20190331.0430

I am aware that tomorrow is supposed to be a bit of a carnivalesque day, one that encourages and, in theory, rewards playing jokes on people, pranks of various sorts. I will note that I have no intention of participating; I'm past the point of thinking it funny to tell people my wife is pregnant when she is not, or that I am, or that setting things up to see people hurt or humiliated leads to things that ought to get laughter (except the cocky, in the latter case). I'm past the point of thinking a lot of things are funny that I used to think were, in fact; while I do still find myself laughing about a great many things, that many is not so great as it once was.
I find that I am reacting more in sympathy with people than with laughter at or about them. I am considering their pain and embarrassment more. It is a good thing, in itself; I ought to be more sympathetic to people than I hitherto have been, being a jerk, and being the jerk I have been has not helped me. I did formerly laugh at people for things I ought not to have done, not necessarily because they needed more inclusion (although I am certain some did--but there were many who put themselves outside on purpose, or who made themselves unwelcome), but because I ought to have been better. I have been on the receiving ends of laughter and of scorn, and I have often deserved it, but I have not always done so; I ought to have long been better about not inflicting on others what I would not suffer.
Perhaps it is an issue of my working at a substance abuse clinic, wherein I see quite a few people at their lowest points in life or not far above them, that moves me so. Perhaps it is being a father. Perhaps it is, in fact, the putative liberal indoctrination that pervades academe and especially the humanities fields in which I have worked and still work. But I am minded of Much Ado about Nothing, in which Benedick remarks that "A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age,"* and I am not so young a man as I have previously been; the spices of such discourses no longer sit so well with me as once they did, causing something that feels like heartburn but is not.
I shall therefore dine on less spicy stuff tomorrow than many will, but the flavor will not be bland because of it. I doubt it will be overly salty, though I cannot forego salt entirely. Perhaps it will be sweeter, not the saccharine corn-syrupy pap with which many distract children, but a cleaner nectar. Perhaps it will be more savory, rich and comforting in the belly instead of a prompt to flop-sweat. And if it is bitter, well, there is a reason I take my coffee black.

*Yes, I see the at-least-double entendre. I do have a PhD in English languages and literatures, after all.

20190330.0430

In a recent conversation I had, the comment was made that "if you didn't do anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide." It's far from the first time I've heard such a comment, of course; I was in college when 9/11 happened, and I remember the fracas surrounding the drafting and passage of the so-called Patriot Act, with its surveillance mandates &c. And I remember one of my responses to it, even at the time, was that "I'm not ashamed to take a shit every day, but I don't want an audience when I do." (For the record, that's still my go-to response, even if I am more likely to have such an audience now, whether I would prefer it or not.) There are others that would apply now, of course, but the general thrust remains the same; there are things I do that I am not ashamed of, but I do not want them observed by non-participants quite so closely as all that.
One of them is likely obvious, I know. I'll leave it at that level of obviousness; those who do not know or cannot guess do not need to.
As I think on the matter, though, because I seemingly must think about the things I encounter, there are a number of things I shouldn't be ashamed of that I seem still to be, or to be closer to that than I feel ought to be the case. For all my noting that I play tabletop roleplaying games in person and online, for example, I still often shy away from discussing it, and I only rarely foreground my doing so (as I've noted). I am still reluctant to admit to certain of my media consumption, typically styles of music and a few things that I read (and no, I'm not going into them here and now, despite the removal and anonymity of being online). I have some ideas about why, of course, and there are some ways in which I work against the tendencies, but they remain in place.
The thing is, I do know that there is no shame in my spending leisure time gaming, or reading the things that I read, or listening to the music I want to listen to--just as there's no shame in my taking a shit once or twice a day. Unlike the last, though, the former examples still make me blush about them; even now, I feel my face reddening at the thoughts, and no, not all of what I'm referencing is lewd (though some of it is, I admit). And I am certain I have caused some others to feel similarly about their own idle and harmless tastes in things; I have more often been an ass than I've not, which is not to my credit and perhaps means I merit feeling bad when and about what I do.

20190329.0430

The present month is drawing to a close, and I am glad that it is doing so. It's been a stressful month for me; there's been a lot going on, and while some of it has been quite good, not all of it has. I'd venture to say that most of it hasn't, in fact; I've not discussed all of it here, and I'm not going to do so in any detail, but the fact that I do not publicize is does not mean it never was. I know I live in the age of it, but "pics or it didn't happen" is not a truth for me.
It really shouldn't be for anyone. I am well aware that memory alone is suspect; it fades in time and with inattention, and it is always necessarily skewed by both emotional state at the time the memory is made and emotional state at the time the memory is called to mind. (And no, you are not remembering things devoid of emotion; you are always emoting, whether you are aware of it or not. You cannot help but do so. It is as taking in the smells of the things around you; you breathe the scent-bearing particles in, whether or not the information they convey presents itself to you overtly and in a way you must attend to. Or perhaps the taste of your own mouth is a better example.) I understand the impulse not to trust it utterly, therefore.
I also know, though, that the camera has its own biases. Its abilities are limited; there are things that are plain to eye that do not always show up well on film or in its digital counterpart. Indeed, in the latter, there are limits on the colors that can be presented that are not present, or are not as restrictive, as those in the world purportedly depicted. Similarly, there are limits on its resolution, though those may not be as relevant to most purposes. Too, the camera's field of vision is limited; the lens only takes in so many degrees of arc, fewer than do most human eyes. Much context for the focal event is lost thereby. And there is the matter of the choice of focus, as well, which is itself an exercise of judgment and therefore a matter of opinion--thus subject to all the concerns any expression of opinion is.
That a thing is recorded does not mean that it is so, only that it is recorded as being so, and this is true in any medium of recording. If memory is not to be trusted, only slightly more so are the other things used in place of memory. And that leaves aside the issue of falsification, which should not be left aside but exceeds in scope what I am prepared to treat here.
However such things may be, though, I remain glad that the month nears its end. I look forward to better in the next one.

20190328.0430

One of the people with whom I play an online version of a tabletop roleplaying game commented recently that a number of the characters s/he is drafting in preparation for an upcoming game are done to avoid addressing the personal anxieties s/he has. Another commented that escapism isn't a bad thing--which is true, on the surface of it, though it can become a problem in some circumstances--and received in reply questions about whether the escapism "to be a badass that hunts evil" or "to be a genial fellow who is liked by many, if not most" would be so healthy. As someone whose characters tend to be, at least in part, reifications or pseudo-reifications of attributes of personality and deportment I might wish I had, I found the questions telling--and decidedly worth considering in my own cases.
The characters I play are, for the most part, upright and honorable people, given to being dutiful and diligent. There are some exceptions, of course; I do occasionally play a sneaky git or a selfish ass. Most of the time, though, I play "good guys" who may have some flaws but generally try to find the right thing to do and to do that thing once they've found it. And if it is the case that those of us who build characters tend to build ones we see as reflecting what we want to be and do not believe we are, then I would seem to be in trouble; if I fantasize about being a "good guy," just as my comrade fantasizes about being either an agent against evil or someone well liked, then it must mean that I do not think myself such a person. I do not know that I can argue against that assertion; I have a decent view of what goes on in my head, and it is not the kind of thing that always makes for the most pleasant viewing.
I am sure the same is true for many other people, though. Most or all of us have facets of ourselves we share with few or none. Most or all of us have things we done and are not proud to have done, or things we did not do and are not proud not to have done. (I have more of the latter than the former, I think.) But I do not think that most people think they are not good for more than moments at a time; I am not convinced that most people introspect quite so often or so deeply as that. It seems a less desirable action, which I note as someone who does more of it than should be, and to less effect. In the games, though, I do not feel compelled to look so far inward or so often as is the case outside the game. If I could transfer that lesson outside, I wonder if I might not be better off.

20109327.0430

I have noted, I believe, having a set of books kept in the living room that are fancier printings, bound in colored leather and with gilt- or silver-edged pages (for the most part), or slipcovered in hardback collectors' editions of works held elsewhere in the house in working copies, sometimes in multiple translations. They serve as celebrations of the printer's arts as well as of the writer's, editor's, and translator's, to be sure; they also serve as a reminder to those who visit that the household is one that prizes literacy. It is probably not necessary; few, if any, visit who do not know the occupants, and it defies understanding that those who know me or my wife would not realize that we value the written word, perhaps more highly than we ought to do. We met in an English graduate degree program, after all, and both pursued doctorates in the arts of the book (because that is the "liberal" in "liberal arts," "having to do with the book," though it is not for nothing that "book" and "free" share a term).
I have thought, though I do not know that I have noted, that the series of such things from which we draw most of our examples is itself a re-creation or re-inscription of a literary canon, though perhaps a different one than would have been taught prior to the culture wars in US academe. Yes, such things as Plato's Republic are included, but so is Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Shakespeare is, of course, amid the series (though, with several other copies floating around the house, we've not opted to buy it), as is the Bible (ibid., including the Oxford UP Quatercentenary Authorized Version on the fancy-book shelf), but so are Lovecraft's works. So that much is to the good; the series editors look a bit further afield than the putatively standard works the Victorians would recognize, expanding the field of what might be considered "standard" readings.
At the same time, the works represented by the series skew heavily white and male. A large part of that has to do with the fact that many of the works presented in the series are those the Victorians might have recognized as standards; though the series does some work to move outside such a set, it does not leave that set aside as it does so. Too, there are and remain socioeconomic forces that work against the inclusion of works by women and persons of color; there is still less economic room for people who aren't middle- to upper-class white guys to spend their time writing than for women to do so, or people of color, or even working-class folk of whatever other demographic. Consequently, there is relatively less writing by those groups, and concomitantly, less chance for such writing to be recognized as being the kind of writing that lends itself to enshrinement as collectible. And that is problematic.
There is this, too: licensing the "fancy" editions has its own legal entanglements. While many of the "classic" texts are in public domain and may therefore be used with relative impunity, the emergent greater works--insofar as such things can still be discussed or described--remain under copyright, and not all authors or their agents are willing to have those works taken up in such series as serves for living room decoration for my family. I do what I can to get the authorized parallels to them, or I have done, but there are not always such to be found...

20190326.0430

It should come as no surprise that I am involved in another iteration of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game; I have played since my first year of undergraduate study, and I've come back to the topic time and again in this webspace and in others. My affection for and engagement with the material, then, should be clear. When another opportunity to play in such a game arose, then, I was almost compelled to seize upon it; that it has done so in such a way as the current game, which situates itself in the deep canonical history of the game as a whole, only served as a greater allure. I'm sure I'll have more to say on the matter in the coming weeks, as the game progresses, but there is something that emerges as a point of interest for me in the present moment.
A common feature of the online play in which I've engaged for some time, and which is present in the game I've joined, is out-of-character chat. While tabletop RPGs themselves depend for their effect upon the immersion of the players in the play--hardly unique to them, I know, though such games are notable in that their audiences are their performers in the moments of the performance--it is also the case that any group of people gathered for a common purpose will engage in side-conversations and other activities that are themselves enjoyable but are also distractions from the main game, the unifying purpose. Such things are unavoidable; the online games in which I've played set up places to put them, places which come to function strangely liminally as the games get going and continue.
The specific webspaces are described as out-of-character areas; the players are not obliged to narrate as if in character. Yet most of them will do so. Early on in games' lives, the out-of-character spaces serve as workshops to find and refine characters' voices; in one case, I found that I needed to apply a particular accent to a character to fit the concept, and I am far from the only example to be found of such things. And while the discussion in the out-of-character spaces do not affect those of the in-character spaces, the reverse is not true--and the players tend to discuss outside matters in the voices of their characters. In short, the out-of-character space is a play-space, one that does not affect the main story but does involve the players playing as their characters. That liminality seems an interesting thing to me; I wonder what someone better at looking at such things than I am might make of it.

20190325.0430

Today, of course, marks the anniversary of the destruction of the One Ring and the fall of Sauron. Along with 22 September, it is one of the most important days in Tolkien fandom, being, among others, Tolkien Reading Day. There is part of me that laments not being able to do more to celebrate it than to make this note; I have to work today, and not only at my day job, so I cannot spend the day re-reading the Tolkienian works I have ready to hand, and I do not have the funds available to gather any more such for myself at this point. But there is also part of me that is reasonably at ease with not having to maintain the fervor of my earlier nerdiness anymore. I have done my bit of nerdiness, and I continue to do bits of nerdiness, but I am increasingly a casual fan of things, rather than the more...intensive fan that I have been. The intensity's a lot to maintain, and I do not have it in me to do that much anymore.
I do not think I have lost in the exchange, though. It is the case that I would like to be able still to immerse myself in the voracious consumption of new knowledge--not just about Tolkien, but about the many nerdinesses in which I have indulged and still, if to a lesser extent, indulge. (There remain many, which is probably part of the problem.) But I know that doing so is largely selfish; even if I do as I have done in the past and still do, and I take what I know and work to put what I learn from it out into the world as an article or somesuch thing, so that others might come to know more, I still keep more than I give back. And I take from my family and from other concerns in doing so; reading takes time, and while the reading is a thing I can do with Ms. 8, the writing that would follow is not something that admits of doing well while attending to my child. (The reverse is also true.) I do wake early in the day so that I have some time to do such things during which I know my family does not need me, and I spend that time as well as I can, but there is only so much I can do in so much time. I am not at a place where I can do more of it.
Still, what I get from being a family man more than a nerdy man--or from trying to be, since I may well not be at that point yet--is more than I lose. No, I cannot sit and indulge myself for hours on end. I can, however, indulge others, and, in the case of my daughter, I can watch her grow in no small part because I give her what I give her. And I can still share some of the nerdiness I purchased at no small cost with her. (I am fortunate, too, that her mother indulges my geekitude.) Perhaps she will not be so happy with it as I have been, but perhaps she will find it the source of comfort I did, and, if she does, it will be a way I can be closer to a person whom I love to excess.

20190324.0430

To follow up on what I posted yesterday, I am having trouble thinking of myself as something other than my job first. I suppose it is because I am as habituated to the working world as I am--and since I've had a job for more years than I've not, nearly as many years as I was in school, it makes sense. Certainly, when I introduce myself to people, I give my name, but I give my professional affiliation immediately thereafter, and I think it is the latter that sticks with people. It matters more what I do than who I am; the job matters more than the person who holds it. And while there might be some good in that--the work gets done, no matter by whom--it does tend to skew my view, and I do not think I am alone in having such a perspective.
The thing is, I do more than my job. Even if a focus on deeds rather than being is appropriate--and I am not making the argument that it is or it is not--that does not mean that a focus on professional position is the most important one. It does not mean it is what should be presented early on, forming the impression against which all that follow is assessed. As I continue to puzzle out who I am outside my work, I wonder what impressions I make in the minds of others if I introduce myself as, say, my wife's husband or Ms. 8's father, as the son of my parents or the brother of my brother--and I was the son of my parents before I began school, the brother of my brother before I began work, and the husband of my wife and father of my daughter before I started working the work that I work now. But the work has supplanted even the earlier identities, and the later ones have grown only with that particular manure spread upon the soil; it has changed the fruit somehow, though I do not know how, having no standard against which to compare the produce I can harvest.
Too, what impressions would form did I introduce myself according to other things I do? Did I lead off with my name and my being a gamer--"Hi; I'm Geoff, and I play tabletop RPGs"--what would I come off as being? If I led off with announcing myself as a member of my family, as in a particular relationship with specific other people (and foregrounding one over the others), that would be something people would easily understand; it might read strangely, but it would read. Naming myself a gamer, and a specific type, might well not read at all, even if it is as true a statement as "Hi, I'm Geoff, and I help direct a Hill Country nonprofit." But calling ourselves our recreational activities, though they may be more truly who we are than our jobs or even our bloodlines, strikes the mind as strange. (And privileged, as well, but that's a discussion to have at another time, if at all.) Perhaps it ought not, but it does.

20190323.0430

As I've been writing in my personal journal recently, I've been working on issues of self-concept. For me, as I think is the case for many men in the United States and in the Texas Hill Country, a fair bit of self-concept inheres in professional identity. To relate a bit of my own experience, noting that it is anecdotal and may well not extend in concept beyond me in any way that helps others, I spent many years working to become a teacher, first of band music at the middle- and high-school levels, then of English at the same, then of English at the collegiate level. I technically succeeded at the last, having been at the fronts of college English classrooms since 2006, even doing so in a full-time position that seemed permanent (until it wasn't) for a while. But the "technically" falters against my current circumstances, in which I teach part-time if at all, and only as a side-line, rather than as the primary identification it had been for me.
I have had some challenge in figuring out who and what I am without being a scholar first--and it is to my shame that I was trying to be a scholar first instead of some other thing first and a scholar only after. It is to my shame that I had been so focused on a (now abortive) career that I had neglected being something outside that career, whether that something was a husband (and I am fortunate to have married a person who also sought to do scholarship, though I think she had the good sense to try to do scholarship rather than to be a scholar, and the two differ greatly) or a father (Ms. 8 learned too early the meaning of "I'm working," I think; I still hear it from her and cringe), a brother or a son (the Work disconnected me from them), a friend (I still have precious few, and most of those from work), or even simply part of a community (I am finding increasingly often that I am little remembered here if I am remembered at all).
The time I have lost, I cannot reclaim, of course. I can only work to use better the time that I still have, uncertain though it is. And part of that is working to know myself better outside the still-lingering demands of academe and the ever-present demand that I provide for my family. I will never be free of the latter, I know; being such is the only way I know how to be a husband and father, even though I feel I do far less well at being those than the model I have had for them. (I flatter myself that I am adequate--my wife has not left me, and my child has not died or even suffered much--but I do not pretend that I am any better than adequate.) I do not begrudge it; I do not seek to shirk it. But I do need to be more than just the worker; no job lasts forever, and I will still be who I am when those I work now end. Who that is doubtlessly needs some adjustment; knowing what changes need making takes a bit of time and attention, which I am trying to give to the tasks.
I do not yet know the outcomes.

20190322.0430

The end of the month is approaching, and I am thinking about what I will do in this webspace next month. I am not certain I want to return to the things I've done before, whether adding to my hymns against the Stupid God or reading and responding to issues in one newspaper or another. I am certain I need to move away from the freer essays I've been doing this month; I am running out of material with them, as has become clear to me as I've written the past few of them. (Again, I try to write them ahead of time so that I can have and maintain a buffer against being unable to write as I would like to write. Not that I can ever write as I would like to write, whether in terms of amount written or of quality.)
One thing that I might do, and I have not done it yet, at least not in the specific instance, is to read and respond to posts on a particular social media network: LinkedIn. There have been times when I have required my students to have presences on it, mostly when I was still fresh from my work in The City, where it had been a useful tool. But it has not carried as much currency outside The City as it seemed to do within it, at least not where I am and have been. I still have a profile on the platform, though, even if I do not check on it as much as I ought to do to maintain an image of myself as a professional on it. My thought is that, by spending time on the platform to read what's posted to it enough that I can respond meaningfully, I can elevate my professional profile, which ought to help me and the nonprofit that employs me.
The thing is, if I do such a thing, I'll need to cross-post what I write here to there; it will do me little good to make the comments where I am not seen, and this webspace attracts little attention. The other might well attract more, particularly if I end up working with the kind of polemic thrust I am prone to adopt--but that attention may not work to my benefit. I know it is said that no publicity is bad publicity, but I do not think I am at the level of professional attainment or privilege that allows me to shrug off bad press. (I rather suspect that some of the comments left about me online influenced decisions against hiring me in another life. But I need to do more to leave that behind me.) I do not think I ought to be as openly confrontational as I have been, at least not in my professional spaces, cyber- or otherwise.
I still have a few days to decide how I shall proceed, so I'll not worry about it more at the moment. But it is something I will need to decide soon; the month draws closer to its end, after all.

20190321.0430

Spring has sprung at last in my part of the world, and it seems the local flora and fauna are rising to greet it. They have been for a while, in fact, with the motion of the world through the local cosmos making little impression upon the buck that, in the words of the old song, farts while a cuckoo makes its own melodies. The wildflowers have begun to bloom, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes joining others in pushing through the many greens of the spreading grasses to dye the roadsides and pastures in brilliant colors that match the goldening sunrise skies and the reddening sunsets. The days are lengthening noticeably, and I feel the call to be outside more, both while I am at work and in the hours after, when I am at home and the sky is still light.
It is strange that, indoorsman that I am, I would long to spend each night sitting beside a fire under the darkening sky. I have worked hard to make my inside spaces comfortable for me, familiar and easy. I have succeeded in it, for the most part; I would like fancier chairs than I have, chairs that might admit of me leaning back in them with a bit more support for my head and neck than those I have at present do. But my places fit around me--and I in them--through long work to make them do so, and I am comfortable in them. For the most part, anyway.
That "most part" seems to apply less now, though. I am not so old as not to feel the call of spring upon me. I am not so withered inwardly as to have no sap rise to meet the regreening of the part of the world I call home. And if I am mired in the mud, that does not mean I cannot look around me with appreciation. I do so, even if that appreciation becomes tinged with longing for what I know well I am not fit to have. Because I am an indoorsman, and I do not have the skills or experience that allow me to understand what I see and value it as it ought to be valued, save only feebly and in sufficient quantity as to let me know that there is much I am missing. At this point, I would be ashamed to go out and flail about ineptly.
Such shame dogs me in many pursuits; there is much I do not venture to do because I know that I would do it badly, and that I would likely do it badly no matter the amount of practice I might put in. I know, too, that I cannot give it the practice it deserves or demands, since I have other concerns to which I must attend each day. So, rather than venture where I know I am inept, I remain in place, where I am less frequently inept, if more annoyingly when I am. But I do like how it looks when I look outside.

20190320.0430

There are some commonalities between the kind of academic work I have done (and am still doing, if only in small measure) and the more "normal" work I've moved into since early 2017. One such is the issue of inheritance--not so much of position or title as of the strange detritus that grows up around most any workstation. For as a graduate student, as a part-time instructor having to squat in shared office space, as a full-time instructor with an office of my own or with cubicles or just a desk in a shared office pool, as a part-time instructor with one office of my own or another, as a clerk in the central office of a chain of bad Tex-Mex restaurants, or as the front-desk worker at a substance abuse treatment facility, I have been other than the first to sit at a particular workstation, and I have found things that others have left behind them.
As with the marginalia I have encountered before and that I have discussed here and here and elsewhere, the desk-scraps induce me to wonder about my predecessors in the spaces I have occupied. I know there is not necessarily much to be gained from considering the implications of paper clips left behind in a secretary's desk, although the strangeness of which mailing labels remain in the desk drawer, what kinds of paper are kept closest to hand, and the occasional bit of coin I've inherited from those whose desks I've taken might well bear some inquiry. Or it would if I'd not immediately rummaged around, displacing things and discarding others as I made the space suit me. There are things still held that I've not touched, of course, not so much out of reverence as out of distraction or apathy. But they do not offer enough to make any kind of comments, at least not reliably. And I am not sure the pseudo-archaeology of such studies would be of interest to anyone other than me, in any event. It becomes an idle wondering, for the most part, something that I flatter myself might become some bit of characterization in the novel I pretend I am going to write someday, an indolent indulgence that distracts me from what I might end up doing in times to come and what I probably ought to be doing now.
I might do better next time. Certainly, I can see that there is a "next time" coming; I am poised to succeed my current boss, who is looking to retire at the end of the current fiscal year. I am in training to take the position, and I've spent a fair bit of time in my boss's office doing so, a fair bit of time at the desk. But I've not rummaged around in the desk; it's still occupied, even if I occasionally sit at it. It's not yet at a point where it's mine and I can claim anything that remains in it. And it's not yet at a point where it has been left behind and I can think on it and what I know of my current boss to arrive at some additional insight into that person. Though I know one will be coming; we only show parts of ourselves to one another in interacting. Other parts entirely emerge in what we leave behind us.
I wonder what my successors have thought about me, and what will they think who are yet to come.

20190319.0430

One of the things I do in my current position--the thing I do most, in fact--is to mind the front desk at the substance abuse clinic where I work. Among others, this means I keep an eye on the entrance to our facility's parking lot--not because it is part of my formal job duties, but because doing so helps me to know when I am about to have to perform some of those formal duties. In essence, I like having a heads-up for things. And it is a useful thing, to be sure; I have something of a reputation in the agency and outside it for offering excellent customer service, and I am able to make that offer in part because I know when I am going to have to do it before I have to do it.
That said, I do find myself sometimes nonsensically annoyed by something I see quite often as I keep an eye towards where those who come to see us must go. For there are a great many people who use our parking lot as a turnaround, ducking in long enough to come about, or using our driveway for one point out of a three-point turn. Most of the time, I pay it no mind; later in the day, I tend to celebrate it, as people not coming in means that I can get my work wrapped up just that much more quickly, and I can get to the other things that matter to me--and, in some cases, far more than the job--in better time.
Some of the time, though, particularly when things are going slowly at the facility, I find myself hating those who duck in for so short a time and contribute nothing to us. We are a bit out of the way, back from the highway and not in easy sight of it, off of a road that does not see so much traffic as might be thought for us to be a common turning-point for drivers, instead of for those who are trying to get themselves out of the throes of addiction. (It never goes away, mind; an addict remains an addict. But that does not mean addicts are necessarily or always commanded by their addiction; we work to help them be not thus ordered, but to order their own lives.) Why we attract so many people who don't know where they're going eludes me, but the fact that we do is somewhat vexing. We could be seeing other people, folks whom we could help, instead of people who don't know how to get where they need to be.
I suppose I ought to look for the positive and think that those who turn around in our parking lot remember seeing our sign when they need the kind of help we offer--or when someone close to them does. It is simultaneously a happy thought and a sad one--happy in that those who might need help have a way to get it, but sad because the help is needed. And it is needed, abundantly, as I have the opportunity to see.

20190318.0430

To make some kind of return to normalcy, my wife and I have been watching a particular television show through a streaming video service (I'm avoiding names so that I can work on an idea I have about it in another venue), one that is clearly working as a satire of a couple of genres. As she and I were talking about it--because we do talk about what we take in, which I hope does something to make our media consumption more active and engaging for us and for Ms. 8--I made the comment that such shows might not be able to last much longer. She asked me why, and I replied that a send-up of a given genre demands that straight examples of the genre continue, and there seem to be few if any such still being produced. (For the record, she agreed with me that the straight takes are fewer, but she was not entirely convinced of the comment about satire demanding them; I still hold that the jokes are funnier if the references are understood, even if they work decently without them. Of course, that might be part of how we know a joke's good...)
There is a tendency to look at earnest productions of one sort or another and think them hokey--and with good reason; they often are. Quite a few things come off as stilted or saccharine now that probably did not register as such when they emerged, or they read as overly sentimental now as was likely not the case when they were released. And there are issues of personal tastes changing between childhood and adulthood; I know that many of the things I enjoyed as a child now cause me to cringe, and not only because they reflect attitudes that were less objectionable thirty years ago than they are today--and I do not think I am alone in doing so. But even with such changes, there is value in the earnestness; there is something delightful in seeing commitment to a thing meant to bring happiness, even if it ends up being poorly done. How else to explain such things as appreciation for The Room or other B- (or worse) movies in themselves, and not merely as vehicles for ridicule?
And there is this, too: I still hold that the occasional straight take is necessary, if only to provide a frame of reference. It's part of the value of such characters as Superman and Captain America--normally "good guys" who, by their attitudes and conduct, provide rubrics against which to measure the others in their respective universes. It's part of why Shakespeare at the Globe remains important; one theater, at least, needs to run "standard" productions to provide a touchstone for the others. It's why I have some thought that satire may be soon to diminish in prominence--because there are fewer straight takes, more ironic takes advanced as the commonplace. (I am put in mind of Bell's "The Ballad of Derpy Hooves.") I do not know how the things already satirical or attempting to be satirical would be satirized; it seems recursive, in that doing so only generates much the same thing being lampooned, such that which one is the joke about what becomes occluded.
That may only be my ignorance, I will admit. I am arrogant in many ways, but not so much as to believe I have nothing left to learn.

20190317.0430

Today, of course, is St. Patrick's Day, for those who celebrate such things. People of all sorts seem to be expected to wear green or be subject to assault (because putting your hands on someone who's unwilling is assault, folks, and this does seem to be a "If you didn't want to be attacked, you should have worn something different," which is problematic for reasons I should not have to explain but probably do) and to claim descent from or affiliation with a nation-state welded together by external oppressions, whether the claims are legitimate or not--and to get uproariously drunk throughout the day, because that nation-state is somehow perceived as being given to excessive consumption, among other generally denigrated traits.
I know that my framing things in such a way will sit ill with a great many people. "It's all in fun," such people say, or "You're overthinking things again; relax and enjoy, for once," or they will ask "Can't you take a joke?" Given recent events, in which horrors have been perpetrated yet again as a result of normalization of stereotypes in public discourse, and in which violence is beginning to erupt again in a place where it had been thought to have been finally ended after decades of terror on both sides, I find such things dangerously oblivious at best--and I am not generally inclined to believe the best of people, as those who know me know. Every such thing, every such bit of "fun," every such "joke" conduces to an environment in which people are immersed in the kinds of ultimately dehumanizing rhetoric that does not allow for atrocity but does make it easier to carry out. And that kind of thing needs to have every hindrance put to it that can be done; it will not stop all such acts from happening, of course, but it will reduce their number and frequency. They will not be the daily or weekly occurrences that they have been, coming so often that they barely attract attention anymore.
Certainly, cultures and heritages should be celebrated. Those things in them which are good should be lauded and extolled. But those things should also be understood more fully than they typically are; the celebration, to be sincere, should be more than putting on a different shirt for a day and affecting a bad accent to justify bad behavior. They should be put into the broader contexts of their cultures, however; there are unpleasantnesses and worse in each and every, and we do a disservice to those we would purport to honor not to acknowledge that those things are there and to understand them better. That does not mean that the bad should necessarily outweigh the good, but it should be noted--not emulated, even when true. And it must not be used to justify the kinds of things that have been seen too often and too recently in such places as Christchurch--though they all too often are, to the diminishment of us all.

20190316.0430

During one of the many excellent conversations I've had with my wonderful wife, I made the comment that "every metaphor breaks down eventually." The folks we know will not be surprised by such a comment, of course, but, as I think about the things leading up to several of my recent posts to this webspace, it becomes clear to me that the concept's a bit less open than might be hoped. In essence, the idea is that any comparison can only go so far before it fails. Usually, this means that every comparison--tacit or explicit--runs itself into stupidity at some point. The fun comes when it arrives at the point with only a short trip to get there.
An example that stands out in my part of the world is the ubiquity of "Come and Take It" star-and-cannon iconography. It's sensible enough on its surface; Texas schoolchildren are exhorted from an early age to "Remember Goliad," above which such a banner flew during the early Texas Revolution, and the early training sticks with people long. But it's not simply a matter of remembrance; those same schoolchildren are exhorted to "Remember the Alamo," and they do, but it is not the Shrine to Texas Liberty that adorns trucks with gun racks. No, it is instead a claim--rather, a belligerent proclamation--of firearms ownership, a challenge to what is seen as a hostile, foreign, colonialist government to take dearly-held weapons.
I will admit that there is some justification in seeing the government of the United States as hostile and colonialist, though to have it called foreign by the people who typically make the challenge strikes me as being disingenuous. So the metaphor falters there. It fails, though, in that those who make the challenge seem not to remember Goliad as much as they ought to if they'll display its banner (or an update of it, replacing the cannon with one form of assault-style weapon or another). For the forces to which the garrison at Goliad made the challenge did come there, and they did take the cannon--and the lives of its defenders. And the difference in might between that garrison and its attackers is far exceeded by the difference in strength between the people who display the icon on their trucks and the government they fear will make the attempt upon them (even as they demand that its officers and iconography be honored even by those who know themselves to be oppressed by that government and its officers). Perhaps they are stating their willingness to die, down to the last and least, to preserve their gun ownership, though I rather think most have not thought to that end; those whom I have known have tended to think that they would be the victorious exception instead of a nameless corpse joining many others in a hastily-dug graveyard.
There are other examples to be found, of course. In times when I hoped I might make teaching my career, rather than the side-job it has become for me, I used such examples of failing metaphors as exercises for my students; I have looked for them, and I have found them in abundance. But that there are many is not a comfort. I know I make no few, and what their inevitable failures say about me is not something I particularly want to consider.

20190315.0430

Today is, of course, the Ides of March, and I must confess that I find myself wondering where there is a Brutus to be found to the Cæsar that unfortunately is. Then again, a Cassius would have to be found, as well, and an Octavian and an Antony would doubtlessly arise, in turn...I am not certain that it would be to the good. Matters might not be to the good now--they flatly are not for many, probably more than they are good for--but I have the overt suspicion (no sneaking for this one!) that they would be worse were such things to happen again.
From such thoughts spring others. There is a tendency to look back to deeper--but not deepest--pasts for ideas of how the world ought to work. That tendency is not necessarily one that should be indulged; even a cursory glance at many of the available pasts shows many of the problems with them, and sustained attention that too few pay them shows more. This is not to say, of course, that the present is without problems or that it is somehow ethically and morally more advanced and developed than the pasts that could be looked upon. Indeed, the fact that there are misguided longings for those pasts suggests that the now is not necessarily better than the then--at least, not as people tend to view them and in terms of ethics or morality.
I have spent a fair bit of time and effort looking back to various pasts. I know their problems reasonably well; I also know their benefits. Knowing both, I am glad to be in the time I am in, for if it is the case that I am not among the mighty in the now (although I know I am in a position of substantial privilege), it is also the case that those who are not among the mighty are not quite so apt to be ground down by the mighty as might have been the case in earlier times. Again, this is not to valorize or demonize the now or the several thens of which things might be said. This is also not to say that there is not far more oppression in the world than there ought to be; there is, and by a wider margin than is commonly acknowledged even by those who work to acknowledge it. But for me, for such a person as me, matters are likely better than they would be.
I do what I can to spread that to others. It is not enough; it will never be enough. Even were I one of the mighty, I would be but one, and only able to do so much therefore. But I look to the future, and I continue to try to make it a better one in ways that those most famous for this day likely could not have conceived.

20190314.0430

The desktop computer I have at home--that I have had since living in The City and that has moved with me thence to the wind-swept plains and to the Texas Hill Country--has an annoying habit of having its monitor cut out at odd intervals. It does not matter what I am doing; the screen loses its connection with whatever is going on and goes blank for a few moments or a few more before returning to its display as if nothing had happened. And I am vexed by it; I lose track of where I was in videos or in putting words into pixels on pages such as this one. I already have enough trouble with the latter (given research rapture and similar phenomena) that I do not do well with the additional, externally imposed interruptions.
Were I given to the kind of magical thinking that endows inanimate objects with agency and intellect, I might assert that I have somehow annoyed the computer into acting as it does. I might think I had offered it some petty slight that is not enough for it to quit on me altogether but is enough to induce it to falter just enough to attract my attention and annoy but not quite enough to prompt me to look for a replacement. (As with any device, I will have to replace it at some point, but that point is not yet, and I am not looking forward to having to do so. The expense and hassle are things I do not need at the moment, if I ever actually do.) I admit that I have acted in such ways with supervisors from time to time, needling them with things after they have annoyed me but still doing well enough in my job that they could not justify firing me for doing so--and if I have done it, it is not difficult for me to imagine that others have, or that a machine, given sentience, would. (And it occurs to me that an Asenion robot might be able to act in such a way...)
Were I so inclined to that thinking, though, I might also note that such thinking also tends to hold that the manner of use affects the sentience that emerges in objects that acquire it. So if my machine might make itself a petty annoyance in an occasional fit of pique, it might also do as I have done many times and advise those working with it that they need to take a break. And, as I was working on the machine and it killed its screen at me, I realized that I had been acting in ways I had not, my attention lagging and my breathing going strange; I was a podling staring into the Crystal's rays, and it moved the mirror aside, if only for a moment. (I seem full of strange references today.)
I would like to think that I am not thus inclined, that "I have my head on straight" and look at what is rather than that for which there is not proof. Or I tell myself such, at least. How true it is, I do not know, though I would guess it's less than it ought to be.

20190313.0430

I've been working for some time now to ensure that posts to this webspace go up early in the morning (for me, of course; I know that my time zone is actually fairly late compared to others). Part of it is that I am a morning person, and, more often than not, I am awake as the post goes live. I am able to get it from here to other places easily, then, and before I get bogged down in the other things I do in a day. That the part of the world where I live is quiet when I do it also helps; I appreciate being able to focus on my own concerns before having to address those others have with which I am obliged to help. (I do not begrudge it, of course, but having the time to myself is nice.)
At the same time, I am also aware that online reading rewards immediacy, and there is a necessary delay between my posting and the willingness of others to read what I write. To take yesterday's post as but one example, in two hours, it had had only eleven views; it hardly went viral right off. Some of that, of course, is because such text-only posts as I make here do not do as well as posts with pictures and other embedded media; that's simply how the online environment works. But if I go back a week from yesterday, the post made then only attracted 22 views since its publication (as of this writing, of course). More folks looked at it than have yet looked at yesterday's, but I'd hardly call it a flood of interest, and I have to think it is because it has not been in front of people's eyes for them to read.
Some of the posts I have posted have done far better, though still not so much as I might like. A few of the posts I've made since the beginning of the year have view-counts in the hundreds; indeed, that at the beginning of the year has the most for the year as of this writing at just over 500 views. I am not sure what it is that makes them more popular; did I, I'd do it more, and on things that were a bit more effectively monetized than what I have here. But I don't, so I can't, and I'm not terribly well set up for it, in any event. So there's that.
It is admittedly the case that I am not writing in this webspace to garner acclaim or earn money. Again, I'd likely be doing different things with it were I doing so. But it is nice to have what I do recognized and acknowledged; it is conversely far less so to be so broadly ignored as seems to be the case. I thank and appreciate those readers I have, of course. I could stand, however, to be speaking to a larger group than it feels like I am.

20190312.0430

My family and I attended the North Texas Irish Festival this past weekend. We had a good time while we were there, enjoying music, arts and crafts, and food based upon those associated with Ireland in the US popular imagination, as well as the scenic Fair Park in Dallas, Texas. Ms. 8 wore herself out running around and seeing new things, exulting in them, and her mother and I were more sedate but no less happy to partake of the brewer's and distiller's arts as we enjoyed others. I did not get many pictures, and those I took are not the sort I'm like to post (unlike an earlier trip to the Kerrville Renaissance Festival, about which more here)--but I did not go to this festival with the intention of doing any work from it. That said, I seem unable not to work on such things, hence this post...
I commented to my wife that I find myself having mixed feelings about such events.As I've noted elsewhere, I appreciate seeing that people enjoy things, and that, through said enjoyment, they promote attention to the kinds of things I like to study. Admittedly, much of the "Irishness" celebrated at the recent festival is post-medieval, and it certainly ranges farther afield than Ireland--several Scottish clans were represented on site, as well as several yet nerdier organizations that I was far from displeased to see. And there were various forms of nerdiness and geekitude to be found; really, everybody present at the event was some kind of nerd or another, even those engaged in such traditionally "non-nerdy" pursuits as law-enforcement equestrian work. (I maintain that nerdiness is enthusiastic engagement with and delight in minutiae, making a lot of people a whole lot nerdier than they're likely happy to have pointed out.)
At the same time, a damned lot of the things valorized at the festival--at most such festivals--get used in heinous ways. An awful lot of raging fuckheads--and, no, I'm not going to "watch my tone" talking about racist, fascist asshat shithead fuckfaces; they deserve all opprobrium in every register--try to cloak their back-facing asininity in a "return to tradition" and "celebration of heritage." They do not realize, or do not want to realize, that the "pure" heritages they seek to use to justify their racism aren't. They are either 1) understandings produced by now-outdated research that was conducted with overt bias in attempts to justify putatively "scientific" racial hierarchies and that lacked access to our outright ignored information that points out how blended, mixed, nuanced, and against the tenor of racists' desires the older forms were; or 2) outright fictions produced for the same damned reasons.
Clearly, given my field of study and my continued engagement with it, I do not want to see a turn away from looking at and into older ideas. I do, however, want to see the looking done better and put to better ends than it seems to be. I do what I can to encourage people towards doing so and away from keeping their heads up their asses--but some folks are buried pretty deeply up their own shit-chutes, and I have to wonder if it wouldn't be easier and better to shove them far enough in that they can't bother anyone else.

20190311.0430

There was a time that I thought I was going to be a band director when I grew up. Because I was an honors student at the time, I knew I had an honors project to complete, and I thought that that project would be re-scoring a piece of music I loved for a concert band, taking it from the expanded rock-band setup of the original to flute; first and second clarinets; bass clarinet; alto, tenor, and baritone saxes; first and second trumpets; French horn; first and second trombones; euphonium; tuba; and percussion. It did not work out; I gave up on trying to be a band director, and the proposed project fell away. But the idea that I might re-score something for a different band setup has never really left me; I still return to it at odd intervals, although with diminishing skill and ready knowledge. I've been away from the formal study of music for too long to have that particular ability anymore--if ever I had it to begin with.
Still, the thought of rendering a song into a different arrangement attracts. Others have made such arrangements any number of times, setting pieces for piano that had been orchestral--or vice-versa. Many bleacher tunes, both those I recall from my high school days and those played now, have their origins not in marching bands but in more popular groups. Many concert band pieces do, as well, or in works for strings or voices alone. So I would not be in small company did I do something like arrange, say, Elgar's Enigma Variations (or a part of them) for a saxophone choir or Holst's Second Suite in F for a big-band setup. Such things exceed my skill at the moment, I am sure, but they are fun exercises to think on, from time to time.
Several reasons to conduct such exercises present themselves. One of them, at least, is a thing with which I am familiar from doing the scholarly work I still do, in which I look at contemporary pieces for how they mis/use the medieval; rearranging older pieces for different setups helps to highlight various parts of those pieces, aiding in the development of new understandings of them and leading listeners to the source materials. That added attention helps to maintain and transmit the materials, and, as someone who is invested in keeping memories of things alive, such is a desirable outcome for me.
Another, and perhaps more important, is that working as closely with a piece of music as has to be done to carry out a rearrangement is something that develops great familiarity with it. If the process is anything like studying a piece of writing at great length, it is one that leads not only to familiarity and understanding, but also appreciation. I know that my own work with Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur has led me to a greater love of the text--not one that ignores the problems with it (there are many), but one that looks to the great good in it; the research I've done on other writers and their works have functioned similarly. I have to think that delving into a piece of music in such a way would have a similar outcome, increasing love for the piece--and more such is needed, to be sure.

20190310.0430

In the last few days, I've had some cause to think back over jobs I've had before. At present, I hold a full-time job and a part-time job, as well as doing some freelance work (if not, perhaps, as much as I might want to have); in the past, I've held various combinations of the same. The earlier setups were not as good for me as the present seems to be--with the exception of the full-time job I had for some years in The City, which paid well and allowed me to pretend for a while that I was living my dream. But I woke up from that dream years ago, now, and I have not fallen back asleep to seek it out again. Nor do I think I ever shall.
As I look back on matters, I recognize that no few of my former employers were evil. Some, I recognized at the time as being so. A boss who openly derides employees to others as he makes much of being not only the smartest person in the room, but the only smart person in the room, and who works to enthrall employees to him in a manorial relationship, whose money moves irregularly and who seems to have ties to organized crime has to be regarded as such. So does one who looks at a gathering of employees and tells them their workplace is a tax write-off waiting to happen--after he has been convicted of embezzling from employees' retirement accounts.
I have not always been so aware of things in the moment, though. My first on-the-books job, being my first, and me being raised in Central Texas (with it's "ride for the brand" ethic) by Midwesterners not far removed from the farm, did not register to me as being run by evil when I started working it. In others, I was still naïve enough to think that those working with me were as driven by the same putatively noble goals as I was--at least, as I started working. I learned better in each case, to be certain, and I did not always adjust well to the revelation. Clearly not, because I am no longer in those jobs. (The jobs themselves are not necessarily still there, either. But I take only small delight in such; I know somebody else needed the work and now does not have it.)
My present work offers me little such uncertainty. I know the full-time job is working to the good; I help others to help people, and I help people more directly, in it. I know the part-time job is ultimately working for evil people; it is a for-profit enterprise, and that profit orientation means that other concerns can and will be discarded in favor of increasing profit for those poised to earn it. (I am not one of those people; I've never seemed to be smart enough to get into that kind of thing.) The freelancing goes different ways, depending on the clients. And I probably ought to be upbraided for continuing to work for those I know are bad. I consider the matter regularly. But I need the money too badly, which I know is something true for a great many people. Nor can I take the risk on what is essentially the prisoner's dilemma; I cannot count on enough people doing what I believe to be the right thing to believe that I and those who depend upon me will not be harmed by my doing so.
I am certain I am not alone in it, though.

20190309.0430

I've spent a few days reflecting on the books and academic journals I have in my possession, considering whether I ought to keep them or send them out into the world so that others may make some use of them. (I have no intention of simply discarding any of them; even if I no longer have need of or use for the text, its value is not exhausted, and I chafe at the thought of destroying writing.) I still have not reached a decision about doing so, and I have other things going on that would keep me from acting on such a resolution, in any event. (As this reaches the part of the internet where people can see it, for example, I am on another trip away from home, though not as far from home as last week's, and with family.) But I have another factor to consider, at least as regards my desire to keep texts with my marginalia as a means of helping Ms. 8 or others to know me better: my personal journals.
I'm sure I've noted those journals before, in this webspace and elsewhere. To treat them again, though: I've kept journals intermittently since my undergraduate years, doing so in fits and starts as I progressed through my career as an English major and graduate students, and continuing with many interruptions in the years since completing formal study (coming up on seven, now) and pressing on with the task even after leaving aside the idea that I can be a "real" English professor. I had been exhorted to do so earlier in life, but it was one area where I was not a good student, and even in the years I've done it voluntarily, there are substantial gaps in my record-keeping, lacunæ in my journals that are results more of my laziness and inattention than anything else.
Still, I return again and again to the work of writing them, and I do so for several reasons. One of them is that I need the practice with my handwriting. My pen-hand is terrible; it is difficult to read and always has been (though I note with some interest that a number of the people in The City who saw me write commented that my script was pretty). I struggle to write legibly, which is part of why I type as much as I do, but I struggle less when I am in practice in my journals. So there's that.
Too, I am still somewhat rooted in older identities, as my recent discussion of my books should attest. Journal-writing is something educated people do, at least to my mind, and I flatter myself that I am an educated man; it follows, then, that I would work to journal. And there is still some sense of vanity even within that. When I thought I would be a professor, I thought that somebody might want to read "my papers," among which would be my journals. The professorial thought is gone, though it does sometimes threaten to act the zombie and rise again to consume my brain.
That said, I am not entirely arrogant to believe that someone will want to read what I write. I have every expectation that, if they survive my death, my wife and Ms. 8 will want to look over the pages I have penned. My nephews might, as might my nieces. And perhaps by then, there will be others, too; Ms. 8 may want children of her own, and she might have siblings who also want and have their own children. I can hope that they will have my journals if they want them--and if they do, then they will not have so much need of my marginalia to know me as me and not me-as-my-relationship-to-them.

20190308.0430

I noted yesterday a concern that I will be diminished by excising from my collection a number of the printed pages for which I once had use but no longer do, and which are marked by my marginalia from the time now gone when I might have used such things. They relate, as I think on it, to earlier remarks of mine. Some time ago, before leaving The City, I made comments in this webspace about the nature of home, comments spurred by the imminence of leaving a home to try to make another elsewhere. (It did not work.) In them, I noted the idea of home as being a place where the internal is made at least partly external; that is, for me, a home is a place where I can allow my interiority to emerge into and be represented by the externalities of decor and paraphernalia. Marginalia is such an emergence, albeit one of more restricted scope--but that it is smaller does not mean it is less a part of me, the loss of which seems a painful thing.
Thinking on it leads me to other thoughts, though. A number of the books I have were owned by others before me. (The physical objects are what I refer to, here; my copy of, oh, Assassin's Apprentice is not the same thing as the novel itself. The latter exists whether I read it or not, whether I buy a copy or not, and it belongs to others; the former is my enduring access to it, an expression of my agency upon the text--but, again, the text exists whether I read it or not.) They have the marginalia others have left. When I look at them, they offer me some small insights into the minds and beings of those others. I get small glimpses of their stories, of their characters, and I find myself intrigued by them.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of elder members of my family, people I barely knew--if I knew them at all; the grandfather whose copy of Shakespeare I own died when I was 22, to be sure, but I did not see him much or often when I was growing up, and how well a child can know an adult, particularly one who gave every evidence of believing in the separation of those two states and in keeping things private, is an open question. (I make a clear distinction between childhood and adulthood, certainly, and there are things I do not discuss, but the boundaries are far more porous for me than they seem to have been for others in my family. Clearly, else I'd not keep several blogs across several years.) But in reading his margin notes, I get a sense of how he regarded texts with which I am familiar. I get a sense of who he was in earlier times, when he perhaps could be more himself and not so much himself-as-father or himself-as-grandfather.
Sometimes, those marginalia are the work of people altogether removed form me--save from the commonality of owning a particular copy of a text. I do not have the vested interest in knowing about them the things I learn about my family from reading their marginalia, to be sure, but I still learn of them, still gain some insight into who they were that they made the notes that they made about the things that they read--and I learn about myself from my consideration of those margin notes. And while this is hardly a revelation--there are scholars who make their whole careers looking at such things, though they tend to focus on the marginalia of the mighty, and I have not the holograph copies of such writers' works--the details of less famous lives are not less important for being less known.
I continue to be torn about the matter of my own side-scrawled pages therefore. I am vainglorious enough to want to be known and wondered about as those whose hands have marked pages I now own are. But I also think I want Ms. 8 to know me as me and not just me-as-father. (Or at least to know another performance of mine, if me-as-scholar is not me-as-me, which would be a legitimate argument to make.) So I am still uncertain as to whether I ought to release my things out into the world or continue to hoard them. I do not yet know which will be the greater good or the lesser ill.

20190307.0430

In yesterday's post to this webspace, I comment that I have had several reasons to hoard printed pages. It must be the case that I have had them; I've dragged more than a ton of them across states and time-zones, and that kind of investment of time and effort has to have some justification. In earlier times, my doing so might have had to do with my work trying to be a scholar and teacher in the academic humanities, chiefly English languages and literatures. Even now, knowing that I ought to divest myself of some of the printed pages I have accumulated over the years in favor of electronic reading and library work, and knowing that I should get rid of some of the others because they represent connections to parts of me that I ought to relinquish--growths or vestigial organs that serve no purpose but threaten to grow septic--there are a fair few pieces that I mean to continue to keep. They continue to matter to me in ways that go beyond the words printed on their pages.
I've addressed some of the reasons why, to be sure. There are copies of works my wife and I have that are for display, and, yes, there is some snobbishness in having fancy ones that do not get opened often if at all. There are some that I keep for their sentimental value, because they were given to me by people for whom I cared and care. My copies of Asimov's Foundation novels are among them, for example, as is my grandfather's copy of an old edition of Shakespeare. There are some, too, that I still use, whether because I continue to play RPGs such as L5R or because I still flatter myself that I do a bit of research people might occasionally want to read or to hear me present at a conference now and again. (Did I mention I've got another one coming up in May?)
One thing that gives me some pause as I consider getting rid of some of the books I have but no longer use, or the academic journals I've gathered over the years, is that I make many notes in the margins of the books from which I study. The fancy and sentimental copies of my books are exempt from that, of course; the pretty ones should probably remain pretty, the ones that matter should get no blemish, and my pen-hand remains poor despite the practice through which I put it time and again. But my working books, the ones from which I've taught or to which I've gone time and again for materials from which to write what I write in the most formal venues where I write, are bestrewn with my notes, both interlinear and marginal. It is because owning copies of the books allows me to make the notes that I have continued to buy books as I have, and it is because there are little bits of me thrust into those pages through the guided work of my hands upon cylinders that trail something behind them that I am loath to part with so many of the pages I've acquired.
I worry that I will be diminished.

20190306.0430

It should come as no surprise that I have a personal library; I was for many years engaged in formal study of English languages and literatures, and I spent no small amount of time trying to be a professor in those same fields, and they call for books more than most. Even before that, I was an avid reader, given to spending money on books instead of on the kinds of things that others of my age, when I was of such an age, spent money on. And while I have made much use of the libraries where I have been, and I have at times pruned items out of my collection, I have tended to hoard the printed pages. There are several reasons, of course, and I may come back to them in another post, and it may even be that some of them still apply. But I think I may be about to go through and rid myself of some of the books and magazines and journals I have acquired over the years; I think they have outlived their usefulness to me, and the sentimental connections they embody and reinforce are not what I need them to be.
Clearly, not all of my books and suchlike fall under such rubrics. There are the fancy copies that my wife and I keep in the living room, decorations for it and advertisements to those who visit us that we read. (Yes, it's a bit snobby.) There are the copies of books I still use for what research I do, their pages stained by the oils of my hands as I've flipped through at high speed, looking for that one line to quote or that one passage to summarize. There are the copies I've been given as gifts, tattered from age and use by now and falling apart, but kept because they came from people I still value. And there are no few that I use in the recreational activities I still undertake--because I am a raging nerd, and the things I like to do involve reading even when they're not typically thought of as "reading."
But I also have boxes and boxes of academic journals, as well as many issues of them still in their wrappings. Some, such as CCC, College English, PMLA, and Profession, I no longer subscribe to; I am not a member anymore of the organizations that produce them, and I have no reason to be so. I will never be a real college professor; I will never be a full-time teacher. So there is no need for me to align myself with the MLA or the NCTE; they do not represent me, and they should not, so I should not give my time or the representation of my time that is the money I earn to them. And I probably ought not to continue to give space to works that I no longer use and am not likely to open again.
To be fair, such a thing feels like quitting. It feels like another admission of defeat, another acknowledgment that I have been wrong. It is not, at least not so much; when I undertook to get such things, I had honest hope that I might be one of the fortunate folks who picked up a professorial job. If I am wrong, it is in holding onto a hope that will never be; letting go of the things that informed that hope and that emerged from pursuing it is more a correction than an error. Such a correction is good to have, even if the reminder of error that it necessarily is is not the most comfortable thing to have provided.

20190305.0430

It may seem a strange thing, but I find myself thinking once again about going back to school to get another degree. It's a thought I've clearly had before; I already have multiple degrees, after all. But since completing the doctorate, I've toyed from time to time with the thought of going back, increasing my skill-set and my credentialing, and picking up something like an MBA or an MLS--something in a more "practical" area than literary study, something that would increase my employability and my ability to do well those jobs for which I have applied and might apply. (An MBA would help me to do the job I am poised to take soon, among others; I could use the accounting background, for example.)
Such thoughts come, of course, with the usual concerns of what program I would attend, how I would finance my schooling, and how I would incorporate that demand on my time into the extant demands, of which there are several. I would also have to deal with concerns of my lack of background knowledge; while I have worked in a cash office, and I currently handle some bookkeeping (with more to come), I do not have any formal training in accounting, finance, or management. I've reviewed MBA programs before (freelance work has been interesting for me, as well as strangely informative), and I've seen that most require applicants to have completed coursework in, well, business areas, which I've not. So I'd be obliged to go back and complete such courses before formally enrolling in the program--which will add cost and time.
There is another concern for me, although it is ancillary to those I've already noted. When I went into grad school to start with, I did so as a person keeping a journal--although I did not do so with nearly the discipline I ought to have done, which problem continues to beset me. I have a faltering record of who and what I was and how I became what I became, but it is faltering and partial, not the kind of thing that lends itself to forming a cogent narrative. If or when I make the move to enroll in a degree program again, I think I will want to work to do better about noting what I do and how I do it, because I think there might be something of a useful story in an account of going back to school after having done it. Whether or not I would fictionalize it is not yet clear to me, but it is something that seems worth considering.
And maybe, at some point, I will dig out the journals I kept while I was a graduate student before and see if I can actually distill some kind of a memoir or autobiography out of them. I do not know who would be interested in reading such a thing; those who come to mind as likely candidates are more likely to read the journals themselves. But I might get lucky...

A

Today is Sousa Day, as I have noted before in this webspace, and it's a fine day to find an A at 440...
Terrible punning aside--and I acknowledge that the puns are bad, but I am years a father and can safely offer such things--I do wonder about the popularity of Sousa's music, both during his time and in the times that have followed. Admittedly, I stopped being a music major before I got to the part of the curriculum that dealt with historical development and trends in music, so it may well be because of my failure that I do not have my head wrapped fully around the matter, but why marches--and Sousa's marches--had and have the cachet they do is not something that is clear to me. I've played enough of them, and enough parts in them, to know that they are energetic pieces, readily accessible to ensembles of reasonable but not exceptional competence--that I've been able to play them is testament to that, because I've never been that good a performer.
Yet energetic, player-accessible pieces do not necessarily make for staying power. There are any number of such pieces that have received less attention in succeeding generations--such as works by Patrick S. Gilmore, for example. Nor is it accessibility to listeners that does it; again, there are many works that were easy to hear that are no longer heard. And, if the parallel argument from literature can be made (of course I was going to find my way there at some point, being who and what I am), and it is the tastes of the socially dominant that make for staying power, then it still eludes me at the moment why Sousa's music would continue to have its place. How the interests of the putatively mighty are served by it is not clear; what the wealthy and powerful gain from it is not evident, at least not to me.
I do not make such comments to condemn Sousa, certainly. Whatever the reasons for his music's continued cachet, his marches are standard band fare, and I am a once and present bandsman; it may be nostalgia that drives me thus, but I am still pushed to appreciate the music. I enjoy a good performance of it, either as one of the people doing the performing or as one of the people in the audience; it was certainly the case when I was living in New York City and the service bands would come through and give concerts, and I think it would be the case now if I had again the opportunity to attend such a thing. (My part of the world does not get many such opportunities, and other circumstances do not always conduce to my going even when there is such a chance.) But that does not mean I do not wonder about why it is that a thing is so, and it does not mean I should not encourage others to ask similar questions.
Assumptions should be examined.

20190303.0430

In the past, I have done a fair bit of summary and response in my online writing--not only in this webspace, but in others I have maintained and currently maintain. Sources have ranged across CCC, College English, Profession, the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, and others, some of which I no longer read with anything approaching regularity. And I have benefited from doing the reading and thinking about the reading that are needed to write summary-and-response pieces; I have had to keep more abreast of things to do so than I would otherwise be likely to do, and that has helped me to be more engaged with the world around me, even as it has annoyed me greatly at times (because the world is not as I would have it be, and for reasons I tend to think bad).
I am not doing that exercise this month, at least not consistently in this webspace, although I may well return to it. It is, after all, good for me. But thinking on it does lead me to think about the reading that I no longer do. I've let quite a bit of reading go along the way, which is something that is strange for me to consider despite the fact of my doing it. I have always prided myself on my ability to read both quickly and deeply, and I have long worked--successfully--to incorporate what I read into what I do. But much of what I used to do, I do no longer, or do so little of that it makes no sense for me to maintain the subscriptions that facilitated my reading. Thus, I have let go of a number of my professional journal subscriptions, and I am rarely in the kind of library that would let me get around that lack with any real skill.
Oddly, however, I feel that I am doing more useful work with my reading and writing now than I did when I was doing more such reading. What I note seems to be taken more seriously, and I feel I am writing that kind of writing with greater skill and nuance than was formerly the case. And it seems I am doing more writing, overall, whether in this webspace or in others, or in my personal journals, or for other projects entirely. It would seem that I was getting in my way with what I was doing to try to get my way; I no longer do as much of that, so I am not as much in my own way, and more gets done. It's a good thing, although it is still strange for me to think on.
I had thought that my identity would be as one thing, one particular thing that it has not been allowed to be. But after being pushed aside from that thing, I seem to be doing more to approach that thing than I had done before. It is a paradox, perhaps, but not one that I think I will work to puzzle out so much as to enjoy.

20190302.0430

Today is Texas Independence Day, something I note even if I am, once again, not in the state to celebrate it. It is not the first time I have marked the occasion in this webspace--that would be here--and certainly not the first time I have marked the occasion overall. But as I looked back over the records I've left in this webspace to see what I have said of the occasion before, I came across something else I've commemorated here: the death of my maternal grandmother. Seeing it, my attention has been compelled by it, and I have thought upon that compulsion and what it calls forward from me.
I have to resist a tendency toward the maudlin as I write; it is something of a struggle for me at the best of times, and having the reminder of a death prompts many people towards it. But wallowing in that tendency and its results will do me no good, and I know it. And it has been four years since the death, now; such wounds as it left have closed by now, and, to borrow from one of my favorite authors, scars are not as good as the flesh they replace, but they stop the bleeding. So I should not allow myself to fall into the trap of cliché lamentation; the death is worth noting, worth considering, worth remembering sadly, and worth more than the hackneyed protestations that often accompany such things out of their exceeding words.
If the loss of the unifying figure who was my grandmother can be said to mark a major point of divergence for my family--and it can, for many reasons--then it behooves those of us who remain and remember to look back and see the ways things in the family have changed since the death. Such reflection is something that writing does well to facilitate; it is far easier to read the words written then and consider them against the words that are written now than to remember what was in the mind then and make the similar comparison. Indeed, it can be argued that the latter cannot be done, not truly, even as it is argued, truly, that both the recollection and the reading reflect only limited, parsed, curated, selected, partial truths of the moments concerned. Yet at least in the writing there might be some consistency of writerly persona, some focus and cohesion and comprehensibility imposed by enacting such a role that might help make sense of things that generally admit of little if any sense at all.
Then again, I would say such things, sitting with a doctorate in a humanities field as I do. I would be expected to rely on written words for meaning. But if I do, it is in large part because I was taught to do so--not only by my schooling, but before it, looking at the elder members of my family reading throughout the day and finding joy in it. And my late grandmother was one of the chief among them.

20190301.0430

A new month has started, and so, if the pattern I've been following for a while now is to continue, it is time to move to something else once again. I'll have more hymns against the Stupid God to write in days to come, I am certain, but I do not have more to do at the moment--not because there are not works that can be imagined to proceed from such a being, but because I am exhausted on that task. I can only give out so much of such before I am emptied of it. But as I have poured out what I have from one cistern, another has filled; the one is replenished by rain that has not fallen abundantly, while the other fills from a well that has yet much to offer.

To draw from that cistern, then: I've made no secret of working in the front office of an outpatient substance abuse treatment facility this past year and a half, and I have been fortunate enough to rise quickly in the organization. For my first year, I was an administrative assistant--a glorified secretary, such work being among the few things my resume and demonstrable skillset seemed to suit me to do after years as a scholar in the academic humanities. (I flatter myself that I communicate reasonably well; I point to facts when I note my typing and ten-keying speeds, as well as my familiarity with a variety of software programs.) After that year, though, I began training to take over as the executive director of the agency, claiming a title to do so and working in the time since to familiarize myself not only with the details of the organization, but also the regulatory environments in which the organization has to operate. (I flatter myself that I am doing reasonably well in the task.)
Before this year ends, I will assume the executive directorship. The current occupant of the position is retiring at the end of the agency's fiscal year, and I will be stepping into the position. It will mark a strange shift for me; I am accustomed to being in positions to contribute to organizations with relatively little supervision (though that "relatively little" has not always been the case; not all of my employers have trusted me to do my job, and I imagine some of them feel justified in that mistrust), not to being the leader and the one on whom responsibility ultimately falls. There are days I do not feel ready for the task, that I do not think I have the insight and judgment to do the job well to which I am being assigned and to which I have agreed. Even on such days, though, I recall the work to get a job, and it is not a kind recollection; I would rather have the work I am facing and for which I may not be ready than to have no work. I am decidedly not ready to go back to that situation, even if it has been good for my writing in the past.