13 through 19

13. I work under a great deal of tension.
True. I'm ready to be done with this semester. The office politics are not tense here in my department, though.

14. I have diarrhea once a month or more.
True. I have an adventurous diet.

15. Once in a while I think of things too bad to talk about.
True. But I often talk about them anyway.

16. I am sure I get a raw deal from life.
False. I get a non-raw deal for sure. I am exceedingly fortunate.

17. My father was a good man.
True. Not to disparage my father, but I believe most people are good people.

18. I am very seldom troubled by constipation.
True. I am exceedingly fortunate.

19. When I take a new job, I like to be tipped off on who should be gotten next to.
True. I like to know who the evil backstabbers are, so I can watch out for them.

posted by Chris at 8:53 AM

today i will...

today i will spend a good portion of my day sitting through oral exams. this morning i will spend some time preping for them; then, at 11 i will go in and begin asking questions to students older than me. if i think they've done a good enough job, i will sign off on their MA. if they're mini-thesis has already been written and approved, then they will graduate.

posted by Jeremy at 7:46 AM

serendipitous

I was struck by this stanza in the poem J. posted in a comment:

They are the deep fallings of the soul's many Christs fallings from some worshipful faith that Destiny blasphemes. Those bloody blows are the cracklings of some bread that carelessly burns in the oven's door. It was an odd moment to read that, because (rather than do my grading) I read Jim Crace's Quarantine this weekend. When I've time, I'll write a review, but for now, marvel at the beauty of the Q on the novel's cover. (The novel is more than a pretty Q. But there is much that a well-designed book cover can do for a book; this one's appropriately offers a glimpse of the audacious.)

posted by Greg at 9:51 PM

in progress or not

some of you have seen this, the other 3 of you have not.

it's changed some since then. read if you want.

Cowboys and Indians

I am no cowboy like my grandfather before me,
who wore jeans and boots and a bolo tie
most every Sunday; with his Stetson perched
atop his balding head he’d sing the songs
of the Sons of the Pioneers at sunset
on his little rancho just north of Santa Fe

I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle
as I go ridin’ merrily along.
And they sing: “Oh ain’t you glad you’re single”
And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.

I am no cowboy, not like my grandfather
growing up on a homestead outside of Idaloo, TX
in the 20s and 30s; driving to Lubbock
in the Model A pickup, it’s wheel-base just wide enough
to ride the rail there and back;
going with his brothers to market to sell
bleached cow bones and scrap metal;
going to town to sing on the radio:

Yippee-kay-ay-yay git along little dogies
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Yippe-kay-ay-yay git along little dogies
You know that Wyoming will be your new home.

I am not a cowboy, not like my grandfather before me
and the sad cowboys of his half-breed generation;
but sad is my adjective, not theirs, for neither were
they like the Navajo cowboys of today’s high-stake rodeo,
proud of the bulls they ride, prouder still of their place
among the Pueblo people; nor were they cowboys
like the cowboys of viejo California,
grazing their older sturdier Spanish breed
on the open plains between San Diego and San Bernadino
riding first for the white skinned priests of the misiones
and then for their own people.

A-roping and a-tying and a-branding all day,
I‘m working mighty hard for mighty little pay.
Come a ti-yi yippee, yippee yeah, yippee yeah,
Come a ti-yi yippee, yippee yeah!

Truth be told, my grandfather never was a cowboy
but a poor farm boy turned soldier
running from the cotton fields and that Oklahoma dust
that blew south like his great grandfather who fled
the Reservation with its barren land and stale stories
of fertile mountains and chestnut groves back east;
a farm boy who ran off, lied to the sergeant and joined the 10th
—Of course I know how to ski, have you never heard
of sand-dune skiing? It’s all the rage in west Texas

I was 13 when asked if I wanted to be White,
Indian or Hispanic. Terrified, I said White.
Only then did my blue-eyed dad who taught me to sing
about how Territory folks should stick together,
about how the cowboy and the farmer should be friends
because they both belong to the land, confessed
his boyhood dream to have had enough in him,
to have had enough to follow (despite our people’s
late arrival, despite their never knowing how to frame
a tepee) the buffalo across the Great Plains;
only then was I told of how my own grandfather’s
great grandfather had lied to the men from the census bureau
back in Oklahoma before the Texas cotton fields.
Yes sir, my boy’s barely a quarter you see.

But by the time he asked me there was no choice:
the learned racism of another grandfather
who prefered Mr T’s fool to Cosby’s doctor,
and whose wife, an exotic Puerto Rican,
refused to teach her children Spanish
or let my mother play under the Texas sun
for fear that the neighbors would think her Mexican.

No, I am no cowboy like my grandfather.
Neither am I an Indian.

posted by Jeremy at 1:37 AM

Dreams

Chris's warning about dreams does not speak to their vivacity; they can disturb. I hate the ones that resurrect emotions of the past: adolescent anger at my parents, burning unexpressed desire of infatuation and first love, despondency of rejection. When I have those dreams, as I had this morning, I awake disconnected from now.

In other news, I turned in my M.A. portfolio yesterday. I'm not happy with it, but I had to give it up. It reflects my academic career, I fear. It has its flashes of brilliance, yes, but it loses its way at the crucial points. The second paper, on the geography of Edgar Huntly could have used a more expert reader. But for various reasons, I have little communication with the eighteenth-century Americanists here.

posted by Greg at 9:55 AM

12.

12. I enjoy detective or mystery stories.
True. I enjoy most kinds of stories. People are endlessly interesting.

Note: I will resume with questions 13 and five more questions on Monday, when I am back in my office.

posted by Chris at 8:43 AM

Weekend Catch-up: 9., 10., & 11.

9. I am about as able to work as I ever was.
True. Sometimes my knee hurts, though.

10. There seems to be a lump in my throat much of the time.
False. I have an adam's apple that protrudes greatly. However, I have no lumps inside my throat. Ever.

11. A person should try to understand his dreams and be guided by or take warning from them.
False (assuming this refers to dreams that occur while one sleeps and not in a more metaphorical sense). Dreams can be interesting and meaningful, but if dreams serve as your best source of insight into your hopes, wishes, and fears, than I think you should take time to consider who you are, how you spend your time, where your life is going, and where you would like it to go. Dreams are not random, but they are not privileged pathways into your soul. They are probably your interpretation of more or less disconnected sequences of neural activitynot completely unlike conscious experience but not any more magical or mystical either. My vote is for meditation or introspection.

posted by Chris at 11:13 AM

8.

8. My daily life is full of things that keep me interested.
True. I am not lacking interesting things. I have 60-hour work weeks and a one-year-old daughter and a wife who has a demanding job and a new (to us) house full of all our packed belongings. I have not seen free time since August. But life is more than satisfactory.

posted by Chris at 8:53 AM

Tripping the New Fantastic

I haven't run Google Scholar very rigorously, yet, but so far as I can tell it's not as useful for my field as it could be. It doesn't appear to provide access, for example, to subscription databases (JSTOR, Academic Search, Lexis, American Periodical Series, etc.). For my purposes those databases have represented the best of what modern technology has to offer. That said, I'm still not sure what it does offer, so in no way is its lack of JSTOR a knock. What do folk in other fields foresee?

posted by Greg at 1:42 PM

7.

7. My hands and feet are usually warm enough.
True. Subjectively, I experience my hands and feet as warm enough. It is subzero in office this morning as usual, but I have faith that my hands and feet will warm to an acceptable temperature. Enjoy Thursday.

posted by Chris at 8:40 AM

6.

6. I like to read newspaper articles on crime.
True. I enjoy reading about white collar crimeI also like scandals, which sometimes verge on the criminal. I am not a big fan of rape, murder, and child molestation, however. So, if you're keeping score, violent and/or pedophilic crimes are not pleasant to hear about, but I don't turn down a good corporate and/or government crime tale.

posted by Chris at 9:20 AM

2 glosses

Leaves of Grass

Whitman flourished at thirty-seven,
singing himself to then wither ¯
to beautifully flower a few more times,
hiding under the torrent of words
that first handsome song,
that utterly unique yawp,
that I am me, here I am,
muffled by reams of paper repeating
this is me, here I am, I am me.


To the poet on his twenty-fourth birthday

Milton writes: “your time has passed
and your flower faded. You will no longer
write anything of consequence. This little
exercise piece is as great as you will be.”

posted by Jeremy at 1:59 AM

5.

5. I am easily awakened by noise.
True. I am uncertain about my response to this itemI am not sure a person can really know whether or not he or she is easily awakened, unless one has trouble going back to sleep or something. However, I have lived the past two years within 100-200 yards of train tracks, and I have seemed to need more rest than before. On the other hand, I have also had more stressful jobs than before as well as a newborn in that time.

posted by Chris at 8:44 AM

2.,3., & 4. (Weekend make-up)

2. I have a good appetite.
True. Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I eat in the university cafeteria with the other faculty people. Faculty lunch is $3, and all one can eat. Sometimes there is eggplant parmesan, which is quite cheesy and good. Always there is hot chocolate (when the machine works).

3. I woke up fresh and rested most mornings.
False. I wake up tired and considering each day's courses...before the sunrisesometimes with a baby crawling on my face. Not that there is anything wrong with a baby crawling on my face. After the intial reaction, it is endearing.

4. I think I would like the work of a librarian.
False. I think I would like the work of a rockstar, though.

posted by Chris at 9:27 AM

my Gift

My lovely partner gave me for my birthday something I wished for:

Oddly, the page to which the book always seems to open when I pick it up:

Unflushed Urinals
lines written in the Omaha bus station

Seeing them, I recognize the contempt
Some men have for themselves.

This man, for instance, zipping quickly up, head turned,
Like a bystander innocent of his own piss.

And here comes one to repair himself at the mirror,
Patting down damp, sparse hairs, suspiciously still black,
Poor bantam cock of a man, jaunty at one a.m., perfumed, undiscourageable. . .

O the saintly forbearance of these mirrors!
The acceptingness of the washbowls, in which we absolve ourselves!

---

And this one, under the title, American sketches

Poem to Be Read at 3 A.M.

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on.

R.I.P., D.J.

posted by Greg at 11:19 PM

Report from Minneapolis

It has been my great privilege to be a member of one of the strongest TA/RA student labor unions, UE-COGS, in the U.S. One of the strengths of COGS is its affiliation with the United Electrical workers union. (Ironically, in his invective against Martin Luther King, Jr., my grandfather used as part of his evidence against MLK the fact that he spoke at a UE meeting because UE was the most communist of all labor unions.) UE is determinedly democratic. Each local sets its agenda with less interference from the national than, say, Teamsters or AFL-CIO. COGS benefits from the democracy. We have been able to speak about and to define TA/RA issues as they particularly relate to the concerns of TAs/RAs. A professional union better suits its members' needs when it realizes its members are uniquely able to articulate those needs. COGS endeavors to solve problems as they arise, and COGS provides a means by which graduate students may separate their academic learning from their work.

COGS has represented its members well. In bargaining COGS won a health care package that is the best in the Big Ten conference and is, in fact, better now than even the faculty has. Since organization in 1996 salaries have increased by nearly $5,000, and COGS has established a solid floor for TA and RA pay. While the university remains the lone Big Ten school to ask its TAs and RAs to pay for tuition, COGS has at least gained partial tuition remission, and it has done so in spite of significant budget squeezes. (In point of fact, the tuition of the freshmen and sophomores I've taught would alone pay tenfold my tuition bill over a six year program, and it would do so not only because I have taught them, but also because I have freed a full professor from having to teach them. I am, indeed, cheap labor, and yet I still have to pay for the "privilege.") COGS has also succeeded in battling TA overwork, and it has established a solid grievance procedure in which TAs and RAs can raise disputes about labor without jeopardizing their academic standing. The gains COGS has won remain struggles, but they are absolutely worthwhile.

This year graduate students at the University of Minnesota are organizing, and we're doing what we can to help. It's not the first time UM students have tried to unionize. Two years ago they did it with the backing of the American Federation of Teachers. For a number of reasons the campaign failed, then, not the least of which (I suspect), the AFT did not cater its campaign to Minnesota in particular but to graduate students in general. This time, because of the success COGS has had with UE, the UM TAs/RAs have affiliated with UE. kl & I went to Minneapolis Friday to help knock doors and encourage other graduate students to vote "Yes!" for their union next spring. GRADTRAC is of course meeting resistance (like the misconception that a union robs from Peter Science to pay Paul Humanities), but their card campaign is going well. The card campaign is running close to its goals, and with continued recruitment, they will meet the requisite number of cards to call the union to vote.

So yesterday we recruited in a student housing neighborhood where a lot of international students live. Even here international students are wary to support action that might be construed as overtly political. They often worry that if they join a union, they will be deported. Such myths become fact too easily. Nevertheless, in the day, we signed nearly 40% of the people to whom we talked. It was a good day.

Then we ate at the Blue Nile before we came home. You, too, should eat there, if you're ever in the neighborhood.

posted by Greg at 6:31 PM

1.

1. I like mechanics magazines.

False. I like other magazines, but I don't really care for mechanics magazines. I wonder if they are not an acquired taste, and I remain among the uninitiated?

posted by Chris at 5:19 PM

566 truths and/or falsehoods

I apologize for my lack of presence around the site. I have been teaching and moving and being a parent.

To reinvigorate my sense of commitment to the site, I commence a series of posts in which I will respond individually to each of the 566 true/false items of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a rather dated test of personality and psychopathology. In my opinion, the MMPI items can be best considered as a form of poetry. Chosen for their ability to discriminate between the "pathological" and the general population, they are both beautiful and ugly.

I invite your responses to each day's item as well.

posted by Chris at 5:14 PM

Annals of Bad Design 2

I noticed this one while I was cursing at my hard drive this weekend. On a Mac, to force a program to close, you hit Command+Option+Escape to open a window called "Force Quit Applications." The window looks like this:

Oh! Macintosh genie! When I rub your lamp to free you from your prison, do not tell me how to free you, for it is already done! Give me my wishes!

posted by Greg at 11:04 PM

Bust

My (new) hard drive froze this week. I tried to make a backup before it died, but when I tried to salvage what I had saved, all the data was useless. I lost a year's worth of files, including, but not limited too, the Excel files I use to keep track of my students' grades, six months' worth of email (I backup email after every semester), a lot of notes I keep in a journal program, all of the R.E.M. catalogue which I had saved, a damn lot of time, all my bookmarks, and your contact information. If you don't mind, take a moment to drop me an email so I can re-update my address book. (If you don't have my email address, let me know in the comments, below.)

posted by Greg at 10:12 PM

Annals of bad design

Who thought it would be a good idea to put single-ply paper in rolls that weigh close to seven pounds? More importantly, who insists this is still a good idea such that he convinces architects to intall them for public use?

---

Five minutes ago, a helicopter dragging a sign flew by my office window. The sign read, "VoteToday We Decide."

posted by Greg at 2:47 PM

so it's not a full-fledge praise poem

but this is what i will be offering up tomorrow for group immolation.

Second iteration of tonight's poem

You whose sex we do not know
You who have quietly become real
only now disturbing her sleep
You who have daily encroached more and more upon our lives
making us change the smallest of things
Unaware, unassuming you

What shall I tell you,
Shall tell you, shall I confess in muted words,
that today is no different than yesterday
That these are uncertain times
with wars and rumors of wars
That you yourself are still uncertain, unnamed
and that neither she nor I know anything
That time, that contingency, that eventuality, that death
But that love too, that passionate, sticky, gooey love
that milky love from which we come,
in which we grow, on which we feed

This is too much; too, too much
and not enough, and not anything at all

Shall I tell you that here, 20 centuries after,
if you count time that way,
That millions of years since the dinosaurs—
and the day will come when you will know them all by name,
know their eating habits, know they died a cataclysmic death,
and the day will come when you will forget their scales and plumage—
Or that in the 200th and 28th year of the nation’s birth,
you became
Yes, unassuming, speechless you began to creep into our lives
causing us to change the slightest of things

There is a flaw in my premise
for into these uncertain times, and not any other,
into this bed, into this house of wood and glass, and not any other,
you’ve come forcing us to change

Shall I tell you, stumbling over words,
that you are blessed, that we are blessed
But that contingency, that time, that death
that this life into which you come, still unnamed, is uncertain

Shall I tell you who, kicking and shoving,
have made a space for yourself already
Whose sex we do not know
but whose toes and fingers we’ve counted
Yes you, floating in that amniotic darkness,
nameless, unassuming you
Have interrupted our lives and we are changed

posted by Jeremy at 2:57 AM

now for some real poetry

our latest assignment is to write a blessing or a praise. i haven't done it yet...but how can you when this is one of the model poems she gave us?



Try to Praise the Mutilated World

(trans. by Clare Cavanaugh)

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


Adam Zagajewski

posted by Jeremy at 2:50 PM

maybe it's my male insecurities...

but i find it singularly disturbing that the email that ivillage sends out informing us of our child's in-utero development and the things t should do to remain healthy contains a rather prominent link for Whose Your Most Compatible Match? This test will analyze your childhood experiences and your adult relationship with your parents in order to determine your most compatible mate.

posted by Jeremy at 2:32 PM