returned

Boston was a blast. Good friends, good food, good fun. It was a true vacation - I didn't do a lick of work (at least in my mind I didn't). I took lots of photos, but no flicker for me. Here are a couple.

My apologies - my traveling companion wanted to make sure her tongue got into all the photos. (I'm still debating whether or not to include this in future slide lectures.)
(This is companion with a gi-normous snapping turtle.)

school's out

Day 10 of S's summer vacation is underway. What kind of school closes at the end of May!?!

This is my first summer without childcare. We're embarking on a new adventure. And, so far, we've kept ourselves entertained.

We caught ladybug larvae on the first day of vacation and kept them at home. They pupated after a few days in captivity and, five days later, they hatched. (The pupae shell is on the left and one of our ladybugs on the right.)

"We" also started swimming lessons. Because of the impending move, S couldn't get in on any of the scheduled swim classes, so I decided to teach her how to swim. I would like to take credit for her amazing success, but the kid's a natural. In three "lessons," she's figured out how to kick herself around the pool (with a float) and how to abandon the float to swim underwater. She thinks she's ready for the diving board. I disagree.

The biggest drawback to my first summer vacation is the weather. (Yeah, I know I complain a lot about the weather. File this one away as complain no. 4382.) We've had 90 degree weather which is worse than it seems because it comes with thunderstorms. Ninety degrees and rain is breath-taking -- breath-taking in terms of suffocation. I've never experienced this kind of humidity.

As a result, we're getting out of here. S and I are off for Boston in the AM.

hiatus

I returned from a short, but well-deserved, vacation last week. Some reasons why it was great include:

• babysitters available 24/7
  
• leaving Middleofnowhere
• grandparents (S's, not mine)
• new sights (like the Arch, above, and Plaza, below)
• forgetting momentarily that I don't know how to sleep and sleeping-in on three consecutive mornings (accomplished using the first point above)
  
• new and unusual spectacles (like a pre-Vatican II Mass. That was a trip in itself.)
• going out with R sans child
• staying out - past midnight - with good friends
  

One of the more remarkable sights was this one of the Plaza in Kansas City. The historian in me can't help but note that this was the first shopping district planned for automobile traffic. The admirer-of-arts in me enjoys both the Spanish/Moorish-influenced architecture and the notion of planning urban spaces - no box stores here and everyone has to get out of their cars and - gasp! - walk. I enjoyed strolling around the Plaza.

(note the blue-clad child doing some illegal fountain wading.)

The only draw-back to my vacation, now that it is over, is I have only five remaining days to work. School ends for the summer next week and I transition to full-time parenting.

disoriented

What is it called when you have so much to do that you loose the inclination to do it? You know, that point where the sheer number of tasks makes you freeze like a deer in the headlights?

I thought I had been doing well recently. I burned through a few of books on my things-I-should-have-read-long-ago list (turns out those skills developed while preparing for comps are useful after the exam). My major discovery from this effort is that the American Crossroads Series is fantastic - most of this is cutting edge stuff. Also worth mentioning is Von Eschen's Race Against Empire, one I recommend to anyone thinking about 20th-century world history. (She shows how McCarthyism re-calibrated both the Civil Rights Movement and anti-imperialism in Africa so that neither could offer critiques of or alternatives to capitalism. It is a great pair with Dudziak.) Nevertheless, reading these books just made me realize that I need to read others; my stack didn't get any smaller.

So, I turned to writing my first chapter and I started wading through sources. I've found many interesting and useful tidbits of evidence. Also, a lot of what I've read is insanely boring. Some of the crap that was printed as "news" 70 years ago was just as inane as what gets passed off as "news" today. I realize that reading through all of this stuff is how the dissertation process works, a sort of needle-in-the-haystack hazing ritual. I wish that I could sleep on my stacks of photocopied newspapers and just have the information seep into my brain the easy way.

This sense of getting nothing accomplished made it easy for me to do very little this weekend (it also helped that R finished teaching on Friday - yeah! - and became my enabler). We explored some hiking trails on Saturday and discovered the local go-cart/mini-golf place on Sunday. The latter also has batting cages. I had never gone into a batting cage before. It was fun. (I wish I had discovered this contraption long ago. I think it would have been great for working off stress.) But the weekend is over and my enabler is gone. Now, I will reluctantly return to rearranging my imposing piles of un-completed work.

funny Vowell

I'm ready to come clean and admit it. I lead a clandestine life where I read books for pleasure. This causes me some small degree of guilt - even in my clandestine life - because I know I could be "making progress" with other, more rigorous readings.

Recently, I've been reading Sarah Vowell's Partly Cloudy Patriot and it is so good that I have to recommend it to other clandestine - and non-clandestine - readers. (If you've ever listed to two or more shows of This American Life, then you've already heard Vowell in action.) It is a collection of short, humorous essays that are insightful, witty, and very funny. Most of the essays - like Vowell - have a historical bent, as this observation from her trip to Salem, Massachusettes, demonstrates.

"Twenty innocent people were executed in Salem during the witchcraft hysteria of 1692. Which is horrifying, yet manages to make for a surprisingly nice weekend getaway."

She explains how Gore could have won the 2000 election by taking a lesson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Elsewhere, she offers the following insight into cultural fetishes:

"A person keen on all things French is called a Francophile. One who has a thing for England is called an Anglophile. An admirer of Germany in the 1930s and '40s is called Pat Buchanan."

I think the reason that I appreciate this book so much is because Vowell is an unapologetic history nerd. So, her wry comments are intermixed with historical interpretations for which I have much sympathy:

"The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories. Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top."

With this recommendation, I wish you happy reading!


(Google's blog spell-checker contains the word "Anglophile" but not the word "Francophile." Hummm.)

pisser

KFR offered a post today about which I have distinct opinions that I will now offer:

Like KFR, I too love my civil liberties* and would note that under the current administration, they are in danger.

I hold the liberty from government surveillance closer to my heart than the liberty to own and discharge fire arms as I see fit. As it turns out, I support restrictions on the latter liberty. Indeed, I would feel safer with distinct, enforced restrictions. (By the by, it is easier to buy a gun in this country than to buy liquor.)

(*including the liberty that the Supreme Court today decided I - as a woman - am not to be entrusted with.)

Here's some thoughts on this incident and ineffective and insufficient efforts at "gun control."
So, the VT gunman was involuntarily committed for psychological evaluation about a year ago. This should have prevented him from obtaining a gun (provided he bought it after this event).
A commenter on NPR (I will link to the article when I find it) raised some very good points about how VT can happen elsewhere in the US. He noted that countries with universal health care are better equipped to offer counseling and treatment to people who are depressed, suicidal, or unable to control their rage (and these people know that they can seek medical care). These same countries also have stricter gun control. But in the US - as Le Monde put it best - guns are readily available and owners are encouraged to use them. This says, in essence, if you feel dis-ease, a gun can solve your problems.

As for gun ownership as a civil liberty, this is one of the most warped of the various warped interpretations of the Constitution, so let us go there: Amendment 2 (1791) says
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Everyone seems to forget about the "well regulated militia" part. This asserted that each state - and village - needed to have an internal, organized militia for protection from the British or Indian nations or slave insurrections, etc. (Recall that not all Americans enjoyed this "liberty" - it was reserved for specific groups.) Also, remember the young nation did not have a national militia (i.e. a national army) because this would have put too much power under the control of the president who - like King George - might have used it against Americans. Private ownership of guns, then, was a matter of national defense. Recall - we now have a standing national army thus negating the intent behind good-old No. 2. I also want to note that a concentration of arms is the same reason that this amendment was not intend for private individuals to stock pile weapons - as modern promoters of this liberty will have us believe. Three years after the passage of this amendment, Pres. Washington led an army (composed of state militias) against up-country Pennsylvania residents who - instead of mustering their arms in defense of the nation - mustered them against the new Constitutional government. This internal threat to the fledgling republic was consistent and palpable in the 18th and early 19th centuries. I can say with confidence that the drafters of the Constitution did not intend for just any private American citizen to "keep and bear arms" because this posed too much of a threat to the consolidation of power and money that they were trying to effect under their pretty new government. By the way, this is the context and intent that the dicktard Supreme Court Justices who claim to be constitutional originalists conveniently forget about.

Rant done.

For the moment.

"tunnel vision"

I am impressed by the good number of 'tunnel' metaphors in English. It works for my present situation. I now have a tunnel.

I finally took my adviser's advice and tried to write out the first line of each chapter. It was useful in many ways. This made me reconsider where the chapters begin and end but also what each one will contribute to the whole. I can't say that I seceded in writing a single, good opening line for each chapter that encapsulated the argument. Many of my "opening lines" are rambling paragraphs.

Nonetheless, I can see the whole dissertation stretching out before me. It now has shape, form, and substance! One might call it a tunnel. It has enough substance that I know what remaining sources I need to see in order to write each chapter. I can also see how the various arguments twist and turn as they run through the story.

I definitely don't see any light at the end of this tunnel, but I do, finally, see a tunnel!