be said to someone in some way:

Students:
- Do not come to my office to discuss your absences at this point. Do not. I am not, in fact, surprised that you have 10 absences. Do you know why? Because I don't have 10 absences. When you ask me if there is a way for you to "make up" the absences, I hate you.
- The first time you turned in your assignment in one of those plastic sleeves with the slide off spine that I used for my 6th grade report on Neptune I thought it was endearing. Now, at the 4th time, I am just annoyed. That thing does not work like a staple.
- MLA-style citations are just about the easiest thing in the universe to not fuck up, and when you keep fucking them up, I hate you.

Really important guy coming to give a talk at school this Friday at 8:
- Seriously, guy? The last day of class, a Friday, at 8pm?

Mom:
- Please stop sending me personalized musical e-cards.

CAT:
- I only can't say this to you because you do not speak English, but want you to know that the flea bites I am suffering fucking suck.

Dude in the office next to me:
- I can hear your farts. All day.

Daughter:
- When I leave your room at night and you tell me to come back and check on you, and I say I will, and you say "if I'm sleeping, do you promise to wake me so I know?" and then I say yes, I am lying. But damn if it isn't one of the most amazing things anyone ever says to me.

Headquarters in his Hindquarters

I sacrificed to make you happy
Left nothin for myself
Now you want to leave me
For the love of someone else
-Marvin Gaye, Baby Don't You Do It

There's a story, probably apocryphal, if that means what I think it means, of a communique from President Lincoln to General Joseph Hooker, Commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Word had reached the President, so the story goes, that General Hooker had been talking smack about how the country needed a military dictatorship to put it to rights. The implication, of course, was that Fightin Joe, was the man for the job of dictator.

Lincoln sent a cable to the General reminding him that military dictators only ascended to supreme state power in the wake of military success. Bring me a victory, said the President, and I'll risk the dictatorship. Or words to that effect. Like I said, its only a story but that's the way I heard it.

Tonight President Obama speaks to the nation from the U.S. Army Academy. First reports from the barking media are that the President will announce the dispatch of some thousands of U.S. troops to Afghanistan for the defense of the Karzai regime.

I console myself with the knowledge that, just as they've gotten everything else wrong, the media have gotten this wrong. I tell myself that its just as likely the President will announce plans for the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops under the slogan, Afghanistan for the Afghanistanians!

It could happen.

Probably not, though.

Now, I don't know if the Generals have buffaloed the President into this strategy of reinforcing failure but it sure looks that way. The righties have been hounding the President to give in to the Generals for months but they can hardly be taken seriously.

I mean, the GOOP abandoned genuine debate of public policy of all types some years ago. And the chickenhawk right is totally enamored of the military episcopacy; the uniforms, the shiny weapons, the rod and the staff, the imagined simplicity of the centurion who tells this one to go and he goeth and who tells this one to come and he cometh. Why the President feels any need to appease their opinion is beyond me.

Maybe he feels the need to appease the opinion of the Generals. They've already subverted his leadership with the disgraceful leaking of McChrystal's memorandum. Perhaps the President thinks they are a real threat to his authority.

This opinion is also inexplicable to me. American generals and admirals have proven themselves to be almost no threat to anyone except the American taxpayer. My God, since 1945, have American flag officers accomplished the military defeat of a single enemy of the United States? Anyone? Hello?

We've been chasing conscript farm boys around Afghanistan for eight years without effect. We've been chasing gangsters and religious militias around Iraq for almost as long and with similar results. We've lavished trillions on weapons that proved utterly useless in defending the country from attack on September 11. American flag officers couldn't detect an enemy of the United States if it camped out in their driveway.

So, President Obama, don't worry about the American generals. Whatever they're reccommending, I'm pretty sure its wrong. We got your back, Mr President.

Stop Look Listen

Comment moderation will be turned on for a brief period to ward off attacks.

The last couple days, BitchPhD has been vandalized by faceless and cowardly scumbags posting shit about the bloggers. Wading through this excrement is not only distasteful for the bloggers, its disrespectful of our readers.

Nobody has the time to monitor comments round the clock and the vandals, apparently, have nothing better to do so, we're going to moderate comments for awhile.

Reader's comments will be posted but the posting will not be immediate.

We will return to our usual comment procedure as quickly as possible.

Hacking the Holiday, Academic Edition

Like many of my academic cohort, I can be quite bad at managing my work. To the tun of being bad at quarantining work-free times/paces for myself. As is often noted, 'tis the nature of the academic job. Which is why I feel pleased to report that I have just had my first ever (well, since being in grad school) work-free (almost), completely enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. Possibly too enjoyable, as I am now experiencing vacation inertia like never before. I have been thinking today about why the holiday worked this way for me this year, and I think these are the steps I will repeat to keep the productivity demons in check.

1. Be home This is counter-intuitive to me on its surface because I tend to think that being away alleviates the temptation to Get Shit Done. But I also think the phenomena of travel fatigue and being out of one's space are the kind of thing that negate 50% of the relaxation of being away over a major holiday. For me, the deal with being at home and wanting to work is like the deal I've figured out with cutting back on cigs: If I don't have any in my possession, I obsess over them constantly, eventually buy a pack and jump back in with both feet. But if I keep a pack on hand and, every time I have an urge to smoke, tell myself to wait 10 minutes, I rarely ending up smoking the cigarette. Knowing I can smoke if I "need" to makes the process tolerable. Similarly, being away from my work or opportunities to work leaves me obsessing over it. A lot. At home, I can tell myself, 'well, you can always wake up an hour early tomorrow morning and take care of that if you need to." And then I don't.

2. Have a guest I'll be honest, the managing work obsession at home thing is way easier with a guest around. A guest forces you out of the routine and asks you to think about leisure as one of the day's goals, which is good for someone like me.

3. A low maintenance guest But obviously one's mother-in-law is probably not ideal for this. There are 3 or 4 people in my life who are the kind of guests that allow me to basically live a slightly more fun version of my everyday life: I don't have to clean or plan actual outings. I can sit on my computer and piss around for hours of their visits because they will do the same. They like my kid enough that they will play with her without me around. They like to watch movies we have all seen 100 times. This is the kind of guest you want for Thanksgiving.

4. Syllabus Design I suppose these points should be obvious, but it took me until this year to figure them out. Firstly, DO NOT teach anything new in the first 2 days of classes after Thanksgiving. If possible, teach the same text in multiple classes. Also: until this year I have always had a Major Thing due right before Thanksgiving, usually a paper of some sort. Bad idea, for obvious reasons. Seems like a good idea to build in the extra time for grading, but then it hangs over your head the whole time. My new approach involves realizing that the 2 weeks after Thanksgiving will suck regardless so there's no real benefit in redistributing one grading task to the holiday and thereby dragging it down too. But I didn't have nothing due; in 2 (of my 3) classes I had minor assignments due - an outline for the final paper and a bibliography of proposed sources. These were easily graded in less than 2 hours and are the thing that I would've done in front of the TV on a normal week. Having hem over the break and grading them over coffee and corn muffins on Friday morning made me feel like I was staying connected and accomplishing with extremely minimal effort. Which is an important game for me to play with myself.

5. Cook This won't work for everyone, but cooking at Thanksgiving (or any holiday) is huge for me. Cooking lets me take the productivity urges and see them fulfilled in a delicious way. When I can produce, by mid-afternoon, muffins, pies, spiced pecans, and bread - and all that on the day BEFORE Thanksgiving - I feel sort of All Powerful.

6. Live somewhere amazing such that it is 70 degrees on Thanksgiving and you can harvest pecans from your backyard. This cannot be sneezed at.

7. Don't try to be an at-home mom if you're not. In the past, I have felt obligated to use my holiday time the way many working parents do: spending quality time with kids who are in childcare. It's a lovely idea and is often restorative. But it also can be fucking boring and irritating. I am not used to spending all day for 5 consecutive days with a 4 yr old. I do not know what magic they work at school to keep her attention focused on something for more than 30 seconds, but I cannot conjure it. I do not find 4 yr old games relaxing. I do not want the monkey and the fairy to have to meet each other for the first time EVERY TIME we sit down to play with them. I am ready for them to move on to the next stage in their relationship. Also, I do not like to chase things or people. I have imagined myself as the kind of mom who spends holidays involving her kid in all the cooking and crafting centerpieces and name cards with her while the turkey cooked and creating all sorts of Heartwarming Memories. And while we created a homegrown memory or two (did I mention the pecans?), I also decided to go real lax with the movie watching and the computer playing and 'sure, get up from the table whenever you want' permission granting. And holy shit, did that decision make everyone sooooo much more relaxed. Thanksgiving is such an adult holiday; kids, at least preschool aged kids, don't really do cooking and sloth and gluttony. So increased screen-time seems a fair trade off. I mean, hell, Thanksgiving isn't good for anyone, really.

8. Don't be on the market. Snark, but true snark. Even with all of these thins enacted last year, I couldn't have really enjoyed the holiday because of the market. Knowing that the coming 2 weeks will potentially end your hopes for any of the applications you saved over, and, if so, will guarantee that you spend Jan-March repeating the labor of the last 2 months, that destroys any amount of carefully planned relaxation. So, for my peeps on the market, know I poured one out for all of y'all during the weekend