20190422.0430

Yet another piece LinkedIn presented to me is Bernard Marr's 14 April 2019 "How Robots, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence Are Changing How Humans Have Sex." In the article, Marr points out several avenues of current development in the further integration of technology into sex--internet-enabled sex toys, sexbots, and virtual-reality pornography--before moving into consideration of legal issues surrounding such advancement and policy questions that begin to move towards broader social questions. Marr stops short of offering any judgments on the matter, simply noting trends and current developments before noting that things are changing; how they will continue to change and what responses will be appropriate are not yet clear.
I confess to a certain degree of titillation in the piece; although sex sells and various forms of sex work are continually substantial parts of human endeavor and economies, they do not appear to be often discussed on such platforms as LinkedIN. There remains a large degree of prudishness about business in the United States--and US norms still exercise outsized influence on broader discourses--that prevents even such cursory and sober discussions of related issues as Marr's from popping up often. And because there is such a taboo in place, violations of it--even those as innocuous as Marr's article--attract attention, particularly from those so salacious as I am.
Something towards which Marr gestures, and which does need some consideration, is that the increasing integration of technology into sex will further decouple sex from intimacy. The two are certainly not identical--intimacy extends beyond sex, and sex beyond intimacy, in myriad ways--though there is a strong association between them, as well as cultural preferences for their conjoining. Further disassociating them from one another--and, again, making sex more a mechanistic thing is like to do that, if not certain--will have effects on the very nature of family, which is largely defined by consanguinity and privileged sexual relationships. Realigning such things will not be done without struggle--which is not a reason not to do them, but it is folly to deny that such struggles will occur, and that many will be resistant to making changes. Many of us define ourselves in some or large part through familial terms, even those of us who are in the purportedly fragmentary family structures ascribed to and almost necessitate by the demands of work in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Comments on the article suggest that quite a bit of work is needed. What should be discussion of the potential business and legal impacts such changes would make--which would be appropriate to the platform, despite the protestations of some that such content is unfitting--is instead too much judgment of others' sexual preferences. In this, as in much else, what an adult does in private, in his or her own home, with inanimate objects belonging to him or her, is nobody else's concern, and while expressing that such may not be to personal taste is one thing, trying to condemn it overall is quite another--and ultimately fruitless, as the fact that all laws are violated attests.

20181218.0430

On 15 December 2018, Sig Christenson's "Seventy Miles of Razor Wire Later, Some GI’s Pulling back from Border" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports on the current state of the troops deployed to the southern border of the United States to assist in deterring migration into the country, as well as the work done by those troops during their deployment to the Mexican borders of Texas, California, and Arizona. (The lack of troops on the New Mexico border is noted.) Political concerns surrounding the deployment also receive attention. Drawdown of troops has begun, although some troops are expected to remain on site until 31 January 2019, depending on conditions along the border.
The article reads as a quiet condemnation of the troops' deployment; I get the sense as I read that Christenson views the deployment as a waste of time and resources, though that might be my own opinion influencing my reading. (I do view it as a waste and a political stunt meant to distract from other problems by causing problems for men and women who are not in a position to respond, as well as their families.) But reinforcing seventy miles of a much longer border does seem a small effort, in all; I know those in uniform are capable of doing much more than that. And the comments Christenson reports and makes seem to indicate a similar awareness, as well, perhaps, as a rebuke to others who might for some reason--likely not a good one--favor more intensive measures.
Again, I find myself of the opinion that the response to migration coming towards the United States is an overwrought theatrical response to an issue that is, in part, the creation of the United States. And I think that there is a certain amount of anxiety among the mainstream population of the United States about immigration, generally. (I cannot take credit for the idea, though I do not recall anymore where I came across it, for which I apologize. I am happy to cite the source if it is presented to me.) It has been remarked repeatedly and abundantly that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and I have heard no few people comment again and again that "if they'd just come over legally and learn our language" and on and on and on. But I note that the "our" being referred to did not do so. The "our" that emerges from a putative "us" that is almost always meant by such phrasing is a group of colonizers who did not assimilate to local customs and ways of life--and, yes, I am the descendant of such people, benefiting even now from atrocities committed upon those who were here by others who came from far away and refused to adapt themselves to the ways of life already in place. So there is likely somewhere some kind of anxiety that what the mainstream population of the United States collectively did and benefits from will be enacted upon it, in turn.
Given what has been done, and over how long, that it should be feared is not a surprise. And it may perhaps be justice for it to happen again, though the scale and scope of it exceeds me. But it might also be justice for the United States to work to correct the errors it has made, though it does not seem apt to do so anytime soon.

20181212.0430

On 9 December 2018, Glenda Wolin's "More Thoughts on that 'Simple' Hug" appeared in the online version of the San Antonio Express-News. The piece is a response to another bit of commentary that had been contributed to the newspaper, and it lays out some of the fraught context in which women in the US have experienced hugging, context that underlies some of the reactions to being hugged even by those who mean to express honest affection. She notes the repeated incidence of assault on women and girls, even and especially by persons whom they should instead have been able to trust; the tragedies of familial abuse and Larry Nasser's perfidy are discussed, as are the purportedly natural inclinations of pubescent boys to fondle those towards whom they find themselves attracted. The lack of ready instruction against such tendencies is also discussed before the piece closes on a note that some women have, indeed, experienced hugs as preludes to horror--and that even those who have not have to think about it.
The piece reads as a gentle explanation of something that should not be so but, being, and being all too obviously so, should damned well not be something that should be attacked. And in central Texas, steeped as it is in the mythos of the Old West, it should not be a difficult concept that touching someone who doesn't want to be touched is a bad idea. Time was, it was a good way to end up dead; today, in purportedly too-sensitive times, it merely earns rebuke, while no few of those who offer that rebuke fail to do so at their own demonstrable and perhaps endured peril. I admit that I've not read the piece to which Wolin responds, and perhaps I should, but I hear as I read Wolin the resigned tone of a woman who is explaining to yet another man that, no, women have reason to feel as they do. And I know that there will be some who will decry such things as feeling and therefore inferior, who will make claims about logic and the notion that past performance is no guarantee of present action--but I somehow doubt that those same people would put their hands into Fenrir's mouth after Tyr did so or their heads into the lion's mouth after it had eaten the faces of the five who went before.
Reading the article, I am once again in mind of ways I know that I have offended and the likelihood if not certainty that I have offended in ways of which I am not aware. I was raised as I was raised, and such concerns were not necessarily noted in great detail as I was brought up. And I have done things that I knew even as I did them were other than they ought to have been. As I have learned more, I have been better about my actions, but I know that I have erred--and if I have, it is likely if not certain that others have erred similarly. I and others like me have made such explanations necessary--not because we have made others stupid, but because we were stupid, as well as evil in the banal way that works some of the longest ruin in the world because it persists for so long without attracting attention to itself. As such, I and others like me should be ashamed of ourselves--as should they who, at this point, can only be ignorant of matters by choice and who would place their own desire to express affection over others' deserving to feel safe.

20181208.0430

On 4 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News published "Confederate Plaque Should Come Down" in the online version of the newspaper. After articulating the thesis contained in the title, the piece offers history of the Children of the Confederacy Creed plaque installed in the Texas Capitol and lays out the case of its fundamental inaccuracy before noting legal authority for its removal. The piece goes on to note the context of the plaque's installation and calls for appropriate reinforcement of that context. It is not to erase history, per the editors, but to present it as accurately as possible--without venerating something that is, in essence, execrable.
The piece is not wrong. The plaque is factually inaccurate, reflecting warping ideas in response to civil rights movements that were long overdue; it should not be presented in a position that affords it ethos and what the editors rightly note is endorsement (not necessarily tacit) by the weight of the Lone Star State. It is also a monument to treason--because the Confederacy was treasonous, a fact which seems lost on the so-called patriots who decry kneeling at the "Star-Spangled Banner" while waving a flag that (supposedly) flew over the enemies of that banner and the republic for which it stands--and so should not be enshrined in a place of honor by a component part of that republic. And it and what it stands for, both the fact of the Confederacy inaccurately reported and the still-racist views that surrounded its installation, should be kept in mind--in a museum, where fuller context and accurate information can be provided for it; what has been done wrongly should be remembered that it not be repeated.
There will, of course, be some who will clamor against it, who fetishize the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery (it was, as the written words of the secessionist traitors themselves make clear) and that their own family histories of participation in it and in the organizations that spring from it are not tainted by that basis of action. And there will be others who recognize that the history of the United States itself is built upon the oppression and enslavement of peoples and treason--for what else was the Revolutionary War but treason against a duly constituted (by the standards of the time) government?--so that it makes sense for rebellious acts to be lauded. There will be still others who, recognizing the ongoing memorialization of the failures of Valley Forge, among others, point to the insistence upon loss for validation and will understand the continued emphasis on treasonous secessionist history (while pointing out the many ironies associated with those emphasizing it). And there will be some, meaning well but less informed than they ought to be, who will insist that "you can't change history" and that "history has to be remembered."
History is mutable; it is not what was, only what is written about it. It can be changed--and should be, as more and better information comes to light.
Nobody is proposing forgetting. There is no forgetting what is still being enforced, too often upon the lives and bodies of people of color. What is being proposed is that what is incorrect be corrected and that what is shameful be remembered as shame.
Maybe, if enough such things happen, we can pull our collective heads just a bit further out of our collective asses. But that's a slim hope, indeed.

20181202.0430

Going back a bit, on 8 August 2017, "Bemoan the Loss of Cursive Writing," by Alfredo Torres, Jr., appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In the article, Torres decries the decline in instruction and skill in cursive writing. Five paragraphs lauding calligraphic handwriting lead into a discussion of the circumstances obliging the decline in public school instruction in cursive and the insufficiency of instruction where it still occurs. Torres likens a decline in valuation of cursive to a decline in valuation of formal rules of usage and laments what he sees as a looming disconnection of future readers from past documents.
I have a number of issues with the short opinion piece. I've written about similar comments before, so some of what I might say has already been said; many of the same issues will still apply, so I'll not repeat them. Also, the slippery slope fallacy the article deploys grates. And, for a historian not to remember that 1) language changes (cildas þissum dægum mid geora wane namas declinunge); 2) even those "taught right" have trouble reading the script of earlier periods (I find myself wondering how Torres would handle Carolingian minuscule, for instance, or insular uncial, or even the typeface Caxton uses in printing Malory), so that the issue of people not being able to read the writings of the past is already a concern, not necessarily like to become more of one; and 3) most people, even in the putative "golden age of penmanship," did not write well--when they could write at all--grates. Such things ring of the very kind of sloppy thinking Torres decries as a result of sloppy writing and writing instruction.
This is not to say I do not value cursive writing, as such. Torres describes it as an art, and he is not wrong to do so; he is also not wrong to say that arts should be valued. A well executed pen-hand is a thing of beauty, whatever is written in it. (Yes, even hate speech; how pretty are some of the most poisonous plants and animals in existence, or some of the most destructive storms that have raged across the face of the world? But then, I do occupy positions of privilege...) But none of us who are or purport to be scholars, particularly scholars of the past, should pretend that even in a supposed golden age that a greater percentage of people cared about what we care about than is true now, or that the people of the past, had they access to the same conveniences that we do, would not avail themselves thereof every bit as quickly as we. Nor yet ought we to pass on as sacrosanct the things of the past for no better reason than that they are the things of the past; they may be of value, but they are of value not because they're how things have been done before, but for other reasons--and not all will share those reasons, certainly not enough to bring them above the concerns of the current moment or the demands of making it to the next one to come.

20160714.0803

Somehow
Amid all of this
She sings
She smiles
She babbles contentedly
Words forming from the stream
Intelligibly
More and more often

The questions have not come yet
They will
She is not as close to some things as she might be
As her mother and I fear
But she is not so far from them as we might like
And there will be questions

I do not know how I will answer them
I do not know how I can answer them
Given that I am who I am
Looking in only from the outside
But I do not know where to go to be able to help her
And I want to help her
She will need to know
She deserves answers
When she asks

For now
However
She sings
She smiles
She babbles contentedly
Words forming from the stream
Intelligibly
More and more often
And she says she loves me

20160210.0616

I have written in this webspace before of my association with coffee; here seems as good a place as any to point out where. It should be no shock, then, to know that I note the appearance of coffee in the works I read--and it does appear in the books I read, certainly. I have identified it as a trope and a symbol in several of the popular novels I have read and written up at the behest of my freelance clientele, and I note that, in most cases, the protagonists of what I read take their coffee black.

A certain part of me wants to read affectively, using the insistence on black coffee as a means of fostering identity between the characters and me. Other parts of me know that 1) That is why the authors write their characters such, and it is good for book sales; and 2) I need not to read in such a way if I am to achieve the distance needed to do deeper reading. (The disjunction between the readerly tendency towards affect and the critical need to eschew it is part of the reason those of us who study literature are often thought to be dry and to have lost the love of what we do. For me, though, and at least, effective reading begins with affective reading; I use what provokes my emotional responses to guide my initial critical ventures. It works well enough.) I do a fair bit of the deeper reading, even for the general-consumption freelance pieces, including reading for how coffee is depicted (other than as a means to develop affect).

I have commented before, for example, that my taking my coffee black links me to my working-class background. Indeed, I learned to drink my coffee black--and it is a learned thing--on job sites, as going out into the Texas Hill Country on summer mornings did not reward taking along cream, but strong cups of coffee were of no small help in getting the work done. For me, therefore, there is a strong association between black coffee and hard work, and I have reason to think I am not the only one who makes the association. Those protagonists in the works I read who are coffee drinkers usually hail from working-class backgrounds. There are many of them, and they appear in no small number of bestselling novels. As such, I have to think that they are resonant with many readers, which would suggest that the idea of black coffee promoting hard work is widespread. There is something in the idealized person, the current iteration of the Emersonian Man (and, yes, I am aware of the problems embedded in that particular construct and phrasing, but that it is problematic does not mean it is not prevalent, and it would not be good to ignore it therefore), that asks for black coffee--even if it still serves as something of a crutch, an acknowledgment that the person alone does not suffice to the demands of the day.

I think I may have to come back to this idea tomorrow. I feel like I am onto something in some small, informal way.

20160119.0639

A couple of years ago, I noted in this webspace that my wife was standing for a baby shower (see it here). Now, with the Mrs. sleeping in the bed we share and Ms. 8, whose expected arrival was being celebrated, sleeping in her own bed, I find myself reflecting on some of the comments I made then. I have come to the conclusion that I was having some of my forms of privilege checked at being effectively excluded from the event. (I know I was formally invited. I know also that I would not have been truly welcome, that my presence would have imposed upon the others there gathered. And so my absence from the proceedings was appropriate, as it will doubtlessly be from similar circumstances later. I am okay with this.) I know it was only some, of course; the mere fact of being (indirectly) the beneficiary of a baby shower (and not having to buy as many diapers and other baby paraphernalia was a benefit to me) marks me as enjoying some privilege of social positioning. But the assumption that I belong in a given place was decidedly not at work.

As I think on it now, I have to wonder how many other times I have acted on that assumption when I ought not to have done so. Several come to mind quickly; I am intrusive, I know, and I am aware of some occasions when I have inserted myself into affairs as I ought not to have done. But I have to wonder how many others (and I know there are others) happened that I do not recall, either because the events have faded from the parts of my memory I commonly search or because I recall the event but was surrounded by people too polite or too concerned with my self-esteem to tell me that I had erred. The idea that I have made so many mistakes and not been aware of making them is not a comfortably one, and while I can see the counterpoint that I cannot alter events as they occurred, I can also note that I might like to avoid such errors later on--which obliges me to know how they happened. But I am also not about to backhandedly assert privilege by insisting that others tell me how and when I made my mistakes; that would also be counterproductive.

What, then, to do? Perhaps the best answer is to be silent and observe from outside, but I am also told that doing so is an exercise of privilege; the ability to leave--at least, to leave without consequence--is not something all share. And I know from experience that I will not be allowed to do such things as much as I might otherwise prefer...unless I can be sufficiently convincing that work continues. That, at least, allows me some way around things; it is hard to argue against my persistence in trying to support my family, particularly for those who benefit from that work...

20150805.0652

As noted yesterday, work continues. I was able to read through the novel I will be writing up for the most recent freelance order. There are problems with it--many problems. Trouble is, I cannot dwell on them overly much in the write-up. "The book sells well, so people must be okay with it," I would be told if I did, "and so the reading guide won't sell well if you land on the book so hard." I have been told such things before, because I do have a tendency to find fault. But that I am certain I would be told such a thing with the current book, despite its problems, has worse implications at this point than at previous times. For the problems in the book are those of stereotypes, and for the book to sell as well as it presumably is (given the name on the front cover, I expect it is or is soon to be on the best-seller lists) reinforces the impression that the main current of popular culture in the United States is still at ease with stereotyping people, lumping them together into groups based on perceived associations that may well not be in place and discarding or denigrating whole populations based on such groupings.

I cannot address that particular point in the write-up, of course, and doubt I am in position to address it in a more formal paper; I am already far behind in my paper-writing, and I am not like to catch up anytime soon. Freelancing intrudes; it is not difficult, but it is time-consuming, and I can only remain awake and effective for so many hours at a time. Too, grading intrudes, and I have a stack of it to attend to today, what with it being the penultimate day of the summer bridge program (and, damn, but it has moved quickly). Again, the work is not difficult, but it takes time, and there is only so much time allotted to me each day. More, I cannot work, whether on grading or on The Work, while attending to Ms. 8; I am glad that she naps, because it is the only time I really have to get things done between coming home and the Mrs. coming home from work. So my time is curtailed yet further.

Still, I will get done what needs to get done. I have no other options, really; I cannot leave the work, and I certainly cannot neglect my daughter or the myriad domestic chores that seem always to need doing. I do get a bit tired, however, of feeling myself to always be in a rush, to always have to be at a dead run to even keep within seeing distance to the back of where I need to be. I am not exactly built for running, with heavy legs and a flabby belly; I am meant to stand in place and anchor others. It would be good to sometime reach a place where I can plant my feet firmly.

20150728.0654

When I opened up the program I use to write this blog, I found the following notice waiting for me:

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(I apologize for the odd spacing. Formatting is a bit wonky in this program.)

I am a respecter of laws, generally; while I acknowledge that many laws are unjust, I tend to adhere to traffic regulations and local ordinances as part of my contribution to a social system from which I benefit. (I am fully aware that I benefit in no small part because I occupy a position of privilege within that system, as I identify and am identified as an Anglo-Saxon-ancestried cisgendered heterosexual male Protestant of the middle class. Not all are positioned to similarly benefit, I know.) I am a state employee, after all, and I paid for my extensive formal education through a series of grants and loans, many of which originated in the federal government. It behooves me to be observant of law in principle--even if I may oppose some specific laws in practice.

Moreover, I am a big believer in fair warning. I do, for example, think bars ought to be able to allow smoking in them if they decide to--but they should have to post at the entrance, conspicuously, that the establishment is a smoking one. (Restaurants, to which children are taken without their consent, are a different matter entirely.) I am Texan enough to accept the validity of the "Trespassers will be shot" sign and the enforcement thereof. Annoying as it may be, I approve of the message that "This call may be monitored." And I tell my students far in advance what I want from them and how they will be assessed.

But I am not under the jurisdiction of the European Union at this point in my life, and I found myself somewhat annoyed at being obliged to comply with laws of lands that are not mine. I imagine that many will feel similarly. On reflection, though, I remembered that this platform is not mine; it is lent to be, but it is not owned by me. The owner has the right to establish rules for the use of what is owned, and, because I am adherent to laws and recognize the justice of "my house, my rules," I find that I have no problem with the policy--the more so because the work of it is done for me. That ought to be a help.

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.

20150505.0726

As I noted last year at around this time, ­¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! and happy Revenge of the Fifth!

Now that the holiday cheer is dispensed with, on to other things: The weather around Sherwood Cottage inches toward summer, with lows in the sixties (Fahrenheit, of course; we'd not want to convert to a sensible system of measurement, now, would we?) and highs formally in the eighties--although I would not be surprised to find that it actually reached ninety. Humidity is up, which likely accounts for the feeling; forecasts suggest that rain will be moving in and staying through the weekend, which will make for a fun time getting things loaded for travel. Once the semester ends, we are paying call on family, and I will be running thence to Kalamazoo for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, at which I am to be quite busy. Getting to do so in the rain makes things all the better.

I do not complain about the rain, though, not really. Having grown up in the Texas Hill Country makes me appreciate water falling form the sky. There is not often enough of it doing so in a year, and only rarely does too much come at once. Twice, to my recollection, or twice of serious note, anyway, but not more than that. The rivers often run low, as do the aquifers upon which many depend, and that is not less true near Sherwood Cottage than in the oak- and cedar-covered hills among which I grew up. Too much red dirt shows beside the waters that do not flow as they ought for me to complain that they are replenished from above--even if such rejuvenation has uncomfortably sexual overtones. But that I am happy to have it happen does not mean that I am pleased entirely with its timing; it will make some things a bit less convenient for me and mine.

That inconvenience occasions complaint is doubtlessly a sign of my being steeped in privilege, of course. I recognize this, and I recognize that my life has been largely good; if annoyance at having to drive in the rain befalls me, it only does so because there is rain (which is good) and because I have a car in which to drive (which I also count as good; if nothing else, I can run deliveries for extra money, although preferably not in a town whose population includes so many of my students--I have some dignity). I am able to drive said car, which not all are, and to expect that my travels will be conducted relatively safely; I do not have to worry so much that I will be pulled over--with legal sanction and official protection for the one doing it--for being in the kind of car I drive or for driving it through the places I do. I do not have to worry that my doing anything other than prostrating myself will end up in my being shot--or that I will be shot even if I do so, leaving the Mrs. and Ms. 8 to deal with the trauma and loss. All I have to do is get through the rain and let it soak into the ground--and that is not so bad.

20150430.0659

Today is payday, and so today is pay-the-bills day. That task is done, at least for the moment, and things are more or less well with it. I still have some money left this time, surprisingly enough, although I know there are more bills coming that will take that money away. Still, the family finances are in a slightly better place than they were at the end of the month last month, which suggests that there is some level of improvement happening, and I cannot argue that it is a bad thing. I would like to have more money in the accounts, though. That would make things a bit better.

I could also stand not to have had the ragged night I had last night. Unfortunately, such was not to be; I had the privilege of waking up repeatedly in the night. Twice, I snapped awake in response to the sound of gunfire--in the early morning. If somebody was fighting off a home invasion, okay, sure, defend the home. I was raised in Texas, after all, and I well understand that kind of thing; I am not at all sure I disagree. That I recognize the necessity and worthiness, however, does not mean I appreciate its iterations when I have to hear them. And, yes, I am aware of how much privilege I am expressing in making such a statement.

I was also awakened several times by Ms. 8 crying out. One of them saw her cry out in her sleep; she quieted as soon as I put a blanket over her. Another, though, between four and four-thirty this morning saw her wake more fully, having wet herself (although not the bed--it did not feel so when I checked). I changed her diaper, because the Mrs. works today and I am at home, but she resisted and worked herself up. I soon took her to another room to wind down, allowing my wife to sleep and getting another hour or so before I finally got up for the day.

Today, I expect to be as busy as ever. I have an assignment to grade in advance of another coming in and preparing for final exams; it should not take long, but it needs doing. I also need to see about picking up a book, one way or another, so that I can have something with which to work for my conference paper. (I know I am cutting it close. It is not a mark in my favor, certainly.) There is doubtlessly work around the house to do, as well, and since the Mrs. will be working outside the house, it is fitting that I tend to the work inside it. And I have the care of Ms. 8 while the Mrs. is at work, as well. I am fortunate, then, that I am able to do so much, even if there is less money than I should like and even if I got less sleep than I probably actually need.

20150407.0725

The weather at Sherwood Cottage is predicted to remind us that summer is not too far away; temperatures are expected to reach the low 90s Fahrenheit, and humidity is up. I had been relying on fans and open windows to keep things feeling decent, but I may well have to turn on one or more of the window units the house has for cooling. Medievalist though I am, I have no desire to return to the medieval; I like such things as climate control, indoor plumbing, and information technology. (The last should be obvious. That I am not the only one for whom it is true should also be obvious.) Fortunately, my work is such that I get to stay inside for the day, and I need not undertake any heavy lifting.

That does not mean I will do *no* lifting, of course. Since the Mrs. is at work today, I will be taking care of Ms. 8, and she still likes to be picked up a fair bit. She still *has* to be, in fact, for although she walks (haltingly) and climbs (perhaps more than her mother and I would like), she can only get so far and so fast. I do not mind, though. Holding my daughter is a pleasure in most events (most because a full diaper is hardly nice to have around, and Ms. 8 is sometimes vigorous in the placement of her feet against her potential brothers and sisters), and I am not anhedonic. Rather the opposite, actually, and likely more than is good for me, as my flabby belly attests.

And it is flabby; I have not been as good about exercise and diet as I ought to have been. That is hardly new, of course, and even when I was being quite good about exercise, I carried a gut. Eight to ten hours of competitive judo practice each week did not strip it from me; nor did ten or more hours of aikido. Then again, I like beer, and while what I eat is usually reasonably good for me, I eat more of it than I ought to, my appetite a holdover from days when my work *was* outside and involved heavy lifting, my metabolism was that of a man a decade younger than I am now or a youth farther removed yet, and the cooking to which I had access still modeled after the farming life my grandparents knew and my parents glimpsed.

I need to drink more water.

Today will not be the day I correct such failings, however. Today will instead be a day of writing work, wherein I sit and stare at this screen for stretches of time and put words onto pixelated pages in the hopes of earning more money for myself and my household--when Ms. 8 allows me to do so. And when that is done, there are other tasks to which I must attend, as there ever are. As much as anything else, their presence accounts for my continued gut--and I know I am not like to change.

20150327.0748

There are a number of things I am looking at updating as I move forward. Some of them are ongoing endeavors. My CV is perhaps the easiest example to find. It updates more frequently than my resume, largely because I focus on being a professional academic, and the materials of my resume do not change as much as they otherwise might. I am also looking at revising my teaching philosophy yet again. It needs to be updated, and more than just the refinements to phrasing that comprised the last revision of it. And there is the continuously delayed work of revising my dissertation for publication; I know I need to do it, but I also need to do other things, and those other things usually push the dissertation revision aside. The allure of the paycheck is strong, after all...

I have to wonder if what I have written in previous years also needs renewed attention. Take, for example, my posts to this webspace on this date in years past--2012 and 2014 are on record. In the former, I discuss bombast, titles, and contingency among teachers of professional writing. I do not know if the way I have talked about bombast with my students in the past is something I can continue--the relevance of the source through which I have tended to discuss the concept is fading with the passage of decades, and there is always the concern that the interaction of the demographics I occupy and the demographic stereotypes the source invokes will prompt complaints of various -isms on my part. Titles and contingency, though, still come up--and the latter may still be a thing to do with my classes. I will have to look over the article again.

The post from last year, a short and likely inept poem about cats in the lives of humanities scholars, perhaps ought not to be revisited so much in its actual form as in the idea presented in the last stanza. I do remain confused by the association of the aloof and dismissive feline with the humanities scholar stridently seeking validation amid prevailing social disdain, and that despite having three cats in the house. I am all the more confused when I hear from my colleagues of the ways in which their cats interfere with their work and lives, whether by eating articles of clothing or by sitting on keyboards and stacks of papers to read and assess or, as in the case of a long-ago friend, pissing on books and other things that make the scholarly endeavor possible. The Work is already enough of a challenge without adding to it feline intervention, Ceiling Cat or Basement Cat or something in between.

It is good to return to ideas now and again. They need to be revisited and interrogated to see if they still hold. Too often, people refuse to do so, accounting for many of the peculiar idiocies that pervade the world. And I am likely as bad about it as anyone else...

20150322.0813

I found myself in an interesting position yesterday. I was able to complete the freelance piece on which I had been working (and I found out that, yes, it is being made into a movie, explaining why the text was brought to attention). I also got a couple of other things done along the way, and so I felt comfortable taking a bit of a break. Several hours later, I pulled myself away from the computer game I had used to distract and, honestly, numb myself in an attempt to allow my mind to rest. I regret the experience mightily, and I seem to recall having regretted similar experiences before.

In part, the regret stems from the insufficiently strong work ethic with which my upbringing and the training received in graduate school have equipped me. I should never not be working, after all, since the only value I have in the profession and in the world is in the work I do--or so the thinking goes. That such thoughts plague me does not stop me from stopping work, not only to answer the demands of the body for food and rest and the restroom breaks that eating makes needful, not only to attend to Ms. 8 or the Mrs., but to spend time idly, doing nothing or what amounts to being nothing. But when I do, I usually resume work or go to the night's rest thinking that I ought to have done more, that I ought to have spent my time better than I did.

"Better" here does not mean the kind of "better" I usually see deployed in such phrases. It does not mean "Go out and have fun" or "Live life to the fullest" (not that either of those actually means anything). It means "more productive," making more words that say better things (since I write and teach writing for a living and write to try to find a better living). It means that I ought to be working more than I am, rather than spending my time pointing and clicking blindly to make little gatherings of pixels erase other little gatherings of pixels, and still others grow and flourish according to algorithms I do not have the background or training to puzzle out. Or I should be reading the words that others have written, sifting through them for ideas which I can take up and use to foster yet others in that writing to make a better living previously noted.

In any event, today will be a bit of a break. I leave this afternoon for a two-day trip to sit for two on-campus interviews in two different states. I may, before I go, push out a couple more job applications; there are still a few forms sitting on my desk and staring at me. But it will be good to get in the car and go where I need to go to do what I need to do--and maybe a job offer will come of my doing so. I continue to nurture such hope.

20150309.0702

The struggle to return to some semblance of normalcy after the hour stolen for Daylight Savings Day continues...and I note with some interest the intersection, pointed out to me by many, of International Women's Day with the shortened day in the US (as well as the coincidence of Black History Month in the US with the shortest month of the year). That I had considered neither is a mark against me; I evidently have more learning to do, more work to do to recognize and critically interrogate the ways in which I am privileged, and more fighting against my defensiveness and feelings of guilt and shame about the matter to conduct. I doubt that I am alone in it.

Yes, I get defensive, or I begin to get defensive, about accusations of privilege. I view myself as having worked hard to get where I am in life, and I continue to work diligently to maintain my position and to try to improve it. When I hear people talk to me about privilege, part of me hears it as a dismissal of the effort I have expended and continue to expend, and that sits ill with me. I come from people who pride themselves on their hard work and work ethic, and that background (as well as the prevailing academic tendency to measure worth in terms of production of pages of research, which is work of a different sort altogether) ensures that tacit or explicit accusations of laziness do not sit well with me.

I know, however, that while I have worked and I do work, and I have not been so privileged as have many who are in my line of work,* I have been very much privileged in other ways. I do not have to worry about whether or not I will encounter people who are, in at least many respects, like me. I do not have to worry about seeing my demographics represented, or represented in plenitude, or represented in variety; I do not have to worry about seeing versions of me deployed as tokens only, surface-level motions toward inclusivity. I do not have to worry about whether or not those who are like me will be depicted as heroes--they may also be villains, yes, but they are also villains. More, I do not have to worry that I will be pulled over by police for driving the wrong kind of car or driving in the wrong neighborhood. I do not have to worry that I will be assumed a criminal because I wear a hoodie one day--or that I will be shot for having my hands in its pockets. I do not have to worry that I will be sentenced more harshly because of the color of my skin. I do not have to worry that, if I am assaulted, it will be because "I asked for it" in how I dressed that day. I do not have to worry that if I am sexually assaulted (and I am not conditioned, as many others are, to worry about being sexually assaulted) I will end up pregnant and possibly have to suffer through a pregnancy I did not want and could not anticipate. All I really have to do is worry about whether or not I will be able to make enough money to live the way I want to live and work to earn or otherwise acquire that money.

It is a privilege.

*Donna Dunbar-Odom discusses the issue eloquently in Defying the Odds. Catharine Olive-Marie Fox does so as well, albeit with a different perspective, in "Toward a Queerly Classed Analysis of Shame: Attunement to Bodies in English Studies" (College English 76.4 [March 2014]).

20150305.0756

Snow did fall yesterday, although not for many hours after it was called for, and not in such quantities as choked the streets with frozen water. My wonderful wife and I were able to go to the grocery store with ease yesterday evening, driving in the dark when the weather should have been worst without difficulty--because it was not so bad. Today seems to be colder, but the sun is shining and the streets seem to be clear; the school is open again, but since I am not scheduled to teach today, I end up with another day away from work. Since yesterday was a day away from work, I was able to get a freelance piece pushed through without trouble, so today I have a short one on my docket, after which I will see about pushing out some job applications and trying to catch up on my reading.

I am still behind on my reading.

I am also slightly behind on my grading. My students submitted a major assignment on Monday, and while I told them that I would not be rushing through grading it, the fact that I had an extra day away from work suggests to me that perhaps I ought to have bumped up my plans for reviewing the work my students do. The plan had been to attend to it this weekend, and I do still have that intent. The work ethic with which I was raised and which was further inculcated into me by years of graduate school tells me, though, that I should still be working--even though I was working yesterday and will be working on other things today. Even when I am working, I need to be working more--something with which my academic friends will be familiar, I have no doubt.

And I am still behind on my reading.

I doubt that I will get caught up on the things I need to get caught up on today. The backlog of things on which I am behind is joined by new tasks that need doing, both professional and domestic, and others queue up daily. The situation is common, I know, and no more to be decried for me than for other people--perhaps less, honestly, since it is only my household and my paycheck that depend on my getting more done, and not the lives of others than my wife and Ms. 8. Important as they are to me, I know that they and I are infinitesimally small within the world, and that world is itself infinitesimally small within creation. I am working on finding the freedom in that revelation that others note having found, that nothing matters and so there is no reason to worry or fret.

I am still behind on doing so.

20150224.0654

I noted yesterday that I had another job interview (which was welcome, as I received several emails telling me I had been turned down for other jobs). As is common in such circumstances, I wore a suit to sit for it--and because of the timing of the thing, I wore the suit throughout my teaching day. Like many men, I look good in a suit, even if it is one that I got on the cheap from a resale shop and thus probably does not fit me as well as it ought to do. (Of course, being able to button the pants is a benefit, and there are clothes in my closet I cannot button any longer. My exercise regimen has...fallen off somewhat. Surprisingly.) I was even more or less comfortable in the thing, although I am never pleased to be wearing a tie.

That said, I found myself aware of the masquerade I was carrying on as I ran around my building in a pinstripe suit. My position is not a lofty one; I a contingent academic laborer, although I am at the higher end of contingency. I do not have a private office anymore--but I recall having one (an experience enshrined in CCC, as I have noted)--and few if any even of my senior colleagues show up for work in suit and tie. Certainly, those with whom I share office space do not do so much, if at all; they and I more typically teach in jeans, possibly in sport coats or the feminine equivalent. And I do not come from circumstances conducive to wearing suits to work. While one grandfather, who was a teacher for decades, did do so, I did not grow up near him; instead, I was raised among tradesfolk, and a worsted wool jacket does not wear well when chipping trenches through caliche or crawling under mobile homes to connect electrical services. Thus, neither my upbringing nor my current professional context conduces to my going about in a suit. I know it, so I feel myself an impostor when I do wear one, despite seeing that I look good in one and knowing that my dressing in such a way has effects on my classroom--and perhaps on my job prospects, as well. "Dress for the job you want," after all, and I want a job that is more secure and pays at least as well as what I am getting now.

Whether I ought consciously to dress better more often, I do not know. I do appreciate feeling good, and looking good--looking like a professional--does help with that. Taking on the trappings associated with being more nearly elite also increases the perception of my authority, in the classroom and outside of it, and I do not deny that I like my authority respected; such as I have, I have worked hard to earn. But I am not certain how well it sits with me to carry out that particular type of performance--and I am not sure that my finances will allow me to get more suits that fit decently...

20141203.0710

I wrote in my journal last night that "I feel I must confess that I look forward to the end of the term," something I think I have indicated in earlier posts to this webspace. Soon after, though, I found myself musing on the phrasing "feel I must confess," as if looking forward to having time off is somehow a sin for which I must atone. The teaching I do is supposed to be a calling, something only done by those who love what they do (else why would they suffer such low wages for it?), and there is something awry in wanting release from the ostensibly beloved. Too, I am acculturated such that diligent work is virtuous--the more so the more so. Time off thus comes off as something of a lapse in virtue. And I am aware of cultural currents that flow in such ways as make teaching, particularly at the collegiate level, "not really work," so that to look forward to time away from it is disingenuous.

I do not know if I have ordered my points well. Whether I have or not, though, and whether or not I have a complete list (it is not likely), I can identify things that prompt the feeling of needing to confess, of having somehow sinned and thus of being in need of penitence. I do not subscribe to a doctrine that can prescribe a particular number of incantations or some specific physical hardship to redress what I seemingly cannot help but feel is error (although I know it is not, but knowing and feeling are different things entirely, and the latter almost always triumphs over the former). I do, however, have other work to do than that which I do in the classroom, and I will be attending to that in plenty as my means of making right the purported wrong I commit in looking forward to being away from the classroom. Because I should not ever not be working, right? Especially if I am going to be asking for a bit of help, yes? I dare not look like I am lazy or wasteful, after all.

But all this is is whining, of course. It is a feeble attempt by one who sucks uselessly at the public teat (for I teach in a humanities field at a state school) to justify his impending indolence. Such people ought to feel shame at not contributing, at receiving benefits without working. That kind of thing is only for those whose incomes come from investments, after all, and who are famous for whatever it is that makes people famous. But they are of a different sort altogether, not bound by the strictures that apply to those who work--or who should work. Those people have jobs to do, and they had better do them; there are others waiting to take the jobs if they will not or cannot, and they will not be looking forward to having time off from work every now and again.