The academic unit I work for wants to abandon the one subdisciplinary area that attracts the most majors. We also want to increase the number of majors by more than 200%. What is wrong with this picture??
In other news - we went shopping, B and I. I don't always love clothes-shopping; in fact, most times I hate it. But today! He bought some interim pants (they'll probably fit for a week or two, a week or two from now) and I bought more than I've ever bought in a single trip - a regular back-to-school spree! The sales clerks were friendly and helpful - and oh retailers, listen up: that really makes a difference. I wouldn't have bought half as much without them finding matches and sizes and accessories for me. They were really fun.
Tomorrow - St. Paul Saints baseball. And I have to finish this damned syllabus project. But I don't have to physically go to work - so that's a plus. If I lack blog subjects (syllabi being not-that-interesting), I'll tell you all about Thing Theory.
After we left the horror that was the Albertville "outlet" mall, we stopped at Maple Grove on the way back, looking for a particular store. Past the usual agglomeration of freestanding chain stores appeared a new mall made to simulate a downtown: parking broken up into clumps, sometimes even angled along the sides of buildings; generous sidewalks; facades broken into "human-scale" rhythms evoking an olde tyme downtown shopping district; antiquey lamposts and flower baskets and benches. Even the municipal offices. A sort of a street grid fashioned out of parking aisles.
Is this the best we can do for New Urbanism? It seems to have the style but not the substance. Is this so much better than the conventional suburban enclosed mall that we should consider it a victory for enlightened design? I hope the rhetorical style of my questions indicates that I find this particular manifestation to be highly problematical.
Here's a way to make a lot of money: buy some land out in the hinterlands. Get the zoning and permits for retail. Build an "outlet" mall and charge your tenants huge sums to sell the same ol' stuff they sell at their regular stores, for the same prices.
People will come. They will hear "outlet" mall and think "great prices." They will drive and buy, without quite knowing what and why they are buying. They will think they are getting great deals because it's an "outlet mall" and they will feel disappointed if they don't get at least something for their travels. They will stop and have a snack or coffee at the overpriced chain coffeebar and it will remind them (but just a little) of their favorite coffee shop in the Cities.
Where is this place? Why, Albertville, MN, of course. The name should've tipped us off. Albert, France, has the worst karma of anyplace I've ever been on this planet. (If you don't trust me, read Stephen O'Shea's book on the Western Front):
You roll into town around noontime. All the shops and restaurants are just closing. (Why would restaurants be open for lunch?!) You go to the WWI museum, which is a hugely interesting but complicated walk through tunnels that were used for supply and advance/retreat during the war. You do not have enough time to understand and enjoy the exhibits, and this ticks you off. You emerge from the tunnels at some distance from the village. You hurry back to the bus. When you arrive, few people have returned, so you seek sustenance in the village.
Your tour director, who is also your professor, follows you down the street, yelling at you to get back on the bus. You ignore him while muttering uncomplimentary remarks about him to your friend, and not troubling to keep your voice down.
Your professor confronts you in the boulangerie. You tell him you will only be a minute. It takes the owner several minutes to make your sandwiches. Your prof is really steamed. You contemplate having a meltdown in the store: everyone else has been late all week - why should it matter now?
You stalk back to the bus (with sandwiches!) with your professor ranting behind you.
Later, you apologize, and he is very gracious about it.
See? Albert - home of the original bad vibe. Albertville - home of another American ripoff.
Tomorrow: faux new urbanism in Maple Grove.
That passage by Thoreau that I quoted in the previous entry reminded me of my favorite assignment ever, in which I analyzed the style of the passage by Thoreau compared with the style of a passage expressing a similar sentiment, by Ed Abbey in Desert Solitaire.
Here's the passage by Abbey. I think it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
"Light. Space. Light and space without time, I think, for this is a country with only the slightest traces of human history. In the doctrine of the geologists with their scheme of ages, eons and epochs all is flux, as Heraclitus taught, but from the mortally human point of view the landscape of the Colorado is like a section of eternity – timeless. In all my years in the canyon country I have yet to see a rock fall, of its own volition, so to speak, aside from floods. To convince myself of the reality of change and therefore time I will sometimes push a stone over the edge of a cliff and watch it descend and wait – lighting my pipe – for the report of its impact and disintegration to return. Doing my bit to help, of course, aiding natural processes and verifying the hypotheses of geological morphology. But am not entirely convinced.
"Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear – the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break. Turning Plato and Hegel on their heads I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
"Under the desert sun, in that dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.
"The sun is touching the fretted tablelands on the west. It seems to bulge a little, to expand for a moment, and then it drops – abruptly – over the edge. I listen for a long time."
Reading these two books and writing about them was hugely formative for me. It opened up a sense of possibilities for the kind of work I could do in my life - this kind of writing, this kind of understanding. I am sorry to say that in the press to complete my doctorate I haven't felt the same intellectual spark, and I wonder if that means I should slow down a little, focus more on content and less on "getting it all done," more on enjoyment and less on the outward and visible symbols (courses taken, grades earned, papers published) of the academic rat race. Just a thought as I try to decide what courses to take....
Some days it is really hard to self-generate happiness. You know, like all that pop psychology that says you are responsible for your emotions; "only you can make you feel sad, angry, happy," etc.
Example: I have been procrastinating all week on asking the grad secretary in our department for a list of fall TAs for a mailing I had to do, for fear B. wouldn't be on said list. (One of the side effects of Minnesota Nice is that people avoid telling you bad news, so you march on in a state of happy delusion only to find out that every around you has known forever what you are just learning.)
But today I could delay no longer. B. wasn't on the list. I got to come home and break the news - "honey, you have no job and no tuition for fall; the one thing about this place - teaching - that makes you happiest is not available to you. Have fun sitting at home for the next four months."
Really, I think I was more bummed out than he. So off I went to the faculty meeting for the program I teach in, and when I came home he made some offhanded reference to required TA trainings, which I didn't really "get." Well, hellooo: while I was gone he got the email with the offer to TA this fall. Now why the secretary did not know this at 12 noon, but learned it between 4 and 5 this afternoon, I'll never quite understand. So he did a happy dance, and I did a happy dance and our collective mood went from depressed, "this place SUCKS," to woo-hoo, we're back in the game! Our state of mind should NOT be so dependent on others. But it's livelihood, it's self-validation, it's planning for the future - so yeah, other people run our emotions.
Happy Anniversary to B. and me! 13 fun-filled years! (I'm embarrassed to say that when he tentatively whispered "happy anniversary" to me this morning (he's calendrically challenged) I thought (and have been thinking) that our anniversary was the 26th instead.)
Here's the dopey way I worked it out. My parents' anniversary is September 6th (I've had to remember that date many more years than that of my own wedding). My sister's is the next day. She was married two weeks after we were (a source of some family aggravation, but, bygones), hence our anniversary is two weeks before September 7. Since that's two Tuesdays from now, our anniversary must be today. QED.
In other news: I got a lot done at work, and caught up on the Sunday papers at home, and the ginger-colored cat reappeared this evening after being gone since last night. Sigh of relief. One hates to misplace a cat while cat-sitting.
The U of M cops called this morning. They want me to find the plastic key for my car. Reading between the lines: if I have my own plastic key, then the crackhead asshole car thieves (CACTs) didn't use mine, hence they had intent to steal a car if they entered mine with a non-mine plastic key. If only I could find it. I looked for about an hour after lunch - no dice. I am going to let my unconscious brain work on this hunt overnight, and see what develops. It's all in there - the secrets of the universe, the memories of everything - it's just a question of access.
We DID have another scenic adventure yesterday - we drove up to Taylors Falls, on the St. Croix River. There WERE falls there, for thousands of years, erased in 1906 with the construction of a hydroelectric dam. But the huge chunks of basalt worn by the ancient St. Croix are all still visible, and there's a lovely gorge through which one can take a quaint paddleboat ride. One cool feature is "potholes," amphora-shaped lacunae that were formed when pebbles spun by the current wore down the bedrock. Thoreau speaks of similar potholes on a river in NH in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Amoskeag, perhaps? No, that's not spelled right.
Yes, Amoskeag, and here's the passage. Thoreau's not much of a stylist, but I have always liked what he says here:
"At Amoskeag the river is divided into many separate torrents and trickling rills by the rocks, and its volume is so much reduced by the drain of the canals that it does not fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a rocky island which the river washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first observed them, they are from one foot to four or five in diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and regular, with smooth and gracefully curved brims, like goblets. Their origin is apparent to the most careless observer. A stone which the current has washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released by some revolution of nature. There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of which have rested from their labor only since the spring, and some higher up which have lain still and dry for ages, --we notice some here at least sixteen feet above the present level of the water, -- while others are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season.... That which commenced a rock when time was young, shall conclude a pebble in the unequal contest. With such expense of time and natural forces are our very paving-stones produced. They teach us lessons, these dumb workers; verily there are “sermons in stones, and books in the running streams".... These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil."
Confession: I took such a pebble from the gorge, and now it's part of my collection of rocks purloined from various state and national parks. I have white sand from White Sands National Monument; red granite from Acadia National Park; and now a pothole-maker from Interstate State Park on the St. Croix. (And a marble chip from the tomb of George Peabody in Salem, MA, but don't tell - I should NOT even have picked it off the ground!)
Oh, and we had dinner at a not-to-be-believed fabulous restaurant in Taylors Falls called something like Eclectic Blue. My food fetishism continues. It's a good thing I was sitting down when the bill came: only $51!!!! - as B. eats mainly soups.
Today: back to dull (and possibly dead-wrong) statistics about geography students. Sigh. It would be nice to think that in two weeks I'll be on to something else, but I am quite sure that these summer assignments will persist into the fall. "No one else has your qualifications," etc. I fall for that shit every time.
We've wanted to visit southeastern MN for quite a while, and finally got a start in that direction yesterday. We drove along the Mississippi River southward to Red Wing, and then along the scenic drive around Lake Pepin. What readers "from here" know (but I did not) is that Lake Pepin is not actually a lake but a widening of the river into lake-like proportions. It is several miles wide and twenty-something miles long. But readers might not know how it was formed: when the Chippewa River, which runs at a steeper gradient than the Mississippi, joins the latter, the Mississippi doesn't have enough velocity to carry all the sediment from the Chippewa southward. These particles fall out of suspension and have formed a huge sandbar that has essentially dammed the Mississippi.
I do like knowing these bits of natural history.
Yesterday was a gorgeous day, like September: cool in the shade, warm in the sun, crisp and dry. Lake Pepin was beautiful - slight riffs in the water, lots of sailboats, ringed by wooded bluffs that look sort of like the mountains at Acadia National Park in Maine (containing North America's only fjord). Those who call Lake Pepin Minnesota's answer to Lake Lucerne are perhaps going a little too far but it's a beautiful area and well worth the drive. We took our time, stopped for lunch and shopping and postcard-writing, read lots of historical plaques, and it took us eight hours - a pleasant day trip that could be extended or shortened depending on the travellers' inclinations.
Today is beautiful and warmer. We might try another (shorter) trip. It seems a shame not to enjoy this flourish of gorgeous summer days.
Hmm. Started an blog entry last night about cycling but it was really lame so I exited before saving. Biking does feel edgy, though. You are paying attention not only for yourself, but for all the people in vehicles or on their own two feet who aren't paying any attention to you. I could make a list (people opening driver doors without looking; people pulling out of parking spaces without looking; people swerving around other people queued up to turn left (without looking, natch); pedestrians crossing the street against the light without looking).
Notice the theme here. People driving are not really noticing what's going on around them. They get in the car, start it up, and then space out, especially if the route is familiar.
That's why biking to work, even if it only takes 10 minutes (and I am a SLOW rider) is always such an adventure.
Tomorrow: our adventure today in the Bluffs.
I have been using some of the techniques from Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers to work on research projects, and I'm really enjoying them. Production is slow, though, and the techniques are better suited to long-term projects than to producing a 10-page paper that's due in 5 days by writing 2.5 pages a day and leaving a day for rewriting (my usual method, at least at the start. It usually produces tons of garbage and leaves me writing the concluding paragraph about 5 minutes before the paper is due).
Last night I used the comment function in Word to mark my questions and suggestions for clarification in the Western Front paper I had written for the humanities conference last fall. That paper is the clearest explication yet of the role I think the trenches can play as memorials. But there's lots of work yet to be done, and alas I have to rise and go now and go advise students. More later today, perhaps.
Today at work I identified 30-35 students we've been counting as geography majors that are not in the official major roster that comes from the central data source. What was most depressing was the number of students who have dropped out of the U, many of whom are nearly finished with their degrees, but came short somehow of getting the sheepskin. Either they didn't finish their final senior paper, or they are lacking a course, or they just seem to have lost interest in finishing other requirements.
It's hard for me to understand - but I suppose if you have a job for which the degree isn't "needed" (and most jobs in this country don't need the skills or knowledge gained in college) then there's no reason to go through the formality - and expense - of the abstraction of a piece of paper.
I'll be interested to continue participating in the debate over the value of higher education as I move into this second career of academe. I prefer the "intrinsic value" argument (critical thinking, context of being a global citizen, etc.) to the "instrumental" argument. If you take the latter position, that the primary value of a liberal arts education is that you will make more money and therefore have a better life, then the second that stops being true, for various instants in global time-space, you have nowhere else to go with your argument. The debate is over and you lose. Whereas if you choose the more abstracted argument, you can always regroup and come back with new variations.
Damn, that man won't stay out of my dreams! In this one, he attended a transportation projects meeting at my (old) workplace. After we complained about various ripoff engineering firms we'd worked with (I'll skip the names here but they were very present in the dream) he and I had a moment for personal chitchat.
He knew who I was, and told me that my father used to hunt at the Bush hunting camp in Maine (not true in life but evidently true in the dream). Then he told me what a great and responsible man my father was - that during a father-daughter hunting trip he had made sure the little girls stayed close by their fathers, so that no one would be accidentally shot.
I shook his hand for a long time while I told him that it was a great honor to meet him, and then I turned away and murmured to my colleagues that I needed a shower, to wash off my insincerity.
In other news - my Swatchwatch self-destructed on Friday night. Poor design? Manufacturing defect? I dunno - and I doubt very much if Swatch will care about my problem. I've only had it since March - is it too much to ask that a watch last for a couple of years??
I'm glad I was not the only one (see http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/) to be annoyed at Costas' and Couric's incessant and inane blather during the Olympic opening ceremonies. If they keep it up, there'll be one less American tuning in to NBC. Do the media really think that we have to have every single thing interpreted for us? Or do they just fear that if we don't hear perky chitchat we'll switch to the next channel?? Yuck.
B. got cleared for squishy foods at his 10-day followup visit. He's doing well with it, but is still weak from the blood loss after surgery. The food thing is, you can blenderize just about anything - potato salad, for example. So he is happy to have more taste in his life.
It's a beautiful day - we are off to the farmers market shortly. I have to do the federal taxes today. I am glad (?) I remembered, but I knew I would leave it until the very last day. Double-yuck.
Terrible sinus headache today. If past pattern is any guide, I'll have it through the weekend.
Ok, enough whining. I'm gonna do some chores and improve my attitude.
Wednesdays are days off for me, usually! I might go into the office later if B. feels like going to school for a bit: I have a little project to do - figure out a new course meeting time for a senior class that doesn't conflict with anything else they are registered for. It may not be possible, and I wonder why "we" are making such changes at this late date. But it's my job only to find a solution, not to second-guess the problem statement.
I was very uncomfortable with being senior management when I got promoted in my last job. It was really unnerving to walk into a meeting room and have all heads turn to me looking to have "the law" laid down upon them. In time, though, I got used to the authority and the power and the expectation. And now that now I am a lowly grad student, I am annoyed when the Powers make crazy decisions or employ a process that seems wrong, when "I could do it so much better."
However, one thing I DID learn in the management job is that it was MUCH more satisfying to guide people through making their own decisions in accordance with mutually developed parameters than it was simply to impose my will backed up by the artificiality of the power of my position. I think that's one of the reasons I've decided to become a teacher.
B. is more laid-back now that he's at home. It's easier to ask me to fetch whatever than to go through the exertion of getting it himself. Also, there's no possibility of being "the star patient" here if you are the only patient.
How often we are motivated to achieve (in the broadest sense of that word) by the opinions (usually potentially negative ones) of others. "Prof. So-and-So will think less of me if I don't write a good paper." "Dr. X won't be pleased with my progress unless I follow his recommendations for exercise." We may pretend that we are doing only as we like in life, but I wonder how often we are lying to ourselves. We tell ourselves we are driven by our OWN self-opinion, but the views of others seem often to be a more important force.
I tried the freewrite this morning about my research on trenches-as-memorials, and it immediately veered off into an internal epistemological debate about the value (or not) of "the innocent eye." It's fashionable to argue right now that there is no such thing as the innocent eye. To the extent that everyone's cognition comes with experiential/cultural baggage, I agree. But if we discredit that kind of knowing entirely, we lose a lot of the delight in experiencing the world and making sense of it. Is that a worthwhile trade-off? I'm old-fashioned and Euro-Americo-centric, so I say it is not.
Today I'm reading a compilation called The Writers Home Companion by Joan Bolker, she of the Fifteen Minute Dissertation. It's good stuff - but I'm just about saturated on reading-about-writing. That's the point, perhaps, though - to push me into doing it (this blog doesn't really "count") rather than thinking about it.
Kind of a slow day. I read the Sunday papers; getting the NYT is so cool because there's always something of interest about cultural memory and/or central Europe and/or WWI or II and/or landscape architecture/urban design.
Then I "purified" my car from the crackhead asshole car thieves. I still need to get it vaccuumed and the upholstery sanitized. CACTs apparently do not bathe - ick. And there are "supersized" mayo stains here and there from their drive-through doings. It's pretty sad - you steal a car and the most interesting thing you can think of to do is drive around with your friends, eat fast food, and drink vodka from the bottle.
Yesterday one of my friends drove me to the impound lot (fine class of people hangs THERE, lemme tell you) and I got driven out to my car and the retired cop (his partner had the same last name as I do) checked it out with me and I started it and went back in and paid for the tow and got driven back out to the car and drove it out. Kinda complicated, but it works. The waitlines must be unreal during street-sweeping and snow emergencies. I was probably there for an hour and I was like the second person in line.
B. is still wiped out. He sits in the recliner and aimlessly surfs through the channels and occasionally takes pain medicine or eats some jello or or a popsicle. He slept yesterday afternoon then was up most of the night then slept this morning. I'm trying to convince him to ride to the grocery store with me - the stairs are hard but I think he'll feel better if he gets out. I noticed in the hospital that he always felt better getting up and walking around, even if he didn't originally feel up to it.
Later I am gonna try to motivate to read through the several iterations of the trenches paper and then do a freewrite on what I'm trying to say about all of it. I'm hoping that will (finally) get me started on revisions. Less than one month until classes begin - then there will be no time for anything but schoolwork and the business of daily living.
Well, the Minneapolis PD did NOT call today to say that my car had been found a couple of blocks from here after having been abandoned by joy-riding kids, so I fear it is on its way to being car parts. Worse, we gave up comprehensive insurance so I get NADA after paying insurance for all those years.
Oh, it just makes me so angry! But I am trying not to think about it, because I can't change what happened and I can't find it and get it back by myself, so I might as well accept that shitty things happen and that I am still alive and healthy and didn't get shot by crackhead asshole car thieves.
B. will probably be home tomorrow. His blood metrics are improving and he looks well.
I was reading, off and on through the night (no thanks to the adreneline rush from crackhead asshole car thieves) one of the source books for the Fifteen Minute Dissertation (see old entries on this topic, sorry I can't find the titles for them right now), which is WAY better than the Dissertation book. It's called Writing without Teachers and it's all about how to use writing to produce better thinking. The usual 10-minute freewrite is a staple, but (for once in the writing self-help category) there is valuable advice about how to use the freewrites to some purpose, to find their inner kernel of meaning and use that to clarify thinking for further writing.
I am not doing a very good job summarizing, and when you just read the book, the whole notion of freewrites sounds kinda hokey, but I have tried it and it really does work.
OH MY GOD! The University police JUST called, and my car has been recovered!!!! The crackhead asshole thieves used a plastic key, and got stopped on one of the crosstown highways. They are so polite out here - the campus cop said, "I'm so sorry we didn't figure out that you were a U staff member earlier, or we would have dropped the car off at your house instead of the impound lot." Isn't that sweet?
I hope that because of the plastic key, the car is in ok shape. I'll have to get a different locking system though (can I get it rekeyed?) so that the same crackhead asshole thieves don't come back and steal it again.
Could I be happier!? And my B is coming home tomorrow!! Good night!!
Brian is doing well. The euphoria of having lived through the surgery has worn off though, and yesterday he was tired; today he was even more tired. He has lost quite a lot of blood so they are keeping him an extra day at least.
I am spending 10-14 hours a day at the hospital and getting to feel at home there, which is kinda scary. I know where the nurses keep the ice, and where to find towels, and what time the coffee shop closes and which lounge has the best view of the downtown skyline and where the heliport is.
At home I have only myself to entertain me - what a bore I am! - and I can't really concentrate on serious reading. Which reminds me: finished The Rule of Four this afternoon. It wasn't too bad, but the narrator wasn't likeable and none of the characters were particularly believable as college students, and I kept thinking that the authors (both of whom graduated from the college featured in the book only 6 years ago) should be "getting over" college already. But at least the Renaissance mystery outlined there is smarter than the one in The DaVinci Code, which is a REALLY annoying book.
Whoa. While I was typing that last sentence, MY CAR WAS STOLEN. I heard a sort of car-type thud, looked over the porch railing, and my car and another were at odd angles. By the time I rushed downstairs, then back up to grab my cell phone, and back down, both cars had turned the corner onto 17th St.
I've filed a report. Dammit. I doubt there'll be more on this saga. And I doubt my insurance will pay out much either. Fuck. I really loved that car.
This is just a placeholder for a book I might want to read someday.
Schneier, Bruce, 1963-: Beyond fear :thinking sensibly about security in an uncertain world /
New York : Copernicus Books, 2003.
I'm pleased to report that B's surgery today went well! We were at the hospital at 6:30; he was scheduled for 8:30 for a procedure I was told would be about two hours. It took longer, and they started late - but no one thought to update poor lil ol me, quietly having a nervous breakdown in a corner of the surgical waiting room.
People, I actually thought this thought: "ok, he died on the table and they don't dare come and tell me."
But of course that didn't happen. He was in recovery by 12:30 and up in the room by 2:30 or so.
He is doing so well that it is exceeding all my expectations. HAPPINESS HERE!!! He slept a bunch at first, while I read past his bookmark in some book with "Four" in it that is supposed to be the smart person's DaVinci Code. Ring of Four? Book of Four? I just don't know.
Then Dave the nurse (who looks unaccountably like our former tenant Mark) made him stand up, and encouraged him to take a few steps. Few steps, nothing! He did four laps around the ward, and stopped and talked with patient families all along the way. I was totally blown away!
I hope he sleeps ok - it's tough to get comfortable and stay comfortable in the hospital beds. When I wake up, I'll get up and maybe even bike over there to spend most of the day. I can park the bike for free, and maybe take a noontime break and go to the library or bookstore.
Oh and of course make calls to family, gack. I called about a dozen family units today, and then I got home and there were a ton of messages on the machine. I do not understand why people do this. If B. is in surgery, I am not at home waiting for your call. QED.
Enuf. My pizza is done. I'm starved. Goodnight.
The anxiety about surgery continues. Last night, I finished the only book on it that was written by a doctor. I've read parts of two others - one by a cheerleader socialite who clearly hates fat people, and hated herself when she was fat; the other by someone looking for all the bad - the deaths, disabilities, unhappiness. She solicited personal memoirs of surgery over the internet and tries to pretend it's an unbiased sample.
These last two books are so badly conceived and written that I want to write to the publishing houses to complain. But why should I be surprised that bad science is what passes for science in the popular press and the popular imagination? (Case in point: that deep-freeze movie about NYC.) You would think that regular Americans, who've gone through all that so-called critical thinking that we supposedly teach in our public schools would have a clue about how to deconstruct fuzzy, biased, weak arguments. But no - if sloppy partisan thinking sells, then by all means, sell it!
The whole notion of "what is safe" has gotten so twisted; our sense of what constitutes personal safety is elevated, rarifed, and made oh-so-precious. Kids stay inside and play video games or watch TV (thereby boosting the pre-teen obesity epidemic) because their parents fear it's not safe for them to play outdoors unaccompanied. They don't walk to school because parents fear for them in traffic or fear they'll be abducted. People in neighborhoods go to meetings about cleanups of hazardous waste and won't accept any finding except "it will be completely safe" - which you will NEVER hear from an environmental engineer. The concept of graduated risk is completely foreign; safety has become an all-or-nothing proposition.
And don't even get me started on the new corollary, our "safety as a nation." I don't believe that there is anything that any federal official (blue or red) can do to protect this nation completely from terrorism. A more effective strategy would be to understand the thinking that motivates fundamentalism, and marginalize it through cultural, economic, and diplomatic means. But no - Bush says "bring 'em on," so Kerry has to talk tough so people won't think he's a wuss.
Ok, enough ranting. I'll post something about the surgery tomorrow (for all you readers who actually KNOW B. - but it will be pretty late.)
Today B. starts his pre-op for the weight loss surgery on Tuesday. Clear liquids only, and a complete cleanout of the GI tract. Ewww, 'nuff said about THAT.
I didn't sleep well last night - partly the wine, but more the anxiety. We had the "what I want you to do if I lapse into a coma" conversation last night, which made me very upset. Right now, I'm feeling that B. is exactly fine the way he is and we can deal with any future medical problems, and he should just cancel out. (This is why I was so adamant that the decision be entirely his - so he wouldn't have to take into account my contradictory and vacillating opinions.)
Yesterday - and now - I wish I could crawl into a comfortable little hole of oblivion and just stay there for awhile. Let's hope the Sunday papers can pull me out of these doldrums. We need all-consuming activities today and tomorrow - movies, trashy books, thrill rides - activities that engage us completely.