Something I'd like to read when I get a moment - The Edifice Complex: how the rich and powerful - and their architects - shape the world.
Deyan Sudjic. Penguin. 2006?
More time than usual to prepare for a trip. That feels weird. It's an anomaly: the next couple of trips will be hectic. I am not used to all this travel - and I don't really like it. I am cleaning off all the little slips of paper from my desk, and trying to get organized for once. I HAVE to do some writing while I'm away, and I'm trying to set that up.
Over the last 6-8 months, there's been a fair bit of controversy about academic blogging. Will blogging hurt you in the academic job market? Will you reveal embarrassing things that will make a search committee scurry away to safer, more silent candidates? Forget MySpace - do you threaten to be a rabble-rouser in departmental meetings, a thorn in the side of administrative policies? Air your institution's dirty laundry in public?
I am pretty good at self-censoring but meanwhile I lurk and ponder how this new technology will affect how we learn and think. I am interested in how blogs can spark and shape civic engagement, for example.
Now comes Marc Lynch, a professor at my undergrad college, and his blog about the Middle East. Required reading for policy wonks - not too shabby! His bloggy sparring partner, conservative Daniel Drezner (undergrad college '90) has a book out on the topic: The Political Promise of Blogging. I'll have to take a look.
My lovely days of lounging around the computer all day in my pj's "working on my dissertation" seem to have come to a crashing end. This week: Pittsburgh. Next week: Boston. Mid-April: SF. Then immediately: Krakow.
I can't seem to buckle down to making an environmental geography presentation out of the stack of books to my left, and nothing else really appeals as a task.
Sigh. I HAVE to motivate.
NYT a week or two ago reviewed the controversial photo-book Rough Beauty by Dave Anderson.
This week I would like to write and practice both my talks for next week, and have them done and printed out by Friday night. That way I can enjoy my trip to Pittsburgh, instead of (as I did last fall in Boston) rushing around the hotel dealing with equipment in the hotel business center at 6 am to reprint my (substantially) revised talk.
My advisor is out of email range; my friends seem to be gone, too: there's no reason I can't get these things done plus write a bit of the next chapter. One thousand words a night should do it, more or less.
Here are the names of four towns I've heard of recently:
California, PA
Indiana, PA
Delaware, OH
Wyoming, MN
What's next: United States, France?? No, the French will never hear of it!
We stop in at the Minneapolis community libraries frequently, in order to support B's film addiction.
Yesterday, at a nearby branch, there was an act of resistance in progress. A bunch of the younger kids (pre high school) had been told that the computers were off limits, because earlier, some unknown teenagers had defaced two computer chairs. Until they 'fess up (and presumably make restitution), there will be no computers for kids.
(Reminds me of school days, when the whole class got punished for the cutups of one or two. I suppose this is supposed to build pressure on the wrongdoers, but all it ever did for me was build solidarity with my classmates against the Regime.)
Anyways, there was a cluster of kids - boys and girls, blacks and whites - who were waiting patiently to see "the manager" (meaning the head librarian, but naturally they've learned the lingo of consumerism so "manager" is what they know) in order to make their case that they shouldn't be punished for the actions of teenagers they don't even know. They were quiet and patient, and very well-spoken about their reasoning. Good for them, I say!
Poetry is a strange thing. When Columbia crashed in 2003, I sketched a poem almost immediately, and refined it over the next five months until it was perfect in my mind and I couldn't change a word. Even now, if I'm having a tough day, I just open up that file, read the poem, and feel better about the world.
Two poems from that same time (more or less) are still in flux - the feeling I get when I walk across the Washington Avenue Bridge, knowing that John Berryman jumped there in January 1971; and the longing for connection that I am trying to express in a villanelle (blasted devilish form!) about speech and writing. I work on these once in a while, in the "perfectionist" mode you read about sometimes - add a comma, then think for twenty minutes, and remove it.
Tonight I made some pretty big changes to the Berryman poem. Once I can get a fix on the last several lines, it will be finished. I despair about the villanelle. But what is driving my poetic imagination these days? - I need to pay more attention to the moments that crystallize language.
Well, it's snowing unbelievably (think Nor'easter) and the U closed for the day at 2:30. That's pretty unusual, supposedly; they pride themselves on tough Lutheran doing-the-job regardless of the weather. It's an open question whether the U will be closed tomorrow, which is sort of interesting, because our departmental recruitment weekend starts tomorrow. Not only will some of the prospectives probably not make it, with potential airline delays and cancellations, but getting around, meeting people, and whatnot will be more difficult than usual.
I have adequate chocolate, beer, and coffee here at the home office, though, so as long as we have heat, things should be fine.
We're now beginning to think about life after Minneapolis. What things should we be sure to do before we leave?
1. Visit Como Park and Zoo and Conservatory.
2. See a play at the new Guthrie. (We've toured the building already.)
3. Finally visit the new Walker.
4. Take urban planning photos of any scene that conceivably could be useful in future teaching.
5. Go to some waterfront condo open houses just for fun.
6. Bike down to Minnehaha Falls.
7. Get Minneapolis-related planning materials that are not available online, for any use they may be in future research or teaching.
Oh, so many more things. And not, really, very much time. Carpe diem, folks.