River of Play

Nebraskiana

The national media came and touched us not so long ago, but not to worry. The wind scours everything pretty clean. And it was in the single digits last night. The Daily Show rolled into town to do a segment on some university research and used one of the owners of a local coffeeshop as an example. The coffeeshop in question is a short walk from our apartment, so when I write about being in a coffeeshop, it's this one. If you go and watch the spot, you'll see a brief shot of the storefront. Right next to the coffee place is the health food co-op where we shop, and our video store is at the other end of the strip mall. 

On the Wendy watch: the child keeps getting lower, the contractions are still random, we're just waiting...

A Day Without A Costume

I'd like to wish all my pagan friends Happy New Year!

But that's not really enough for a post, so I add this link to a piece by Jonathan Gottschall. He's one of the new breed of lit crit people who work the science side of things. It's a kind of criticism that I'm interested in, one which I see connected to ecocritical work, though I don't think that he would necessarily go there with me. And, as alert reader Kat has pointed out in other comments, please note that the piece is fairly one-sided. Indeed, with the number of straw men he sets up, it looks like an audition for the Scarecrow in a remake of The Wizard of Oz. And he seems awfully pleased with his conclusion, pleased in ways that scientists would not necessarily be when they reach conclusions. Worth a look, though, between noshings on individually wrapped candy bars.

Be sure to floss tonight. That's all I'm saying.  

This Is Your Brain on Fairness

Interesting little article from Slate on fairness, offense, empathy,...and evolution. Once you get past the politics, note the role of emotions in decision-making. And when you get to the third page, you'll find that the author--and sources--pretty much remove any god as a cause/source of morality, though they do a save for god (against armor class zero) by suggesting that religions, if not god itself, have codified those fairness principles.

So the next time someone says to you that you can't be moral without god, slap them on the head with this. Then watch the hilarity ensue.

Go Toward the Light

As in, images. Cameras soaking up light. From last year. But you can find them here.

Clearinghouse Post

I'm here at the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference working the magazine table. Zero sales, but lots of smiling at random people, one of whom admitted that, although living just up the road in Omaha, she had no idea about our magazine. Never heard of it. Well. Good luck with that writing thing, y'know?

Right. So. D and I were out late watching "Taming of the Shrew" at Flatwater Shakespeare last night. Not a bad production, and imaginatively set in the Wild West. Except the boys from Pisa were supposed to actually be from Pisa. So, yes, accents. Italian immigrant accents. One of which was so bad that when he started to speak I instead watched the barn swallows dart in and out of one of the former horse stalls. The big question I have is this: Was Shakespeare serious? I'm inclined to think that even the big summing up at the end is tongue in cheek. Otherwise the play seems like a wild misjudgment on the part of an otherwise shrewd observer of human nature. 

While you consider that, I have a couple of wacky links that have intrigued me recently:

We are the universe: here and here. Cue up Joni Mitchell...

Fantasy apartment. Unless you're hugely wealthy, so, yes, one more reason to be jealous. Or find wonders in your own life. 

Pressures on public transport? You don't say. But funding is always nice. 

Oh, and happy Father's Day. A complicated little holiday...

Offspringiness

So there's the world economy in a slowly growing uproar over the price of gasoline... D and I, on our way back from used goods shopping (which we're doing more and more of--books, games, toys, furniture--we're trying to get more into the "reuse" phase) were talking about GM's strange myopia. And weather. But that's a separate topic. We were discussing our conviction that a broad segment of consumers will be pissed enough about high energy prices that another kind of energy product (?!) will get funded, and not by current industry giants. It seems like we are living in interesting times. And I don't mean that in a good way. But as a friend of mine said to me: "when is a good time to have a child? My parents went ahead in 1939--not a good time in Europe, but what can you do?" Indeed. 

On the other hand, a couple of the feral mother cats have bounding, playful feral kittens that frolic in our backyard. So very cute, and so much better than TV. They can get serious: I saw one snag a fledgling starling yesterday. Fierceness follows fangs, I suppose. 

The Thousand Heads

As I'm watching the price of gasoline rise and listening to wider discussions about oil production passing its peak, I'm thinking about the future of energy. One of the great flaws--on the part of a lot of folk, including but not limited to the Bush Administration (no surprise there)--is the often hidden assumption that we must have massive infrastructure in place for any energy solution to succeed. We're going to have to stop talking about "piecemeal" approaches while arguing about what's going to replace Big Oil/Coal. Anything that extractive and abusive can't be the answer--unless you're focused on imperialism. I'm beginning to think that "piecemeal" is the answer.

And if you're looking for an answer about why the books list to your left hasn't changed (as well as for awkward transitions), then you've come to the right place. Right. Grad school. Since I'm in the last stretch, I'm going through as many books as I'd be going through diapers if I'd been feeding a baby raw figs. There are stacks and stacks all around the apartment. I've moved my base of operations to the dining room table. D has he couch and coffee table. We're in close to freak out mood. We're surviving mostly on coffee, granola bars and wine.

A Spring Potpourri

Generally, with the pollen count of a spring potpourri, expect to be sneezing your ass off. Or your head. Opposite and equal reactions being what they are.

I've got a lot of stuff on my brain this morning, so I'm going to type like a madman.

First, the continuing saga of the Duke U. men's lacrosse team. Just when it seems like we're all beginning to understand--even the people in places of privilege--that women (and the poor, and, well, pick your "Other") are people and deserve respect, along comes a scandal that simply beggars the imagination.

On to better news (though you might still be able to hear my teeth grinding). D and I bought a "half share" in Shadowbrook Farms, a local organic grower. You'd think that in Nebraska, there'd be a ton of these kinds of places. And you'd be thinking wrong. Not that I don't love you for it, you understand. It's still early, but they had some greenhouse greens: mixed salad greens, all the spinach you could care to handle (in our case, half a pound), and a half pound of arugula. Dinner last night was garlic and a peeled, squeezed tomato sauteed in a pat of butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, basil. To this I added some garlic/gorgonzola raviolis and then the arugula. Tender, mild baby arugula. It was a good dinner.

It's easy to think of places like organic farms as "eco." I ran across an article in Orion magazine about he ecology not only of cities but slums. Horrifiying, but something that needs to be thought about--and engaged. Makes me feel way beyond spoiled to be sitting in my comfy chair typing on my PowerBook. There's another article--one that's reserved for paying and/or print readers (so look for it at bookstores near you)--that's about the biology and psychology of why it might actually take a village to raise a child based on the social wiring of humans as great apes and why the nuclear family is a bad, bad idea. I'm not sure I'm with the researcher every step of the way, but the position--that we need extended groups of adults to raise healthy offspring--is intriguing.

I've got to get back to my own research now. Up next, Kate Rigby's article on ecopoeisis: "Earth, World, Text: On the (Im)Possibility of Poeisis." Colon in title, check. Wacky, unnecessary parentheses, check. But it's good stuff, though it makes me feel like I need to brush up on my Heidegger. Ach.

And. . . We're Back

It was a mad dash across all of Iowa and a slice of Illinois and back, but we're home safe. The cats do a kind of celebratory chase thing when we get back after a trip. First, they get underfoot. Then, they launch themselves as fast as their little clawed feet will take them through the house.

4Cs (College Composition and Communication Conference) was a very different animal than AWP (Associated [Writers and] Writing Programs). No little ugrads being trotted around while being told that they're the second coming of (Shakespeare, Stein, Eliot, Plath. . . ). No grad students convinced of their genius but still looking over your shoulder to see whom they should be talking to really. Professors who are harried in their departments ("Novels just aren't research"), don't want to be teaching, and only have a moment to hang out with their old friends. Or to look over the shoulders of the people they're talking to in order to find someone more important or famous to shmooze with.

It's probably not that bad for everyone, but that's my experience with it. I'm not cool, hip, famous, crazy, a hot commodity, or simply hot enough to register as anything but bugfood at AWP. So it becomes kind've ok after a while because I'm so far to the edge that I can hang out with other wallflowers and just observe. And buy books.

Back to 4Cs: First, they've all got jobs. And there's no terrible anxiety about getting jobs. AWP knows that there's too many MFAs in the world and they're all anxious to get jobs. Who gets a PhD in composition? People willing to teach composition. And what do universities need? You see the relative relaxation. Lots of knots of people talking earnestly about how to help students, who believe in students, whose egos are tied up in helping other people. . . Stunning.

Other stunning details: sleeping six to a room at the Palmer House Hilton. Lovely old place. Long talks (when I should have been doing homework) about teaching, cognitivism(s), writing, rhetoric, games, online space. . .

On the way back, we listened to a book on cd: David Bodanis' History of Electricity. One interesting point (talk among yourselves): The tight, spare writing style I tend to associate with Hemingway (and, well, Palahniuk) developed because of the need for international reporters to write that way to save money/time on the cutting edge technology of the telegraph. Our own technology pushes back on our creating. So what do we do with lack of ink, and it's accompanying addition of price to books, on the web? It's not an old question, but I'm interested in how we might reconsider style.

Ok, last shoe to drop: D's panel was fabulous. It led to a lot of conversation about how to "give" papers at a conference, particularly a conference that developed things like pulling desks into a circle and de-emphasizing the centrality of the teacher.

Two quick things: 1. No, songbirds aren't born of telephone wires; debutantes are born of telephone wires. Geez. I thought everyone knew that. 2. 4Cs is in NYC next year.