Happy Tax Day, my US friends! I hope you have done what you have needed to do and that you have actually overpaid, so that you get something back.
Work and the search for more work continue as they ever do. After my adventures yesterday, I have a stack of quizzes to grade, as well as the discussion posts I have my literature students do. Normally, I would have taken care of such things yesterday, but I was otherwise engaged at that time--as I am not now (which I appreciate). So when I go back to the office as scheduled, I will have a fair bit of paperwork that requires attention. It will not be difficult, but it will be a bit tedious--as will the other grading that will crop up tomorrow; my writing students have drafts due for my critique. They join some freelance proofreading work that I have been doing and with which I have been growing more proficient through practice. I could be doing worse in that regard, I think.
Even so, I do look for more permanent employment. The position I have now is not a bad one; I am treated decently for the demands on my time and energy (although I would not argue with a raise). But it is temporary, even if I have been renewed for another year (which, again, I appreciate), and Ms. 8 and her mother deserve a bit more stability than such a position allows. Too, if I am going to make a place a home again, as was the case with Bedfordside Garden, it needs to be a place in which I can be relatively certain I will reside over the long term. Pleasant as Sherwood Cottage is, and much as I continue to work to improve upon it, it is not such a place--and it cannot be as long as I cannot be certain that I will be here for another year. My wife and I will make ourselves comfortable here, since it seems certain we will be here through 2015, but for it to be a home, it needs to be a place where I can remain, and that will demand a continuing line position or something similar.
As part of that, I continue to do my research, my work on The Work. I do have a couple of appointments to keep today, but after they are done, I intend to settle in and work on the next paper that is mine to do, a piece for the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I need to get it done so that I can churn out a far more substantial piece that I have to submit by the beginning of June, and I need to do that so I can write a piece for the Evil Incarnate conference at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, by mid-July. And I probably ought to see about finally carrying out the revision of my dissertation for publication as a book as well as compiling and extending some of my conference papers into either journal articles or a collection of essays for publication as another book. And I have creative projects that have been beckoning to me for some time; it would be good to get them done at long last.
So I ought to get back to work, oughtn't I?
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bedfordside garden. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bedfordside garden. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Friday, July 10, 2015
20150710.0740
One of the benefits of maintaining a series of writings is that doing so allows for some ease of finding topics. There are always things left untreated in writing that has been done, loose ends that can be tied off later or toothing stones that can be used to build more walls and rooms. It is not proof against not having things about which to write, of course, but it is helpful. Today, it confronts me with two easy possibilities, for one of the ways in which having a body of writing to look over helps can be to look at what was written on similar days in the past. I have twice posted to this webspace on the tenth of July: 2010 and 2014. Either could well be a springboard for further work.
In 2010, I still lived in The City at Bedfordside Garden. My writing was less polished then than it is now, or so it seems to me; I wrote in choppy paragraphs with unreasonably complex sentence structures. I was still at work on dissertation materials at that time, though, and it is possible that that work infected my other writing. Dissertations are consuming, as those who have written them can attest, and since they represent the ability to enter into prevailing academic discourse standards, they tend to be more...complicated in their syntax and lexicon than many other works. Too, they also tend to treat ideas difficult for their writers, a tendency that puts me in mind of Ian Barnard's piece in CCC 61.3, "The Ruse of Clarity." I write in fuller, more developed paragraphs now than I did then, and I like to think that I am better at adjusting my usage to suit my audiences now. That is not to say I dumb things down in this webspace, but I do not write it as I write when I write only to those whose training is like mine.
Last year, I was at Sherwood Cottage, considering the lawn and the social (and legal, as it happens) demands of attending to it. Then, as now, I did not look forward to working with the grass, although I am better equipped to do so now than I was then. I am in better practice with it, and I have more tools with which to perform the tasks, thanks to the kind gifts of family. Then, as now, I struggled with negotiating "traditional" masculinity and my own inclinations, and I wrestled with the idea of presenting a good model of adulthood to Ms. 8. I struggle less now than then, which may be because I either have better ideas now or have given up a large part of the fight to do so. (The former would be better. I worry that the latter is more likely.) My writing was more like what it is now in 2014 than in 2010, both in form and content--understandably so. What that indicates, however, is still not clear to me. More consideration will be needed. Fortunately, I can return to this post in the future, as well.
In 2010, I still lived in The City at Bedfordside Garden. My writing was less polished then than it is now, or so it seems to me; I wrote in choppy paragraphs with unreasonably complex sentence structures. I was still at work on dissertation materials at that time, though, and it is possible that that work infected my other writing. Dissertations are consuming, as those who have written them can attest, and since they represent the ability to enter into prevailing academic discourse standards, they tend to be more...complicated in their syntax and lexicon than many other works. Too, they also tend to treat ideas difficult for their writers, a tendency that puts me in mind of Ian Barnard's piece in CCC 61.3, "The Ruse of Clarity." I write in fuller, more developed paragraphs now than I did then, and I like to think that I am better at adjusting my usage to suit my audiences now. That is not to say I dumb things down in this webspace, but I do not write it as I write when I write only to those whose training is like mine.
Last year, I was at Sherwood Cottage, considering the lawn and the social (and legal, as it happens) demands of attending to it. Then, as now, I did not look forward to working with the grass, although I am better equipped to do so now than I was then. I am in better practice with it, and I have more tools with which to perform the tasks, thanks to the kind gifts of family. Then, as now, I struggled with negotiating "traditional" masculinity and my own inclinations, and I wrestled with the idea of presenting a good model of adulthood to Ms. 8. I struggle less now than then, which may be because I either have better ideas now or have given up a large part of the fight to do so. (The former would be better. I worry that the latter is more likely.) My writing was more like what it is now in 2014 than in 2010, both in form and content--understandably so. What that indicates, however, is still not clear to me. More consideration will be needed. Fortunately, I can return to this post in the future, as well.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
20140123.0703
I have addressed the use of kennings before, at least as the device exists in the world (and as it occurs to me to look over once again in preparation for discussing with my students works which include them as a matter of course). They are in many cases metonym or synecdoche, references to things by association or by component part, and I note that I use some variant upon them to describe the places I have been and those in which I live and have lived. The City of Thunder, Bedfordside Garden, Sherwood Cottage, and their like occur to me as being such references, even if their meanings are perhaps obscured by the specificity of their fields of reference. (But only perhaps. I have few secrets.)
They are forms of encryption, such devices, methods of reducing certainty and clarity and therefore methods used to hide--although in such a way as asks to be found, as with the embedding of Cynewulf's name in runes in his verse (you can guess what I have been teaching, yes?). If I call the place where I grew up Nimitz's schooltown, it will not take much to figure out what and where I mean. Similarly if I say I studied at Gaines's school, or the Chaucerian Allen's. And with that ease comes the suggestion that the task is to be done, the puzzle solved; it is not much of a cover that so readily falls to the floor.
And in such a case, why would it be used to hide? (As might be guessed, this line of thought proceeds from what happened in my classroom. Say what it is that I have been teaching.) If the mask accents but does not obfuscate, to what end is it as a device for hiding? For when I put the question to my students, they suggested almost to the last and least of them that the slanted embedding of identity amid anonymity surrounded by riddles and elegies and the talk of the best of trees was meant to hide the writer in the work. I know that my place on the ground floor of the ivory tower limits my view sharply; there are walls about the grounds over which I cannot see, and my students still stand at the gates, having not yet fully entered, so that they can yet see the streets surrounding. There may well be a thing in the text of which I am unaware but that their circumstances make obvious to them; if there is, it is knowledge I wish to possess.
I wish to possess all knowledge, actually.
Perhaps, however, there is a cultural current among my students that suggests to them that the only reason to hide a thing, however badly it may be hidden, is to actually conceal it from the casual viewer. And if there is such a thing as that, I sorrow, for it is a means by which to isolate people from the wondrous intricacies in the depths of things. The solid stone beneath us is by no means simple; its structure is complex and glorious if we but look closely enough at it.
They are forms of encryption, such devices, methods of reducing certainty and clarity and therefore methods used to hide--although in such a way as asks to be found, as with the embedding of Cynewulf's name in runes in his verse (you can guess what I have been teaching, yes?). If I call the place where I grew up Nimitz's schooltown, it will not take much to figure out what and where I mean. Similarly if I say I studied at Gaines's school, or the Chaucerian Allen's. And with that ease comes the suggestion that the task is to be done, the puzzle solved; it is not much of a cover that so readily falls to the floor.
And in such a case, why would it be used to hide? (As might be guessed, this line of thought proceeds from what happened in my classroom. Say what it is that I have been teaching.) If the mask accents but does not obfuscate, to what end is it as a device for hiding? For when I put the question to my students, they suggested almost to the last and least of them that the slanted embedding of identity amid anonymity surrounded by riddles and elegies and the talk of the best of trees was meant to hide the writer in the work. I know that my place on the ground floor of the ivory tower limits my view sharply; there are walls about the grounds over which I cannot see, and my students still stand at the gates, having not yet fully entered, so that they can yet see the streets surrounding. There may well be a thing in the text of which I am unaware but that their circumstances make obvious to them; if there is, it is knowledge I wish to possess.
I wish to possess all knowledge, actually.
Perhaps, however, there is a cultural current among my students that suggests to them that the only reason to hide a thing, however badly it may be hidden, is to actually conceal it from the casual viewer. And if there is such a thing as that, I sorrow, for it is a means by which to isolate people from the wondrous intricacies in the depths of things. The solid stone beneath us is by no means simple; its structure is complex and glorious if we but look closely enough at it.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
20140105.0818
A blanket of snow shrouds Sherwood Cottage and the houses and streets surrounding it, setting into stark relief against its stunning background the few blades of grass that poke up from it and the walls of houses protected by their eaves. There is a peaceful quiet greater than that typical of mornings in this place; the snow serves to silence much, both in itself and in it prompting the dwellers of the wind-swept plains to remain in their own homes, where their sounds do not reach my ears. And I relish it.
In the outer silence, I am able to reach out within my home with all of my senses; I can sit and simply feel the house. I hear the susurration of the space heater in the bedroom where my wife still sleeps, the high electric whisper of current being forced through gas in my desk lamp and the magnetic oscillations my computer and its screen produce. I know that each cat does his own piece, with one even now padding softly towards the bedroom and another contemplating mischief; the third is on the floor where the heater discharges, waiting for the warmth to return.
I feel more than hear the house breathing. My wife and I have done much to insulate the old windows, but air still moves even if the wall furnace is not blowing. The doors, I think, which must remain passable--I have to be able to get out with a shovel somehow--are its bronchia, its spiracles. There is the sense that this place, though an older house and abused by its former tenants, is yet alive, still struggling on more through resignation to continuance than through defiance or in response to love. (And I think again of Bedfordside Garden, in which my wife and I were the first tenants, and which flourished because of love.)
And this place has been abused; the marks of it are more plain than bruises, for bruises fade with the body's ability to heal, and a house cannot make itself whole again. Its wounds have been patched in part, and its blemishes covered over, but they still remain. I can see that college students who did not know how to hold a house have lived here; I can see it in the results of inattention to fixtures and the one strange stain in the carpet that remains, and in the dorm-room-drab paint that is on the walls that are painted (over many layers of other colors that show where the paint has peeled away). I can see it, too, in the burns and bullet holes on the accompanying garage, and I wonder what else I will find.
Sherwood Cottage has been good to me and mine, and I thank the house for it. It has served as a refuge from the frenetic furor of The City, permitting space in which to heal myself from what I did to myself therein, and I appreciate it. It will serve as the first home for my beloved child yet to come, and I cannot help but be grateful. But it is a place I know I will not be in long, and so although I do extend myself outward to feel what is here, to find the limits of this space amid the snowy world surrounding it, I will not extend deeply into it. I respect it and I maintain it, and I work in my small and inexpert way to improve it, but this is not my forever home; my time here is limited, and so I am not settling here.
For now, though, I know its limits, I know mine, and I will work within them in the snow-made quiet.
In the outer silence, I am able to reach out within my home with all of my senses; I can sit and simply feel the house. I hear the susurration of the space heater in the bedroom where my wife still sleeps, the high electric whisper of current being forced through gas in my desk lamp and the magnetic oscillations my computer and its screen produce. I know that each cat does his own piece, with one even now padding softly towards the bedroom and another contemplating mischief; the third is on the floor where the heater discharges, waiting for the warmth to return.
I feel more than hear the house breathing. My wife and I have done much to insulate the old windows, but air still moves even if the wall furnace is not blowing. The doors, I think, which must remain passable--I have to be able to get out with a shovel somehow--are its bronchia, its spiracles. There is the sense that this place, though an older house and abused by its former tenants, is yet alive, still struggling on more through resignation to continuance than through defiance or in response to love. (And I think again of Bedfordside Garden, in which my wife and I were the first tenants, and which flourished because of love.)
And this place has been abused; the marks of it are more plain than bruises, for bruises fade with the body's ability to heal, and a house cannot make itself whole again. Its wounds have been patched in part, and its blemishes covered over, but they still remain. I can see that college students who did not know how to hold a house have lived here; I can see it in the results of inattention to fixtures and the one strange stain in the carpet that remains, and in the dorm-room-drab paint that is on the walls that are painted (over many layers of other colors that show where the paint has peeled away). I can see it, too, in the burns and bullet holes on the accompanying garage, and I wonder what else I will find.
Sherwood Cottage has been good to me and mine, and I thank the house for it. It has served as a refuge from the frenetic furor of The City, permitting space in which to heal myself from what I did to myself therein, and I appreciate it. It will serve as the first home for my beloved child yet to come, and I cannot help but be grateful. But it is a place I know I will not be in long, and so although I do extend myself outward to feel what is here, to find the limits of this space amid the snowy world surrounding it, I will not extend deeply into it. I respect it and I maintain it, and I work in my small and inexpert way to improve it, but this is not my forever home; my time here is limited, and so I am not settling here.
For now, though, I know its limits, I know mine, and I will work within them in the snow-made quiet.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
20140731.0727
Payday has come once again, and I am glad of it, although the bills have come along with it and there is all too little left. So it is not quite the same as I have remarked before. More's the pity.
The end of July has tended to be a good time for my writing, I find as I look back through the blogroll. I posted here on this day in 2010, 2011, and 2013; in 2012, I was overseas and concerned with being a tourist. It was a good experience, overall, even if I do still lament the amount of money I spent that month...never again. The years of which I do have records here, however, show a shift in preoccupation and in writing. Being able to make such a claim is one of the advantages of record-keeping, and being able to do so easily is one of the advantages of doing so online. That I can seize upon the advantages helps me to understand some of the claims of scholars in favor of digital humanities work; Fish is still wrong.
In 2010, my concern was entirely local. I lived in The City, and there was rancor about the so-called WTC Mosque. My comment about the matter was terse, a mere 125 words. I have not heard anything about the matter since moving--and, indeed, I did not hear much about it before moving, although it is possible that my relative isolation from mainstream news media did something to inhibit my hearing about it. The comment was somewhat passive-aggressive, I admit; it is addressed to "those of you," a nameless collective I have no real expectation ever actually read anything I write. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of cowardice. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of stereotyping. Certainly, it indicates a lack of focus for the annoyance evidenced in the piece.
In 2011, I was enmeshed in drafting my dissertation. As it happened, I did not get the draft completed until the end of the year and hurriedly pushed through revisions and final proofing in the short months of the UL Spring 2012 term. Again, I posted a mere 125 words to apologize for and justify the gap in my writing into the blog. I suppose it is understandable; I was teaching six classes at the time in addition to the research work (on the dissertation and on other projects). Such actions do not leave much time for other writing, whatever the value of that writing might be. (I am well aware that there may not be much to anything I put on a page, although some writing is more likely to be of worth than other writing.)
In 2013, I was working through preparations to move to Sherwood Cottage from Bedfordside Garden in the Best of the Boroughs. I was also more fully engaged in my teaching than I had been in previous years--sensibly, since I had completed the dissertation at that point. I was also dipping a toe into digital scholarship. I have not immersed myself more fully in that kind of work; I still do most of my criticism with printed pages, even if I find many or most of them online. (I read more quickly from a sheet than from a screen. Old habits.) But the kind of writing that I was doing in 2013 was of a more sustained, more contemplative, and more developed sort than my earlier pieces. It suggests that I have gotten better at doing what I do--which is good, since a fair chunk of my money comes from my sitting in front of my computer and typing madly about things clients want to read. It is how I can increase my payday yields and maybe have a little bit more left o'er next time around.
The end of July has tended to be a good time for my writing, I find as I look back through the blogroll. I posted here on this day in 2010, 2011, and 2013; in 2012, I was overseas and concerned with being a tourist. It was a good experience, overall, even if I do still lament the amount of money I spent that month...never again. The years of which I do have records here, however, show a shift in preoccupation and in writing. Being able to make such a claim is one of the advantages of record-keeping, and being able to do so easily is one of the advantages of doing so online. That I can seize upon the advantages helps me to understand some of the claims of scholars in favor of digital humanities work; Fish is still wrong.
In 2010, my concern was entirely local. I lived in The City, and there was rancor about the so-called WTC Mosque. My comment about the matter was terse, a mere 125 words. I have not heard anything about the matter since moving--and, indeed, I did not hear much about it before moving, although it is possible that my relative isolation from mainstream news media did something to inhibit my hearing about it. The comment was somewhat passive-aggressive, I admit; it is addressed to "those of you," a nameless collective I have no real expectation ever actually read anything I write. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of cowardice. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of stereotyping. Certainly, it indicates a lack of focus for the annoyance evidenced in the piece.
In 2011, I was enmeshed in drafting my dissertation. As it happened, I did not get the draft completed until the end of the year and hurriedly pushed through revisions and final proofing in the short months of the UL Spring 2012 term. Again, I posted a mere 125 words to apologize for and justify the gap in my writing into the blog. I suppose it is understandable; I was teaching six classes at the time in addition to the research work (on the dissertation and on other projects). Such actions do not leave much time for other writing, whatever the value of that writing might be. (I am well aware that there may not be much to anything I put on a page, although some writing is more likely to be of worth than other writing.)
In 2013, I was working through preparations to move to Sherwood Cottage from Bedfordside Garden in the Best of the Boroughs. I was also more fully engaged in my teaching than I had been in previous years--sensibly, since I had completed the dissertation at that point. I was also dipping a toe into digital scholarship. I have not immersed myself more fully in that kind of work; I still do most of my criticism with printed pages, even if I find many or most of them online. (I read more quickly from a sheet than from a screen. Old habits.) But the kind of writing that I was doing in 2013 was of a more sustained, more contemplative, and more developed sort than my earlier pieces. It suggests that I have gotten better at doing what I do--which is good, since a fair chunk of my money comes from my sitting in front of my computer and typing madly about things clients want to read. It is how I can increase my payday yields and maybe have a little bit more left o'er next time around.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
20140803.0512
I travel quite a bit, anymore, particularly to conferences. This year has been particularly active in that regard. As a result, I have had occasion to think about how I get ready for trips, and on mornings like this that see me awake early enough to enjoy the quiet of the pre-dawn hours, I have occasion to put some of those musings in a form that works well on the blog.
When I pack for travel, I pack light. If I am taking a five-day trip, for instance, I pack five full changes of clothes, perhaps six. (I see the value in having a spare, just in case.) If I know there will be some kind of fancy thing to do, I pack a good change of clothes, as well, but it is usually t-shirts and jeans, or sweaters and the like if the weather is cooler. Nothing fancy, nothing special.
From what I have heard from others, I am not unusual among men in doing so. I know men who are clothes-horses, of course; I lived in The City for several years, and even outside it, there are many who remember ZZ Top's dictum. But I know many others who will happily wear the same clothes day after day, and who have many iterations of the same outfit as a compromise between doing so and wearing clean clothes each day. I think I am closer to being the latter than the former.
I usually pack for a trip the night before I make it, and where I leave my suitcase (why do I call it that when I never use it for a suit?) for the night does say something about me. ("There's that liberal arts and academic humanities thing again, picking things apart for meaning that really don't have any meaning in them," says an annoying voice within me that I hear too often from outside myself, as well.) It tends to sit in front of my main bookcase in the living room, whether at Bedfordside Garden in the Best of the Boroughs or at Sherwood Cottage where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. There is an old idea that leaving what needs to be taken in a prominent place ensures that it will not be forgotten. (It also increases the likelihood of it being tripped over in the dark.) If I am following that in my placement, it says that my bookcases form a prominent place for me--which I suppose is sensible enough, given what I do. It is yet another way in which I orient my life around my reading that I do such a thing.
I do not think, though, that I can make so neat and safe an assertion about how others I know pack. My wife, for instance, cannot be said to be bound up nearly so neatly in where she leaves her stuff before leaving as I am. I have to wonder about my (lack of) complexity as a person, then, that so much of my action speaks to a single focus. And insofar as the kind of reading I do serves as a means to understand the self, it is something that other people ought to do.
When I pack for travel, I pack light. If I am taking a five-day trip, for instance, I pack five full changes of clothes, perhaps six. (I see the value in having a spare, just in case.) If I know there will be some kind of fancy thing to do, I pack a good change of clothes, as well, but it is usually t-shirts and jeans, or sweaters and the like if the weather is cooler. Nothing fancy, nothing special.
From what I have heard from others, I am not unusual among men in doing so. I know men who are clothes-horses, of course; I lived in The City for several years, and even outside it, there are many who remember ZZ Top's dictum. But I know many others who will happily wear the same clothes day after day, and who have many iterations of the same outfit as a compromise between doing so and wearing clean clothes each day. I think I am closer to being the latter than the former.
I usually pack for a trip the night before I make it, and where I leave my suitcase (why do I call it that when I never use it for a suit?) for the night does say something about me. ("There's that liberal arts and academic humanities thing again, picking things apart for meaning that really don't have any meaning in them," says an annoying voice within me that I hear too often from outside myself, as well.) It tends to sit in front of my main bookcase in the living room, whether at Bedfordside Garden in the Best of the Boroughs or at Sherwood Cottage where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. There is an old idea that leaving what needs to be taken in a prominent place ensures that it will not be forgotten. (It also increases the likelihood of it being tripped over in the dark.) If I am following that in my placement, it says that my bookcases form a prominent place for me--which I suppose is sensible enough, given what I do. It is yet another way in which I orient my life around my reading that I do such a thing.
I do not think, though, that I can make so neat and safe an assertion about how others I know pack. My wife, for instance, cannot be said to be bound up nearly so neatly in where she leaves her stuff before leaving as I am. I have to wonder about my (lack of) complexity as a person, then, that so much of my action speaks to a single focus. And insofar as the kind of reading I do serves as a means to understand the self, it is something that other people ought to do.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
20140806.0608
It should be obvious that I am doing better about being up when I ought to be. For much of the time away, I had been letting myself sleep in; I feel that it hampered me unduly. The problem is at least in the process of being corrected.
As I am sitting and typing, to change the subject completely, I notice that the way I am doing so is not at all what my own poor instructors taught me to do. (I call them poor not necessarily because they were only marginally competent in their jobs, but because they had the profound misfortune of having me in their classes before old age mellowed me out--and they had rooms full of others very much like me. I shudder to think of the situation from the front of the classroom.) I am working more or less with two fingers on each hand, with the occasional strike from my ring and pinky fingers and thumbs, rather than typing with all ten digits. For all that, though, I still type nearly eighty words per minute. (I test regularly to be sure. I also ten-key at something approaching 8000 keystrokes per hour. Valuable job skills.
I am forced to consider how much else I do otherwise than my teachers taught, and so I am forced also to consider how much my own students do otherwise than I have taught them--and how much they *will* do otherwise. And that threatens, for a moment, to make me doubt that I or any of my colleagues do anything that approaches any good in the world. As teaching is often understood, we do not if our students go away from what we gave them. (Some will asset that, as teaching is often understood, we *never* do any good in the world. Note the attacks on educational systems in general.) But teaching as it is often understood is not actually teaching, or at least is far from being the whole of it. For teaching is often regarded as being the dissemination of information alone, something I follow others in addressing here as being an inaccurate view. It is far more; in its better , forms, it is the promotion of habits of mind and the willingness to deploy those habits in situations in which learner find themselves later on. That is, teaching is supposed to equip students to think along certain paths later--and it will of course be the case that someone following a path from a point other than its earlier beginning will each a different end. If I walk a mile north and a mile west, I will end in a different place leaving from Sherwood Cottage than I will from Bedfordside Garden. So it is with teaching; my colleagues and I teach from our own perspectives and understanding, as cannot be avoided and should not, and we lay out the paths w use to find new knowledge. Our students start from where their own roads cross ours, so even if they move forward from us, they will reach different places from us.
That is as it ought to be, for it is only in that that we find new things, and we need them. What we have had so far has not really worked.
As I am sitting and typing, to change the subject completely, I notice that the way I am doing so is not at all what my own poor instructors taught me to do. (I call them poor not necessarily because they were only marginally competent in their jobs, but because they had the profound misfortune of having me in their classes before old age mellowed me out--and they had rooms full of others very much like me. I shudder to think of the situation from the front of the classroom.) I am working more or less with two fingers on each hand, with the occasional strike from my ring and pinky fingers and thumbs, rather than typing with all ten digits. For all that, though, I still type nearly eighty words per minute. (I test regularly to be sure. I also ten-key at something approaching 8000 keystrokes per hour. Valuable job skills.
I am forced to consider how much else I do otherwise than my teachers taught, and so I am forced also to consider how much my own students do otherwise than I have taught them--and how much they *will* do otherwise. And that threatens, for a moment, to make me doubt that I or any of my colleagues do anything that approaches any good in the world. As teaching is often understood, we do not if our students go away from what we gave them. (Some will asset that, as teaching is often understood, we *never* do any good in the world. Note the attacks on educational systems in general.) But teaching as it is often understood is not actually teaching, or at least is far from being the whole of it. For teaching is often regarded as being the dissemination of information alone, something I follow others in addressing here as being an inaccurate view. It is far more; in its better , forms, it is the promotion of habits of mind and the willingness to deploy those habits in situations in which learner find themselves later on. That is, teaching is supposed to equip students to think along certain paths later--and it will of course be the case that someone following a path from a point other than its earlier beginning will each a different end. If I walk a mile north and a mile west, I will end in a different place leaving from Sherwood Cottage than I will from Bedfordside Garden. So it is with teaching; my colleagues and I teach from our own perspectives and understanding, as cannot be avoided and should not, and we lay out the paths w use to find new knowledge. Our students start from where their own roads cross ours, so even if they move forward from us, they will reach different places from us.
That is as it ought to be, for it is only in that that we find new things, and we need them. What we have had so far has not really worked.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
20190604.0430
I have not been as successful on writing on 4 June as I have on a number of other days; I appear to have done so in this webspace only in four years previously: 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. The last of them, again, is a poem in a sequence of them and cannot be understood outside of that sequence--and I might someday revisit that project. There was promise in it, but I am not skilled enough a writer to fulfill that promise. The 2016 piece was an occasional poem, one of many I've written that could do better as prose; I am not sure what I've tried to do with line breaks other than highlight things, but that highlighting doesn't make much sense to me at this point. The 2015 piece ruminates on then-present circumstances at what my Mrs. and I called Sherwood Cottage in something of a romanticizing gesture that had the benefit of being easier to write and reference than "the place we live/d in Stillwater." (We refer to our apartment in Brooklyn as Bedfordside Garden for a similar reason. Other places we've lived get other names.)
The 2014 piece, as I look at it again (and it's been five years since I have), warms my cockles. It talks about the beginnings of the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, with which I was and still am heavily involved, as well as with the Society that operates it. (Clearly so; I was one of its first vice-presidents, and I am currently its president. It's hard to be more involved with it.) I was and still am enthusiastic about that project, though I do not post in it as frequently as I do in other places (such as this one), and being reminded of my early enthusiasm for the project (which helped the Society come in as a World Fantasy Award finalist in, I think, 2016) has not so much rekindled my enthusiasm as it has restored to me a little bit of joy I had not recalled having.
Leaving aside the discussion of scholarship and audience that runs to self-pity--the tendency to it in my writing is one I've yet to outgrow, despite being many years no longer a teenager--I had no way to know at the time that things would progress with the blog as they have. I've been fortunate to see some of the most popular and insightful commentaries about some of the most popular medievalist mass-media to emerge in a while develop, and I've seen the popularity of those commentaries mount; having some small part in it has been gratifying. Having my own work, much more modest, receive some attention alongside it has also been enjoyable--as well as helping my writerly voice develop further. I've worked to improve how I write for broader audiences through the work I've done on that blog, and I flatter myself that it's influenced the other writing I've done since starting on that.
I often use reminiscence and rumination to chastise myself. I look back on what I have done and what I have written, and I think about how stupid I was in whichever then is in question. Occasionally, though, I am happy about what I see. It's a nice thing.
The 2014 piece, as I look at it again (and it's been five years since I have), warms my cockles. It talks about the beginnings of the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, with which I was and still am heavily involved, as well as with the Society that operates it. (Clearly so; I was one of its first vice-presidents, and I am currently its president. It's hard to be more involved with it.) I was and still am enthusiastic about that project, though I do not post in it as frequently as I do in other places (such as this one), and being reminded of my early enthusiasm for the project (which helped the Society come in as a World Fantasy Award finalist in, I think, 2016) has not so much rekindled my enthusiasm as it has restored to me a little bit of joy I had not recalled having.
Leaving aside the discussion of scholarship and audience that runs to self-pity--the tendency to it in my writing is one I've yet to outgrow, despite being many years no longer a teenager--I had no way to know at the time that things would progress with the blog as they have. I've been fortunate to see some of the most popular and insightful commentaries about some of the most popular medievalist mass-media to emerge in a while develop, and I've seen the popularity of those commentaries mount; having some small part in it has been gratifying. Having my own work, much more modest, receive some attention alongside it has also been enjoyable--as well as helping my writerly voice develop further. I've worked to improve how I write for broader audiences through the work I've done on that blog, and I flatter myself that it's influenced the other writing I've done since starting on that.
I often use reminiscence and rumination to chastise myself. I look back on what I have done and what I have written, and I think about how stupid I was in whichever then is in question. Occasionally, though, I am happy about what I see. It's a nice thing.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
20140802.0843
I have had cause to think abut family dynamics of late. I am reminded of the times I have been told of the perception that the "traditional" WASPy middle-class family does not have a strong sense of family, that the relationships among cousins and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and grandparents and grandchildren are not as integral for them as for some other groups. (The names of those groups vary; I have heard it from many people.) And I have to admit that my own experience largely supports the assertion; I grew up largely disconnected from my broader extended family, and even from large parts of the more local relations. Some of the latter has to do with age differences--many of those cousins are a decade or more older than I am--and some with the simple facts of personality differences. Some, though, is the hermit-like demeanor of many of my relations; they like to be off by themselves, away from others. It is an inclination that I share in large measure.
Some of the divergence is a matter of work, though. I know that I have moved several times to follow paychecks. From the Central Texas where I grew up and where my parents and brother still live to Hub City to The City and Bedfordside Garden to Sherwood Cottage where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, I have left where my family lives to make my professional way. Even now, I am a day's drive away from where I grew up, but it is the closest to where I grew up that I have lived since 2005. My parents live in the Hill Country for much the same reason: following work. It is why they left the Midwest of their youth and moved south. (Yes, I know that both they and I followed love--they filial, I romantic--amid the moves. But even those moves were bound up in working.)
It seems to me that the call of the paycheck--more generously, the focus upon the craft embedded in employment--has much muted the voices of blood and affection, which underpins the oft-heard complaints of moral degradation among "kids these days" at this point. But I have to consider also that those voices have not been as loud in the ears of others as they have in mine; while some may lament the "loss" of "family values" as indicated by the increasing atomization of bloodlines, there have to be some instances in which it is to be praised. There is more freedom to leave bad situations now than there was in the past, when "we fixed what was broken instead of throwing it away"; I do not think so much work was done to fix problems as ignore them, which does not make them disappear. (And given how much fixing costs, much more than replacement, and over a longer period, the economics of such decisions make sense--for those who need that kind of argument made.) Again, THIS IS NOT HOW IT IS FOR ME. But it is how it is for others, and so even if I may lament my own separation and try to bridge it across a shifting distance, I cannot say that it is always an ill. And I do not think other ought to, either.
Some of the divergence is a matter of work, though. I know that I have moved several times to follow paychecks. From the Central Texas where I grew up and where my parents and brother still live to Hub City to The City and Bedfordside Garden to Sherwood Cottage where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, I have left where my family lives to make my professional way. Even now, I am a day's drive away from where I grew up, but it is the closest to where I grew up that I have lived since 2005. My parents live in the Hill Country for much the same reason: following work. It is why they left the Midwest of their youth and moved south. (Yes, I know that both they and I followed love--they filial, I romantic--amid the moves. But even those moves were bound up in working.)
It seems to me that the call of the paycheck--more generously, the focus upon the craft embedded in employment--has much muted the voices of blood and affection, which underpins the oft-heard complaints of moral degradation among "kids these days" at this point. But I have to consider also that those voices have not been as loud in the ears of others as they have in mine; while some may lament the "loss" of "family values" as indicated by the increasing atomization of bloodlines, there have to be some instances in which it is to be praised. There is more freedom to leave bad situations now than there was in the past, when "we fixed what was broken instead of throwing it away"; I do not think so much work was done to fix problems as ignore them, which does not make them disappear. (And given how much fixing costs, much more than replacement, and over a longer period, the economics of such decisions make sense--for those who need that kind of argument made.) Again, THIS IS NOT HOW IT IS FOR ME. But it is how it is for others, and so even if I may lament my own separation and try to bridge it across a shifting distance, I cannot say that it is always an ill. And I do not think other ought to, either.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
20140126.0917
I was shocked into being awake today by a piercing scream from the youngest of our three cats. Nothing was wrong with him, fortunately. He had simply been confronted by an object of hate to him: a big orange tabby tom that has recently started sitting on the front porch of Sherwood Cottage, or in the driveway.
I am convinced that it is Frank's father.
I suppose I ought to offer some context. Frank is a rescued kitty; his mother (a raging bitch of a calico) was wandering around a part of Brooklyn where a friend of my wife's and mine lived. Said friend found her and took pity on her, and after a few days, the mother, Maggie, followed our friend home. Our friend fed her, at which point the Maggie's teats swelled, and our friend knew there were kittens to be found. She did find them; Frank and his brother, the Colonel, were alone in an abandoned warehouse that belongs in a 1980s urban decay film more than in the Bed-Stuy of the early 2010s. If there had been more kittens, we do not know and likely never will.
Our friend took in Frank, the Colonel, and Maggie, but she could not accommodate all three for long. We ended up taking Frank, adding him to the two cats we already had and entering into actually having a clowder. That clowder came with us from Bedfordside Garden to Sherwood Cottage, and all was well with the cats for a time.
Then the tabby began to show up.
We first noticed him--and it is clearly a him--one night as we came home from something or other. He was sitting on our lamp-lit porch, looking longingly at the window until we got out of the car, at which point he leapt up and ran away into the darkening Oklahoma evening. In the weeks since, he has frequently popped up on our porch or in the driveway, and I think he has sheltered sometimes in our garage (there are holes in it I will not patch; I pay rent in part so that someone else will have to do such work). When I am inside and he does so, I hear Frank complain of it bitterly, raging against the orange feline fiend. The sounds are much as would be expected: loud hissing, a weirdly warbling growl, the feline screaming in hate.
The other cats do little other than look on; neither reacts with the same fierce anger that Frank displays. It is for that reason that I think there must be something...personal. Somehow, some way, the tabby has been bad to Frank directly and specifically. And I recall that Frank is a foundling, one who was out on the street with his mother and brother in his earliest days, neglected by the world. The relationships of cats are as they are, of course, and it is dangerous to personify too much. But there is something similar in their stances and attitudes, and, again, there is a seeming personal thrust to the hate--as all good hate displays--that leads me to believe there is something more at work. I can easily see that it is Frank reacting to the tom that made him and left him and others to die, coming now to impose upon his son for entry into what my wife and I have made sure is a good life for our cats, and I could not fault him for the anger if it were the case.
I am convinced that it is Frank's father.
I suppose I ought to offer some context. Frank is a rescued kitty; his mother (a raging bitch of a calico) was wandering around a part of Brooklyn where a friend of my wife's and mine lived. Said friend found her and took pity on her, and after a few days, the mother, Maggie, followed our friend home. Our friend fed her, at which point the Maggie's teats swelled, and our friend knew there were kittens to be found. She did find them; Frank and his brother, the Colonel, were alone in an abandoned warehouse that belongs in a 1980s urban decay film more than in the Bed-Stuy of the early 2010s. If there had been more kittens, we do not know and likely never will.
Our friend took in Frank, the Colonel, and Maggie, but she could not accommodate all three for long. We ended up taking Frank, adding him to the two cats we already had and entering into actually having a clowder. That clowder came with us from Bedfordside Garden to Sherwood Cottage, and all was well with the cats for a time.
Then the tabby began to show up.
We first noticed him--and it is clearly a him--one night as we came home from something or other. He was sitting on our lamp-lit porch, looking longingly at the window until we got out of the car, at which point he leapt up and ran away into the darkening Oklahoma evening. In the weeks since, he has frequently popped up on our porch or in the driveway, and I think he has sheltered sometimes in our garage (there are holes in it I will not patch; I pay rent in part so that someone else will have to do such work). When I am inside and he does so, I hear Frank complain of it bitterly, raging against the orange feline fiend. The sounds are much as would be expected: loud hissing, a weirdly warbling growl, the feline screaming in hate.
The other cats do little other than look on; neither reacts with the same fierce anger that Frank displays. It is for that reason that I think there must be something...personal. Somehow, some way, the tabby has been bad to Frank directly and specifically. And I recall that Frank is a foundling, one who was out on the street with his mother and brother in his earliest days, neglected by the world. The relationships of cats are as they are, of course, and it is dangerous to personify too much. But there is something similar in their stances and attitudes, and, again, there is a seeming personal thrust to the hate--as all good hate displays--that leads me to believe there is something more at work. I can easily see that it is Frank reacting to the tom that made him and left him and others to die, coming now to impose upon his son for entry into what my wife and I have made sure is a good life for our cats, and I could not fault him for the anger if it were the case.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
20150127.0756
Against the news of the snowstorms in the Northeast, an account of an earlier such storm--one that lived up to its promise--suggests itself. I have made such comments before, and on this day, in fact...
The one that comes to mind for me is the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010, about which I made some comments. The details of how much snow fell on The City and in how much time, and how long it took to remove enough of the snow that the outer boroughs of The City could function (because Manhattan gets cleaned quickly), are on record elsewhere; I need not repeat them here. But although I made a scant few notes about my own experience with the snow, there is more to say on that topic.
That year, that very week, was the first Christmas my wife and I had as marrieds. My most excellent wife had decided that, to mark the occasion, she would make a large Christmas dinner. I initially spoke against it, curmudgeonly ingrate that I am, saying that there was no need to go to the trouble, since it would only be the two of us eating it. She pressed on, anyway, and I was soon glad she did so. For one thing, she is an excellent cook, so that the meal was quite good. For another, we had much in the way of leftovers from it, which served us in good stead over the next few days.
Admittedly, holiday leftovers are a long-standing tradition with me. (I am, in fact, still eating candy from the Christmas just past.) The Mrs. and I would doubtlessly have been working through them for days afterward even had the weather been of the sort I have seen more than once for Christmas in the Texas Hill Country: 90F and sunny. (That is not a joke, by the way; I remember seeing my dad grill Christmas dinner in shirtsleeves.) But with the roads in the Best of the Boroughs shut down for the snow such that ambulances could not get through to rescue those whose medical needs would admit of no delay, the grocery store near Bedfordside Garden was not open, and we could scarcely have gotten there even with it being only a half a block away. (Crossing streets in the winter in the part of Brooklyn where we lived is somewhat challenging. Ice lurks oddly at the curbsides.) Having the leftovers in place, and in such a manner as would need little work to heat them (even had the power gone out, our stove was gas, and at worst, I could have used *my* grill, although I'd not have been in shirtsleeves), was therefore quite the blessing.
We ate the leftovers for several days as the snow melted and was cleared away at last. I recall that we spent quite a lot of time in our pajamas, as well, feeling no need to dress to leave the house when we knew we would not be doing so. (I do not often lounge about in such a way for so long. Even today, when I am relatively sure I will be inside at home for the whole day, I dressed, although not as if to go to work.) From what I have seen from my friends in The City and near it, such seems to be the standard practice; I wish them joy of it today and hope that things clear up soon.
The one that comes to mind for me is the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010, about which I made some comments. The details of how much snow fell on The City and in how much time, and how long it took to remove enough of the snow that the outer boroughs of The City could function (because Manhattan gets cleaned quickly), are on record elsewhere; I need not repeat them here. But although I made a scant few notes about my own experience with the snow, there is more to say on that topic.
That year, that very week, was the first Christmas my wife and I had as marrieds. My most excellent wife had decided that, to mark the occasion, she would make a large Christmas dinner. I initially spoke against it, curmudgeonly ingrate that I am, saying that there was no need to go to the trouble, since it would only be the two of us eating it. She pressed on, anyway, and I was soon glad she did so. For one thing, she is an excellent cook, so that the meal was quite good. For another, we had much in the way of leftovers from it, which served us in good stead over the next few days.
Admittedly, holiday leftovers are a long-standing tradition with me. (I am, in fact, still eating candy from the Christmas just past.) The Mrs. and I would doubtlessly have been working through them for days afterward even had the weather been of the sort I have seen more than once for Christmas in the Texas Hill Country: 90F and sunny. (That is not a joke, by the way; I remember seeing my dad grill Christmas dinner in shirtsleeves.) But with the roads in the Best of the Boroughs shut down for the snow such that ambulances could not get through to rescue those whose medical needs would admit of no delay, the grocery store near Bedfordside Garden was not open, and we could scarcely have gotten there even with it being only a half a block away. (Crossing streets in the winter in the part of Brooklyn where we lived is somewhat challenging. Ice lurks oddly at the curbsides.) Having the leftovers in place, and in such a manner as would need little work to heat them (even had the power gone out, our stove was gas, and at worst, I could have used *my* grill, although I'd not have been in shirtsleeves), was therefore quite the blessing.
We ate the leftovers for several days as the snow melted and was cleared away at last. I recall that we spent quite a lot of time in our pajamas, as well, feeling no need to dress to leave the house when we knew we would not be doing so. (I do not often lounge about in such a way for so long. Even today, when I am relatively sure I will be inside at home for the whole day, I dressed, although not as if to go to work.) From what I have seen from my friends in The City and near it, such seems to be the standard practice; I wish them joy of it today and hope that things clear up soon.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
20150106.0733
I did go to the gym yesterday, as planned. There, I did some thirty minutes of strength-training exercises (probably incorrectly), focusing on my upper body. It was a good experience, and I felt good for most of the rest of the day. I have every intention of resuming once I am back from my trip, and I may actually avail myself of workout facilities in the hotel where I'll be staying. (It has not been a thing I have tended to do in the past.) Again, I want to set a good example for Ms. 8, and I want to continue to do so for a long time.
I will not be doing so today, however; I will not be back at the gym quite yet. Part of why is that my wife works today, and so I have to be home to make sure that Ms. 8 has what she needs. Another part is that I do have a bit of freelance writing to do, as well as work on my course materials to push through and job applications to complete. My current position is still a contingent one, after all. But most of it is because I am stiff and sore in ways I had forgotten I would be. I will see about getting in some aerobic work today, but I will not be handling weights.
As I noted, it has been some time since I last exercised regularly (and one day, no matter how solidly other days are intended to follow, does not make for regularity). When I did, though, I did so for quite some time. I was in judo for years as a graduate student, practicing regularly and intensely during that time (eight or more hours weekly in the last few terms). I was also enrolled at the New York Aikikai for years in New York City. The last months I was in The City, I was at the dojo five days a week (sometimes six), two hours a day. I was accustomed to the exertion (and to the strain put on joints purposefully), and while I would have a dull ache in my muscles as I went back to the dorm or to Bedfordside Garden, it was dull, and it was pleasantly warm.
That is not currently the case. My deltoids hurt; lifting my arms, either to the sides or in front of me, is substantially uncomfortable (which made this morning's shower interesting). I believe I may have overexerted myself at the gym yesterday, my enthusiasm at feeling myself strong again, if only for a moment, and working as I had worked before when I was in some kind of condition, overrode what little sense I have of such things (and, again, I probably did the exercises incorrectly, as I am not the right kind of doctor to know how to do them well). Today, therefore, I will let them rest as I can, and I will let them heal if they need healing (I think they do), and I will be a bit more...moderate in my attempts at working out when I do it again--soon.
I will not be doing so today, however; I will not be back at the gym quite yet. Part of why is that my wife works today, and so I have to be home to make sure that Ms. 8 has what she needs. Another part is that I do have a bit of freelance writing to do, as well as work on my course materials to push through and job applications to complete. My current position is still a contingent one, after all. But most of it is because I am stiff and sore in ways I had forgotten I would be. I will see about getting in some aerobic work today, but I will not be handling weights.
As I noted, it has been some time since I last exercised regularly (and one day, no matter how solidly other days are intended to follow, does not make for regularity). When I did, though, I did so for quite some time. I was in judo for years as a graduate student, practicing regularly and intensely during that time (eight or more hours weekly in the last few terms). I was also enrolled at the New York Aikikai for years in New York City. The last months I was in The City, I was at the dojo five days a week (sometimes six), two hours a day. I was accustomed to the exertion (and to the strain put on joints purposefully), and while I would have a dull ache in my muscles as I went back to the dorm or to Bedfordside Garden, it was dull, and it was pleasantly warm.
That is not currently the case. My deltoids hurt; lifting my arms, either to the sides or in front of me, is substantially uncomfortable (which made this morning's shower interesting). I believe I may have overexerted myself at the gym yesterday, my enthusiasm at feeling myself strong again, if only for a moment, and working as I had worked before when I was in some kind of condition, overrode what little sense I have of such things (and, again, I probably did the exercises incorrectly, as I am not the right kind of doctor to know how to do them well). Today, therefore, I will let them rest as I can, and I will let them heal if they need healing (I think they do), and I will be a bit more...moderate in my attempts at working out when I do it again--soon.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
20140521.0809
It should be obvious that my schedule has changed somewhat with the end of the term and the beginning of the summer hiatus. Sleeping until the entirely-too-late hour of seven in the morning since getting back from my Michigan adventures has had some good effects; I feel better, anymore, although I cannot say that I look or act any better. And I am not getting less work done than I did while the semester was on, although it is of somewhat different sort. Freelancing continues, as does work on The Work, while grading is fortunately set aside for a time and lesson prep can be put off for a while as my upcoming schedule solidifies itself. Each is appreciated.
Perhaps less appreciated is the encroaching summer heat. The formal beginning of summer, as determined celestially by the solstice, is a month away, yet the weather around Sherwood Cottage has begun to act as though the summer is in full force. My wife and I will need to do somewhat to secure the place against the warmth; it is no better suited to keeping out the febrile heat than it was to keep out the biting cold earlier this year. We plan to hang curtains between rooms, blocking off the kitchen and living room from one another so that the cool of the air conditioner in one room does not have to fight so hard against the warmth of cooking. (I plan also to try to do more cooking on the grill, following Robb Walsh's note that there is some perversity in simultaneously heating the house while trying to cool it.) The idea that isolating the parts of the house from one another will aid in keeping at least some parts comfortable without sending our utility bills to unacceptable heights is one we bring with us from Bedfordside Garden in The City; it worked decently enough there, and so it ought to help here.
At present, we run the air conditioners only in the later afternoon, when the heat gets oppressive, and when we seek to sleep, so that the compressors can remove some of the stickiness from the air. And I have to wonder at the changes that have taken place in me and mine, that we who grew up in Texas and lived so long in Louisiana are now so discommoded by warmth that is not yet summer--and that we know is not yet summer. Did the time in The City so weaken us against such things? Are we so much less enduring than we were? And if so, how can we return to the hardihood our childhoods ought to have instilled in us? (It is not the only return with which I am concerned; my physicality has diminished somewhat as I have done the work I have done here. I really need to start working out again, even if it is only in going to the gym on campus. Ms. 8 deserves to have a healthy father, and I am not doing as well in that regard as I ought to do.)
Perhaps less appreciated is the encroaching summer heat. The formal beginning of summer, as determined celestially by the solstice, is a month away, yet the weather around Sherwood Cottage has begun to act as though the summer is in full force. My wife and I will need to do somewhat to secure the place against the warmth; it is no better suited to keeping out the febrile heat than it was to keep out the biting cold earlier this year. We plan to hang curtains between rooms, blocking off the kitchen and living room from one another so that the cool of the air conditioner in one room does not have to fight so hard against the warmth of cooking. (I plan also to try to do more cooking on the grill, following Robb Walsh's note that there is some perversity in simultaneously heating the house while trying to cool it.) The idea that isolating the parts of the house from one another will aid in keeping at least some parts comfortable without sending our utility bills to unacceptable heights is one we bring with us from Bedfordside Garden in The City; it worked decently enough there, and so it ought to help here.
At present, we run the air conditioners only in the later afternoon, when the heat gets oppressive, and when we seek to sleep, so that the compressors can remove some of the stickiness from the air. And I have to wonder at the changes that have taken place in me and mine, that we who grew up in Texas and lived so long in Louisiana are now so discommoded by warmth that is not yet summer--and that we know is not yet summer. Did the time in The City so weaken us against such things? Are we so much less enduring than we were? And if so, how can we return to the hardihood our childhoods ought to have instilled in us? (It is not the only return with which I am concerned; my physicality has diminished somewhat as I have done the work I have done here. I really need to start working out again, even if it is only in going to the gym on campus. Ms. 8 deserves to have a healthy father, and I am not doing as well in that regard as I ought to do.)
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