The View From Kalamazoo

Great piece on the Invisible Adjunct at The Chronicle. Between reading it, thinking back on my year reading IA, and yesterday’s post on the piece in the Village Voice I can’t help but feel resigned to failure.

I have to request deferment from the fine folks at KY in the hopes that funding might be available next year, but worse than the prospect of waiting another year (or waiting that year, finding there is still no funding, and then having to figure out what miracles, always in short supply, I can produce on my own) is the thought of all of this waiting (and debt. oh Lord the debt) and time and work – and following it with 5-7 years of hell blissful academic exercises to find there is no place for me and I must go back to the same sort of clerical gig I have here. Only it will likely be worse, since this is about as close to working within the field as one can get as a mere file jockey and I can enjoy, at least, the vague ambience of academia…write papers, all that jazz.

Or maybe it’s the stress and lack of sleep due to my impending doom the upcoming Congress talking.

Honestly, I suppose I should hang up the very notion were I not so physically pained that friends I have got into schools with funding and are off…and I’m not. Is the visceral response to my situation in the face of their well-earned successes a sign that I should heed? Is there more dignity in failure to be told ‘You’re able, there’s just no place for you here’ than ‘You’re not able’? I know the employment situation is bleak, but I still have to wonder if these sorts of warnings I’ve spoken of before of the former aren’t the polite way to communicate the latter. Maybe I see myself in the plight of the Invisible Adjunct…

But on to snails, as promised. Attack of the giant snails! Really! EW!

Gym yesterday and only once last week. Scheduling gym time is slim to none when Something Congress This Way Comes, but my weight is down a half pound more – so perhaps I’m exiting this abysmal plateau. Not having time to eat must be a positive factor. Officially started on June conference paper. It’s all wine and roses now, kiddies.

This is a damn disturbing article in the Village Voice. Not that I am new to the info contained therein, but it’s so bare…and plain…and I’m sure Brian will bug me again about what I think I’ll accomplish with a Ph.D., much less getting funding to get the damn thing and actually managing to run the gauntlet reasonably unscathed. Yes, and almost weekly my father calls me to remind me that at least here I have retirement, health insurance, and the use of most of my stomach lining.

President G.W. Bush is coming to Kalamazoo Monday.

Maybe he’ll be willing to stay on a few days and give a plenary address on the Nature of the Crusade at Congress.

[crossposted to my lj]

Today snow.

Tomorrow 70s.

Welcome to Michigan.

NB: Packing for Congress? Check this site often (and pack for all seasons, anyway).

When Timbuktu Was the Paris of Islamic Intellectuals in Africa

In recent years, thousands of medieval manuscripts that include poetry by women,
legal reflections and innovative scientific treatises have come to light,
reshaping ideas about African and Islamic civilizations. Yet even as this cache
is being discovered, it is in danger of disappearing, as sand and other grit are
abrading many of the aging texts, causing them to disintegrate.

Florilegium Urbanum: “a considered selection of primary source texts illustrative of various aspects of medieval urban life, and to present those texts in modern English.”

Diaperless Babies Seen As Earth-Friendly Solution: “Parents are urged to get in tune with their infant’s body signals and hold babies over toilets, buckets and shrubbery or any other convenient receptacle when nature calls…One advocate suggests bringing a “tight-lidded bucket” along to serve as a waste receptacle when mothers take their babies out in public.”

And more:
“”In my mind, diapers became the symbol of the Evil Empire of Western Parenting in which babies must suffer to accommodate the needs of their parents’ broken-continuum culture: a controlled, sterile, odorless, wall-to-wall carpeted fortress in which to live with the illusion of dominion over nature,” wrote Noelle, on the website livingharmony.com.

Despite his concerns, Noelle continued to use diapers on his daughter, despite the fact that he “felt like a monster and a fraud.”

Noelle finally chose to go diaperless and looked to traditional cultures for inspiration. “How I longed for a simple, dirt-floored, baby-friendly hut like that of a Yequana family,” he wrote.”

It’s patronizing. “Ooohh, look at those primitives living in their own filth! They’re so cute!!!”

It’s also patently stupid. The western world’s ‘controlled, sterile, odorless’ environment they despise is the alternative to filth and disease, countless numbers dying in plagues and epidemics – the environment our ancestors tried to escape, not glorify. Haven’t they seen those late-night Save-the-Chldren-esque commercials or taken a f-ing history course in their lives? SANITATION IS A GOOD THING. So much disease – diseases that kill children in huge numbers – are spread through feces. Increasing the risk intentionally for some political fashion is unbelievably stupid – and reckless, and dangerous, and moronic.

Mark my words – I’ll be arrested for physically assaulting some jackass having their infant shit in a can in their cart in the middle of the produce section at Meijer’s.

The British Library has recently expanded its “Turning the Pages” project to ten rare MSS and books:

The ten titles (each showing a couple dozen pages or so) and their descriptions:

Leonardo’s Notebook (Sketches by the great genius and notes in ‘mirror writing’)

Lindisfarne Gospels (Priceless treasure of Northumbrian art)

Luttrell Psalter (Fascinating glimpses of medieval life)

Sforza Hours (Renaissance masterpiece by Birago and Horenbout)

Golden Haggadah (Lavishly illustrated 14th century Hebrew manuscript)
Sherborne Missal (Magnificent 15th century service book)

Vesalius’ Anatomy (Landmark medical work of the 16th century)

Blackwell’s Herbal (George III’s personal copy of a beautiful botanical text)
Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an (Masterpiece of Arabic calligraphy)

Diamond Sutra (Chinese Buddhist scroll printed in 868. The world’s oldest,dated, printed book)

The site is so cool! You can hold the mouse button down and drag the “hand” cursor to open the cover and turn the pages. Two pages are shown at a time (just like a book). Each page is about 2.5″ wide and 4″ high (there’s a magnifying glass you can move around to get more detail).

[crossposted in my lj]

Boudicca news or rather, the torc she might have owned. Metal detecting is so much more interesting in the UK…

For all those who do occasional gigs in their kids’ classrooms – this looks to be a fun one (be prepared to help small knights make helmet-masks!): The Princess Knight. I’ll have to pick it up!

Just bought Forri the Baker by Edward Myers. Really wonderful – great illustrations (which I do look for. wanted to be a children’s book illustrator once upon a time and still might try it, someday…but I’d write the books, too. medieval-themed, of course).

Books I Want to buy: Sir Cedric by Roy Gerrard, A Medieval Feast by Aliki, The Green Man by Gail E. Haley, and Bestiary : An Illuminated Alphabet of Medieval Beasts
by Jonathan Hunt . I have Illuminations by Hunt and it’s really well done. Knights & Castles: 50 Hands-On Activities to Experience the Middle Ages by Avery Hart looks really good, too.

Of course everyone knows my sinister plot – get kids interested in medieval history before someone tells them it’s boring, get kids intereated in Latin (Harry Potter!) before someone tells them it’s hard and obscure…*muahahahaha* Maybe in 4th grade or something if the teacher wants to cover Harry Potter I can offer to come in and teach them how to write their own spells….*MUAHAHAHAHAHA*

[crossposted to my lj]