Saw this at Dr. Brazen Hussy's...
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ?? |
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Maybe this explains why I'm so spacy?
Why I can't seem to get back into blogging
So this morning I was trying to work from home, to do some analysis for my thesis. I woke up super groggy and couldn't seem to snap out of it. I suspect this has to do with air quality. Between the fires, the smog, and the agriculture outdoor air quality around here isn't too great. Additionally I'm living in an attic with carpeting that is about as old as I am and a bathroom full of mold damage. I have always had trouble with moldy rooms, although it doesn't seem to be too bad right now, maybe because it's so dry here, so the mold isn't actively growing.
I got some coffee and breakfast, started some laundry, and then proceeded to procrastinate for a while. I was excited to discover that the new calendar for Thunderbird will sync with Google calendar, so I set that up. Then I searched around for a way to sync my Palm with Google calendar as well. I decided to go downstairs to get my palm, so I could try to get it to work.
What did I discover when I got downstairs? My uncle, talking excitedly about taking my grandmother to get some puppies. Specifically, he found some Jack Russell Terrier puppies, which is what my grandmother said she wanted after the funeral. The thing is everyone has warned us that Jack Russells are very hyperactive and will turn into monsters if not properly entertained and trained. We told my uncle this, but he doesn't seem to care.
My grandmother talked about getting puppies in the days right after my grandfather died, but she hasn't mentioned it since. She can't take care of herself, so there is no way that she can take care of puppies. My uncle doesn't think to ask us if we want to take care of puppies. Also, we don't really know what is going to happen in the near future, if the dementia gets worse she may end up in assisted living. What will happen to the dogs then?
I don't think a normal person would get someone else's child a puppy without talking to the parents first. Well in this situation I think he should be talking to Grandma's caregivers before announcing that he is getting her a pet. It won't do any good to talk to him about it though, he has the emotional maturity of a small child, so it will just result in a tantrum, which is rather scary when it's coming from a six foot tall, fifty year old man.
So now I'm simultaneously angry and anxious. There is no way I'm going to be able to concentrate on work this morning.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
NYC here I come
As you can see I'm still not back into regular blogging. Thanks for all your kind words. I'm hoping things will feel more settled soon.
For the weekend, I'm off to a conference in the Big Apple. (Does anyone say that any more?) Suggestions for places to eat or things to see are welcome.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Sorry for the long interlude
My blog suddenly went silent.
Things got away from me and my normal routine has still not fully returned. So here are a few important details from the last month or so.
1. My grandfather died.
2. This caused great turmoil in my family.
3. The same week we were scheduled to move out of our apartment.
4. Then we stayed at my father's house for a while because my grandmother's attic was still filthy and full of trash.
5. We got it mostly cleaned up and most of the junk moved out.
6. Now we are helping to care for my grandmother who has dementia.
7. The attic where we are living still needs a lot of work.
8. I'm frustrated that I can't be in control of the manner and speed of the repairs.
9. I still don't feel much like blogging.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Things I Learned at Antioch College
I attended Antioch College from 1991-96 and despite what a number of people have said about Antioch shooting itself in the foot, I learned many important lessons during my time there. The education I got at Antioch was so different from that I see the undergrads here at Big Ag U that it's difficult to cover everything.
In many ways my Antioch education wasn't that different than any liberal arts education, so the accusation that somehow it's Antioch's unconventional education that resulted in it's financial demise is just not true. Yes, there are some things about Antioch that are unconventional, but it's hardly fair to accuse them of not preparing their students for a competitive job market.
Everyone is mentioning the lack of letter grades and the use of narrative evaluations, as if employers hire based on graduates' GPAs. The truth is that my narrative evaluations meant that I had what amounted to numerous glowing recommendations of my academic work when it came time to apply to graduate school. Just as at other alternative schools, such as Evergreen and UCSC, it was possible to request that letter grades be placed on your transcripts.
No one is mentioning the most important aspect of the Antioch experience, the cooperative education program. This program, which started in 1921 requires all students to participate in several paid internship experiences. I expressly chose Antioch because I would get job and travel experiences. Each year at Antioch I spent 3-6 months working full time at a real job. I spent time interning at a major museum in Chicago. I worked as an environmental lobbyist in West Virginia. I tried my hand in a chemistry lab. I even ran the college's community garden, marketing the produce at the Yellow Springs farmers market. (I'm glad I got the organic farming bug out of my system.)
My first year at Antioch I worked as an assistant in the registrar's office. I must have been frustrated by the dilapidated state of the facilities, because the registrar, who had worked there seemingly forever, explained to me the demise of Antioch's endowment. It had nothing to do with Antioch's leftist leanings. During the 70's one of Antioch's presidents spent the endowment opening up satellite campuses all over the country and hiring his buddies to administer them. At some point in the late 70's most of the satellite campuses closed down, leaving the campus with practically no endowment. Since then the college hasn't had enough money to repair it's dilapidated buildings.
The commencement speaker at my graduation was Harvard professor and popular science essayist Steven J. Gould, himself an Antioch graduate. At the time I found his speech both amusing and slightly insulting in that it's thesis was that Antioch was like a bacteria or amoeba, small, adaptable, and difficult to eradicate. Now I hope that Gould was correct, that Antioch will reappear 2012.
Random philosophical problems
I'm writing a paper to do with posthumanism and the question of the moral standing of non-human animals. Today I ran into an undergrad I know who asked me what I was doing. Then I did a very poor job of trying to explain what the class was about. (I didn't even try to explain what my paper was about.)
He said something like, "I always have trouble explaining classes I really like." Thanks. I don't know how you philosophy folks do it. I felt like I had to try to explain critical theory (which I don't really understand myself) and then explain humanism before I could even get to the point about non-human animals. I have tried to say to people, "I'm taking this class about animals." This results in them saying something like, "You mean like wildlife ecology?"
Last week at an end of the year party I told some other grad students in my program that I'm interested in discourses on/about nature and everyone looked at me like, "What did you say?" I ended up explaining why I think there was a link between whiteness and and concern for "nature," which probably offended and/or confused people because I didn't explain it well.
I have also taken (when slightly drunk) to attempting to insert, as many times as I can, the word hegemony unnecessarily into conversation. One (if one is a frazzle grad student) can accuse people of being hegemonic in sort of the same way that the peasant at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail yells "Help, help, I'm being oppressed!" But it's only funny if you have recently read "Contingency, Hegemony, Universality."
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