Moving Question

Okay, so trying to be cool like Maude and save the name of this blog, I made a private blog at wordpress. But instead of having a password that I can give out to people, wordpress seems to control access through people's usernames. (I seem to remember that someone fabulous had a password-protected blog but now I can't remember who or where it was.) The issue here is that in order to add people I need to know their wordpress usernames. Grrr. So, brilliant blogfolk, what do I do? Do I try to get y'all's wordpress usernames? Investigate where I remember having an actual password-protected blog? Or stick with blogger and change my blog name/URL because it's easy to add people's blogger names since so many of us are on blogger?

Hmmm. . .I could also just password-protect blogposts. Maybe that's the best because then I could actually use a password!

I'm a dork but I can't decide what I should do. What do y'all think?

Moving

Hi all. Absurdist Family has moved. In fact, we had a pretty wild ride. Imagine, if you will, a giant moving truck towing a car, two adults, and a baby. 2,500 miles. We crossed nine states and three time zones. With a stop in Grad City, it took us ten days. The baby was amazingly good. Absurdist Lover drove the whole way. I took many pictures of greenery. This country is really beautiful.

Now, esconced in our new home and thinking about the tenure-track and the dangers of blogging, I've been thinking I shouldn't blog and haven't. We all know that I'm the type to thrust my whole foot into my mouth and swallow. But away from everyone I know and looking wide-eyed into a new environment, I have much to write/process/ask about. I just miss communicating with many of you! In fact, if I don't blog, I realize, I'm going to drive Absurdist Lover nuts with my incessant talking/processing about academia. Moreover, I may just explode. So, like last time (for all you longtime readers, assuming I have any readers left), I think I need to password protect my thoughts. If you want to read the next installment of the Wacky Adventures of Earnest, please email me at earnestenglish@gmail.com, and I'll give you the secret password (or whatever). I think I'm going to leave this blog up because occasionally, I see, people still read my graduate school rants -- and I like that they are out there in the world.

Jobness!

All right, all right, so I haven't exactly been doing research this week. I did, however, finish grading that set of essays. I still have one more set, but because of the Week of Busy Weirdness, I haven't even started. Because the Week of Busy Weirdness is over, I don't even care that I haven't started these essays. I had the kind of week where we did lots of good important things, but so many of them were emotional and conflicted and hard that I definitely feel I'm going to be processing them for a while. (For example, yesterday I went to a funeral.)

One of them, probably the least conflicted of all, was that I got the contract for my job! Yes! One of those mystical animals that are rarely seen: the tenure-track position. I'm sorry I didn't tell y'all sooner, but it wasn't real to me -- which means I could've jinxed it by publicizing it -- until I got the contract. (Which is why I was blogging and then basically dropped out of sight. At first, I was freaking out everyday and had nothing new to say. Then I got the offer, but it took ages until I got the contract and so was paranoid.) I will be fully employed soon! It's a good position for me, I think, because of the mission of the department, though it's not the kind of university I saw myself at. (Of course, two schools that were totally the kind of places I thought I'd be best at contacted me after I accepted the offer. Grrr. Well, if they had gotten their butts in gear sooner. . . .) While not all of the faculty have books or anything, I do think that research is very important there, so I'll be trying to pursue a pretty aggressive research agenda -- which is crazy because I don't even have a firm idea of what to do next and how to think about my research agenda beyond turning my dissertation into articles. If anyone has a good way of thinking about building a research agenda (I mean of course I have a rough one, but I could always use the extra help), please please please let me know. Boice and others don't seem to talk about the project of building a coherent research agenda! I guess we assume that everyone wants to do their research enough that it's merely about following one's interests. For me, the problem is I"m interested in so many different things that I wonder what is smartest for me to do first and how to balance long-term and short-term projects so that I have enough scholarship for tenure. Anyway, the university is in a totally different part of the country, so we're packing ourselves up and moving the second my semester is done here, which is early June.

We're ecstatic to be leaving Urban Home City, which really feels to me a lot of the time like a dying city. Cross your fingers we'll be able to find a place that has a lot of land for my gardening obsession.

Magical Month of Academic Publishing Challenge!

Everyone! Sisyphus has thrown down the gauntlet and proclaimed a Magical Month of Academic Publishing (MMAP)! And let's face it, I need it. So I'm going to blog progress and effort in the upcoming days. Really.

But first I'm finishing up the last few days of spring break (can you hear me crying???) and have to grade grade grade. I have writing projects from each of my courses, though I've already graded their midterms, which should count for something. While I doubt I'll be able to do everything before Tuesday because I don't have any uninterrupted time with Absurdist Baby (who by the way is going to be 6 months old in 11 days!!!), I must get at least one set done. The hard set. From the class who hates me. Who I had to institute reading quizzes for. Ugh.

But I'm very excited about the idea of working on scholarship. I can't wait. As soon as I'm done grading.

*****Update midnight*****

I am only now done with my eight essays. Absurdist Baby is having a really hard time right now with all his new teeth (a new one up top) and he keeps waking up and crying. For a while there I was only getting one essay done between having to go and take care of him. Am exhausted. Eight more tomorrow and the next day. I'm sure tomorrow will be easier, because I've already started.

Incensed about 60 Minutes!

Hi everyone. I'm totally freaking pissed. I just watched the 60-minutes segment on Alice Waters and slow food. It was the worst reporting I've ever seen. The piece focused on Alice Waters herself and different aspects of what she's done in the Bay Area -- and, sadly, Waters came off as an effete airheaded aesthete. But there are gross misrepresentations of the slow food and local food movement.

1. First, the slow food movement is an international movement, begun in 1986, then really gotten underway in 1989 in Europe. Perhaps Alice Waters was a part of that original group, but it is certainly a movement that has grown far beyond just her and the Bay Area. I am part of a local foods convivium/slow foods chapter and get emails all the time for various events, from presentations to farmers markets to research projects.
   
2. Supporting one's local small farmers is increasingly important in our struggling economy. The small family farmer has been eaten up by large corporations. Rather than shopping at a grocery store, one can go to a farmers' market, where I don't find the prices to be that expensive at all. Most big farmers aren't organic, putting pesticides and herbicides (poisons) on our food, and don't pay living wages to their workers.
3. Part of the reason for eating local food has nothing to do with its taste or even supporting local farmers; it has to do with foreign oil. If we eat more locally, instead of eating food from halfway around the world or country, it takes far less gas and resources to get to us. This makes our economy less dependent on foreign oil.
4. It is vitally important that our foods don't contain poisons in them, whether antibiotics in our meat or pesticides on our vegetables or artificial hormones in our milk. It's just not rocket science to suppose that antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides harm people. They barely even mentioned this in the 60 Minutes piece!
5. The 60 Minutes piece compares Alice Waters' elegant breakfast with what a working mother has time to prepare. Local and/or organic food does not mean that it has to be difficult to prepare. In fact, unless one demands the convenience of a pop-tart, making a healthy quick breakfast means no extra outlay of time; cage-free eggs, BST-free milk, and organic oatmeal does not take any longer to cook than the cheapest versions of these at Wal-Mart. This made local foods look like it was only possible for the rich and leisurely, and not for the harried working moms of the world. I am a harried working mom who came home from the farmer's market this morning with cauliflower, peanuts, salad, oranges, garlic, asparagus, and potatoes. I sent out my boyfriend this evening to go get some organic butter at the local grocery store. Eating healthy, organic, and local food is not incompatible with being a busy mother -- in fact, I consider it my duty as a mom and family member to make sure that we get the best food, the best fuel with which to grow, possible on our budget.
6. The ultimate in local foods is growing your own. How on earth is that an expensive proposition? Not all of us can do it or have time to do it? But how is this an effete upper-crust pasttime -- gardening, the most popular pasttime in the United States and historically the foundation of our economy, an actual survival skill brought back in times of stress with the Victory Garden and current community garden movement.
   
7. There are growing foods programs in schools across the country, not just in the Bay Area. This is not to turn everyone into Chez Panisse chefs, but for people to develop a relationship with a resource that we must take into ourselves every few hours. Developing a relationship with how food is produced simply makes good sense. Farming is one of the basics of any society, any gathering of people. Cultivating food in one way or another is vital to our very lives. Moreover, students learn a great deal from these kinds of projects, biology, zoology, metereology, soil sceince, horticulture in addition to finally cooking. Don't we want projects where students can learn about their world? Educational theorists agree that hands-on learning is better for retention than rote memorization.

Absurdist Lover watched the 60 Minutes piece with me and said that it lacked anything of substance about why a person would focus on local and healthy foods. But he said that no one listens to 60 Minutes anymore and that no one would ever think that the movement was characterized correctly. I was hoping he was right. Then I looked at the comments to the segment online. Oh boy. Clearly many people think that Alice Waters represents the elite of America and that "her movement" is some idiocy that only people with more dollars than sense would dream up. I'm considering leading (or joining) a petition to 60 Minutes to object to this characterization of the movement. It seemed to put a whole movement at Alice Waters's feet. Actually, many people have been talking about local food from all sorts of different vantage points. I would like to send 60 Minutes a list!

What I would like to tell people is that if you're interested in these issues, there are better representations of the concerns, such as Barbara Kingsolver, et al's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Slow Food International, and Local Harvest.

Mr. Tabby 1994-2009, May He Rest in Peace

This is a picture of him when we lived in the camper. But in the last six weeks he developed mouth cancer -- first it was a hard little ball you could feel on the side of his jaw, then it grew awfully fast until he couldn't close his mouth. In addition to the medication he was on for his hyperthyroid, he was on three additional medications. He looked awful, he smelled awful, worst of all he clearly felt awful. There was nothing to be done to cure the mouth cancer. Yesterday, we decided it was time.

Fifteen years that cat and I were together. We lived together in eight different cities, even more apartments; we went overseas and back together. I picked him out of a litter at the pound. That was before I got married, before I finished college, before I got divorced and got two more degrees. He was there for all of it, purring in my lap. I've had Mr. Tabby so long I don't really know that I got him in 1994. It could've been 1993.

He used to be a great hunter, along with the cat who raised him, who died a couple years ago in Grad City, though with all the moves I eventually made them both indoor cats. He used to jump into people's laps. Even people who didn't like cats liked him.

I'm just sad over here. The rest of the family is merely okay: Absurdist Baby is as happy as ever and occasionally squabbly because of his two teeth, and Absurdist Lover's back has gone out.

He Can't Have a Tooth, He's Only Four Months Old!

But apparently Absurdist Baby doesn't realize that most babies get their teeth around six months. His first tooth came up and is now clear as day (okay, white) -- it came up last Wednesday. And today he is officially four months old.

I'm just trying to make it through -- really I'm just edgy and worried and wishing that I would hear something from Interesting U, though really it will be definitely another week or two and maybe even more before I hear something. And that is if it's good news. Meanwhile I'm trying to do the very reasonable thing of applying to more schools. When I printed out an application for an upcoming community college deadline, I said over the printer: may I not need this application. Sigh.

I'm teaching a pre-transfer course that I taught last semester. Last semester, only a handful passed the class, but with being pregnant and everything, I didn't have time to feel bad about it. Really, most didn't pass the class because they didn't keep up with the work, not because their writing was good or bad. This semester, I began to feel bad about it -- that I can't figure out a way to reach the students, to make the work of academic writing seem worth the investment. But I totally understand not feeling invested in academic conversations. After all, who reads their academic writing to respond other than for evaluation? They are taught so often that academic writing is a matter of structure, rather than conversation. Who cares about mastering a set of discourse conventions if you can't see why you'd want to participate in the conversation? I worried and gnawed at this bone for a while the weekend before last. Then last week we had our first journal assignment due. I went around the room -- and about a dozen people hadn't done it. Sigh. And I had this epiphany: the reason why some of these students are in this pre-transfer class is because they don't do their schoolwork, not because no one has ever tried to reach them. My job is not to feel bad about the ones who don't do their work (but still show up -- don't they realize they're not in high school anymore???), but to spend my time on the ones who really want to figure out what they're not getting and move on. Still, I wish I could make them feel more invested in the work of the class and of the university in general -- but to be honest, I'm not very convinced either that drilling a certain kind of academic essay (which is what this writing sequence seems to do) is really that useful for all students (okay, the ones who are going to transfer, maybe, but what about the ones who are not? shouldn't we be teaching students how to enter a number of discourses and helping students develop strategies for figuring out how to enter discourses?). I'm sure my own lack of excitement for what I'm teaching comes across too. Isn't it interesting that the community college doesn't seem to care what we are committed to?

So here's a question. I'm teaching an intro to literature class organized by genre. I figure we'll do a writing assignment for each genre. But I want to mix it up: I just don't want students to write four different literary essays. It just seems so boring to me -- and aren't there other genres that discuss literature in interesting ways? I've been trying to think of different situations where readers would be asked to make an argument about a text beyond the "this is school, so write me an essay" kind of thing. I could break up the three essays into the traditional explication, analysis/argument, and evaluation essays, but I want to have different situations or even genres so there are real audiences to write to. Does anyone have any ideas? What are your favorite writing projects about literature? I'm out of my element (which is weird, because I used to do literature; on the other hand, I always wrote into conversations that I felt a part of, which I don't think would be the case for these students -- I guess I just want there to be some connection between a Facebook meme that asks people to name and explain a book that changed their lives and a close reading of a text that they have to do for class: help please!).

Money is tight. Jobs are scarce. Absurdist Baby is the cutest happiest thing I've ever seen, even teething (which has made his sleeping habits odd, but he doesn't actually scream a lot or anything). I feel more and more like Urban Home City is dying, and we need to get out because people here are just mean the way too many rats in a cage just start biting themselves and others for no reason. In short, same old same old.

Cross your fingers Interesting U wants to hire me. I'm in the bargaining stage so maybe I've already lost the job: I promise to blog more when I get an offer. Right now, even Absurdist Lover says I'm scaring him (mostly with bad puns). Happy equinox to all and to all a good night!