Body Electric

Profound Irony

2009-07-19T09:36:00.001-05:00

July 17, 2009, 4:01 pm

Amazon.com Plays Big Brother With Famous E-Books

EDITOR’S NOTE | 8:41 p.m. The Times published an article explaining that the Orwell books were unauthorized editions that Amazon removed from its Kindle store. However, Amazon said it would not automatically remove purchased copies of Kindle books if a similar situation arose in the future.

From the blog of our colleague David Pogue:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Scary.

"The International": One Redeeming Moment

2009-07-15T11:10:00.007-05:00

So Clive Owen could persuade me to watch almost anything (... sat through the BMW online mini-movies twice), so even against the advice of friends, I rented and watched The International. Friends were right: watch this movie only for background noise and the occasional eye-candy Owen provides. Beyond this, the only redeeming moment to note passes in this exchange between Captain Martell and District Attorney Whitman (Naomi Watts) where Whitman is arguing for a more passionate pursuit of justice and a higher moral ground:

Captain: There's what people wanna hear. There's what people wanna believe. There's everything else, and THEN there's the truth.

Whitman: The truth means taking responsibility, Arne!

Captain: Exactly! Which is why everyone dreads it!

Point to the Captain.

The Truth about the World

2009-07-14T22:01:00.005-05:00

The Blood Meridian (McCarthy)
ISBN 9780679728757

"The truth about the world, he said, is that ... had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning .... and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose the way" (245).

A Rock on a Fairy's Wing

2009-07-14T20:38:00.002-05:00

The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
ISBN 9780684801520

"A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing" (105).

The Meaning We Make

2009-07-14T19:25:00.003-05:00

This passage from Chaim Potok's The Chosen speaks to the work of living as being the "filling" of life with meaning. In other words, we write our lives with the meaning we make or we allow our lives to be "fill" in the compositions others create (perhaps being secretly relieved to be delivered of the work we would otherwise have to do on our own behalves).

"... meaning is not automatically given to life."

Father (David Malter) speaking to his son, Reuven Malter:

"I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning."

The Chosen (Potok, 217)
ISBN 0449213447

As Regards Consistency

2009-07-14T10:51:00.001-05:00

Ralph Waldo Emerson's memorable words from his 1841 essay, "Self-Reliance":

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

A Bruno Fashion Statement

2009-06-23T22:33:00.003-05:00

First Ali G., then Borat, and now actor Sacha Baron Cohen creates Bruno, a gay fashion journalist from Australia. I don't know a lot about the actor or the characters for that matter, but I dig this picture - a knitted version of being naked that might make Halloween a fun night out in '09, a Bruno classic fashion statement.

Anyone got the pattern?

Seeing Music

2009-03-27T12:43:00.001-05:00

Calling Forth the Poets

2009-02-21T20:30:00.014-06:00

.

"The Poets and the People"
. by One of the Latter (from The Artist: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde, ed. Richard Ellmann)

* The followed unsigned essay was published in the Pall Mall Gazette XLV (17 February 1887). It's insight is hauntingly appropriate to the times we now navigate and is attributed to the playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde. Wilde's answer to the challenging times of his own day may offer an answer to us in ours: He calls forth the poets.

Never was there a time in our national history when there was more need than there is now for the creation of a spirit of enthusiasm among all classes of society, inspiring men and women with that social zeal and the spirit of self-sacrifice which alone can save a great people in the thoes of national misfortune. Tirades of pessimism require but little intellectual effort, and the world is not much the better for them; but to inspire a people with hope and courage, to fill them with a desire after righteousness and duty, this is work that requires the combination of intelligence and feeling of the highest order. Who, in the midst of all our poverty and distress, that threatens to become intensified, will step into the breach and rouse us to the almost super-human effort that is necessary to alter the existing state of things?

There is one class of men to whom we have a right to look for assistance, to whom the task of stirring the national conscience should be accepted with delight. When the poor are suffering from inherent faults of their own, and the greediness of captialists, and both are in danger of suffering still more from causes over which they have but partial control, surely the hour has come when the poets should exercise their influence for good, and set fairer ideals before all than the mere love of wealth and ostentatious display on the side and the desire to appropriate wealth on the other. But we listen in vain for any inspiring ode or ballad that shall reach the hearts of the people or touch the consciences of capitalists. What do those who are designated in the columns of our newspapers as great poets bring to us in this hour of national trial, when we are so much in need of the serice of a truly great poet? ... The struggle to live in all parts of Western Europe, and perhaps especially England, is so fierce that we are in danger of having all that is idealistic and beautiful crushed out of us by the steam engine and the manipulations of the Stock Exchanges. We were never in greater need of good poets, and never better able than in this practical age to do without literary medicine men and mystery mongers. ... The people are suffering, and are likely to suffer more; where is the poet who is the one [person] needful to rouse the nation to a sense of duty and inspire the people with hope?

Be The Change: What Do You Pledge?

2009-01-23T09:54:00.002-06:00

Openly Romantic

2009-01-21T08:37:00.003-06:00

Romance is one of the great pleasures of my life, and gown-watching the inaugural balls occupied my evening of January 20. A long-term appreciation for NYTime's Cathy Horyn is enough reason to interrupt my morning work to post her overview of our new First Ladies' inaugural attire. ... a wonderful one and a half minutes. Enjoy!

(click on the picture to view the NYTimes narrated slideshow)

No Two People Read the Same Book

2009-01-19T16:18:00.001-06:00

No Two People Read the Same Book
Uploaded by Postkiwi

Thinking of Jenn

2009-01-15T09:09:00.002-06:00

... with this passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirzig)

Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: "You never gain something but that you lose something." And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

Hunting Treasure

2008-12-12T10:59:00.002-06:00

As an experiment in pedagogy, the students in my first-year composition class at Purdue designed their closing semester project - theme, requirements, grading, and all! The project? Compose a treasure hunt. Seriously, you'd be surprised how closely the planning for such an adventure parallels the writing process they'd learn to use throughout the semester.

Anyway... here are the pics from a great couple of weeks!

Signs of Life

2008-12-10T12:48:00.002-06:00

Thinking of Oshia

2008-12-08T21:04:00.001-06:00

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirzig 204)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are the things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.

Correctness and Style

2008-12-04T10:40:00.005-06:00

I teach writing. I enjoy the work, though I wrestle every semester with the gravity that teaching correctness exacts on my instruction. I just can't find my way past a sense of responsibility for teaching punctuation, sentence structure, or grammar - particularly a few of those "rules" commonly held to measure right and wrong use.

Students struggle with this aspect of writing, the imposition of "squarish, by-the-numbers, objective, methodical," and pre-scriptive requirements.

Continuing to read Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I find Phaedrus' description one most of my writing students would echo:

"Hundreds of itsy-bitsy rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with upper class.

In Montana [or Indiana, or Minnesota, or Alaska, or wherever], however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass."

Phaedrus names it "prescriptive rhetoric" - the itsy-bitsy rules, and I regularly witness the imposition students experience when they are called to account for the "good table manners" that one English teacher after another since the second grade has overlaid on writing. Is it all about "Eastern asses" or "egotistical desires"? Is there any place for correctness when teaching writing?

For now my answer includes a sense of accountability to a commonly held social/workplace expectation for attention to the recognizable "itsy-bitsy rules" - a surprisingly high expectation if the 2005 National Governor's Report on writing is to be believed. So I teach at least a basic package of style and continue to level some expectation that my students attend to these "rules" in the work they complete, but I do all I can to pull students from their own compulsive sense that abiding by the rules = "good writing." Students rarely find a measure for their own work beyond the measure of table manners. I offer the measure of ideas, the unique synthesis of thought with which a student responds when she stands at the intersection of rich and diverse reads, conversation, and critical argument. Oh yeah ... delicious times can be found there.

Writing begins with the ideas you mean to chase down, parse out, and push into language. My rule? ... get good ideas to the table and only then (maybe) share a few of the "manners" that might make sharing a meal a more pleasant experience. ... all the while remembering that pizza, corn on the cob, s'mores and the like need a "mess" to best enjoyed.

Strengths and Weaknesses

2008-11-21T21:24:00.003-06:00

I'm in the process of reading Marcus Buckingham's The Truth About You in preparation for a review I'm doing for Thomas Nelson Publishers.

I'll have more to say about the book when I've finished reading it, but I bring it up prematurely here to mention the challenge it raises in the first few pages. In general, Buckingham writes to motivate his readers in achieving personal success - an easily overworked and "tired" topic, but he makes one unexpected turn when he approaches the notion of strengths and weaknesses not measured by what you do well or do poorly but by actions or activities that make you feel strong when you're doing them or conversely feel drained, diminished when you're doing them.

So, I've asked myself for some days now, what am I doing when I feel strong, capable, and in command? Try it. Coming to an answer was not nearly so easy for me as I imagined it would be.

Then today, I continued my reading in Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and found this gem - a single, short line describing Phaedrus that spoke to me and pointed to the answer I'd been looking for:

"For Phaedrus, failure to understand something created a tremendous interest ... "

There it is: When do I feel strong? What am I doing when I feel my greatest strength? I am confronting something I don't understand.

I do many things well - we all do, so read me aware as you pass these words, but I am at my best when I engage what I don't know. I think of horse whisperers who converse with the beautiful lying just beyond wild resistance, and I know myself there - whispering and whispered to by ideas daring to defy being known. I am calculating, strategic, tenacious, and patiently determined - God, I love it! ... the best game in town!

The "... failure to understand something create[s] a tremendous interest ..." in me. In this place I am strong.

update (three days and a few pages later):

Pirsig explores Phaedrus' "fanatic intensity" and willingness to "burn one's self out, day after day" to learn more about the processes of reason and the substance of (T)ruth. Pirsig culminates several pages of developing his thoughts with this:
"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They knowit's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt ....

That's probably why he felt such a deep kinship with so many failing students in the back rows of his classrooms. The contemputous looks on their faces reflected the same feelings he had toward the whole rational, intellectual process. The only difference was that they were contemptuous because they didn't understand it. He was contemptuous because he did. Because they didn't understand int they had no solution but to fail and for the rest of their lives remember he experience with bitterness. He on the onther hand felt fanatically obliged to do something about it ... He was telling them you have to have faith in reason because there isn't anyting else. But it was a faith he didn't have himself" (emphasis mine).

In the kingdom of man, you have to have faith in reason because you have to have faith in something, and even if reason, in fact, does not merit your faith, there is nothing else - maybe, nothing "better."

Reach past the kingdom of man to take in the rest of the story - the kingdom beyond, if you will allow this consideration, and I will suggest with similarity to Phaedrus that "you have to have faith in [God] because there isn't anything else." I hold this position with a similar limp in my own conviction, however, while I nonetheless argue "intensely" for this faith - an intensity informed by the limp itself - as the best answer to a problem that wants an answer and the most reasonable answer to hold.

... food for thought.

About Life

2008-11-16T13:19:00.001-06:00

"In three short words, I can sum up everything I know about life: It goes on."

Lest We Forget

2008-11-11T13:34:00.003-06:00

CNN, Jamie McIntyre, and a host of often unsung journalists behind the camera have created a 30 minute salute to our veterans for viewing today. This photo-essay tells many stories; perhaps most importantly, it tells our story. I have transposed snips of many of the conversations in the "appetizers" that follow with the hope that you'll be encouraged to give at least this much time to remembering today.

McIntyre himself says it best in his sign-off to this work: "Thank you for watching and thereby honoring our veterans." I add my own special thanks to Tommi and Abraham Godwin for their service with this last note: A mother could not be more proud of you both than I am today.

With the thanks of a grateful nation, "Veterans in Focus" (video below)

"We'll do this till this thing ends." Bangor International Airport Greeters

"This is my way of dealing with it." Bill McNaughton, caretaker

"If you show us an enemy, we'll defeat it. It's hard sometimes to tell what you're fighting: I'm fighting to stay alive." Thomas Cuddy, surviving Lou Gehrig's disease

"It gave one the confidence to really believe I was an American." Harry Akune, Japanese American

"I was like, this is it. I'm going to die." Colby Buzzell, Iraq War blogger

"You folks say the war ended 40 years ago, and I tell you, the war has never ended for me." Robert Etherson, Viet Nam veteran

"Among the homeless population, 20% are veterans." Samson Barris, Founder, Pathways to Housing

"For the first time in my life, I'm happy." Joe Boil, (previously) homeless veteran

It's a New Day

2008-11-09T12:27:00.004-06:00

"It's a New Day"

Thanks, Will.i.am! You speak for us all!

Step 8

2008-11-08T20:41:00.005-06:00

I am a stronger woman for having learned to trust twelve steps so many years ago, whether serenity, AA, Al.Anon, or any of the many expressions available. Thank you, Bill W.

This short story from BBC News Online catches my attention, most certainly for the reinforcement it lends to the value I hold: Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Thief sent 'sorry' letter to shop

The owner of an Indian food store in Bristol has received an apology letter and £100 from a former drug addict who stole cigarettes from the shop in 2001.

Imran Ahmed, 27, who runs Raja Foods in St Marks Road, Easton, said he was stunned to open the remorseful letter.

It begins: "Dear Sirs, I am writing this letter to make amends to you for something I have done in the past."

Mr Ahmed said the thief's change of heart was "really good" and he intends to give the money to a drugs' charity.

The thief's letter continues: "About seven years ago I was walking past your shop late one night when I noticed that someone had broken into it.

Make amends

"I used this opportunity to enter your shop where I stole 400 cigarettes. The money enclosed (£100) is to pay for those cigarettes which I stole from you.

"At that time I was heavily using drugs and my life was in a mess, now I no longer use drugs and I strive to lead a decent and honest life.

"As part of my ongoing recovery I try to put right all of the wrongs I have done in the past, at least where I can, and this is why I am giving you back the money which I stole from you.

"I regret the harm I caused you in the past and I sincerely apologise to you for it.

"I was very wrong to do this and I hope that returning the money will make up for this harm, at least in some small way."

January 20, 2009

2008-11-05T08:31:00.001-06:00

We Did It!

2008-11-04T22:10:00.002-06:00

Congratulations!

President Elect Barack Obama!

Worth Remembering

2008-11-04T13:36:00.004-06:00

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I voted! Did you? Vote. Don't let anything get in your way!

An Election Day Poem

2008-11-04T13:29:00.002-06:00

Excerpt from The People Yes

Carl Sandburg


The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
   They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
   The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
   You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
   "I earn my living.
   I make enough to get by
   and it takes all my time.
   If I had more time
   I could do more for myself
   and maybe for others.
   I could read and study
   and talk things over
   and find out about things.
   It takes time.
   I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

   Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
   Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
   Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
   This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
   Yet this reaching is alive yet
   for lights and keepsakes.

   The people know the salt of the sea
   and the strength of the winds
   lashing the corners of the earth.
   The people take the earth
   as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
   Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
   They are in tune and step
   with constellations of universal law.
   The people is a polychrome,
   a spectrum and a prism
   held in a moving monolith,
   a console organ of changing themes,
   a clavilux of color poems
   wherein the sea offers fog
   and the fog moves off in rain
   and the labrador sunset shortens
   to a nocturne of clear stars
   serene over the shot spray
   of northern lights.

   The steel mill sky is alive.
   The fire breaks white and zigzag
   shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
   Man is a long time coming.
   Man will yet win.
   Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
   There are men who can't be bought.
   The fireborn are at home in fire.
   The stars make no noise,
   You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
   Time is a great teacher.
   Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
   the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
   "Where to? what next?"



HT: Glen Avalon

Reality Shows

2008-11-04T11:13:00.008-06:00

An American Rendition (Jane Comfort and Company) premiered September 24, 2008 using integrated text, movement and extended vocal techniques to depict the story of an American story: a U.S. citizen is kidnapped, interrogated, and tortured in a secret prison while the rest of us distract ourselves with our favorite models, pop stars, and fashion queens.

Using the remote control as a theatrical device, the dancers flip from reality to Reality Show (way more fun) as they offer savage parodies of American Idol, Fear Factor, and America's Next Top Model - humiliation we find both captivating and delicious.

Comfort and company explore the moral and political paralysis confronting a nation addicted to reality TV shows. Intense, non-stop viewing, seamless, scene-to-scene transitions push the often reluctant viewer through channels of discomfort, confusion, and titillation. Only almost invited to participate in an environment saturated with sound, image, movement, and color, the audience is as commandeered and subjected as Sean, the increasingly broken player we follow to his end.

In conversation following the performance at Purdue University (October 27), Comfort referenced the FBI's definition of successful torture: the victim becomes willing to do whatever will make the perpetrator happy. The discussion further layered an already provocative evening with yet other complexities and considerations.

In what could only be an interesting intersection of coincidence, I was that day reading the last pages of Camus' The Stranger. Just two passages may bring you to the place of thought I occupied:

[E]verybody knows life isn't worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn't much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living - and for thousands of years. In fact, nothing could be clearer. Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the one dying. At that point, what would disturb my train of thought was the terrifying leap I would feel my heart take at the idea of having twenty more years of life ahead of me. But I simply had to stifle it by imagining what I'd be thinking in twenty years when it would all come down to the same thing anyway. Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.
....
Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd live, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they thing they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers?

At the crossroads of two works of art I was brought to a dark reconsideration of "reality" showing, and I admit to being overtaken by a kind of emotional standstill. What did it matter anyway? I'd come too close to torture; I knew torture, and I knew the captivatingly delicious seduction that could overtake you there. The next day would come regardless of my will, and if or when they stopped coming, would I remember how to know the difference? As I say, ... dark days.

I am moving again now (even today, even as my stomach rides high in election-day anxiety) with renewed confidence and re-commitment to be the world I want to live in - to greet a neighbor, to pick up the litter, to work the extra unpaid hour, to pray, to laugh, to love the children, to safeguard the elders, and to keep reading, thinking, learning, growing. ... all this yet with no desire at all to fight with Camus.

The dark wind continues to rise out of my future and convince me as it did Meursault that life is absurd at best, that when and how we die can't possibly matter if measured against the ultimate fact of death, that we can not know, and that (perhaps more importantly) knowing is as likely to make matters more difficult to navigate as to increase ease. And so, you might ask to my pleasure, why go on?

Because we must. Because we do. Because we will.

Wanting the answer to be more meaningful is naturally compelling but equally the very personal, very singular, and intensely individual business of faith - not fact, and it could be nothing more.

I elect to practice faith in God (an act I believe should have no right to govern another's practice), and I recognize in the great privilege of my citizenship an opportunity to put my faith in the American Dream.

If you have not had the opportunity to view Bill Moyer's wonderful work, "Deepening the American Dream," I recommend you find the time. It is free for viewing in its entirety online. I draw my own understanding of what the

American Dream is from ethicist Martha Nussbaum who offered this reflection:
My vision would be of an America in which we recognize that we each have a conscience, that each of us is searching for the meaning of life - a very hard thing to do, and that we agreed to respect one another as equals as we carry on that search.

The rest of Nussbuam's essay can be read online, but this passage is enough for me to point to my own conviction, my own hope, that we will finally respect the difficulty of answering Camus, the difficulty of answering Jane Comfort and Company, and that, with renewed respect for the utterly necessary and ultimately inescapable condition of our singularity, we would commit ourselves to building communities that would in every way possible nuture, encourage, and protect all the people of this great nation as they work out an answer for themselves that will hold against the howling wind.

Such bold freedom is uniquely American and forever worth the price to preserve.

What Threatens Democracy

2008-11-02T16:27:00.006-06:00

Speaking with CNN's Don Lemon, Dr. Cornel West (Princeton) named three threats to democracy in America today:

greed running amuck, especially "at the top"
indifference
the politics of fear.

Lemon challenged Dr. West to answer those who might suggest his views could be called "un-American," and he answered:

People are gonna say I'm un-American, and I'm gonna say, "I'm anti-injustice." ... If to speak out against injustice in America makes me anti-American, they can call me anything they want 'cause I'm a Christian, and my allegiance is to the cross first and foremost. The flag comes second.

The interview is well worth the 3 1/2 minutes listen.

Heal This Nation

2008-10-28T11:34:00.003-05:00

I know, I know... it's another Obama "ad," but for me it's more. In these 30 seconds I find an emotionally charged turn into hope, a willingness to believe that a nation with united purpose might once again arise, that my children might know for themselves the nation I taught them to believe was possible, the nation I believe myself to have known: the United States of America.

Yes, We Can.

What Is a Family?

2008-10-27T09:41:00.003-05:00

With thoughts toward my children:

What is a family? Is it just a genetic shain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

I could list various possibilities. But I'd never arrived at a definite answer ... Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself, with borders that shifted as time passed and faces changed but that nevertheless offered the illusion of control. An inner circle, where love was constant and claims unquestioned. Then a second circle, a realm of negotiated love, commitments freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues, acquaintances; the cheerful gray-haired lady who rang up my groceries ... the circle finally widened to embrace a nation or a race, or a particular moral course, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name but were actually commitments I'd made to myself.

At first I reacted to all this attention like a child to its mother's bosom, full of simple, unquestioning gratitude ... an obvious contrast to the growing isolation of American life, a contrast I understood, not in racial, but in cultural terms. A measure of what we sacrificed for technology and mobility ... the insistent pleasure of other peopl's company, the joy of human warmth.

As the days wore on, though my joy became tempered with tension and doubt .... Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? ... I'd been able to translate these feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial ... [but] faith in participatory democracy couldn't buy Jane a new set of sheets. For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking deeply about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it, the crude but undeniable peace it could buy ....

But, of course, wealth involved trade-offs for those who weren't born to it .... the same perverse survivor's guilt that I could expect to experience if I ever did try to make money and had to pass the throngs of young black men on the corner as I made my way to a downtown office. Without power for the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave other behind. And perhaps that was that fact that left me so unsettled - the fact that the same maddening patterns still held sway; that on one here could tell me what my blood ties demanded or how those demands could be reconciled with some larger idea of human association. It was as if we are all making it up as we went along.

....

I remember a conversation I had once in Chicago when I was still organizing. It was with a woman who'd grown up in a big family in rural Georgia. Five brothers and three sisters, she had told me, all crowded under a single roof. She told me about her father's ultimately futile efforts to farm his small plot of land, her mother's vegetable graden, the two pigs they kept penned out in the yrard, and the trips with her siblings to fish the murky waters of a river nearlby. Listening to her speak, I began to realize that two of the three sisters she'd mentioned had actually died at birth, but that in this woman's mind they had remained with her always, spirits with names and ages and characters, two sisters who accompanied her while she walked to school or did chores, who soothed her cries and colmed her feaars. For this woman, family had never been a vessel just for the living. The dead, too, had their claims, their voices sshaping the course of her dreams.

So now it was for me.

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. New York: Random House, 2004. (327-338).

Writing Ourselves Into the World

2008-10-27T08:57:00.002-05:00

At the beginning of each semester, I challenge young writers to reconsider their more as a billboard about themselves than a paper about something else: "You are writing yourself into the world," I tell them, "... how you see the world, what you believe to be important, who you are ... you are writing yourself every time you write."

This bit of affirmation comes alongside my thinking from Dreams From My Father (Obama 2004):

He held up a copy of Heart of Darkness, evidence for the court. I reached over to snatch it out of his hands. "See there," Marcus said. "Makes you embarrassed, don't it - just being seen with a book like this. I'm telling you, man, this stuff will poison your mind." ....

Regina smiled and shook her head .... I tossed the book into my backpack. "Actually, he's right," I said. "It is a racist book. The way Conrad sees it, Africa's the cesspool of the world, black folks are savages, and any contact with them breeds infection."

Regina blew on her coffee. "So why are you reading it?"

"Because it's assigned." I paused, not sure if I should go on. "And because .... because the book teaches me things, "I said. "About white people, I mean. See, the book's not really about Africa. Or black people. It's about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. If you can keep your distance, it's all there, in what's said and what's left unsaid" (103).

First Nations

2008-10-23T09:47:00.001-05:00

Red Lake Nation
Leech Lake Nation
White Earth Nation

Barack Obama is committed to the interests of my tribal brothers and sisters. Anishinabe people, here is a man who will be president for us all.

In His Own Words

2008-10-20T08:26:00.003-05:00

www.askobamanow.com is "[c]reated and modestly funded by Obama volunteers who simply believe that Barack Obama would make a fine president. [They] are independent of Obama for America, www.barackobama.com, and any other entity. Any shortcomings you see here are [theirs] alone."

I'm liking this site for the opportunity to hear the man himself speak to my interests and concerns. Maybe it will do something for you, too. And if anyone can point me to a similar site from John McCain, I'd like to post that information here as well.

"Leaks"

2008-10-19T22:23:00.004-05:00

First semester studies at Purdue left me inundated by names of philosophers and ideas strange and unfamiliar to me. I helped myself remember with note cards filled with definitions and and photosheets printed with pictures that helped me to visualize the men and women I read. This image of Deleuze came to mind again for me when Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout (Breakfast of Champions) spoke of "leaks."

Trout did another thing which some people might have considered eccentric: he called mirrors leaks. It amused him to pretend that mirrors were holes between two universes.

If he saw a child near a mirror, he might wag his finger at a child warningly, and say with great solemnity, "Don't get too near that leak. You wouldn't want to wind up in the other universe, would you?"

... a fitting (re)consideration of Deleuze.

The Value of Freedom

2008-10-19T21:55:00.002-05:00

In an interview attached to the audio book version of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, long-time friend and attorney Donald C. Farber wrapped a closing comment in laughter, saying to Vonnegut, "You always manage to find something funny about something that isn't funny at all."

Here's one of my favorite examples:

Then [Kilgore Trout] thought about what Bill [his pet bird] might want. It was easy to guess. "Bill," he said, "I like you so much, and I am such a big shot in the Universe, that I will make your three biggest wishes come true." He opened the door of the cage, something Bill couldn't have done in a thousand years.

Bill flew over to the windowsill. He put his little sholder against the glass. There was just one layer of glass between Bill and the great out-of-doors ....

Your second wish is about to come true," said Trout, and he again did something which Bill could never have done. He opened the window. But the opening of the window was such an alarming business to the parakeet that he flew back to this cage and hopped inside.

Trout closed the door of the cage and latched it. "That's the most intelligent use of three wishes I ever heard of," he told the bird. "You made sure you'd still have something worht wishing for - to get out of the cage."

By my measure, November 4th is a day for getting out of the cage. The loss of freedom was never fair trade in exchange for the promise of a maybe tomorrow. Vote.

Thinking of Tommi in So Many Ways

2008-10-07T19:47:00.001-05:00

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
US anthropologist & popularizer of anthropology (1901 - 1978)

Rhetoric and Cultural Study

2008-10-07T17:28:00.000-05:00

Wake a Sleeping Giant?

2008-10-07T09:58:00.002-05:00

There might be better things to do in a fight.

Excellence in Teaching

2008-10-05T23:18:00.001-05:00

Congratulations, Mary! You’ve won an Excellence in Teaching award!
Winners will be recognized at the next faculty meeting—October 15, STEW 202.

A True War Story

2008-10-04T17:59:00.002-05:00

From How to Tell a True War Story (Tim O'Brien)

"You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it.

"In the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

Register to Vote. Yes, YOU!

2008-10-01T17:46:00.002-05:00

... or maybe not. OK, don't vote.

... unless America matters to you.

Let Me Get This Straight

2008-09-30T17:52:00.001-05:00

It Was 1958: "The Oceans Were Clean and Pure"

2008-09-30T08:49:00.002-05:00

In 2008 ...

Pssst... do something!

Bail Out? Hmmm...

2008-09-29T09:04:00.001-05:00

Ghosts?

2008-09-25T12:13:00.008-05:00

OK, I'm hooked, and I needed a mini brain-break from my recent obsession with the economic dealing in Washington right now anyway. So, what do you think? Is there a "ghost" caught working out on this security video clip?

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2008-09-24T22:07:00.004-05:00

John McCain cancels with Letterman (he has to get back to Washington) but remains in New York, and just as he would have been going on stage with Dave (which he couldn't do, of course ... he had to get back to Washington), cameras from The Late Show actually (I swear, you can't make this stuff up!) actually find McCain in a nearby studio doing an interview with Katie Couric.

Nobody could tell it as well as Letterman does. Enjoy.

Too Much Risk

2008-09-24T20:34:00.004-05:00

Lawrence Lessig takes up the challenge Palin set during her interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson on September 11 - to discover how her experience and qualifications compare to other Vice Presidents throughout history.

In only 12 minutes Lessig reviews and analyzes the qualifications of all 46 prior Vice Presidents to reveal that even in the most generous consideration, with the possible exception of only two Vice Presidents in the history of our nation, Sarah Palin is the LEAST qualified candidate ever to have been named to a national ticket.

I am distressed by this on so many levels, and not the least is as a woman working as hard as I do to command a voice equal to my male counterparts in determining the destiny of my nation, my community, and my world.

In Sarah Palin, the value of a woman is once again reduced to her ability to polish the man that stands beside her.

No press conferences? No unscripted questions? No answers?

"One heartbeat away" is not just a slogan: This is NO time to take such a risk!

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

2008-09-23T20:53:00.003-05:00

A recent "Value Voters Summit" shines an unfortunate and unbecoming light on Christianity as represented by James Dobson and Focus on the Family. I offer this clip from "The View" for a short discussion:

A friend attending a recent Obama get-out-the-vote calling party was surprised to be confronted by the strength of this sentiment from one self-proclaimed life-long Democrat: "...no way in hell I'll vote a Black man into the White House." He wondered aloud how such a thing could be true in 21st century America. I wonder, too, and I hurt to know more of the answer than I want to know.

Mandy Patinkin sings the unfortunate reality of it all ...

House M.D.'s "Kutner" Wants YOU to Register and Vote

2008-09-23T19:11:00.003-05:00

Kal Penn (Kutner) Asks Minnesota to Get Registered

Sometimes More Than You Want to Know

2008-09-21T08:50:00.005-05:00

I now know more about the financial structures informing the economic web of our society than I have ever known before, and all this prompted by a Friday morning conversation between guest commentator on MSNBC's Hardball, Mike Barnicle, and Chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Christopher Dodd.

The five-minute interview rocked my world as Sen. Dodd conveyed the gravity of the nearly catastrophic moment facing the nation, a moment conservatively expected to deliver an immediate 1.5 trillion dollar debt to American taxpayers.

Translated, that 1.5 trillion dollars comes to roughly $36,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country or nearly 2.5 times the cost of the entire Iraqi war leveled on the shoulders of American workers.

I've shared the highlights of that interview with family members and now record them here so as not to forget. With the bi-partisan act of congress apt to pass in the first days of the coming week, the U.S. national debt will rise to $11.5 trillion and more than $700 billion of "bad paper," loans in default, will be wiped from the records of major banking houses and taken up as the new property of the federal government - you and me.

They say we had no choice: it was this disastrous move or global economic catastrophe, a financial tsunami that would leave no one untouched and throw the world into depression. I exhale again just now, deeply, and know that I am willing to take up hope only in the anticipation of an Obama administration.

The conversation between Mike Barnicle and Sen. Christopher Dodd followed a late-night, Thursday night meeting between the leaders of the House and Senate and members of the president's economic advisory committee: Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Chris Cox, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury. Notably, at such a time as this, President Bush was not in attendance, explaining that he did not want to participate in a meeting where the outcome could have such significant ramifications for the impending national election.

My notes from the interview follow:

Mike: Senator, where's the justice in the impending bailout?

Dodd: There isn't any, and I'm angry about it. Someone once described the situation in a brief sentence, "We've reached a point where we are privatizing wealth and socializing debt," and that's where we are now.

Mike: What did, if anything, Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke say to you that scared you, if they did scare you? What did they say?

Dodd: They said, "Look, we're in a moment here - not a matter of weeks away or months away or years away - we're in a matter of hours away or days away from the largest collapse of the financial markets in the history of this country, and the effect would be a global effect." And this was a very sobering moment. I can't recall another moment as sobering as that one, and immediately thereafter was this 5 to 10 seconds where all the oxygen went out of the room - it took the breath away of everyone in that room.

What they describe happening would make whatever the cost of this program pale by comparison, so I'm not sure that at the end of the day we have any choice, as angry as we may be about how we got here, and I have some strong views about why we're here. ... This is literally a meltdown of the entire financial system.

Financial analysts who agree with Senator Dodd's assessment yet disagree with the proposed solution suggest the difficulty with the bailout lies in "the detachment between risk and the risk-taker, which is the fundamental principle keeping capitalism as a functioning system. ... If there's no potential accountability and realization of your own activities, people will continue to take undue risks."

The economic crisis due to be inherited by the next administration dwarfs any challenge yet faced in American history at the same time that the current solution, as necessary as it apparently is, threatens to detach the American electorate from its realization of the undue risk and subsequent overwhelming loss suffered by electing a Republican administration and George Bush to lead us into this mess. Without this realization, if the expert analysts can be trusted, American citizens become willing to make the same mistakes again.

Be sure of this: We will not survive as a nation with four more years of Republican leadership - this before you consider the frightful thought that the impending pressures could easily leave Gov. Palin in charge of the nuclear codes. Resist the impulse to vote single issues, and give your heart again to the call for a unified nation.

Vote hope.

Vote Obama.

Headlines

2008-09-19T08:40:00.002-05:00

Bullet-point headlines drive home the timeliness of Obama's message as I read my Bloglines line-up this morning. This from NYTimes.com:

Lenders have become even less willing to part with their money, further crimping budgets and family spending.
Treasury will back the money market funds temporarilty up to $50 billion to ensure their solvency.
SEC temporarily blocks short sales of financial stocks.
N.Korea said it was preparing to restart its nuclear reactor because the US failed to fulfill its obligations under an international treaty.
The agreement with Iraq over our troops is at risk, the major point of contention being the US promised immunity from war crimes (note: The Federal government is currently blocking a law suit being brought by prisoners of war recovered from the first Bush war with Iraq; their case is subsequently being advanced through the legislative houses and is giving rise to the "risk" referenced in this headline.)
August unemployment rates in New York City show the largest monthly increase in more than 30 years.

As Obama and Biden keep saying: "I'm not making this stuff up." While the McCain/Palin ticket pepper audiences on the stump with platitudes at best, falsehoods at worst, and evidence of the lack of preparation for statemanship we would otherwise have believed only fundamental to the office of president, Obama speaks articulately and point-on to the headlines that announce a little more of the American dream is either gone or threatened again today.

America for ALL Americans: Vote Obama/Biden.

A New Sense of Unity and Shared Responsibility

2008-09-17T08:51:00.004-05:00

We're reading Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions in my freshman writing class at Purdue, and as I prepare for a first discussion, I find connection between Vonnegut's recollection of Phoebe Hurty's hope for America and the new Obama ad slated to being airing nationally today.

Here's Vonnegut:

[Phoebe Hurty] believed what so many Americans believed then: that the nation would be happy and just and rational when prosperity came. I never hear that anymore: Prosperity. It used to be a synonym for Paradise. And Phoebe Hurty was able to believe that the impoliteness she recommended would give shape to an American paradise. Now her sort of impoliteness is fashionable. But nobody believes anymore in a new American paradise. I sure miss Phoebe Hurty.

Yes, you have to step past the nostalgia and a temptation to believe there were better days just a few decades ago - that's not it. What can be read in Phoebe Hurty is a willingness to fight for a better day where prosperity is coupled with justice and rationality, where the fruit of our labor secures well being for all Americans.

Phoebe Hurty used impoliteness to open the conversation of her day, to provoke an awakening to rationality. In this election season, such impoliteness has been co-opted and now redeployed with false "honor" to accuse, sensationalize, and distort wherever rational argument would seek audience.

I must believe that, in the end, it will not be so. I choose to believe that ...
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. Laying its foundations on such prinicples and organizing its powers in such force as to them should be most likely to evince their freedom and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established should not be changed for light and tanscient causes, but accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer when evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed; but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same object, divines to reduce them to an absolute despostism, it is their right - it is their duty- to throw off such government and to devise new forms for their future security."

What Jefferson knew then, Obama knows now. He believes in a prosperity born of justice and rationality. He believes in an America that is "America" for all of its citizens.

Forgive me for compromising the language of The Declaration of Independence as I wrote it above: I write from seventh-grade memories, and that's a long time ago for me. I've held these words as among the dearest my citizen-birthright affords, even if they have morphed a little over time.

What I know is this: We aren't called to be America as a place where we all think alike; we're called to protect America as a act of freedom each of us lives into and works out as individuals - as the responsibility only an individual can carry to increasingly understand what life is all about. America is America because it protects that dream - that freedom - for as many of its citizens as it possibly can, and it commits its citizens to a sense of unity and a shared responsibility for building a nation where each and every one of us has the same opportunity - more than that, the shared responsibility - to become all that we were made to be by the very one who made us to be so (and you can drop the God part here if it doesn't work for you - your call).

McCain and Palin won't take us there.

Vote Obama.

Protect Democracy

2008-09-11T17:20:00.003-05:00

It has been four weeks today since John McCain has allowed himself to be interviewed directly by members of the press. It has been three weeks since he has held a public town-hall meeting. All appearances in those weeks have been staged, 15-minute presentations - sound bites and nothing more. (source: Fox News)

The Democratic process requires informed decisions if it hopes to work at all, and if McCain/Palin cordon themselves off from access, from inquiry, and from being called to explain their position on health-care reform, educational funding, troop deployments and veterans care, funding for science and innovation, civil liberty infractions, and more ... if all we have are sound bites, how does democracy survive?

It doesn't!

Debating then Mayor Palin in his bid for the Alaskan gubernatorial seat, Andrew Halcro reasoned his response to Palin's willingness to withhold civil benefits to same-sex couples along these lines:

"Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. We live in a country that means to protect its citizens and assure equal rights under the law to each and every one."

If this democracy matters to you, get involved NOW! The last time we gave the country to Bush, we promised the world that we wouldn't let it happen again. Let's keep that promise.

We can.

Yes we can!

Showing Off the Shoes

2008-08-11T22:19:00.002-05:00

Tommi Lynn Godwin married Eric John Hyttinnen on August 3, 2008, and I now have a son-in-law I trust to love my daughter as much and as well as I have done for the first 20+ years of her life.

The dresses were wonderful, the party was great, the music was outstanding, and every dream my baby girl ever dreamed came true for her for three days in August.

All that and I never had the opportunity to flash the fabulously sexy shoes I bought for the occasion, so I'm showing off the shoes now!

Lexicon Artist

2008-06-20T12:37:00.000-05:00

The Colbert Report: The Word - 'Lexicon Artist'

"Using language to turn failed policy into ideals that transcend debate is the best way to get people to think of John McCain as transcen-presidential."

onegoodmove: The Word - Lexicon Artist

First Snow 2007

2007-10-27T07:45:00.001-05:00

October 9, 2007 Bemidji, Minnesota

OK, so it's not much, but is was the first snow of the season, and I was there to receive it. While my mom was wrestling with the air conditioner and 90 degree weather in Michigan, I woke up at a fall camp out with a dusty of snow. Lucky me!

For the Record

2007-10-25T13:50:00.001-05:00

I never understood Tom more than I understand him now.

Sleep Deprived? A Surprising Fix for the Problem

2007-10-04T23:10:00.000-05:00

Didn't get enough sleep last night?

Grab a quick midday nap just after a cup of coffee.

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.
Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you'll get what's known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.
Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain's prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

From: Gini Trapani, Lifehacker

He Likes Me!

2007-10-04T21:17:00.000-05:00

... had one of those lonely days recently and received this from my son, Abe. The feeling is mutual, Abe.

Family: We Need the Children

2007-09-30T21:06:00.000-05:00

Update: My students' work is now open for viewing at Composing English. If any of you have the time to take a look, I would be grateful, and I know they are excited to think that their audience has just grown past the boundaries of a classroom. ... good on you all!

You might enjoy taking a look at some of the work we're doing in first-year composition at Purdue. The slide show below is my "model" for the assignment relating to Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Students were asked to compose a multimedia "argument" responding to one of two themes defined for this work: the commodification of life or defining the boundaries that compose "family." Student work is available for viewing at Composing English. Of course, if you see something you like there, but sure and leave a comment. You will be their first public audience, and, as you might imagine, they are a bit nervous about it! ... all part of the fun.

Here's my composition: Family, We Need the Children

Create a Free Slideshow

A Rotten, Nasty COLD

2007-09-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

It's my own fault. I knew better; I know better. I walk two to three miles a day, eat the best foods I can afford, and generally keep my hands clean and out of my eyes during cold season. So what happened? Well, we finished work early for English 420, so I let the students go - it was a Friday, after all, and I thought to take advantage of the extra time in a computer lab to get a bit of my own work done. And where did I choose to sit? At the very station where the only sick student in class had sat! I was having a great day, chatting with a few folks who lingered in the lab, and I mindlessly sat down at her station! ... a conscientious, young woman who had earlier cautioned me about her illness and warned me to be careful with proximity. It's my own fault. I know it!

Saturday last went OK, and Sunday, though a bit dragging, was fine, too, but by Monday, the beast was coming out to play, and I've been fighting this rotten, no-good, nasty COLD since then. Grrrr...... growling just seems the right thing to do.

And I want to work - I want to think, but it's not going well. I feel myself reaching through thick-pile velvet to pick up a dime or a half-dollar thought. They tease me with promise and drop away, then lay conspicuously daring me to try again. I don't. It's enough to keep finding my breath. Yet from here I remembering A Passage to India, the book Olga gave me, a love-hate read through fields of prose from E.M.Forster, a story as likely warm, inviting, and poetic as it was at other times repulsive to me. The story is haunting me this week as I wrestle with a cold, intruding on my best efforts to stay on the road with Kerouac.

Olga tells me that conversation about Forster's Passage can drift to discussions about the homosexual relationship between Fielding and Aziz, but that's a stretch for me; and though I can relate to the Mrs. Moore character and in passing moments to Adela, the real story for me in the novel is the being Indian that Aziz negotiates throughout. There are so many expressions for him, so many flows and tensions, and so many promising possibilities against a backdrop of limitation and performance. Aziz journeys on, and the story resolves only in that fact of his being still Aziz - poet, seer, and Indian. He continues and in the end he will be friends with the English only when the earth agrees ... "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."

And Jack Kerouac takes me back to the road, and my thoughts drift to a 4:30 class and the nasty, awful cold will lose this fight in the end.

Forster, E.M.. A Passage to India. New York: Harvest Books, 1965.

Quotes I note:

"It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyze..." (12)

"...pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the hearer witha sense of his own weakness..." (113)

"The poem had don no 'good' to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust ... it voiced our loneliness nonetheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes ..." (114)

"Men yearn for poetry through they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form..." (234)

Shit Creek

2007-09-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

For those not likely to be reading my friend Winston over at nobody asked ... , here's a reposting I couldn't resist.

Readers

2007-09-15T23:47:00.000-05:00

An Associated Press report released in August of this year provided a snapshot view of American readers. Highlights include:

Gallup Poll asked how many books people had at least started in the last year. The average answer was five, down from ten in 1999.
A National Endowment for the Arts report found that only 57% of America adults had read a book 2002.
An Associated Press-Ipsos poll recently released found that one in four adults read no books at all in the past year.
Yet, publishers showed $35.7 billion in global book sales last year, a 3% increase over the previous year.

I found a bit of hometown encouragement in the additional note that "people from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year," and that "Democrats and liberals typically read slightly more than Republicans and conservatives" do. ... proud to be a liberal Minnesota and happy that cold winters still make being curled up under a warm blanket with a hot cup of cocoa and a good book the best place to be.

My Mother's Story on Every Page

2007-09-15T19:46:00.000-05:00

I grew up hearing stories of my grandfather's suddenly lost security and the family's sneaking away in the night in order to save the wagon, the team of horses, and as many of my grandmother's saved possessions as could be packed in a few hour's time. I often visited my Uncle Lloyd, a tenant farmer living a half hour's drive away, and remember the moving day for he and his family when the property owner served notice of eviction. He took a job as janitor at my school, a broken and angry man as I recall him now.

Though the losses suffered in my mother's family only echo those detailed in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the recollection of their frequent retelling punctuated page after page throughout my reading experience. The characters became real for me; their determination became mine, and I felt the shared responsibility to discipline a willing anger in response to the inhumanity of tolerated yet totally unnecessary deprivation.

I remember my father crouched in a three-point stance of consideration, gathered with other men in conference and reinforced by the confidence of the women encircling them. I was among the children sent to play with a promise of Cracker Jacks. All these memories made it easy to read Steinbeck's Pa and Uncle John, Tom and Al, and the preacher, Casy, as if they were near kin. I might have mistaken Aunt Esther as a model for Steinbeck's Ma, the character with whom I most identified, a representative of strength I most envied.

Critically, I found the female characters - those beyond Steinbeck's Ma - to be less meaningfully composed, less individually consistent than male characters, and I often found myself wanting more from Rose of Sharon and Ruthie. An abundance of female characters written only incidental into the story seemed a best attempt to answer that need: the the truck stop waitress on one occasion and a trio of caring women on another exemplify a sampling of those stitched together in a kind of patchwork quilt of the female presence overlaying the novel as a whole. Yet the story carried me, caught up my attention, and wouldn't let me go.

I didn't want it to end. I had read the last pages ahead of beginning the book, and I knew Steinbeck would abandon me, that he would leave the missing chapters - the rest of the story - to be written in me. Even though overly sentimental by my measure, I recognized Tom's departing speech to Ma as the only readerly direction Steinbeck would give, and I didn't want to be left in the rain without an answer - drafted to a fight that would have to come off the page if the story Steinbeck began would ever find it's ending. Ma knew the trouble there would be and reasoned against her son's departure: "Tom, they'll drive ya and cut ya down .... they might kill ya an' I wouldn' know. They might hurt ya ... Then what, Tom?" And Tom's answer,

Then it don' matter, Ma. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there ... I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build - why, I'll be there. See? (572)

Kenneth Burke's guiding sensibility that literature is best experienced as "equipment for living" finds fertile ground for me in Grapes of Wrath. The language sometimes dances, and the characters are sometimes so real that I think to tell one or another of them about a job I just found available before remembering myself, the book, and the pages where they are alone real - only there. But I am nonetheless another person at the end of this novel than I was when it began - a better person. I move more peacefully now, more determined to listen past the noise, and clearly in more possession of myself. There is enough to be angry about, and when the time is right, I am able to be angry, but there is enough reason to love, too, and more reason to draw together now than to push one another apart. So much of what my mother was trying to say in her stories finally comes clear for me in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.

My mother has never been much of a reader, and a book of some 600-plus pages long will scare the bejiggers out of her for sure, but she's getting Steinbeck for Christmas - audio and text. She just might find enough support and encouragement in the combination to make it all the way to the end. i'll get her started and leave the rest to Steinbeck. I am certain of this: If anyone can hold her attention, he can, and no other book will go the distance that this book does to make sense of the stories she remembers, the stories she has given to me. Good reading, Mom.

Quotes I Note:

They's a guy in McAlester - lifer. he studies all the time. He's sec'etary of the warden - writes letters an' stuff like that. Well, he's one hell of a bright guy an' reads law an/ all stuff like that. Well, I talked to him one time about her, 'cause he reads so much stuff. an' he says it don't do no good to read books. Says he's read ever'thing ... an' he says se makes less sense now than she did before he starts readin'. (75)

Ma cleared her throat. "It ain't kin we? It's will we? she said firmly. "As far as 'kin,' we can't do nothin', not go to California or nothin'; bas as far as 'will,' why, we'll do what we will." (139)

Al asked, "Ain't you think' what's it gonna be like when we get there? ... "No," [Ma] said quickly. "no, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' live we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much. You got to live ahead 'cause you're so young, but - it's jus' the road goin' by for me. (168)

They's times when how you feel got to be kep' to yourself. (413)

And thinking about Abe ...
"You got more sense, Tom. I don' need to make you mad, I got to lean on you. Them others - they're kinda strangers, all but you. You won't give up, Tom.
"I don't like it," he said. "I wanta go out like Al. An' I wanta get mad like Pa, an' I wana get drunk like Uncle John."
Ma shook her head. "You can't, Tom. I know. I knowed from the time you was a little fella. You can't. They's some folks that's just theirself an' nothin' more. There's Al - he's jus' a young fella after a girl. You wasn't never like that, Tom."
"Sure I was," said Tom. "Still am."
"No you ain't. Ever'thing you do is mor'n you. When they sent you up to prison I knowed it. You're spoke for."
"Now, Ma - cut that out. It ain't true. It's all in your head."
"Maybe. Maybe it's in my head. Rosasharn, you wipe up these here an' put 'em away." (482)

The evening was hot, and the thrust of light still flowed up from the western horizon. And without any signal the family gathered by the truck, and the congress, the family government, went into session. (135)

Steinbeck, John. Grapes of Wrath. New York: Book of the Month Club, 1997.

A Promise to Read: Gibson's "Neuromancer"

2007-09-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

Reading goes a little slower when the press of teaching comes alongside, and fall semester at Purdue means two sections of eager students: one, first-year composition, and a second in business writing. No complaints - I'm having a great time with the renewed challenge of university instruction and new approaches to writing.

But today is a day for catching up, and I'm writing about books that I've finished in the first weeks of school. First, William Gibson's Neuromancer.

Attending the 1997 International Science Fair (chaperon/teacher/proud mom of a state champion homeschooler studying vermiculture), I had the pleasure of hearing John Chambers, then CEO of Cisco Systems, deliver the keynote address. His talk was profoundly inspirational, just as you would expect it to be for up and coming young scientists, and in it he mentioned Gibson's Neuromancer as the 1984 "book that got us all started." Chambers made repeated references to the novel, and the title immediately went on my must-read list. I have only (finally) finished it this year.

Reading like a fast-paced, deeply-networked Mickey Spillane detective novel, the book's entertainment value was unfortunately lost on me. I can't say I've spent much time with crime novels. Language patterns were often too unfamiliar, and jumps through time or sudden shifts in character voice and representation sent me scrambling to find the threads of meaning again. Still, who could resist the near prescient collection of digital gadgetry so cleverly put to use throughout the novel? Set in "an age of affordable beauty," my personal enhancement favorites included Molly's lens, surgically implanted eye coverings sporting read-outs of time and weather as well as the identification of anyone approaching or personally "piped-in" messages from her cohorts in crime (maybe freedom fighters - depending on your point of view).

Trinity's wonderful line, "Load me up, Tank" (The Matrix), echoes a second Gibson device that captured my attention and continues to provoke a genuine desire/envy. Called "microsofts," these "angular fragments of colored silicon" mounted neatly into "carbon sockets planted behind the left ear" were an immediate and complete experience of knowing whatever you needed or wanted to know. Even better, they were stackable! The story's Panther Moderns who favored the devices were a set of youthful of willing anarchists tagged "softheads." Of course, Molly, belonging to an older generation, nonetheless lacks nothing for riding the razor edge of top technology, and rejoins with competitive savvy, "You can't let the little pricks generation-gap you." Go, go, Gadget Girls!

I thoroughly enjoyed those passages of the story that came clear for me, and I hold the confusion of other parts as no more than a witness to my own deficiency in reading. I'm willing to give Mr. Gibson his well-heralded due for a creative and commanding work, and I'll certainly return for a second reading after I whittle my current reading list down to a more manageable number ... a year or two from now, maybe, but ten more years pass again before I do, Mr. Gibson. I promise.

Quotes I note:

"But also he saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zone,s that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself" (11).

"'I don't have that good of a memory,' Case said, looking around ... 'Everybody does,' the Finn said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out under his heel, 'but not many of you can access it. Artists can, mostly, if they're any good'" (170).

"Case had always taken it for granted that the real bosses, the kingpins in a given industry, would be both more and less than people ... He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism. It was the root of street cool, too, the knowing poster that implied connection" (203).

"'She a warrior,' Maelcum said, as if it explained everything" (248).

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 2003.

Seeing Poetry

2007-09-15T07:18:00.000-05:00

Since signing on to blog a bit with others at the Sycamore Review, I've been paying more attention to poetry. Of course, poetry isn't the only or even main focus of Sycamore Review, but it seems to be what has happened to me as I paid more attention (<-- an interesting phrase, isn't it? ...to "pay" attention) to literature online.

I was lost for a few hours delicious hours the other day in poetry readings read aloud to me by the authors themselves at The Poetry Archive. Here I listened with ears and eyes to Patricia Beers, Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, and Spike Milligan (this last, at first, only because his name was so inviting). Even poets Tennyson, Yeats, and Browning can be heard reciting their own works, though the recordings bear witness to the passing of time as you might expect. Poke around in "historic recordings" to discover a favorite of your own.

Taking an otherly turn, I came across works I found to be called "animated poetry" and fell down a particularly wonderful rabbit hole with Billy Collins (44th U.S. Poet Laureate) and the series of his poems available on YouTube. Picking a favorite among these just won't work, but "Sweet Talk," "Forgetfulness," and at the top of my list, "The Best Cigarette" found more than one viewing with me.

From comments left on one of the Collins poems, I wandered on my way to this amazing bit of fun, work the writer called "graphic poetry." It starts slow, but give it a chance: "Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger."

To save you the link jump, here is "The Best Cigarette":

Dear Senators

2007-09-15T06:54:00.000-05:00

Please be part of the risk.

"If you're part of the risk, you're gonna be part of the solution. What we need in the country is for people to mobilize to get a simple law in Congress which says that the members of Congress will no longer have health insurance until all the other Americans have a similar health insurance."
Ralph Nader, September 9 interview with Bill Maher

thanks: onegoodmove

Remembering

2007-09-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

Six years ... it's been six years, and the losses continue.

This memorial was composed by student artists at Bemidji State University in an effort to help us grasp, mourn, cope, and find one another in the aftermath of 9/11.

The work has aged with time. Seasoned now, it still continues to serve.

I am grateful.

Images taken: July 2007, Bemidji, Minnesota

Spiders

2007-09-10T19:17:00.000-05:00

My new living space in Indiana comes with a washer/dryer, convenient location, plenty of space, and even a pleasant view from a private deck. It comes, too, with this rather impressive fellow-tenant. Being as impressed as I was with his (?) size, I tried to establish perspective in the picture by placing a mini wooden match nearby. The match is about an inch and a half. Maybe this is would be a "baby" spider in your neck of the woods, but he's all he needs to be to catch my attention. The big question: did I kill him yet? Answer: no... not yet.

A Graduate Education Via Online Video Lectures

2007-09-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

I follow conversations from Stephen Downes, George Siemens, and Ira Socol who talk about the shifting models of education, and I am as excited about the promise of possibilities for breaking past old models as I am challenged by pockets of resistance (sometimes) offered by reigning institutions.

Well, in light of the conversation I mention above, here is a moment of celebration: The European Graduate School is sharing online video lectures from some of the best authors, lecturers, and philosophers of the 20 and 21st century.

EGS introduces itself online as "facilitating creative breakthroughs and theoretical paradigm shifts" and bringing graduate students together with "the visionaries and philosophers of the media world who inspire learning about art, philosophy, communications, film, literature, internet, web and cyberspace studies from a cross-disciplinary perspective."

Video lectures available for viewing include such notable writers as Slavoj Zizek on "Happiness," Jean Baudrillard on the "Finalities of Change," Victor J. Vitanza on "Being in Relation," Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky on "21st Century Aesthetics," and Shelley Jackson on "Trans-Literary Styles" - these representing only an appetizer in light of the many other and notable lectures posted there. Here's an open door into some of the best the academy has to offer!

Interested? You can go HERE to check out the 1999-2003 lectures available onsite with EGS, or browse the list below for viewing opportunities EGS has made available through YouTube:

Jacques Derrida at the EGS, 2004 - Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Jean Baudrillard at the EGS, 2002 - Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Jean Baudrillard at the EGS, 2004

Slavoj Žižek - Rules, Race, and Mel Gibson, 2006 - Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Judith Butler at the EGS, 2006 - Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Lectures from authors and filmmakers: Atom Egoyan, Peter Greenaway, John Waters and Julian Barnes.

Worth Re-Posting

2007-09-07T12:48:00.000-05:00

tip 'o the hat to Norm at onegoodmove

For Just Enough Reasons

2007-08-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

For just enough reasons, this is the right piece of music today.

Ben Folds: "Still Fighting It"

Beautiful Feet

2007-08-16T21:32:00.000-05:00

Cheney: War in Iraq Equals "Quagmire" and "Too Many Casualites"

2007-08-15T16:45:00.000-05:00

This 1994 clip (source: MoveOn.org) shows V.P. Cheney openly acknowledging administrative awareness that two of the big problems with the war in Iraq were likely outcomes of an invasion. So, what changed administrative perspective? Really ... what prompted the change?! Isn't that a question needing answers before the next election?

Ant Works

2007-08-11T23:26:00.000-05:00

For Mother's Day I received an "ant farm" from my son and a Canon digital movie camera. Their gifts inspired my first movie project: a condensed-time recording of the work these ants did to compose their world. Watch the tunnels take shape, see the frenzy of their first feeding, and then watch at the life of the environment begins to fade. Note: these ants were native to my geographic region and were released shortly after the point of the film where you see it end.

This project represents a number of firsts for me: a first ant farm, a first movie camera, and a first-time use of Windows Movie Maker. I can see room for improvement, but I'm thrilled to have completed the project.

Sun Gazing

2007-08-09T11:53:00.001-05:00

Bemidji, Minnesota
August 8, 2007

The Pure and Calm Friendship that Reading Is

2007-08-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

From Marcel Proust, On Reading, trans. and ed. Jean Autret and William Burford:

No doubt friendship, friendship for individuals, is a frivolous thing, and reading is a friendship. But at least it is a sincere friendship, and the fact that it is directed to one who is dead, who is absent, gives it something disinterested, almost moving. It is, moreover, a friendship unencumbered with all that makes up the ugliness of other kinds. Since we are all, we the living, only the dead who have not yet assumed our roles, all these compliments, all these greetings in the hall which we call deference, gratitude, devotion, and in which we mingle so many lies, are sterile and tiresome. Furthermore--from our first relations of sympathy, of admiration, of gratitude--the first words we speak, the first letters we we write, weave around us the initial threads of a web of habits, of a veritable manner of being from which we can no longer extricate ourselves in ensuing friendships, without reckoning that during that time the excessive words we have spoken remain like debts which we have to pay, or which we will pay still more dearly all our life with the remorse of having let ourselves refuse them. In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its first purity. With books, no amiability. These friends, if we spend an evening with them, it is truly because we desire them. In their case, at least, we leave often only with regret. And with none of those thoughts, when we have left, that spoil friendship: What did they think of us? Didn't we lack tact? Did we please?--and the fear of being forgotten for another. All these agitations of friendship come to an end at the threshold of that pure and calm friendship that reading is.

reposted from Jenny at Light Reading

Professor Godwin

2007-08-05T18:58:00.001-05:00

I used Meez to build this animated avatar of "Professor Godwin." Now ... what interesting ways will I be able to use this in my work at Purdue?

No Stones

2007-08-04T20:13:00.001-05:00

"There was soil above his grave with flowers growing out of it and a maple tree reaching down to it, and the roots and flowers offered his corpse a path out of the grave. If her father had been covered with a stone, she would never have been able to communicate with him after he died, and hear his voice in the trees pardoning her."

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera 1984)

Being Stuck in Kitsch

2007-08-04T13:11:00.000-05:00

Some years ago, in a class on postmodern theory, the mention of “kitsch” was frequently made, often tagging an idea for dismissal. The word was new to me at the time, and a fellow grad student defined the concept as all that is garishly common – “kewpie dolls, for example,” she said.

Milan Kundera visits the notion of “kitsch” in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, noting first its origin in German during the romantic mid-1800s and then recalling its initially metaphysical meaning (in true Kunderian style) as “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word … excluding everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence” (248).

The “good life” I have romanticized for so long might be considered “kitsch” when that “quoted” aspiration idealizes a life without shit. When such is the case, “kitsch” will be celebrated, installed in ceremony, institutionalized, nationalized, and reinforced with every Hallmark© card the U.S. Postal Service can deliver. Kitsch can only be kitsch when it draws on the shared feelings and basic images held in common by the mass of people – the unusual situation does not qualify. Kundera writes, “The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch” (251).

I have lived most of my life stuck in “kitsch,” denying shit, and sending too many Hallmark cards prescribed by duty, drenched with a secret panic/hope. I have been properly enthusiastic at parades, big games, and holiday gatherings – doing my part and being appropriately pissed off or sympathetic when others failed to do theirs. I’ve believed it a show of strength to achieve and protect the middle ground, a place of balance and inclusion, the eternal smile … the land of “kitsch.” I hear the Land of Oz, Gatsby’s east-egg almost-yesterday-again hope, and his faith in a world “founded securely on a fairy’s wing” as I write these ideas. I want to believe in kitsch, and I still resolvedly do – for better or worse, but I’m ready to embrace the shit now, too – the kid that won’t talk, unexpected debt, an unruly body, and returning to grad study when I have no confidence at all I can find a way through.

This is not a self-medicating, “truth-telling” move – a jail of its own in so many other ways, but a move to dump the work of shame, reduce the sense of “audience,” and affirm the greater satisfaction to be had in the absence of performance – a life broadcast only in the soothing tones of kitsch.

“As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch,” Kundera writes, “thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness” (256). Human weakness throws a much more interesting and inviting party; “proper” and “model” behavior is a lie at its base, a boring albeit profitable lie in its ability to undergird economic well-being and stabilize identity. Happiness is anchored in repetition, and shit blows every stable pattern to hell and back on a regular basis. It’s not necessarily a pretty site when that happens, but it’s real. Today I’m trading in “happiness” for interesting, challenging, and overwhelming shit. It keeps me alive. Tomorrow I’ll be tired of real and long for a bit of “happiness” again, but I’ll get over it. The best stories are dipped in shit.

Kundera writes that “the longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man” (296). Today I embrace my skin.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, New York: Tandem Library, 1999.

Some Things Never Change

2007-08-03T22:59:00.001-05:00

Tommi (1982)

Tommi (2007)

Dominion: A Moment of Perspective

2007-08-03T21:12:00.000-05:00

The refreshingly civil Houyhnhnms from Gulliver's Travels + recent Christopher Hitchens discussions (God is Not Great) + the increasing discomfort I've had in knowing (almost) more than I want to know about the Bush administration (An Assault on Reason) = the thought that we might want to reconsider the whole notion of "dominion" altogether.

From The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera 1984)

"The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.

The reason we take the right for granted is that we stand at the top of the hierarchy. But let a third party enter the game - a visitor from another planet, for example, someone to whom God says, "Thou shalt have dominion over creature of all other stars" - and all at once taking Genesis for granted becomes problematical."

This clip from Instinct (Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr., Buena Vista Pictures, 1999) caps the conversation for me.

.

Suffering Vertigo

2007-08-03T15:42:00.000-05:00

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? ... It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera 1984)

An Academic Education

2007-08-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

Mr. Antolini offers Holden Caulfield thoughtful and considered counsel in the closing chapters of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye that has camped out in the back corners of my attention since finishing that read more than a month ago. This passage speaks to me ... about residing in the state of "student," the gain(s) of continuing education, the compelling feeling of necessity for driving on. There is a part of my humanity that comes alive for me only through the kind of rigorous study I must engage at the academy. Maybe Mr. Antolini articulates a bit of that for me.

"I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student - whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find .... you're going to start getting closer and closer - that is, if you wantto, and if you look for it and wait for it - to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score ... many, may men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to."

"I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with - which unfortunately, is rarely the case - tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And- most important - nine times out of ten, they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker."

"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing ... You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly" (189-90).

Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

This Is Me, This Is Grandma

2007-07-31T10:07:00.001-05:00

This is me.
This is Grandma.

Julia Katherine (Raska) Dill

This Is Mom, This Is Me

2007-07-31T10:02:00.001-05:00

This is mom.

This is me.

PhoneVite

2007-07-30T11:34:00.000-05:00

OK, so I've got an open Saturday evening, and I'm hoping for some time around the fire with friends and a good bottle of wine. Now I can call send one phone message and invite everyone at once, and recipients can respond immediately from their own phones using single keys for "yes," "no," or "maybe" answers or leave a voice message of their own. The new service is Phonevite (free, of course), and it lets me add "voice" to invite functions like those already available through Facebook or Evite. Like these services, I can track responses by logging in at Phonevite.

...don't know where this will take me, but I thought it was worth having a "go" and passing along to you.

Jott

2007-07-30T11:21:00.000-05:00

...found a new "must try" application. Jott is a quick sign up that lets you PHONE your email account with a reminder - an on-the-go update for to-do list from your cellphone. Jott converts your voice message to text that will show up in your email a few minutes later, and it works with txt msgs, too! Of course, it's FREE!... and like Abe says, "I like free."
From the site:
Try Jott.com, a cool new web service that helps you get more done. It's been hailed as "insanely clever" and a "godsend". Very simply, Jott let's you use any ordinary cell phone to dictate an idea or memo to your to-do list via email and text messages - all by converting your voice to text. Best of all, it's FREE.

A "Fix" for Democracy

2007-07-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

“What has gone wrong in our democracy, and how can we fix it?” These are the questions that Al Gore boldly and passionately addresses in his book, The Assault on Reason.

Gore frames the conversation with a focus on literacy – the capacity to receive, assimilate, and articulate response to information. He outlines the nature of literacy common to the print-based society out of which democracy first sprung in our country and contrasts that with today’s society where one-way, television-based information dominates the scene. Gore convincingly argues that subsequent shifts in patterns of literacy and access to information distribution have put our democracy at risk, disenfranchised the vast majority of Americans, and created the vulnerabilities that have made it possible for the Bush administration to pillage our nation for personal gain.

eight chapters of brutal awakening. Call Bush the Wizard of Oz, and I have been one of too many willing to “pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain,” while he goes on making plans to protect his own interests. Gore walks the reader through a behind-the-curtain view of democracy’s dismantling under the Bush administration. He demonstrates the use made of mass media – particularly television – to loll the electorate into complacency and put democracy up for sale to the highest bidder. Where Brzezinski’s Second Chance leans into analytical and often an elevated discussion of national and international political overview, Gore remains approachable and respectfully conversant on similar topics throughout but does so while disclosing an insider’s view of American policy enacted in our names that could only leave us repeatedly aghast and ashamed if complacent and complicit in our knowing. The dissolution of constitutional authority, the disregard for checks and balance between branches of government, the wholesale betrayal of American trust and confidence as regards the war, the environment, the economy, and citizen rights, and the cankerous promotion of glutinous self-service are all illustrated in point after supported point of Bush-led initiatives. I was reading somewhere in chapter seven when IThe relatively comfortable read through introductory comments gives way to finally said aloud to myself, “I need some light at the end of this tunnel, Mr. Gore, and I need it soon.”

That light comes in chapter eight, “A Well-Connected Citizenry,” and as you might expect from the language, Gore looks largely, but not exclusively, to the Internet for hope in the fight to save democracy. He notes the two-way nature of the Internet, the open access, and the means available for assembly of the electorate. Interestingly, he pointedly contrasts “education” with the act of being “well-informed,” defining them in starkly different terms and noting that while being institutionally educated can underwrite the ability to be informed, it is no guarantee and certainly no prerequisite. The “marketplace of ideas,” he states is 1) open to every individual able to receive information and in turn contribute information directly into the flow of ideas, 2) is governed by the “meritocracy of ideas,” and 3) is guided by “an unspoken duty to search for general agreement” (13).

The revolutionary departure on which the tide of America was based was the audacious belief that, as Thomas Jefferson said, “An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.” Our Founders knew that people who are armed with knowledge and the ability to communicate it can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. They knew that democracy requires the open flow of information both to and, more important, from the citizenry. That means it is past time for us to examine our role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the executive branch to dominate our constitutional system and reverse the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy. (259)

Gore defines the Internet as “perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment.” He applauds the use of blogs, wikis, user-generated TV, and social networks as the 21st century equivalent of 18th century pamphleteering and reiterates the importance of the written word as a basis for propagating democracy. “Generally speaking,” he writes, “bloggers are concerned citizens who want to share their ideas and opinions with the rest of the public. Some have genuinely interesting things to say, while other do not, but what is most significant about blogging may be the process itself … reclaiming the tradition of our Founders by making their reflections on the national state of affairs publicly available” (263). … hurrah for us! And Go, Team, Go!

The Assault on Reason is one summer read I’ll be reading again.

In closing this discussion, I’ll leave you with a few questions given in the last chapter (254-56) as a quick test against which to assess the need for becoming a better informed citizen. Take a read and see how you do.

Can you name one of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination? Can you name two?
Can you name one of the candidates running for the Republican nomination? Can you name two?
Can you name a Supreme Court Justice? Can you name two? Can you name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
True or False: The president is required to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagrees.
True or False: Only the Supreme Court has the right to declare war?
True or False: The Supreme Court has the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional.
The line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” comes from what document?
What rights are protected by the First Amendment, and do you believe “they go to far in the rights it guarantees”?
Are you able to locate the countries of Iraq, India, and China on a map?
Who really won the last election?

Ok, so the last question was my own, but hey… we needed a light moment, right!?

The Smothers Brothers in Concert

2007-07-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

The Smothers Brothers are approaching 70 years old by their own report, and this evening I finally saw them perform live! It was a great show... the YoYo Man made a special guest appearance, the famous brotherly dynamic was in full bloom, and the music was wonderful.

Of course, the jokes were entirely Smothers-Brothers fun throughout, so to share the moment, I'm going to take my hand at telling one of the jokes I heard tonight. Be fairly warned, however, I'm told this is one of my least accomplished skills.

So Tommy Smothers was at the airport, and he saw a guy getting on a flight with a dog, but the attendant stopped the guy when he saw him trying to take a dog on the plane. He said, "Hey, whattaya think you're doing taking a dog on the plane?" The guy answered "It's a seeing-eye dog," so the attendant let him pass. Then a second guy was getting ready to get on the plane, and he had a chihuahua dog at the end of a leash. Now the attendant asked this guy, "What do you think you're doing taking that dog onto the plane?" The second guy answers, "It's a seeing-eye dog," but the attendant challenges him, "You have a chihuahua for a seeing-eye dog?" The blind guy says, "Is that what they gave me?!" And then the blind guy starts swinging the chihuahua around in circles above his head, and the attendant, aghast, says, "What are you doing now?!" and the blind guy answers, "...just taking a look around."

Ok, so maybe the joke isn't that funny, and maybe I made it worse in the telling, but I actually had more fun writing it out for you here than I had when I heard it at the show. ...sometimes encores work!

There were a fair share of political comments throughout the show - of course, and the last song of the evening, "To Dream the Impossible Dream," struck a particularly moving note for me by reinforcing the many encouragements given to stay in the fight for saving our country. Tom and Dick Smothers were taken off the air years ago for raising their voices in protest of the Viet Nam War; how fitting that they are still here when we need them again.

The concert was arranged through the work of Lakeland Public Television as both a gift to the community and an appeal to support public television everywhere. My recent reading has made me more sensitive to the importance of an informed electorate, so I was particularly glad for the "Be More Empowered" clip that kicked off of the show. I'll share that clip with you here:

Fish Life

Seeqpod

2007-07-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

Often, as I read along with many of your own writings online, a song will come to mind. You'll have something to say that triggers a memory or some conversations we've shared in a chat, and a song will start playing in my head. Well, now I keep a window open for Seeqpod, an application that searches for playable files from any artist that's come to mind for me so far. I've listened to Mellencamp after a "Cobert Report" story, Tori Amos with thoughts toward Tommi, Streisand for kicks, and Sinatra for mood.

I don't get much music time ... I am too susceptible to its call, and there seems always too much work to be done to afford any drift, but I'm finding Seeqpod to be just the thing I need for a fast "brain break" when the moment is right - a dip in the pool and back out again. Give it a try and see what you think.

From Seeqpod online:

The amount of music on the Internet is much larger than music found in catalogs or physical inventories. It's also a well known fact now that the Internet has a growing inventory filled with mashups, mixes and music of all kinds. SeeqPod crawls the entire multilingual deep web in the vertical space of music for playable search, discovery, recommendation and social experiences. In addition, people submit the music and videos they produce themselves as well as locations for music not yet found in the PodCrawler and search results.

At SeeqPod Music, you can search for music, music videos & podcasts by artists you like, as well as discover other artists and songs you were not familiar with. You can generate countless playlists of songs and videos, save them for future enjoyment and share them with friends by e-mailing or embedding a player and playlist in a web page.

SeeqPod is the home for playable search results.

Warning: "There Won't Be a Third"

2007-07-24T15:46:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Second Chance by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a book I picked up at the recommendation of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. The read richly contextualizes many of the discussions I expect to be “hot” in the coming elections, and it did this by reviewing the Bush-Clinton-Bush presidencies in light the opportunities (squandered and/or redeemed) to realize global American leadership through international and domestic administration.

The book begins with Bush I, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Soviet Union. As the following administrations under Clinton and then Bush II are reviewed, a comprehensive view of what is at stake for America in the next presidential election takes shape. Brzezinski tracks eight “conversations” of presidential focus as they developed over the last fifteen years, and he “grades” leadership quality measured by how effectively each president addressed the needs and opportunities presented in each of those conversations. His scorecard looks like this for Bush I , Clinton, and Bush II respectively

Atlantic Alliance A A D
Post-Soviet Space B B B-
Far East C+ B- C+
Middle East B- D F
Proliferation B D D
Peacekeeping na B+ C
Environment C B- F
Global Trade/Poverty B- A- C-

Of course Brzezinski makes his case for each of these claims throughout the 250 pages of his book, and I offer you the “report card” only as an overview. As he moves into his wrap-up, Brzezinski outlines what it will take to get this country out of the mess we’re now in as a culminating seven years under the George Bush administration. He writes

America has a monopoly on gobal military reach, an economy second to none, and peerless technological innovation, all of which give it unique world wide political clout. Moreover, there is widespread, if unspoken, practical recoginiton that the international system needs an effective stabilizer, and that the most likely short-term alternative to a constructive American world role is chaos. An intelligent Global Leader IV should still be able to exploit that feeling to tap what’s left of the reservoir of goodwill toward America … an America aware of its responsibilities, measured in its presidential rhetoric, sensitive to the complexities of the human condition, and consensual rather than abrasive in its external relations (in brief, entirely different from its recent emanation)” (192).

In my view (President) Al Gore can step into the role of “Global Leader IV” better than any other person available for the job right now. If the thought has occurred to you as well, you might consider adding your name to any of the online petitions calling for his candidacy. There seem to be a lot of citizens waiting to hear what he is going to do. Any thoughts on that idea from you?

Back to Brzezinski … His closing remarks call for a focus on three complex issues: 1) the need for an American system equipped to formulate and sustain global policy that protects American interests at the same time it promotes security, 2) the need for “responsible self-restraint,” and 3) a grasp of the “novel condition” in the global political awakening now taking place (194).

The second of these ideas seems to play into the potential problem arising with the third if Americans fail to wake up to the reality of their own global citizenship. I often find myself sounding an alarm, particular with young people, about the changed world in which we live. I put myself in check by wondering whether or not I am voicing that “middle-aged” motto bemoaning the loss of better days, but I don’t think that’s the case. This age of new digital literacy is pulling people beyond regional boundaries to measures of awareness that open a view of possibility in such a way as will demand shared global resources. Are we ready for that? Brzezinski asks us to imagine a world where 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians consume as much energy per capita as Americans do. He writes, “Americans must recognize that their patterns of consumption will soon collide head-on with increasingly impatient egalitarian [global] aspirations. Whether through the exploitation of natural resources, excessive energy consumption, indifference to global ecology, or the exorbitant size of houses for the well-to-do, indulgent self-gratification at home conveys indifference to the persisting deprivations of much of the world.” The growing awareness of inequality (global and domestic) is fueled by continuing advances in communication technology; we can see, hear, and know more about each other now than ever before. Do we really believe we won’t ever have to share?

Brzezinski ultimately makes the point that it will go easier on Americans if we come to the table with a good idea for “sharing” the wealth before we are excluded from the conversation all together while others decide which part of our possessions we’ll be allowed to keep. He sees the upcoming election as a "second chance," and he means to soberly warn us that there won't be a third.

Necessary Arrangements

2007-07-23T12:05:00.000-05:00

KD Florals, Bemidji, Minnesota
July 2007

Gulliver Encounters the Learning Machine of Balnibarbi

2007-07-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

Having been permitted to visit The Grand Academy of Lagado,

“We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where … the Projectors in speculative learning resided. The first Professor … said, perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge by practical and mechanical operations.” Here Gulliver describes a device large enough to fill a room, built something like a spinning cube, each side a twenty-foot square frame laced full with tiny placards of woods able to rotate and spin when the apparatus was set in motion. Can you see it? Each placard had a different and randomly selected word. The “practical and mechanical operation” of learning was to spin the entire device and then collect and transcribe the knowledge that would randomly appear across the several lines of text. “The Professor shewed me several volumes in large folio already collected,” Gulliver goes on to say, “which he intended to piece together; and out of those rich materials to give the world a compleat body of all arts and sciences…” (175).

As I read this passage from Gulliver’s Travels, I thought of student “research” I’d seen done by “googling” the first terms coming to mind and transcribing the returned information as a collection arranged to fill the assigned number of pages. “Works cited” were typically appended as numbered lists of URLs – no thought at all given to title, author, or date of publication.

I don’t want to say I was baffled by the practice; a number of plausible explanations account for the various reasons why students “shortcut” intellectual work – athletics, social activities, competing coursework, or family activities. Swift’s Professor argued his case for a learning machine in way many of my students would have appreciated: “Every one knows how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by [this] contrivance, the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politicks, law, mathematicks and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study” (173). The key selling point here would be the little bit of labor required to learn. In their academic work, my students regularly reduced Google search to a version of the Professor’s machine – random returns, copy/paste, and print.

Students I worked with throughout the past year seemed to understand learning in encyclopedic terms: information to be collected, arranged, and filed “A” to “Z” – assembly line learning where, under teacher guidance, textbook knowledge transferred from one “storage” site to another. When the truck (or compact car, as the case may be) was full, class was over. They seemed to realize a responsibility for “picking up” information, but they would distance themselves from any expectation that they use information in a productive practice of critical thinking. For most, the test of learning was only a demonstration of whether or not the “pick up” had been made, and computer resources easily became the “practical and mechanical” means for reducing demonstration to a copy/paste and transcription exercise.

Reducing a workload or finding the most efficient means for completing a project is good by me – no problem there, but I wonder if the students I worked with during the past year were wrestling another kind of problem: connecting the traditional expectations of school and “the basics” they were being asked to learn with the reality of their daily lives. And I wonder if answers to questions like “Why do we need to learn this?” and “When am I ever going to use this?” aren’t becoming as hard for teachers to answer as for students. New technologies certainly facilitate the practice of old models in a first phase of application; Google search, for example, serves information acquisition for writing a paper, but when an explosion of new possibilities for thinking and learning – the very innovation we are all hoping to celebrate – disrupts old patterns, the traditional “paper” assignment must evolve. Of course, this outcome complicates a continued use of old patterns and traditional expectations, and notions “school” necessarily outgrow the nostalgic reminiscences of parents looking back to “when I was there.” …always a tough letting go, but in the end, if the paradigm for structured learning fails to maintain relevance to the fast, digital, and mobile realities of students, then inside the halls of learning, “machines” will facilitate no more than mechanical exercises, and we’ll join Gulliver in putting on a happy face to celebrate the production of nothing.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism). Ed. Christopher Fox. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1994.

Come With Me Tomorrow?

2007-07-20T08:26:00.000-05:00

I walked in a cloud this morning. Past a lake and into the woods. A careful look where early morning sunbeams passed revealed tiny drops of water floating all around me. The air was cool – not above 55 degrees yet, and the ground seemed to fight against the inevitability of another warm day, but for now it was cool – cool enough to keep mosquitoes away, and I was alone. I walked paths that had not been walked in some time and felt the spiders’ webs break across my face, others of them catching bits of light just ahead or to the side of me. Trees had fallen unnoticed – firewood for later maybe, but for now another story of the wind that blew through a couple weeks ago. I left the path, called by wild raspberries and a patch of open grass – lighter greens with the look of soft, quiet, inviting, escape. A handful of adolescent oaks grew nearby the edges and seemed to prove a kind of valor in growth suggesting they’d survived one challenge or another. I stayed there awhile and listened. Then light bounced off raspberries up ahead, and I laughed aloud at how many there were dripping from plants all around. I walked into the middle of them, picked handfuls, and ate them all. Raspberries planted intentionally in my yard are a delicious first breakfast in season at the end of every morning walk, but they never come close to the sweet taste of earth and wild and free and ohmygoodness I ate to my full today. My fingers were numbing from the cold, and I didn’t care. I filled a makeshift pouch in my sweatshirt with pickings and made my way back to the clearing where I stayed for a while. I stopped there. I stopped. Sat. Listened and then just didn’t. Maybe looked and maybe not even that. Just. And then the mist began to lift. Light sliced more and more through cool air, and mosquitoes at last reclaimed their clearing. Cat Stevens sang in my head as I started the walk home, “Morning has broken, like the first morning….”

The Best Days

2007-07-08T23:27:00.001-05:00

“Optima dies … prima fugit” Virgil

Willa Cather’s My Ántonia includes this epigraph on the title page of the book. Two hundred and sixty pages later the words are translated in text: “In the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee” (263).

An epigraph is given as a motto or quotation at the beginning of a work of literature that frames a central theme for that work, and certainly Virgil’s words borrowed from the Georgics rightly direct understanding toward greater attention paid and value upheld for those details so easily passing us by each lived day – for the memories we build (or neglect to build) that will comfort us in the closing days of our life.

Three points stood out for me in this reading.

1) The story presents two classes of people making their way together in a small town of Black Hawk, Nebraska: one represented as the “newly moneyed” and the other typified in “the hired girls.” Based on the first, the reader is welcomed to formulate a kind of standard against which to measure the behavior, quality of person, and social value of the latter. By way of contrast, the narrator juxtaposes a discussion of Virgil’s poetic contribution to his hometown with the poetry made possible through the lives and being of the hired girls. “If there were no girls like that,” the speaker comments, “there would be no poetry in the world” (270).

I think of my own life and the moves I make outside the boundaries of standard expectations. Mine is a small town community, and I prize the intimacy of knowing exchanged among members as well as the ready hand wherever help is needed, but I am equally aware that time-tested patterns guide most determinations of reliability and the subsequent reward of inclusion. There is always a trade-off between conformity and the bold colors of adventurous expression (I am here reminded of Tamarika’s recent 100 mile walk), but I am encouraged by Cather’s text to remember the poetry that comes from “girls like that,” and I am glad to be counted among them whenever such judgment tips in my direction.

2) While away at school, narrator Jim Burden encounters a “brilliant and inspiring young scholar” who introduces him to the “world of ideas” and a time of mental awakening he regarded one of the happiest times in is life. Gaston Cleric was his guide in reading, poetry, athletics, and long walks of talking together. Of this time the narrator reflects, “When one first enters that world [of ideas], everything else fades for a time, and all that went before is as if it had not been” (257).

This thought blankets my anticipation of returning to school this fall. It is a return to the “world of ideas” where “everything else fades for a time.” I love the study, the considerations, and the compelling patterns discovered for their power to direct new decisions, compose convictions, and sculpt a life. I have no idea what the outcome will be, and that both excites and unnerves me. I like the comfort of knowing and the cozy experience of predictable environments; the “everything else [that] fades for a time” as I return to school amounts to the safety of all things home to me, and I know that neither it nor I will be the same when I return – if, indeed, one can be said ever to “return” from adventure. And so I embrace the going-on.

3) A youthful Jim and his Ántonia meet one last time before years of career development will take Jim forever from his Nebraska home. Ántonia consoles herself and Jim in shared moments with reflections of her father. “Of course it means you are going away from us for good,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But that don’t mean I’ll lose you. years, and yet he is more real to me than almostLook at my papa here; he’s been dead all these anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him” (320).

Wayne Francis Miller was born July 3, 1925 and died October 10, 1980. “He never goes out of my life,” and I comfort myself in believing he would be proud of me for the woman I have become, for the bits of being that have come to reflect and bear witness to his having been. Here’s a wink and a wave to you, Dad. I love you still.

Through the characters of Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerdas, Cather argues the value of memories and the cohesive quality of a shared past – even one selectively composed. “In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions … Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again” (328). As the final chapter unfolds, Cather describes Jim and Ántonia coming together again years later: Jim a successful businessman and Ántonia – still vibrant and fully possessed of “the fire of life” – the wife, mother, and landowner that measures success in her own terms. In closing reflections, Cather writes of “roads of Destiny” and “accidents of fortune which predetermine for us all that we can ever be.” Last words of the novel affirm that whatever is missed as life shared together, we possess still “the precious, the incommunicable past” (372).

I treasure my illusions, personal mythologies, and remembered past: they have been purposefully composed to steel me against confusion and to assure me of my own meaningful existence. Through My Ántonia, Cather encourages me to keep up the good work.

Re(de)fining the URL

2007-07-05T13:44:00.000-05:00

Readers:

If you are following this blog by use of the URL through bookmarking or memory, please make a note that the URL will be changing in the next couple of days. The new URL address for this blog will be ... www.readingbodies.blogspot.com.

Thanks for making any necessary changes to your subscriptions. -mg

Building Cases: Writing Stories

2007-07-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

Brenda Mathiesen is both a good friend and an artist - a lucky combination for me as it turns out. Brenda's latest medium is "found" luggage, particularly small, American Tourister cases that once carried cosmetics and spoke of accomplishment in the world. Brenda writes stories-to-go on cases she hopes will continue to be used. Mine will probably take up permanent residence on blue carpet in the growing collection of stories being told there.

The "story" Brenda writes about me reflects the time we shared together at Battle Lake: puzzle pieces, literature, bold colors, technology, tugs-of-war, lions roaring, chains, pearls, and words ... good words.

Some of the highlights include

f8 NO Ctrl
Pause Break Home ... Bemidji
Energy
Possibility
Dream
Writing
Learn
Definitely
Jane Eyre: "I am sure there is a future state; I can resign my immartal part to God without any misgiving. God is my father. God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me."
butterflies
hands to touch
and, Benjamin Franklin

Thanks, Brenda. I feel the love.

Notes on My Desk

2007-06-26T19:37:00.000-05:00

I've just finished days of reading Dante's Divine Comedy and the scholarly reading that accompanied it. Post-it notes on my desk remember pieces of thought for me until I can write them here.

...Dante wrote to authenticate himself: poet, Florentine, legitimate, yet present though exiled. Writing as a means to authenticate oneself brings to mind the want of a witness and the thought that to write is to compose oneself as a document, to invest "being" into material text - whether into ink or bits, onto paper or screen, and before many or no one at all. To write is then to substance(iate) - to become "real" in a medium that outreaches the boundary of skin. Dante wrote so commandingly as to overcome great spans of time, and I am easily intimidated by the thought that, unless I have something in some part equally profound to say, I have no business writing. But as I type out these words, I remember my Aunt Ester's letters to me from more than twenty years ago, saved in a drawer and well-worn from reading. ...not Dante, and not for countless audiences across time, but "she" is in those words. Her voice lives: authentic, real, and present.

...In a discussion addressing the sin of false council and the state of Ulysses in hell, lecturers Cook and Herzman suggest Dante's discussion fundamentally addresses the issue of trust and the "sin" that comes from too great a reliance on one's own experience as guide. Excuse this painfully inadequate framing, but it is Cook's summary statement that made it to a post-it note on my desk: "In fact," he states, "it's really not an issue. Everybody trust something. The question is what do you trust? 'Nothing beyond my own experience, beyond what my senses tell me' refuses everything beyond one's own experience and excludes faith altogether. Part of learning you're not the center of the world and that the world does not revolve around you is coming to terms with the idea that human knowledge is limited, and human experience is limited, and you simply have to trust someone or something." To believe otherwise is to inevitably offer the (false) council that one's own experience alone is a reliable measure for critical judgment ... at least according to Dante via Cook.

It is the "center of the universe" thinking that grabs my attention - the thought that the world revolves around me, and I note the "cure" Cook takes from his poetic reading: sound judgment follows only in realizing the inescapable condition of having to trust somebody or something beyond the reach of my own being. And I ask myself who or what I trust. There are some big, "easy" answers that come quickly to mind, but the question gets more interesting when I get past the rhetoric of public presentation. What I find myself most trusting is what I will call "my neighbor" and fact that she will share the road with me, pay for the services I deliver, stock grocery shelves with food, and generally respect boundaries. I count on his civility for all the permission I take to "be free," and I trust him every day with hardly a thought for the depth risk engaged. Maybe my less-than-sunshine life should have taught me more caution. It didn't. Lucky me.

... last post-it treasure: Dante's guides shelter, encourage, and provoke him as he navigates his own redemptive climb. It occurs to me that they become that "just enough" measure of safety necessary for Dante to be bold, secure in person, and certain enough to keep going. I consider my own life and the "guides" who make me feel safe enough to be brave. Thank you.

Living in a Park

2007-06-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

A week away and three days of rain meant an immediate need for mowing after the recent trip out of town. Then wind storms swept through and took down a dozen trees - more than half falling into the yard. The damage here and there has been repaired and the lawn put right again. An early morning walk convinces me again how lucky I am. This is why home feels so good.