The View From Kalamazoo

Moss may not grow on a rolling stone, but perhaps ivy does?

Hello … I Must Be Going: Most assistant professors at top Ivy League universities won’t be sticking around for the long term

MUST GET TIX

aaaaaaahhhhhhhhgh

Hahahahahahahaha

Paper Friday seemed to go well. Lots of positive feedback. It’s still an unnerving memory – auditorium, stage, podium, MIKE, bright lights…and I was FIRST, kicking the whole thing off. I can’t properly work a microphone, so it was sometimes hard to hear me. I should have turned it off and just projected – I’ve filled a lecture hall 3-4 times the size before without much effort (twice a week for a semester).

Met some very nice folks, tagged along at lunch with some of the other medievalists, sat with a bunch of non-medievalists at the banquet and had all sorts of diverse conversations. Many of the people seemed to know each other, while I didn’t see anyone I knew (ok, one person) until the day after my arrival, so I have a new appreciation of those who come to Congress not knowing a soul. It’s awkward as hell. Had a few people come up who were certain we’d met – and I suggested it was likely Kalamazoo. 😉 Eventually everyone sees me, at least, but these folks were probably at a session I also attended, and one I am certain saw me give my paper in 2002.

Had to leave the conference early, but it was a Good Thing…and I hope this first conference by the ASE folks isn’t the last.

Currently, however, I’m enjoying a sinus infection with a side of bronchitis. Buy one foul plague, get one foul plague free. 800 mg of ibuprofen is barely taking the edge off my headache – I hope the antibiotics start kicking bacterial butt soon – I haven’t slept well in nigh a week.

Final registration count for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, for all those playing along at home, was 2910. This afternoon is the last post-mortem meeting and I can’t be more elated – I hate meetings. My meetings for next year, however, have already begun – another tomorrow. Another year of this…

[Anyone in academia prone to giving warnings about career paths in academia need to do my job for a while – the long hours, lack of sleep, frustration, never-ending projects, disappointment, mire of details, low wages…seem pretty familiar.]

In early August November 1942 a very young Pfc. Philip E. Fiero rode on a transport in the South Pacific.

When his vessel took a lot of structural damage – hit by a falling Japanese plane – he jumped over the side with a buddy. He was picked out of the water by a tin can (destroyer). He never saw his buddy again. On August 7 he stormed the island of Guadalcanal, in the Solomons (just to the east of Australia), and the following day fought (the Battle of Savo) to take control of a crucial strategic airstrip – Henderson field.

That night he stood on the shore and, as he watched the Vincennes attacked and sunk, he thought he’d never see Michigan again. He would, but not before he saw more death than he could have imagined when he enlisted 7 months before; not before he subsisted on 2 meager meals per day of wormy barley, fish heads, and rice captured from the Japanese; not before he killed, saw buddies die next to him – saw the terrible, gruesome gore of war.

There were daily dogfights overhead, and he later spoke of Squadron 223 (manning Grummans), “Those Marines were the fightingest bunch of men I ever saw or ever hope to see.” Two weeks later at the Battle of the Tenaru River (as he would recount) some 1,200 Japanese combatants were killed with a loss of only 28-30 American lives. He helped to bury the dead – dynamite was used to blow large holes that they would fill with bodies, cover well, and then move on to the next hole. He remained, he fought, and eventually he was badly wounded and spent three months in a military hospital before coming home to visit his mother.

This information came from a home-town newspaper interview (the only one he ever agreed to) given within days of his return on this visit. Otherwise, and thereafter, he didn’t speak of it. We might have heard references to going out drinking with his buddies, something about the terrible weather in North Carolina where he had basic training…but there were no war stories, no relating heroic tales, no prosaic reflection of macho deeds done (not even to his two sons). There was no question as to why – my sister and I silently observed his emotional response when a WWII movie set in the Pacific was on TV, when, for a few brief moments, he was transported back to those days and weeks of his life before, wounded, he made it out of Hell. When he sat and cried when he received a phone call informing him that one of his buddies, a man he fought with and barely survived with, had recently passed. Having seen what he saw, every loss of life thereafter broke his heart.

War is not romantic. War is not a topic suitable for light dinner discussion, not a shining series of heroic deeds strung together on the silver screen. War is about death, and dying, and the loss of life and limb even in victory is still loss. War is not protestors with snappy comments on cardboard signs, it’s not politicians in air-conditioned rooms playing a game of chess with real lives, it’s not the bits and pieces of the puzzle the media choose to share to the exclusion of the rest of the picture. War is hell.

The WWII memorial was recently dedicated after a battle for its very existence longer than the Pacific campaign my grandfather fought in and survived. He lost his last fight in November of 1997, some 55 years after he made it through the horrific fighting in the Solomons. I wish he could have lived to see this memorial (and his second great-grandchild, the first boy in the family since his own sons were born. and hear his first great-grandchild call him ‘Gampa’… and my sister’s wedding, where he would have danced with her to the Mills Bros Paper Doll (as I would have done had I not had a very small, scaled-down affair…if I had known..).

Not all of his buddies, and the buddies of so many other Marines, made it home. Very few of those who did are still around to see this long-overdue memorial dedicated, and fewer still able to go and see it with their own eyes (and hearts). Maybe some day I’ll go to D.C. and see it. The memorial in Nashville, next to the Carillon Bells, is wonderful. Many others I’ve seen are noticeably small, or barely there. I don’t know how he felt about memorials and their quality and their heart…but I know I have expectations of a level of respect that only a small handful have met.

Through the period from Memorial Day to his birthday in early July he remains on my mind – though time has passed I still spend this month remembering. As school ends for my daughter I remember that my sister and I would pack up and have a long visit right after school was out…I remember that on the 4th of July we’d celebrate his birthday, mine two days earlier, my sister and uncle’s birthday’s a week on either side of that, and his wedding anniversary (and, later, mine as well). I don’t enjoy celebrating my birthday as much anymore…it’s just not the same.

As all over many listservs, boards, etc..(excerpted):

The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) has awarded a grant to the Institute of English Studies in partnership with the British Library to produce the first ever digitally illustrated and searchable catalogue of western illuminated medieval and renaissance manuscripts held in the British Library’s collections. A pilot project was previously conducted by The British Library, with the support of the Getty Grant Program, entailing a survey of the collections at shelf and the creation of a pilot website. This currently holds descriptions and selected images of some 250 manuscripts, drawn from different periods and regions.

“The National Library of Scotland’s online collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides lets you see for yourself what ‘the word on the street’ was in Scotland between 1650 and 1910. Crime, politics, romance, emigration, humour, tragedy, royalty and superstitions – all these and more are here.”

(This could be a bonanza for a teacher of AP high school english or history!)

Plagiarizing student suing university for negligence:
Michael Gunn, a 21-year-old English student at Kent University in Britain who admits plagiarizing material from the Web, said the school should have warned him that using already published text was against the rules, according to the BBC.

“I did plagiarize. I never dreamt it was a problem,” Gunn told the news service.

Riiight. It’s a serious, disturbingly widespread problem here at WMU, as well – and the school does everything short of taking dere widdle hands and walking dem through the library and internet to try and give them the clue they so desperately need. Bah. Treat us like adults, except when we don’t want you to. At least I get to say ‘When I was an undergraduate I was stupid, but not that stupid!’

I think clowns are evil. I’ve always been afraid of them (well, was…now I’m just horrified at the sight), traumatized by them – they were active participants in my nightmares. I am, therefore, somehow not surprised that instead of a Stephen King sort of scary, this story describes a different sort of scary. As a parent would you really be comfortable with Spanky the Clown? What might have been his second choice of name – Diddler the Clown? I loved the circus – I hated the clowns. Clarabell’s creepy horn, that freakish car that vomited leering painted faces, maybe the only one I can stand is Emmett Kelly (but only because my grandfather was particularly fond of him…he loved clowns. I forgave him that long ago…)

Truth in advertising

Have they nothing more important to do? After this they’ll want to change city names that harken back to the days of the Spanish missions to something less offensive to non-Catholics: Los Angeles … Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Bruno, San Carlos, Santa Clara, San Clemente, Santa Cruz, Santa Clarita, San Diego, San Dimas, San Francisco, San Fernando, San Gabriel, San Joaquin, San Juan Bautista, San Jacinto, San Juan Capistrano, San Jose, San Anselmo, San Leandro, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Monica, San Marcos, Santa Maria, San Marino, Santa Paula, San Pablo, San Rafael, San Ramon, Santa Rosa….Ah, I lurve the smell of litigation in the morning!

So with my happy back issues in mind I decided to sign up for more personal training with Olga since I want to focus on my abs and trunk more, in general, but I don’t know which machines to go with, what machines targets what – and more importantly what machines or exercises will send me crying to my neurosurgeon (who is also, apparently, a member of the same gym…but I digress) for good drugs and (more) frightening surgery. Hans House of Pain is back, my friends.

Mach schnell! Mach schnell!

So this has been two weeks now and she’s kicking my ass working me hard. More bizarre shit with weighted medicine balls – happy, happy, joy, joy. Everyone, apparently, is noticing my Ahhhnold-ette physique except moi. I’m getting into more of my pre-Colin wardrobe, and that’s a Good Thing.

I’m taking a break from the bellydance class for the next 6-week session, tho. I need to finish my paper* (!!!) before I step up to give it next week (!!!) and I want to take some annual leave and get the heck out of dodge for a few days. Will likely head to St. L. to visit a friend and then south to locales in the glorious Ozarks to enjoy the starry canopy without the interference of city lights, good coffee with real cream, and a labyrinth mowed into a large field for lovely 45-minute walking meditation. Without children. Anywhere. Near. Mine or anyone else’s. Oh yeah, baby…

[*why the heck to I have to be first?! first paper, first session, non-concurrent sessions!!! no pressure, noooooo pressure…]