We're having people over to watch the debate (and eat spaghetti) AND play debate bingo. Should be a blast, and some compensation for the probability that our guy is gonna lose in November.
I'll never forget: in 1984 - yeah, the irony of THAT just reeks - my deeply, deeply weird yet clearly brilliant prof of landscape history saying, one day post-election, "WAKE UP, PEOPLE! You should be smart enough to know that not everyone thinks as you do here in Zip Code 02138!" (Cambridge, the Center of the Free World.)
We didn't believe it then, and it's difficult to believe it now. Of all the hundreds of people I know, there are perhaps two who admit to planning to vote for Bush. And those are RELATIVES - there's nothing I can do about them. My friends - there is not a Bushie among them, here in the Other Center of the Free World, the University of Minnesota. God bless the Academic Left!
Ok. Gotta see if I can figure out Ref Works before the doorbell rings. If there is anything interesting about the debate (doubtful), I'll post it tomorrow.
B, that genius, fixed the laptop so that I have internet and email again! Woo-hoo!
Only 57 messages arrived in the 3 days I was gone...
I haven't had Internet access or email since Sunday, when we (by we I mean B) installed the NEW! LASER! PRINTER! and in the course of setups of various sorts, my connections don't work anymore. So I work at the desktop (which fortunately still has all my Faves in IE) and get my email from hotmail, which is kind of annoying since a) I'm not used to the program; and 2) it reminds me of sitting in Internet cafes in Europe paying by the minute while junk mail that looked like real mail downloaded for 40 minutes.
It's really amazing how quickly one acclimates to top service. Some of my friends have dial-up, and that just seems sad. Nowadays, the graduate lab is jammed full of people all the time - there are maybe 10 computers and about 80 grad students. I work in "my" advising office, but that is rapidly coming to a close - we are mostly through the interview process and may make a decision as early as Friday.
One thing I've noticed about NOT having email is that formerly I checked it about a gazillion times a day, and surfed randomly whenever I felt like taking a break. It's good to have a reminder once in a while of these types of time-wasters.
I may have mentioned that my beginning Polish class meets only once a week, for 3 ½ hours Tuesday nights, unlike the usual beginning language classes, which meet every day. It’s tidy for one’s schedule, but really throws a lot of responsibility on the student to practice every day in order to build pattern skills and vocabulary.
Also, I may have mentioned that we have several “native speakers” in the class, undergrads who grew up speaking Polish with relatives. At first I was really bummed out because of the relative (ha ha) advantage they have. But now I see that in general their knowledge of structural grammar is so shaky that the playing field is immediately leveled. While they fret about translating the present progressive or present emphatic incorrectly (one size fits all in Polish, as in French, German and Italian), I’m murmuring patterns like a mantra. In short, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and doubtless the class is better for it. Although I can’t understand when Prof P babbles on at length in Polish with them, I’m hearing it and trying to understand, which is valuable even if I only get a few words. I believe that if I can continue my present approach of working nearly every day for about an hour, I will do well in the class.
However, I also think that that true fluency will take much longer than I anticipated last year when I was planning all of this. The best I’ll be able to hope for next summer, I think, is basic knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. I am thinking that an intensive course THERE might be useful – but then what about B? And could I really study intensively while at the same time conducting dissertation research? Doubtful.
Lots of questions. Meanwhile, I should be reading several articles for a class that meets at 10 am tomorrow. So, do widzenia, na razie.
Although my blog doesn't reflect it, some part of every day is spent thinking about new and creative ways to cook the same old stuff. In general, I try to make meals that are vegetable-rich and protein-rich while light on carbohydrates. I do this because I feel it gives me more energy even though I think it skews the global energy balance (in that it would not be sustainable for all to eat meat and vegetables instead of carbohydrates). Personally I would love to eat spaghetti with red sauce or udon with soy sauce every night, but it makes me sleepy and lethargic so I try to eat meat instead. When I eat vegetarian meals (a la our friend J) I don't find them as satisfying long-term as meat.
Here's an internet marinade for chicken thighs that worked well tonight. Combine the juice of half a good-sized lime; some chicken stock, a splash of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of ground cumin, a couple of pinches of cayenne pepper, and salt and pepper. Marinate 3 skinless boneless chicken thighs for 20 minutes minimum (I was hungry, ok?) then grill as usual. Subtle, piquant, nice with a skewer of red onions and baby pattypan squash.
I will be sorry to see the fall demise of the grill. Once it gets below 45 or so, we can't cook food quickly enough on the grill. B. is happy though: a season of soups. Homemade soups are sooo much better than canned, it's a wonder than anyone buys the canned variety.
This from a BBC online article about Bush support for Turkey's joining the EU:
"Including Turkey would expose the clash of civilisations as a passing myth of history."
Did he think of this all by himself?
Hmm. If you are asked to give an update on your research to your fellow grad students, what would you do?
1. Try to make it light: pop appeal, lots of jokey references to drinking and working on your tan and meeting fun people;
2. Try to make it really intense, conveying your sense of the deeper spiritual and ethical purpose of your work; or
3. Show lots of scenic slides.
I think my natural inclination would be the second approach. But that's just me - cuz I'm basically a serious person and although I'm not above self-deprecating humor, sometimes I feel like showing the intellectual side I feel usually has to be hidden. That said, there are lots of advantages to the #1 and #3 approaches as well. Can it really be only about how you want to present yourself - at a point in time? If you have imprinted that impression, are you stuck with it?
Also today: a 90-minute conversation with a Boston attorney on my affidavit for a court case in Massachusetts. It reminds me that "I could've been a lawyer" and a damn good one, too; I really "think like a lawyer." But the law as it's developed in the US is an intellectual game missing its ethical/moral center, at least in my opinion. When right loses to logic, there's something amiss.
Yet the value of believable logic and servicde to truth mustn't be overlooked. Saddest case I can remember: someone I know looked like a total jerk on the witness stand because she "spun" her ideas to serve what she thought was the greater good, yet she wasn't skilled enough to pull it off, so everyone knew she was lying, which was just pathetic. Raskolnikov, are you listening? The end never justifies the means. Harldy ever anyway (which means I've bought into his fallacy of the superior intellect). Must the Truth always be disinterested?
The Pixies sound like an incessant, repetitive version of the B-52s. What's up with that? It's hurting my brain.
My class schedule has finally shaken out into its final configuration, but boy, is it weird: all three of my classes meet within a single 24 hour period between Tuesday at 3 and Wednesday noon. What this means is that Monday is a completely frantic day; the weekends must be devoted to schoolwork; and Wednesday night is now my "Friday."
I'm still working, and we are interviewing for my replacement, so that chews up a few unstrategically placed hours too. I set my office hours presuming an entirely different class schedule so it's not too convenient now, but I haven't the heart to tell students that the 3 minutes of the week they can find me have now been changed.
I dreamed that the giant linden (that's Tilia cordata for you tree types) in my parents' front yard crashed down; it was so tall that it stretched across their street and blocked traffic in both directions. Dreams are so optimistic; if that tree REALLY fell, it would fall in the other direction and crush their house.
Our neighbor is replacing his windows. Good for him; noisy for us. Tomorrow: observations on Polish.
There were so many poignant moments at the wake/funeral of my former boss and mentor Peter Torigian that I have lost count. I think the one that I will remember the longest is when his best friend, giving the eulogy, couldn't keep it together at the end. His voice cracked and broke as he said, "goodbye, dear friend, God bless" and then he turned away from the lectern. If he intended to say more, we'll never know what it was.
I have never seen more men wiping their eyes than I saw that day. No fake stoicism: we are all just completely brokenhearted at the loss of this man, and we don't mind showing it for the world to see.
Still, for all the sadness, there was a deep sense of homecoming and belonging. We were really drawn in and enveloped and comforted and it felt so warm.
I did virtually no homework. So it's gonna be a busy two days.
Trying to blow off a little steam here after a full day (6 1/2 hours) of class. Tuesdays are tough: office hours in the morning; then a seminar for 3 hours in the afternoon, then rush to Polish class for 3 1/2 hours. Then home, dinner, right to bed, and up for another seminar on Wednesday morning.
Not too smart in the scheduling department, am I? Right now I am, ahem, reproducing a certain audiotape to take on our trip to Boston, making lists, and trying to finish readings for tomorrow.
Boston, yes! We got last minute tix to fly in order to attend the wake and funeral for Peter Torigian, my long-time former boss. (See previous entry.)
I am already feeling that I am back on the out-of-control treadmill of too many classes, and that I never have time to really, fully read and reflect on what I'm working on, much less have an organized home life, work on my dissertation proposal, or write fellowship applications. That's the mistake I made last spring by taking four classes, having the advising job, and teaching a brand-new class for the first time. I swore then that if I made it through THAT, I would not replicate my errors. I DID make it through - but with that panic every day of not being prepared for what the day would hand me.
So, time to learn from the past. Isn't that what history is all about??
I got an email this morning that my former boss, Mayor Peter Torigian, of Peabody, MA died last Saturday, September 11. He had been sick for several months with cancer, and I've expected this news for a long, long time, but it was still a big shock when it came.
Peter Torigian was mayor for 23 years, the longest serving in Massachusetts. Under his leadership, Peabody was transformed from a rundown, post-industrial city that was hemorrhaging jobs and trying to keep out seedy enterprises fleeing Boston, to the regional employment capital of Boston's North Shore. He celebrated the ethnic diversity of the city and its commitment to hard work to reinvent and revitalize itself, and presided over millions of dollars invested in public buildings, roads, and parks.
He loved flowers - the bigger, the better - and under his prodding streetcorners and traffic islands were transformed every summer into a riot of color. He loved parties, and delighted in planning civic celebrations down to the last decoration. He had a gift - a genuis, really - for financial management, and under his leadership Peabody enjoyed low, stable tax rates and high bond ratings. Above all, he thrived on hard work, and demanded commitment, dedication, and rigorous self-application from everyone who worked for him.
Graduate school is a cakewalk compared to the School of Mayor T. I can't say I always loved it - but it changed my life and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
RIP. Mayor. God bless.
I didn't write yesterday because it felt wrong not to acknowledge the date in my subject matter, yet I felt that the blogosphere hardly needs another reflection on 9/11 and what it means to this blogger.
After all of it, though - isn't it still just incredible to think that human beings deliberately crashed jet aircraft into skyscrapers and that thousands of other human beings died because of it? I think that we moderns have so subscribed to ideas about survival as the primary instinct (Freud's death wish gets more play on the pathological side of things) that it's hard to imagine a different drive. We just give it the shorthand of "religious fanaticism" so that it's labeled and boxed up into a tidy package and stigmatized and thus we don't feel we have to understand it. The undesirable Other, in short.
I am thinking of this idea of what is "naturalized" in our collective culture and thnking, because Stuart Hall makes the point that liberalism as a political ideology is directly related to late 17th and 18th century ideas about scientific inquiry - man as having a natural instinct to compete and amass (Adam Smith) and as having the natural right to do so (Locke). I don't know if his formulation is new with him, or whether he's just summing up the late 20th century view of liberalism.
Shane (I think) wondered what would happen to all our blogs when school started. For me, I can foresee writing less. Not because I have less time (writing remains a compulsion no matter how little time there is) but because I become so much more inward-focused. During the semester, I think only about the things I'm reading about and can't conceive of an interesting way to write about them for public (yeah, the three of you know who you are!) consumption.
Today was a busy day, considering I had no classes. I worked for a couple of hours; went to a meeting; walked all over campus in pursuit of various errands; grabbed lunch; made copies of articles; got a book for Wednesday's seminar; and went to the geography lecture (every Friday for the last - and next - hundred years). Oh, also I had a good, spontaneous chat with my advisor.
Does the quotidian matter? Some days, it's all there is.
Okay, so we have J's cat while he whiles away four lovely weeks in Spain. He dropped the cat off on Monday; after he left, Mittens crawled under the couch and stayed there for about 24 hours. He only comes out when we're sleeping, when he "knows it's safe."
Poor psycho cat is so scared that he hisses whenever we come near (after meowing plaintively to get our sympathy) and then lashes out with his unclawed paws. He "got" B. this morning from under the bed; B wailed a shoe in his general direction; and Mittens stayed in there until about dinnertime.
I don't mind if the cat chooses to lurk for four weeks, but what's unnerving is that he hides in dark corners (of which our apartment has MANY) and you have to look where you are going constantly, so you don't startle the little creep and get slashed.
Yeah, I'm no ailurophile. The downstairs cats had me convinced that I was - but I'm back to the reality of cats and the reality of my ailurophobia.
Oooh, Polish was scary! There are tons of students in my class who've been speaking Polish all their lives. (What's THAT about, easy A for the language requirement?!) I look at the words and I haven't a clue how to pronounce them, much less pronounce them well.
But then, on the grammar, it's all cases and endings and genders. Same old, same old, comforting routine. I'll be fine if I can spend some time trying to hear and reproduce the sounds. Welcome to the language lab.
I had four classes today, plus a spate of advising. Too much: it's time to weed and prune that schedule.
Warning - another entirely personal reflection on my language learning strengths and weaknesses. See yesterday's entry for the beginning of these thoughts. I had to save-and-post so we could do some computer tasks.
First of all, German class met every day, for an hour. It was taught using a textbook called, German A Structural Approach. Every section opened with pattern drills, and there were even quasi-musical diagrams to show how simple sentences (as representative of types) should be inflected. I think we must have practiced these drills a lot, because I can still remember some of the sentences, more than 20 years later.
The word order of sentences in German is very different than in English. The textbook explained the rules of it, but I think it was really the drills that internalized it for me. The text made up names for the parts of sentences and so I learned how to build sentences in syntactical chunks.
Bottom line: I read better in French - I have a much larger vocabulary - but I don't understand very well, and I'm pretty inarticulate. I understand German better, and I can generate basic sentences without reaching for verb endings or worrying about word order - much more "natural" in that way.
I think that for Polish (which I start tomorrow! So exciting!!) I will have to combine the aspects of learning French and German that have worked best for me in the past. I have to drill syntactical units until they come "naturally," without thinking. At the same time, I have to work on building vocab. This will be harder since there are fewer cognates, but I've noticed from looking at the BBC news in Polish online that there are more than I thought - the word "kataklizmu" for example - earthquake.
And last - I have to speak often and forcefully and clearly in class and to myself, even when I know I won't be completely correct. I can't wait to speak until I've formed the sentence correctly in my head, because that's not like native speaking. I just have to start so that I'm accustomed to "just saying it."
Warning: this entry is a boring personal speculation on how foreign languages are acquired.
I had four years of French in high school (and two years of French Lite in middle school before that), then a semester of French in college.
In my junior year in high school, I decided that Latin would be way more fun than more lab science, so I took two years of Latin.
In college, I took a full year of beginning German. It met every day at 8 am, so that we could absorb German while we were still half-asleep. I found this less painful than it sounds here. Then I took another semester of German in a more normal schedule.
While working, I took a semester of extension school Italian. It met once a week, I hardly studied, and I got virtually nothing out of it.
Each of these language experiences was quite different, and I've been reflecting on that the past few days. Latin was extremely grammar-based, and there was no expectation about good pronunciation or generating oral sentences. I had a better knowledge of grammar in general, a semi-photographic memory, and could learn a list of vocabulary words 10 minutes before class, in order to get an A on the quiz. I still remember quite a bit of Latin - nouns, verb stems. Not so much the conjugations.
French was also grammar based, although there was the pretense of developing speaking skills through practicing dialogues. We weren't required to memorize dialogues, though, and our teachers knew it would be futile to correct our horrendous accents, so they didn't even try. The focus eventually was on comprehending reading assignments, and producing grammatically correct written sentences. This past spring I passed the graduate course that allows you to say you read French on your CV, and it was more of the same, except without any pretense of being able to generate your own written French sentences. And no oral work AT ALL.
I didn't care for this approach, although I did like two aspects: 1) learning enough about suffixes and prefixes to recognize English words in their French garb; and 2) being encouraged to "read through" a passage and get as much as possible before finally resorting to a dictionary.
Nevertheless, the focus on Correctness - always generating the right verb ending, the correct article, the proper word order - was inhibiting. And since I'm a little obsessive about "being right" I would tend to freeze up and say nothing rather than speak incorrectly. Even now, I feel almost speechless in France - I have a lot of trouble generating even basic conversation, and even though I can read very complicated stuff without too much difficulty, I feel that my knowledge of the language is rudimentary. I think I would have benefitted from lots of encouragement to speak freely and a positive atmosphere of correction. And realizing that the most important thing is to understand and be understood, rather than be correct. If I tell the waiter "je veux lait" I will not impress him but he will probably bring me some milk anyway.
I started the day, early, with the usual slate of good intentions, most of which had fallen by the wayside by the time I fell asleep mid-afternoon. I was hoping that this weekend could be a time to catch up on life-type stuff (think oil changes, tax returns, insurance forms, correspondence to tenants) but other than grocery-shopping and getting a haircut (too short on top, I fear) it hasn't been a very productive day.
We still need to run out and get wine, in case the wine store is closed on Monday. A funny blast-from-the-past last week: some friends came over for dinner and we drank all the wine, and then at 7:55 or so we realized we really wanted more, so we flew downstairs, into the car, and over to the Liquor Despot, where they were giving the "please bring your final selections to the registers" routine over the loudspeaker as we walked in. J was characteristically indecisive about pinot noirs, so I grabbed a couple things and away we went.
Don't even get me started on the liquor store closing-at-8 thing. Hell, even Maasachusetts, the Home of the Puritan, allows them to be open till 10 on weeknights. But it was comical and kinda fun to be trying to beat the clock, like in high school. (For the record I am old enough to remember when the legal age was 18, not 21).
Bought my Polish textbooks yesterday. Fascinating - yet frightening. One of my favorite blogs on this site has a great link to an online book about adult language learning. It's good to go into this with an analytical mind. Click on the entry for August 25.
Not even a couple of chapters of The European Union: How does it Work? could put me to sleep last night - I was up past 2, very unusual for me.
I have several routines for getting to sleep. The most effective one, and the one I used last night, is mentally to walk around the yard of my childhood, looking at every tree, shrub and flower. It sounds demented, but I have total recall of every plant in the acre I grew up on (and left when I was 13).
I am a landscape architect, after all.
Due to some sleep deficit, after our pizza with friends tonight, I snuggled into the Rent-A-Center recliner we rented to help Brian convalesce. It's so unbelievably comfortable (yet so incredibly ugly) that I want to design a recliner for my perfect living room.
This room will have two of the recliners (one for each of us), a large TV, adjustable lighting for atmosphere or task-work, and perfectly designed side tables to hold all the stuff you need while nesting: remotes, beverages, snacks, reading material, writing implements, a phone.
The perfect living room: don't leave home....
(I'm thinking Ultrasuede.)
Things are heating up - and I don't just mean that it's warmer than it's been practically all summer! Spent a full day working - weird feeling! - with more of same tomorrow. Then Tuesday, the full rush: classes, trying to finish up summer projects; worrying about not having a dissertation topic; indecisive about which courses to take.
Yeah, poor me. Such problems as I have...
Back in July, I renewed my membership in the professional organization for my field. My workplace had paid for the perk back on the East Coast, and I never had thought too much about it, except for all the problems we always had in dealing with their clueless accounting office.
I had vaguely, in the back of my mind, been surprised not to be deluged with a spate of junk mail from them at once. Today I learned why, when I received an "invoice" informing me that I owed hundreds of dollars in back dues for the period between when I left my job and when I filled out the application for membership last month. They don't tell you when you join that if you want to leave, you can't really - it's like the Mafia.
Can they be serious? What a scam! I wrote a two page rant letter, but I don't know if I'll send it - it makes me sound deranged. These trade organizations are such ripoffs - but they try to make membership sound like an essential credential, and once people buy into it, then they've got it made.
Enough of that, anyway.