The View From Kalamazoo

From the Invisible Adjunct, whose final comment is really the icing on the cake:

“Michael Bérubé has an idea for a conference on the conference:

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences. It will be called ‘The Longer Version,’ and will be distinguished by three features: one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt ‘I think not!’ at random moments during the paper. Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, ‘this is really more of a comment than a question– I wonder if you could say more about X,’ on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself. (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, ‘I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper,’ regardless of whether there is a longer version or not. (If the conference proceedings are published, they will consist only of sections of papers that were cut for time during the actual conference.)

I’d like to condition for just one more requirement: for every paper delivered, there should be at least one questioner the substance of whose remarks amount to, ‘That’s all well and good, but why aren’t we talking about my work?”

What didn’t make me laugh: Invisible Adjunct is calling it quits. A shame…a blog I’ll miss a lot. I can’t say anything more than is already being said about this great loss to the greater academic on-line community all over the web… Maybe it’ll be enough to just say that I’m glad I was a regular reader, I’m probably something better for it…

I am 1 for 7 and that acceptance came without an offer of funding.

I currently feel like the biggest pile of dogsh*t on the planet. I’ll end this lest I begin to emote…into my keyboard and short the damn thing out.

A no from Virginia.

A yes from Kentucky, with no funding.

1 to go, but frankly I’m feeling like I’m living under a death sentence.
I’ll never get out of here, never. This city is like the LaBrea tar pits…

I’ve been going to the gym at least twice a week and a cardio for an hour every week but I’m still in plateau hell. Today’s weight: 259. Not unlike the last few weigh-ins: 259.5, 260, 260.5, 259.5…you get the idea.

My kid has Issues with me: she’s announced that whatever I believe she will believe the opposite, just on principle. “If Momma believes in God then I don’t. If Momma doesn’t believe in God, then I do.” This, at 7 years old. It really sucks to have one’s kid hate them before the teenage hormones kick in…

There is just nothing in the way of good news in my life. Congress has hit the I’m-buried-and-would-be-happy-to-be-abducted-by-aliens-just-to-leave-the-office period that won’t freaking end until some time in July; that conference I agreed to give a paper for in June [note to self: might consider getting started on that sometime soon] is run by pirates, so I have to shell out $175 (unless, SLU accepts me with funding, in which case I’ll claim student status and only have to pay $125) for a very small, 3-day affair and there appears to be no cheap housing anywhere (the room block, which might already be full, is $85 a night. Since it’s a conference on esotericism I’ve considered going to the tackle shop, buying a handful of lead weights, and sending them in an envelope with a note that reads “transmute these to gold for my registration fee. thanks.”); oh, and parent-teacher conferences are next week and so beginning the ‘I’d like you to hold my kid back a grade, thanks’ battle and hearing about everything she can’t do at grade-level will be a super uplifting experience. (and I won’t bother to go into anything else…that would just be bitching to hear myself bitch)

I know a lot of people have it a lot worse, but I’m very unhappy right now, and it would be pretty shitty to be consoled by another’s grief and troubles, anyway.

Nibelungenlied manuscripts on display!

(Not that I’ll get to go see them, but still, Most Excellent!)

Earth, peeking over the horizon, as seen from the surface of Mars.

Wow

When Zero Tolerance equals Zero Common Sense. Boy gets expelled for bringing scissors…to sewing class. Some days homeschooling looks better and better…

As a Salt Lake mother‘s unborn twins got closer to birth, doctors repeatedly told her they would likely die if she did not have a C-section. She refused, and one later was stillborn. I just don’t know what to say about this one…

Dread: Indiana faked me out. I came home and saw the corner of a 9 X 12 envelope sticking out of the box with Indiana U’s return address. I was excited for the few seconds it took for me to pull it out and realize it held one lonely sheet of paper. 200 applications for 25 spots. I’m 0 for 4. It’s getting depressing – my GRE scores are respectable; my CV lists regular conference participation, mostly giving papers; I’m published in a juried ejournal (albeit pretty darn small); I have even coordinated THE academic conference for medievalists for several years now…So do I have three eyes and a curse on my head, or what? 3 to go – but I can’t say that I’m looking ahead with anticipation. I feel like a mylar balloon someone left in the corner…barely hovering above the floor and far from fully inflated.

John McGeoch, guitarist of Siouxsie and the Banshees, PiL died this week.

Dave Blood, bassist of the Dead Milkmen killed himself this week.

Granted I was more upset when I learned of DeeDee Ramone’s passing, but these were talented people, and these bands were near and dear to my heart in my youth (so, like The Ramones, I feel a certain angsty attachment, even now…when as Someone’s Mother I rarely have time to listen to much more than whining and NPR – and that’s just at work!)

Of course, I’m waiting for the other (third) shoe to drop now…

So I suppose I should mention the gig I did in Emma’s class in more detail.

A little history: I’m not the PTA mom type. I am, howrver, a geek…specifically a geek who has had experience working with little kids as the art anchor at day camps, so it’s not hard for me to translate that into my field of medieval studies. Get the little buggers interested in history before someone tells them it’s boring, that’s what I say.

Last year I went in to her kindergarten class and read a great book I have, The Glassmakers of Gurven, a medieval-ly set book about three glassmakers (each specializing in a different color of glass) who have to cooperate to make a beautiful window for the new cathedral of the town. (It’s a gorgeous book…but out of print and extremely hard to find, so if you see it at a yard sale or a used bookstore – snatch it up!) I used transparency film the teacher sent home with Em to make them a little project. By hand I duplicated the shape of the window in the book on the three sheets (set together like overlapping pie pieces), split the kids into three groups (red, yellow, and blue. like the colors in the book) and they colored their part of the design – when put together the three made one round window and a color wheel at the same time. 🙂 It was very pretty taped on to their classroom window. They made knight masks and ‘galloped’ through the hallways – a whole day of medieval fun was had by all.

So this year I thought illuminated letters would be fun. I brought each child a page I’d put together with an illuminated initial for their first name on story paper so they could write a sentence out that included their name (‘Emma learned how books were made,’ each using the individual child’s own name, of course) and lots of copies of knights, ladies, and other things from the Coloring Book of the Middle Ages. I told them all about how books were made in the middle ages (a description of vellum got a great round of “EEEWWWW!”), brought in a manuscript page I have to show them what they really looked like, and they were suitably impressed that every book was written out by hand, since they are just getting going on writing and still find it very cumbersome. I had made a cover for the book (titled ‘Our Medieval Book’ and this will be important), all pages had holed stamped out so the book could be sewn together with yarn…a tidy little project for a class book. Not as cool as a color wheel, but what can I say.

So when we got the ‘This Week In…’ letter home the following week there was a little thank you to Emma’s mom for ‘showing us how books were made in mid-evil times.’ *twitch*

I figure future installments of ‘Emma’s Mom is a Geek’ include heraldry (I can give them examples and they can create their own crests or knight’s shields), building balsawood trebuchets and having contests on who can shoot the ping-pong ball farthest, and in 5th or 6th grade I’ll try to work out a deal with the art teacher, get donations of tile and do a big Byzantine mosaic project. 🙂

crossposted in My lj]

Arlington, Virginia; The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, the world’s largest organization of anthropologists, the people who study culture, releases the following statement in response to President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization.

“The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.”

Some Texans Boycott Girl Scout Cookies

CRAWFORD, Texas – Some families are boycotting Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos and other Girl Scout cookies. Troop 7527 is down to just two members after the other girls were withdrawn by their parents. And Brownie Troop 7087 is no more.

…The two troops in Crawford, population 700, decided not to deliver the cookie
orders that they had already taken.

But cookie sales have skyrocketed this year as many people bought cases just
to show their support for the Girl Scouts, said Becky Parker, a troop leader who
is the cookie distributor for Waco-area troops.

Read down to the reference to soft-core porn. It’s all just faaabulous. [I’ve already put my cookie order in this year!]