professors in the family

A week or so ago, Ann Althouse had a post where she quoted - and asked about the comment - that someone else made, observing that professors tend to have children who become professors.

And one of the questions asked was, was that necessarily a good thing? With the implication being vaguely that it's somehow classist and that a "nerdy" class that's "out of touch" with regular folks is being set up.

There's also the implication that only the Fortunate Few can go into a career where you have to take five or more years "off" to get a Ph.D. or equivalent.

And I don't know - yeah, I can kind of see how if you were the sole caretaker for your disabled dad (or whatever) it would be a lot harder to manage. But should we really be going in the direction of saying it's a Fortunate Few and that's a problem? Because then, what's next? Tracking people into careers and saying, "Oh, I'm sorry - you cannot become a math professor. There are too many people of your gender/race/socioeconomic class. Why not go to truck driving school instead?" Or, relaxing standards so that not so much is expected of the "hard case" people - that they can get a Ph.D. without a dissertation (Well, if I'm to believe the spam I receive every day, you can already do that), or that they don't need to publish for tenure, or they don't need to have a stellar record of being present to teach/holding office hours/basically having their shit together like is expected of other professors.

I tend to fight against any lowering of standards. I fight against it for my students and I would fight against it in the academy. Because, then why should ANYBODY strive for excellence if Joe Blow gets the same things by offering a hard-luck story. Life isn't fair and it's best we all got over that idea.

(I suppose I should also add: My mom was the first person in her family to go to COLLEGE, let alone become a professor. She did it by scrimping and saving and by her hardworking [manual labor] dad giving her his life savings so his "little girl" could do something "good" with her life [instead of becoming a waitress or something, that was the subtext]. My dad's parents had more opportunites but his mom was a former socialite and his dad a newspaperman, so they weren't professors - and his dad probably was no elitist - either)

But there is also the question of nature and nurture and whether having professors for parents makes you weird.

And I suppose that brings out a lot of people's Weird Professor Stories, or the particular I-Think-They're-Treasonous Professor Stories (that tend to come from a particular subset of the right).

And okay, the Weird, I will own up to. I have my very own personal brand of freak-flag that I fly. But I'm not dangerous in my weirdness and I try not to let it creep into the classroom. But the Treasonous thing, or the Lazy stereotype, or the Parasite image - that I do take exception to.

I have parents who are professors. Granted, they're pretty old-line, my dad's a rock-ribbed Republican and while my mom would probably vote Democrat if she felt the candidate in question was trustworthy and represented what she wanted to see represented, she's pretty conservative too. But. When they taught, they NEVER injected politics into classes. (They are both in the natural sciences; I actually took one of my dad's classes one summer as a "cognate science" towards my undergraduate degree. [I did opt out of doing the faculty evaluation; I did not think I could be fair]).

I do hate it - and cringe like crazy - when there's someone who spouts a 9/11 conspiracy theory on campus. Especially if they do it in, like, an economics class, where discussion of the topic is AT BEST marginally related to the discipline at hand. (And I wonder: when do they find the time to rant in class? I'm so hard up to get the course material - the stuff I want my students to come out of my class having expertise in - done that I wonder where I'd find time to inject politics.)

Unfortunately, those are the people who form the whole stereotype for us as a class these days. It's no longer Mr. Chips or the guy who invented Flubber or whatever as the common-man's imagination of the professor. No, it's someone who's seen as working 12 hours a week and spending the rest of the time dreaming up ways to undermine America.

And that makes me mad on two points: first, the "12 hours a week" thing. Yes, some of us are in class only 12 hours a week. I happen to be in class 14 hours a week. But it's the time outside class - the many hours spent grading (I probably spend 2 to 7 hours a week grading, depending on if I'm giving a big exam. And that can rise to 12 hours in the weeks when I collect research papers). The hours spent in prep - I spend roughly one hour in prep for each hour of class time, and I spent more - like maybe 3 hours - when I was a new prof. And there's time spent advising students, holding office hours, helping people, writing and giving make up exams for people who have emergencies (or who don't have their stuff together and can bull a good line). And there are the hours devoted to meetings and committee-fu and dealing with administratrivia (and seriously: this year they are going to make us write reports detailing how we Benefitted the Community in the past year. My question was this: if it takes us 3 to 5 hours at a minimum to write these and document our Good Works, would it not better serve society to say bag the report and have us go spend that 5 hours doing Good Works? But the administration is not always logical, and it seems to run on professor-generated reports).

And that's even BEFORE research. I try to spend an hour a day, minimum, on research.

So I don't know how many hours a week that is. I know some weeks it can be as little as 40 - maybe even less. But there are also weeks where I put in 14 hour days (multiple) and when I'm in most of the weekend and when my free time is all spent grading.

And so, it frustrates me when people say, "We need to get these lazy professors into the classrooms more!" because it demonstrates a fundamental lack-of-understanding of the job.

And the Undermining America part - I've already touched on that, but I will say most of the profs I know - regardless of their political leanings - are pretty devoted to seeing America succeed. Otherwise, we wouldn't be agonizing over teaching the next generation of Americans. Or we wouldn't go out and volunteer time on the weekends to pick trash off the highway. Or serve on director's boards for private park organizations. Or any of the other Good Works that we are now going to be required to write up and document. Professors like that jerk at Madison - the 9/11 conspiracy guy - are less than 1% of the professorate, and yet, he's the one who gets the press.

But anyway. I'm inclined to think it's a non-issue - or maybe even a positive thing - that professor's kids go into academia. (And please, can we kill off the unfortunate word "proffspring"? It's ugly and clunky and "faculty brat" - with its whiff of the 50s - seems to work much better in my estimation). Because - if you want to do what your parents did - especially in a household where education was valued, and so you probably had more options - it must be a pretty decent job, no?

And, for all the complaints I make about clueless, time-wasting administrators, or self-entitled-mindset students, or the crushing pressure of getting research out, it's a good life. I understand academia. I more or less understand and enjoy how it works. There's a particular joy in coming up with a good explanation for something to the class and seeing the eyes light up, or in having a student who REALLY CARES a whole lot about a subject. Or going out and doing field research. Or walking in the stacks of the library and being surrounded by all these books that you MUST read someday because they look so interesting.

And it's fun to go into general bio and tell my old stories about starfish arm regeneration or give my funny example of a food chain and have the students REMEMBER it and bring it up on exams or even after the class is done with and they see me on campus somewhere.

I had a student email me the other day and he prefaced it with the greeting, "Hi Doc!" and that makes me smile. I worked hard for the doctorate and it makes me happy when students choose to recognize its existence, rather than calling me "Miss/Ms./Mrs." (and I am not a Mrs. but I don't generally correct them. I don't want to be one of those people who's always shoving, "It's actually DOCTOR" down people's throats)

There's even a joy in coming in on a fall Saturday morning and setting up in my office with my research -reading or my data entry.

And there's a special joy in having a publication come out, or having a student get accepted to a good grad school, or hear a student you helped give their first professional presentation.

And so, it makes me sad when I see someone run down a life in academia as either a life of laziness or extended adolescence or a hideout for subversives. Because there are so many of us out there who I do not think fit that mold - it's kind of like saying that all cops are dishonest because you knew of one once who took a bribe.

But it's good being a professor. And in the fall - it's the best time of year. There's the feeling of back-to-schoolness in everything, there's the lovely golden fall light, the sound of the marching band practicing on campus. There are the students finally dressing "like students" again in jeans and college sweatshirts (instead of the short-shorts and halter tops of a few weeks ago; I am frequently embarrassed on the part of my female students who dress like hoochie-mamas rather than people who are on their way to serious jobs in medicine or conservation or bioinformatics). There's the rhythm of the academic year - the boom-and-bust cycles, where some weeks you're busy you almost lack the time to breathe (but you're happy because you're getting so much done) and the slack times when you can hang out, leaning against a colleague's office doorframe, and shoot the bull with them - or come up with new research projects - or solve the world's problems.

All in all, it's a good life, and it hurts me to see someone think of it as a classist/elitist/somehow dishonest way to make a living.

Insomnia

Ugh. My insomnia is back.

I get this periodically (heh...a pun. It's related to PMS - in fact, it's pretty much the ONLY symptom I have. I suppose I should be thankful for that, but it's kind of hard right now when I'm so TIRED).

I've had it, off and on, since I was an adult. It doesn't happen every month - more like every 2 or 3, with it being really bad a couple times a year.

What happens is this: usually there's some triggering event. I'm inclined to be anxious ANYWAY, so little things set me off. This month is was the evening "let's call everyone in the church and tell them to come to church! So if you're a busy person who gets maybe 2 hours at home in the evening, you can spend those two hours calling people!" thing. (that, and it was a late meeting).

I didn't sleep well Monday night but I didn't realize what it was; it wasn't until last night I realized I was in an insomnia cycle.

I was tired. I did everything 'right' - I ate a light early dinner, I showered, I read instead of watching tv or playing on the computer. I even chose a book that would be calming rather than stimulating. I even did YOGA for goodness' sake.

And then I got in bed. And I. Did. Not. Sleep. It was like my brain was all excited - it was all, "hey! hey! I know what we could do! We could get up now and start working on that new embroidery project! Or we could read a book! Or we could watch Adult Swim!"

And my body was like: "Brain? STFU."

But that's not enough for my crazy brain. I started running through the music I had listened to that day in my mind. (When I'm insomniacal, I'm incredibly prone to "earworms.") I lay there and felt my heart beating, and then wondered if it was beating too fast, or if it was beating irregularly and I realized I couldn't tell and I should just get up and get my watch and take my pulse and ohmygosh what if I'm having an episode of fibrillation like my dad used to get, should I just drive myself to the emergency room and let them hook me up to an EKG?

And my body was like: "Brain? S. T. F. U.!"

And so I lay there and tried counting back from 100 by threes or imagining myself painting the alphabet slowly or swimming, all the stupid mind-tricks that are supposed to fool you into sleeping.

And finally I got up and put my sleep mask on - because my next door neighbor has one of those damned "security lights" (I mean, good grief. The man is a COP. He has a COP GUN in the house. And we live in a town where the main ways to be a victim of crime are to be wandering drunk on the street at 2 am or be involved with the meth trade or have an abusive Significant Other - none of which the cop's family are involved with). And I didn't want to be nicely asleep and then have that monstrosity come on and be all shining in my bedroom (I have curtains, I have shades. Still enough light gets through. My neighbor's tried repositioning it but to no avail. He's not willing to give it up because "My teenaged son comes in late from work." Yeah? Work that ends at 2 am? You might look into that kid.)

I slept a while then but I woke at 4:30. I need to be up at 6 at the latest (if I'm not working out) and 5 (if I am). So I groaned and thought: at the most I get an hour and a half more to lay here. And it took me three hours to fall asleep last night. So I got up and worked out - which was probably good because it propelled me through my eight o'clock class. But I'm anticipating the crash any time - and Wednesday is not a good day for this: I have another class in an hour, and an afternoon lab to teach, and then it's Youth Group and another church meeting (which, at least, I won't have to talk in). It will be 8 pm at least before I get home tonight.

What does insomnia - or rather, the days after I have Not Slept feel like? Well, time passes oddly. It passes a whole lot more slowly than normally. Things drag. Noise bothers me more than it normally does. And I'm a lot less patient than I normally am.
(The other day - I was tired - I snapped at a colleague that I "didn't have time!" when he came in and wanted to do his latest round of "me me me! I'm so great! I cancelled a week's class to go to this meeting! Yay me!" Well, I WAS working on something that was time-critical. But I'm so tired of his "I'm working smarter not harder like you chumps!" attitude when he's actually not really working that much at all). The weird time-dilation effect is the most noticeable though. I remember a bad, bad bout - the first real bout - I had in grad school. I didn't sleep more than an hour or two a night for two weeks. I remember sitting in the little Continental Restaurant in the city where I lived, with my French Toast (they served breakfast all day. It was the cheapest thing on the menu and their breakfasts were better than most places' other food). And I remember staring at it, and feeling like the five minutes I had been eating it had been an hour. It felt like walking through molasses, going to class, teaching my classes (dear God, how did I manage to teach? I don't even remember it now). I'd go home and stare at the television (I lived in a tiny apartment in a bad part of town; I never went out at night because it was too dangerous) and I prayed for sleep. I tried everything - going to bed extra early. Going to bed extra late. Getting up and staring at the Weather Channel (which, seriously, is the insomniac's friend...it's the same thing over and over again and as long as no tragedies like hurricanes or tsunamis are happening, it's kind of oddly soothing).

Finally I slept again. I don't know if my body slowed down its production of Bad Hormones or if I just got tired enough or if the triggering event (an unpleasant confrontation with the Queen Bitch of the faculty at that school) faded enough in my mind, but I finally slept again.

Those of you without insomnia don't know what it's like - you don't know the joy of waking up and realizing you were dreaming - which means you were asleep - which means you are getting better, and you won't feel so trashed the next day. It's one of those not-missing-the-water-until-the-well-runs-dry things - you're never GRATEFUL for sleep until you can't sleep.

I've learned just to live with this insomnia - I drag for a few days every couple months, feeling like crap, maybe doing a little less than I normally do in the name of self-preservation. I know - some people would be quick to suggest the many new Sleep Enhancing Drugs (or some of the old Sleep Enhancing Drugs) out there. But. I have such a screwy metabolism - I react to things so strangely - that I'm afraid if I took the sleep-drug, one of four things would happen:
a. it would act like an upper on me and I'd sleep even less
b. I'd sleep, but I'd be slow and stoned-y the next day, and people would talk.
c. I'd sleep, and sleep through my alarm, and be late for work.
d. I'd never wake up ever again. (I don't know what the risk of Sudden Death is in side effects; I suspect most drugs don't publish that).

So, like with most health-oriented-quality-of-life things, I tough it out. Maybe it's not the strategy you'd use. Maybe it's not even the best strategy. But I manage to survive on it. (I just hope the kids aren't squirrelly tonight; they've been all jangly the past few weeks - I ASK the food-providers not to bring caffeinated sodas, but everyone in this culture thinks caffeine is 100% harmless, they don't see that the kids are utterly hooked on it, and so they look at me strange when I suggest lemonade or Gatorade instead as a beverage. I refuse to drink the colas or caffeinated root beers or Dr. Pepper [or more likely, the wal-mart knockoff] partly in protest, but partly because I NEED MY SLEEP.)

responsibility rant

Okay. This is going to be angry. Skip if you want to.

I am getting fed up with personal responsibility, the lack of same on some people's part, and the idea that the responsible people should pick up the slack for the irresponsible ones.

I have students right and left begging to take exams late because they had some kind of life-issue come up - but they couldn't be bothered to call me in advance. Nooooo. They either assumed that because I didn't see them there, I would know they had a good reason for missing the exam, or they figured that I'd take pity on them.

My rule is: you let me know before the exam. DO NOT come to me after I've handed it back - after I've GONE OVER it in class - and ask me to take a make up. I will not write a make up for you under those conditions.

And they should know that. It is in my syllabus. It is something I remind them of on a regular basis.

I am not an inflexible hardass. If a student tells me they have another big exam on the same day, I am willing to let them take the exam early or late. If someone calls me the morning of the exam because they are sick, I will hold handing it back until they've taken it, or I will write a make-up.

But I need TIME and PRIOR WARNING to be able to write a make-up. It takes an hour, minimum, even if I do it as an all-essay make-up. And I do not have time this week to be writing make-up exams!

The good news is I drop the lowest exam in that class so at least it can count as the students' drop exams.

In my non-majors class...well, it's just frustrating. I have people who seem to have some kind of Major Life Drama every single feckin' week. Everything from their grandma fell and their mom's not strong enough to lift her to their car breaking down to they need an operation. And you know, I'm sympathetic - but when it's the same person every week, I almost reach the point of wanting to say, "Drop out until your life calms down and then come back." Because even with my make-up exams, and my allowing homework to be handed in late, and my giving out copies of my notes - the people who are not there still do miserably. The best they can get is a D, from what I've seen.

College is like a full-time job. Unfortunately, more and more people seem to see it as being like a hobby - or like a tv show that you watch when you can catch it. No. It takes work and dedication to succeed and you are wasting your time and you are wasting the professor's good will if you go in thinking you can devote ten hours or less per week to attending all your classes and doing all your assignments and succeed.

It drives me ROUND THE BEND, the number of students who come up to me and say at the start of class, "I have a meeting to go to" or "I have a doctor's appointment" or "we have an away game this weekend" and ask to leave class early (this is an 11-12:15 Thursday class; I do not know of ANY away games - save perhaps one in Hawaii - that would require that amount of travel time). As for the doctor's appointments - maybe it's part of HMO world, I don't know, but when I need to go to the doctor or dentist, I am careful to arrange it at a time when I am NOT IN CLASS. And as for meetings: well, I tell the meeting leader that I will be late. Because, you know? I am IN CLASS.

Another part of the responsibility rant: I was at a meeting at church last night. Part of the reason for the meeting was the concern that attendance has been low, how do we bring it up? And how do we get these people who join and never attend to start attending regularly? And I felt at least a few eyes on me, because some of the joined-but-not-attending folks are parents of kids in my youth group. And people are always asking, "Why aren't Matt and Debbie here?" or "Where's Mrs. Lowton?" and I have to scrabble around and talk about sick kids or bad job schedules or the like, while I'm really thinking: I am not their mom! I do not call them Sunday morning and tell them to come to church! They are grownups! They should be able to manage this!

And one of the suggestions brought up - all of us "regulars" get a list of ten names. We check on Sunday morning to see if they're there, and then call them to tell them we missed them if they aren't.

NO NO NO NO NO NO. I do not want to do that. Part of it is I hate the phone anyway - it takes a tremendous amount of psychic energy on my part to pick up the receiver and intrude (because that's how I see it: intruding) on someone else's day. Especially to nanny at them: "why weren't you in church Sunday?" And I know I will get the brush off from some people, and the brush off always hurts. And what do I do - how do I report back to my 'commandante' if someone says "Don't call me again! Never call me! I will come to church when it pleases me to!" (because that would be my response if I were not a regular attender and someone kept calling me and bugging me).

Because, you know? Nine times out of ten, when my phone rings at home, I sigh and roll my eyes, and have to put down the embroidery or book or whatever I'm doing and go answer it. And nine times out of ten, it is someone "needing" me for something. And I personally regard many phone calls as intrusions (my friends and I - we either e-mail or we meet in person at set times) and I tend to think other people feel the same way.

And I don't like being thrust into the role of attendance-taker. I don't like being forced to call people and - the subtext of the call being, explain yourself, why weren't you in church. And I don't want to listen to the same damn tired excuses that my students give me: there was an away game. I was tired. My manager at work called me and is making me come in. My kid was sick. I didn't feel like it.

And the other thing is - I think there's a fundamental split in our society right now, that there are simply people who don't see being in church on Sunday as as IMPORTANT. They are there when THEY "need" to be there or when it's convenient to them. They don't recognize that their being there is important to others - or if they do, they don't care. And you know? We're not going to "convert" people like that by calling them on the phone. That habit is learned early and hard to break.

It's just like the students who don't work up to their potential in class - because it's just not important to them. It's the old idea of motiviation - if you are inwardly motivated, you will walk through Hell to do something you consider to be important to do. But if you're only motivated by those outside of you pushing you, when times get difficult, you're more likely to fold.

And that's why I'm so opposed to the calling idea - it just allows people to continue to be outer-motivated without trying to develop any inner-motivation in them. And the other suggestion: putting them on committees and giving them responsibilities - not such a good idea. Some responsibilities are good, and for people who seem motivated, they should have them. But for the "questionable" ones? Not so much. I know. I've been in the place of being called, frantically, by someone at the church asking if I could "fill in" for Ms. X becuase Ms. X didn't show up to do whatever she had agreed to do. And that's worse than knowing I have to do something and being able to fit it into my schedule. (And that's something I totally DO NOT GET: why do you agree to do something, knowing that you probably won't do it? It's just unfair to everyone, most to the person who gets called to fill in for you).

One thing I am going to ask about the calling tree: that they keep statistics for a few months and see if it increases attendance. Because I'm danged if I'm going to keep calling people and bugging them to come if we've been doing it for a year and it has not increased attendance one bit.

And if it's a matter of money? If they're concerned about the operating budget? Hell, I'd rather increase my weekly giving and just cut back on some other area of my life. Because I'd frankly rather the discussion be HONESTLY about "we are afraid we won't have enough money" than "we need to get butts in seats so we can get silver in the collection plate." (And I suspect - just from knowing their life-situations - that a lot of the non-regulars will be a "disappointment" in the offering-department. And the whole idea of it coming down to money makes me sad and mad and frustrated, but that's the subtext I get)

And you know? It seems it's the way of the world these days. The responsible folk get loaded up with extra crap - like calling people who don't come to church - because they're responsible. Because, even if they disagree with it, they will do it if they're told to do it or if they're asked to do it and can't come up with a good reason why not.

On my campus we also get handed letters and notes and phone messages to pass on to our students because the offices doing the sending-out are too lazy to keep up with the students' addresses or they think the students cannot be trusted to be told, "check in with us every month." And so some classes I have three or four different messages to pass to different people, some of whom may not be there, and it's just frustrating. It feels like a job I should not have to do.

I put in a fifteen hour day yesterday. I worked five of those hours solidly - with, I think, one break to get a drink of water - working on a labor-intensive, mentally-draining computer-related task. And so, when I'm sitting in my nighttime meeting - after I've already been up for 14 hours - hearing people talk about "how can we get people in church - hey - let's give our regular people Extra Work to do and see if that helps!" I'm just not very enthusiastic about it.

Because, you know? I think if ANYONE had a reasonable excuse for not attending that meeting, it would have been me. (I had people asking me, at that meeting, if I was sick or had a migraine or if something was wrong. Because I wasn't talking and I spent most of the time holding my head. I explained that I was just tired but I don't think the other people - many of whom are retired - really understand what goes on during my day - I'm one of those "lazy academics" who "puts in two hours in the classroom and then goes home.")

I really think responsibility - and doing what you're "supposed to" - is not something a calling tree can fix. It's not something making faculty pass messages to students can fix. It's not something even that getting Ds in a class because you never show up can fix. It's something either inborn or learnt at an early age, and it's hard to break the habit of "what's on tv tonight is more important to me" or "I'll go when I feel like I need it."

And so - please don't kill the Golden Gooses in your life - the responsible people - by asking them to be "mothers" to the people who seem more feckless. It only makes the responsible people resentful and I'm guessing it will have minimal beneficial effects.

names and naming

Tracey was talking about names in her blog.

My given name is Erica; I am ricki to only certain people. I have always liked my given name, and I like my nickname for certain contexts. (And yes, I spell my nickname with a lowercase, usually. It's a minor affectation.)

I've always liked my given name; it is serious without having the whiff of "headmistress who wears a tie" that Bertha or something similar might have. And yet, it is not un-serious. As I said in the comment on Tracey's blog, I know of a famous linguist named Bambi Schefelbein. I cannot imagine being saddled with a name like Bambi, unless it was a "stage name" one took on when one was pole-dancing down at the titty bar.

My name was also - at least until recently - fairly unusual. Growing up in northeastern Ohio, there were few other people with my name. Most of them were older women; many immigrants from Germany or Scandinavia. I was also aware of the British needleworker Erica Wilson. I will admit I always felt a bit proud to share a name with her - my mom had a number of her books and I always liked her designs.

(I was named for a distant German relative - a great-aunt or something. And because the name was unusual without being bizarre. My mom said they considered very carefully - they wanted a name that wouldn't doom me to having to be Firstname Firstletteroflastname in my classes, like all of the Michelles or Kristins. [I think one year there was, in a class of 25, a Kristin B., a Kristin K., a Kristen-with-an-e, a Kirsten, and a Kristin W. The poor teacher.)

Another good thing about my name is that it doesn't rhyme with anything. For anyone teased on the playground, this will make sense. You don't want a name that rhymes with attributes like "smelly" (Shelley) or that can be transmogrified into something gross like "mucus" (Marcus). I think the worst teasing I got was from some little girls of soap-opera addled mothers, who used to shout at me "You're on All My Children! You're on All My Children!" (It annoyed me then but now it makes me laugh and shake my head over what kids will do to try and get other kids' goats.)

My name is more common now. I do not know if it is because of All My Children, or the increase in the Hispanic population (although Erica is originally a German name, it is popular among Hispanic women. I suppose because there were German settlers of Mexico, and people thought it was a pretty name). And also it was featured in that "Mambo Number 5" song. (But then so was Monica and I don't see many Monicas).

I often wondered as a kid about how it would be different to have a name that lots of other people had. I think it might affect one's sense of distinctiveness - I know I felt very unusual as a child (not always a good feeling, but a lot of the time it was). Like my thoughts were my own, and maybe all the Kristins had some kind of a hive-mind where they shared thoughts.

To this day - if there's another Erica in the room, I reflexively look up when someone says her name - I'm so used to being the only one.

Another thing that struck me was in language class - either the tiny bit of Spanish we had in grade school or the French I had later on - whe you introduced yourself. I don't remember if there were different ways to do it in Spanish, but in French, you could either say "I am" or "My name is" - just like in English. Some of the kids said, "My name is" but I always said "I am" - I related so deeply to my name, I guess, that I figured it was a defining feature of me, rather than some tag that was stuck on me, a convenient handle.

I don't remember ever seriously wanting to change my name. In high school I talked about changing my middle name to Annabella (I was going through a sort of Edwardian-British phase) and that I would write books and poetry under the name E. Annabella [Lastname] and that I'd write British-style mystery novels under the pseudonym Bella Twinings. (that last name taken from the tea). But I was never serious about it.

I began using my middle initial in addition to my firstname and lastname a few years ago. I don't know why. I think it was an affectation; it made my name look a little grander. It's got to the point that I sign my name now with my middle initial. I suppose some people think it's the vestige of my maiden name (it's not; I still have my maiden name. I still have my "maiden" status...well, legally speaking at least).

I've always strongly identified with my name (so much so, as I said, that I introduce myself as "I am..." rather than "My name is..."). I wonder what it would be like to not identify with your name - to feel like "I'm not the person I'm called." I can imagine it would be uncomfortable, perhaps a bit like the discomfort I feel when I look in the mirror and ask myself, "where's the skinny chick that I have the image of myself being in my mind? [I was a skinny kid and a reasonable teenager; its' the last 20 years that have taken their toll. Don't get me wrong - it's not like I'm 400 pounds or something. It's just, I look at my belly and my boobs and...well, it feels a bit like it's not-me, that I'm looking at someone else].

I wonder how many parents give little thought to their kids' names, what they mean, what they might do in the kids' future. I know my mom said they were VERY careful not to select a name with initials that spelled something bad (like ASS). And she said they were also careful to choose something that would not be too babyish - I guess they could imagine me as a grownup even days after I was born. (Well, in old pictures of me as a kid - I do have a strangely grownup look about my face; I had one of those faces that matured early).

My parents chose well, and I am glad of it.

I wonder - does a kid's name affect his or her personality, or even destiny, like some of those weird new-agey groups claim?

Scenes from a classroom

Just a couple of "Front Lines of Education" stories for you today:

1. I have this guy in one of my classes. If you watch NCIS, think of Tony DiNozzo - only without the tv-star good-looks. (And mercifully without the sexual innuendo/borderline harrassment. At least to me. Probably because he knows I'd smack him down fast if he pulled that on me). The kind of person who thinks he's charming and witty - and would be, under certain circumstances (if he were my age and cute and my date, and if I had a few beers in me). But as a student he is mostly annoying.

Because, I get the distinct feeling he's trying to kiss my ass without it looking like he's kissing my ass, but it's still blatantly obvious to me that he's trying to kiss my ass to get me to grade him easier.

Anyway. I was driving the class back (in one of the scary, probably-should-be-retired 15-passenger vans) from a field trip, and he pipes up, "This test we have coming up...is it going to be hard?" (in his "I'm so cute and witty" voice).

"That depends," I respond, giving my favorite non-answer answer, "on how hard you studied."

"Yeah, well...the studying thing and me, we don't work out all that well" was his response. (And I thought: yeah, dude, I know that. I graded your first exam in this class).

Another student asked him where he was from, and he named BigCollegeTown where there's a large and very well respected state school. (As opposed to the third-tier college where I teach). They asked him why he wasn't at Big State School and he began reminiscing about "The Strip" or "Collegetown" or whatever it was called "...where there were like 17 bars in four city blocks."

So apparently, he failed out of Big State School because he liked to drink (and probably scam on girls) more than he liked to study. The thing is - and this is where I kind of scratch my head - he's apparently close to in-process of doing that here (And we have like 3 bars, and they're separated by several miles each).

I mean - in some ways he's a nice guy. But I don't have tremendous amounts of sympathy for people who fail out of a good school because they're lazy and like to party, and then turn around and do the same damn thing that got them kicked out of a prestigious school, here.

It's like Santayana's (or whoever's) definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to see a different outcome.

2. This one's a little happier. I have a football player in my non majors class. Mostly, he's kind of an annoyance - he's a BMOC and he knows it. He tries to flirt with the girls or chat with his teammate during my class and it drives me up the wall to stop, look at him, get him to shut up, start again, and five minutes later have to do the same thing. (He's also another guy who apparently gets by on charm and good looks. He's tried it on me, but I'm pretty much immune to charm and good looks in a guy when it's also in a package that's under 30 and a student of mine).

Well, the other day I was talking about cloning. And I referred to plant cell cloning and how it's comparatively easy - I have had students (in a plant physiology lab) do it. I remarked, "With the right equipment - which unfortunately this campus doesn't have - and a little training, you could go into a lab and clone a carrot or something. And I literally mean you - you here in this class could do it with training." And Football guy perked up, and asked me, "You mean I could clone a carrot?" And I responded, "yeah - it might take a few tries, even the experts don't have 100% success."

And he responded: "Dang...that's TIGHT."

(I assume in this context that "TIGHT" is a good thing...)

So maybe he's beginning to get a little interested in it. Good, because nextweek is the Biotech Blitz where I hit DNA fingerprinting and GMOs and all that good stuff. And I try to get discussion going - both, where have they heard of this stuff being used (I never have very many CSI watchers in my classes for some reason), and some of the ethical concerns about its use. (It frightens me a little how many of my students would willingly blindly submit DNA samples to be stored in a database so that crime-scene DNA could be quickly matched; I guess they've never heard of evidence tampering or "innocent until proven guilty.")

3. And I just got done talking with a student - and this is something not very pretty about me, but I had kind of written her off because she was one of those sporty cheerleader types who tormented me in high school, and I figured she saw me as even less cool than her mom, and therefore would do as little work for me as possible and not be polite to me and all that...

and she came in to talk about a one-credit-hour arranged-time class (basically a readings type class) that I offer. And she asked me if I taught any other classes in her particular field (I don't). I always take that as a good sign, that they don't hate me as a person and they think I'm a decent teacher, when they ask that.

Well, we talked for about 10 minutes, and I gave her some advice about stuff - and she was really nice. And yeah, I know - I tend to snap-judge people who are sporty and tanned and ponytailed and very obviously into the sorority thing. And I need to stop that - but it's hard, because it calls up bad high school and bad college memories - the mean "popular girls" and how they treated us nurd girls. And you know - she does well in class - maybe she's deep down a nurd girl who has learned how to socialize. But at any rate - yay, for having a pleasant interaction with a student.

back and forth

Today, when I stepped out of my house, the wind was out of the north - cool and damp. I had been working under a big head of anger - just anger generally at people who inhabit the world and how self-centered and horrible they can be. But that cool north wind - the autumnal wind - made my anger evaporate. Mostly what's left behind now is sadness.

the whole Foley mess. Look, I don't care that he was molested by some religious leader as a kid. I don't care that he's an alcoholic. If he did anything to any of those pages...and his whole coming-out thing. Isn't that what so many gay men have to fight against? The stereotype that they're pedophiles, when for the vast, vast majority of them, the thought of sleeping with an under-18 is as horrifying as, well, the thought of me dating one of my 18 year old college freshmen. Shudder.

Fall is an introspective time, and I wonder if maybe fall and winter tend more to be the favorite seasons of introverted people - they related to the closing down, the looking within, the faint nostalgic smell of woodsmoke in the air.

Maybe we just need to throw all of Congress out, start over from scratch. Maybe we need to make it a law that you can't be a professional politician or even a lawyer to run for Congress. Maybe there need to be ethics tests...but you can lie on an ethics test; it's entirely possible to KNOW what's ethical but not DO it.

I don't like summer much. I've established that already. Actually, the truth is I don't like Southern summers - where it gets hot and stays hot and there's no relief for months on end. When I was a kid growing up, up north, we'd get cool days in summer and even rainy days. Days when the wind wheeled around to come out of the north, wind that had passed over Canada and picked up moisture from the Great Lakes - and you could almost smell the wide open Canadian prairies in it. The wind felt like that this morning - it's too warm for it to really feel like fall, but it reminds me of a cool summer day "back home."

And what was that I heard on the radio? The Phelps-ites were planning on spewing their brand of hatred that they call "Christianity" at the funerals of the Amish girls that that bastard killed? Good God. It makes me embarrassed to call myself a Christian if they also call themselves Christians. That's why I sometimes encounter people that, when they find out I go to church, take me to task, tell me it's a hateful religion that should be abolished...and then spew their own brand of hatred all over me. And I have to try to deal with it and also explain myself at the same time. And it's especially horrible when you're a captive audience, like that one time I was traveling and had to sit next to the angry self-styled Buddhist (who was also close to Michael Moore-size) who kept telling me how hateful and angry Christians were.

The air makes me think of making soup, and baking bread, and staying in as the darkness falls earlier and earlier. And lighting my little candles on the mantel and the ones I have in the fireplace and watching them flicker as I read my book or work on a sweater. It's good cozy weather and I'm ready for cozy after this summer.

I wonder how much of this can be laid at the doorstep of the 24-hour news cycle? Where there always has to be some new atrocity to froth people up and keep them watching? How much to I fall prey to it myself? But still...there seem to have been an awful lot of school shootings this fall. There seems almost to be a plot afoot to divide people, to make them angry and mistrustful of each other.

What I'd really love to do would be to take the whole weekend - I can't, though - and go antiquing. Just withdraw some of the "mad money" I've stashed in my savings account and drive somewhere with lots of antique shops and just spend the day looking for wonderful things. The fall issues of my decorating magazines have come (and when did Better Homes and Gardens hip up? It's looked really nice lately) and there are so many things to tempt me to go out and look for those lady-head vases or old Jadeite glass or old lithographs like the ones that gas companies used to give away on their calendars. My house isn't grand, it's just a little cottage, but so many of the shops now have the cottage-style stuff or Shabby Chic stuff that it's relatively easy to find things that are neat.

And back to this Fred Phelps thing. These people offend me deeply, on so many levels...first of all, there's their sheer misunderstanding of cause and effect. Dear Fred Phelps people: the fact that we have not interned gay people in reeducation camps has NOTHING to do with the fact that terrorists are making IEDs to blow up our soliders. I wonder what you make of the fact that the terrorists who are carrying out what you seem to think is the will of God are a totally different religion altogether? Then there's the issue of...well, I think the words UNSEEMLY and ODIOUS fit well - the way you behave at the soldier's funerals. I don't care what you think (my disagreements with many of your fundamental beliefs aside). But it does offend me on a very deep level that you are going to thrust yourselves in the middle of a grieving family and grieving community and make it All About You. Fundamentally, what you are doing would be no different from Tom Cruise showing up at a Southern Baptist wedding to talk about HIS "religion." (Except even THAT would be less offensive). And then there's the issue of your deeming to judge. Who died and made you God? I may discern, I may call people on things I regard as morally wrong - but I am not going to say, "God has abandoned this country" and I am not going to say "you are going to Hell." Because that's not my call. (And thank God for that.) I wish you'd shut up because you all make it harder for the rest of us Christians - those of us who are more interested in helping people than in pushing our agenda forward.

I'm glad I took an evening this week and cleaned house and did laundry. There's something very right about having a totally clean house, especially when it's cooler out and you can look forward to spending time indoors. I should bake some bread this weekend and maybe figure out another kind of soup to make - or something; something so I'll have leftovers on hand for next week so I can just heat stuff up when I want dinner. Or maybe I should bake cookies; I saw a good recipe for white-chocolate-chunk-dried-cranberry cookies that seem nice and fall-ish. I could bring the extras in to my department on Monday.

Looking at all the crap that's going on - not just globally, not just nationally, but also local and specific crap - it makes me wonder at the human race. At our selfishness. At our capacity to hurt each other. How did we get to this point, and can we ever come back? Or have we always been at this point but I never noticed before? I'm too good at seeing patterns; I need to avoid the news for a while or I'll be getting out a map of the U.S. and trying to connect the dots of the localities where 'bad stuff happened' to see if it forms some kind of a pattern. And that way lies madness.

Dammit, I wish I could find what I did with the most recent Daedalus catalog that came. I had circled a bunch of stuff in there I wanted to order - for once, several books I had contemplated buying at full-price are in there on a good sale. But I need the catalog so I don't forget one of the things I wanted to order.

I just wish people spent more time looking after their OWN lives before they tried to interfere with other people

I also need to buy another bookcase sometime. Or maybe two; I'll fill them up fast enough.

I also wish that the Fred Phelps followers (and others like them) would look at problems and instead of looking for a way to blame, look for a way to help. Sure, it's harder to sit and hold an AIDS patient's hand so he's not alone while he's dying than it is to berate people for behavior that makes them at greater risk for contracting HIV...but it's more worthwhile in the end. It's not just you opening your maw and letting darkness funnel out...it's you, trying to bring a little light into the world.

I think it's also time to start making a Christmas list. I'm toying with the idea of driving to the nearby artists' colony and trying to find a small but nice piece of artwork for each person on my list - pottery, or a framed photograph, or a collage, something. That would be an easy and different way to do it. But I don't know - my parents are beginning to enter pare-down mode - would they really appreciate another thing that required dusting? What about ordering food as gifts for everyone this year? Chocolate, or nuts, or good citrus depending on the person's taste and diet? Or maybe buying books for everyone? That would be appreciated, provided I could find books they didn't already own. Or maybe some kind of craft kit for each person out of Flax...would be hard to find a good one for my dad though.

And I wonder if we're going to have to put up with that inane "Assault on Christmas" thing this year. Look: if someone celebrates Hanukkah, I'm gonna wish them happy Hanukkah. If they are pagan, I'll wish them a good Yule or Solstice or whatever. If I know they're Christian, then Merry Christmas...but if I don't know, I'm not going to assume. I'm not saying "happy holidays" so I can take God out of daily life; I'm doing it to be polite to someone I don't really know. But I do ask that I be allowed to celebrate Christmas and to wish a happy one to those others who do...

for my own list...well, I saw that three cd set of poetry read-by-its-poet. Even crazy stuff - poets you'd think wouldn't have still been alive at the dawn of recording. And books. I'll have to start writing down titles as I think of them. I'd really love a satellite radio set-up, but I should probably buy that for myself - it is not the tradition in my family to give extravagent gifts at Christmas, and even though I'm sure my dad would buy it for me if I asked, I kind of think that since I'm a grown-up now, I should buy it for myself. And I should finally get a dvd player; then I could ask for dvds of things I like. Maybe a yoga dvd.

You know, a lot of this stuff: the Phelps-ites, the "Assault! On! Christmas!" people...all of that borders on what someone, on some blog - I know we were talking about it in the comments on Sheila's blog - referred to as an Insane Lifestyle Mentioner. Even though I'm in some ways an inflexible person, I guess inflexibility in general - especially self-serving inflexibility - pisses me off.

I should get back into doing yoga again; I was calmer and happier when I did it. It made me concentrate instead of lapsing into my habit of being almost ADD about things. And I slept better. And my neck wasn't so stiff. I think stress is getting to me; my neck and shoulders are starting to hurt again. I could go get a massage, but...the one massage clinic here in town, the guy who runs it has the reputation for being creepy. So maybe not. Maybe just take a nice hot bath tonight in my nice clean tub with its new shower curtain...I could take the mystery novel I'm currently working on and read it while I soak...I'm glad it's nearly the weekend, I'm TIRED and I want some home-time.

tiny worlds

Several days ago, Sheila linked to a site that had pictures - I think they were like trading cards that came with chocolates - of mushrooms (it was a European blog; I think it was all in French). And she talked a little about how those mushrooms evoked the tiny worlds like The Borrowers and the family that lived in the bookshelves of Captain Kangaroo.

(And I do not remember that! And I was all about the Captain back in the day, but I only remember a tiny marching band that only he could see...and this is one reason why they've not brought the show up to the present day, and made it "edgy"...can you imagine "But I saw them! I saw the tiny marching band again!" "Captain...are you high or did you just get hit on the head too many times with ping pong balls?" I mean...there are just some things that should NOT be made edgy and played for cheap humor...And from what I've read, Bob Keeshan (the Captain) was very much an advocate for children and for quality children's programming, kind of like Mr. Rogers in that way. But I sorta liked the Captain better than Mr. Rogers when I was a kid).

And it got me thinking about tiny worlds. Some of my favorite cartoons were the old Tom and Jerry cartoons where you saw interior shots of Jerry's mousehole...you could see the back of the lath and plaster of the wall in some cases, and you could imagine the space between the walls. And you saw his bed (a matchbox) and his chair (an empty thread spool) and his sink (a thimble). And Warner Brothers did something similar, earlier, with Sniffles the Mouse (most people I've talked to HATE the Sniffles cartoons, and while they certainly didn't have the anarchic laugh-a-minute pace of the later Bugs and Daffy cartoons...there was still something GOOD about them, something safe and sweet that appealed to small children. Or at least, that appealed to me as a small child).

And when I was a kid...I remember the Borrowers books, I read them all from the library. And I had another series, sort of a knock-off American version of the Borrowers, called The Littles - except they had tails and pointed ears so it was not entirely clear if they were some kind of miniaturized human or if they were some sort of "little people" or pixie or something. (Later on, there was a Saturday-morning cartoon about the Littles. It wasn't great, but I had loved the books as a kid, so I doggedly watched it). And again - these tiny people (or whatevers) lived in the walls or under the floor of houses, right alongside humans, and their furniture and other impedimentia were made from human castoffs - you could recognize thimbles and playing cards and broken combs in the illustrations from The Borrowers.

And Stuart Little! To an extent, that's another tiny-world book. (I remember as a child - I had a little mouse doll that my mother had made me. I called him Stuart. For a while, when I was quite small, my parents indulged me to let him sit at the table with us when we ate dinner - I used a doll's table on top of the dinner table, and Stuart sat in a doll-house chair. His plate was a button and his glass the washed-out cap from a Magic Marker. And yes, my parents even let me put morsels of food on his plate as long as I cleaned it up later). I also remember trying to make ice skates for Stuart by bending paper clips into kind of an ice-skate shape. But they were hard to attach to his feet because he didn't have shoes...I think I tied them on with thread.

I also had a book - I can't remember the title now and it's disappeared into the mists of time - that showed how to make simple dollhouse type furniture - sponges for beds, spool chairs, dried flowers stuck in clay inserted in an empty toothpaste tube cap for a vase...again, shades of Sniffles' house! The book was illustrated by photographs; the dollhouse-dwellers shown using the furniture were mostly the tiniest-size of the Steiff teddy bears, and also a small toy chicken made out of pompoms. (I remember particularly the dining room shot - showing them all grouped around a table, sitting on spool stools, with "food" made by putting Cheerios and other small things on button plates).

And for me - part of it was that it was a cozy sort of thing. It made me feel warm and safe to look into my dollhouse (I got a dollhouse one Christmas) and see the family in there, all provided for with beds and blankets on the beds and food in the tiny icebox and tiny books that I made by writing stories and poems in my most microscopic printing and then stapling together....I think part of it was a fundamental inborn desire to CARE for something, to be able to look at it and say "they're safe and warm and have things to do because I took care of it" - a lot of the furniture and accessories in the house was stuff I made myself.

I think part of it also was a desire to control...I didn't have control over a lot when I was a kid. But I could set up the dollhouse the way I wanted, I could put the whole family together in the living room if I chose. If I was angry, I could scatter them throughout the house and force them to be lonely...I didn't do that often, I was a pretty benevolent dictator.

Even before the dollhouse, I had a Sunshine Family. (Any other girls of the 70s remember them? Sort of a hippiefied, back-to-the lander family? I had the mom and dad and baby...later on a little girl was added to be an older sister to the baby but I never had her. And I think she destroyed the fundamental symmetry, the simple trinity of the family.) Anyway. They were about Barbie sized (maybe a bit smaller) and they came with booklets that showed how to make things for them - like how to make a baby crib out of one of those plastic berry boxes. And as a very small girl, I remember doing that (I think there were also simple kits you could buy of stuff for them, to make...my Sunshine Family dad had a "leather" gardening apron that I think I remember making from a kit). They lived on a bookshelf in my room.

I wonder - do kids play that way much any more? I mean, I know there's Barbie in her many Shiva-like manifestations and there are the Bratz dolls and the various knockoffs - but somehow they seem more consumerist ("Buy 'bling' for your Bratz." Indeed.) and don't have that same ethos...that same home-and-family thing. (I cannot imagine the Bratz in a family setting. Yes, I know there are Baby Bratz - presumably little sisters and NOT the result of teenage-pregnancy on the part of the semi-grown Bratz... but I cannot see in my mind's eye what those dolls' fathers and mothers would look like..and perhaps that is part of the issue - there are no parents on the scene at all - a 'tweener's paradise and an adult's nightmare).

But anyway. I had my Sunshine family, and my family of mouse dolls (Stuart grew up and got married - his wife's name was Caroline - and they had Raymond and Martin and Susie and Teency, the baby...and they all lived in the dollhouse for a while). And I had another mouse doll, named Guinevere, who lived in her own, separate house...her world was not part of Stuart and his family's; she was in a different universe.

And later, I had a more authentic dollhouse family that was living circa 1920, which required me to do simple research to find out, for example, whether they would have had a telephone or not and what it would have looked like...And I will admit I still "played" (more in the sense of making stuff and arranging it in the house, rather than truly moving the dolls through domestic dramas) to an embarrassingly late age - like 14 or 15. And you know, I still kind of miss the dollhouse. I know some adults have them but I just can't face having to go out and buy all of the impedimentia, and making new stuff, and doubtless having it sit half-finished for months...and then having my friends ask about it, because although a lot of them think I'm weird already, a dollhouse (as a childless adult) would be a new "round-the-bend" for them.
(My friends, much as I love them...well, some of them don't totally understand me.)

But at least I have my memories of those days. And I admit, even now as an adult, I look long and hard at toothpaste-tube caps before I throw them out. And I have a whole pile of those tiny matchboxes tucked away. (The tiny ones - the kitchen-match matchboxes that are about 1 1/2" by 2 1/2", were like gold when I was a kid...they made authentic chests of drawers with drawers that really moved. But when I was a kid, no one in my family smoked, and candles were used RARELY - so there were almost never any empty matchboxes. And now, since I light candles nearly every night, I have lots of them...and I cannot bear to throw them away. I guess I secretly hope I'll make friends with someone who has a seven or eight year old daughter who likes to make dollhouse stuff, and then I can give them to her - and she can have the one supply I coveted and never had enough of as a kid).

Freakin' A

That's just all I have to say.

I've got emails back from SEVERAL of the members of my former committee informing me (usually in gory detail) as to WHY they cannot take the chairship.

Okay, guys - so no one can be chair. So what do we do now? I am NOT falling on the sword and petitioning to rejoin the committee just so I can be chair and then have everyone complain at me that:

the meeting was at a bad time!

the meeting ran too long! (Um...if you quit FLAPPING YOUR GUMS about pointless things during the meeting, it would go faster)

you forgot my department's materials!

you voted against something my department wanted!

you didn't do things fast enough!

you set the deadline too early!

you set the deadline too late!

Seriously - I told them LAST FALL that I was quitting as chair. Reason: I had done it several years, and I had done it through a very rancorous (and ultimately futile) fight against something that was a Bad Idea but that ultimately got pushed through because people with money wanted it. It got to the point where the chairship was affecting my health - I was sleeping badly, having upset stomachs, and one time when I went in to give blood, they wouldn't take it because my blood pressure was too high.

Oh, and did I let you know I'm teaching an overload? And I'm doing volunteer work? And I'm chair of another campus committee? And I'm doing RESEARCH, which many of you humanities types do not do? And that several weeks out of the month, I am involved with EVENING meetings four nights a week - meaning that I'm home, relaxing, and trying to keep my blood pressure down perhaps 10 days out of the freakin' MONTH?

Please do not tell me a sob story about how your life is too preciously busy for you to possibly chair the committee. Especially when you've told me you "can't" meet on Fridays because you don't teach that day and you don't bother to come in to campus. Guess what, skippy? I teach Monday Through Friday and I don't have a lot of joy in thinking that you get a whole extra weekend day because of how you've gamed the system. You're not getting any sympathy from this quarter.

Monday...uh....'muck'-off?

Yeah, I know this is usually done on Friday. And Emily is the one who came up with it and I'm stealing her idea.

But I have a moment that contains both "WTF???" and "F-off!" in one.

I had a meeting 'cross campus this afternoon. As parking on my campus is best described as "nightmare" (every student has their own car. And every student drives their car to class and parks in the campus lots, even if they live in a dormitory 500 feet from their classroom building), I walked to it.

and it's about eleventy million degrees out there. I will be all glow-y for my late afternoon class now.

But anyway: I was walking back, cursing the heat, and getting ready to cross the street. I saw a pickup approaching. He began to slow down as he approached the crosswalk and I thought, "Oh, he's being nice, he's going to let me cross."

So I got ready to step out into the crosswalk. And he sped up. And raced through. And he was LAUGHING as I had to jump back.

WTF, tool? Is that how you get your sick jollies? Scaring fat nearly-middle-aged professors out of a year or two of their lives by nearly running them over? Freakin' idiot. I hope he does that close to a schoolyard when a cop happens to be watching. I'd love to see that big-ass truck confiscated and sold at auction...

It was not anyone I knew. Not a former student or anything. So it was just some random tool out being a jerk.

Oh, and as for my committee - I emailed them saying basically, tell me when we can meet or I appoint a new chair. And one of the committee members is a coach. And his email? "My season is in full swing right now. So just pick a time. If I can't come, I'll send one of my assistants or a student worker."

Ummmm...WTF? Seriously, dude. I guess this is just emblematic of the academic vs. athletic attitude in universities today but I've never been offered the option of sending an assistant (as if I even had one) or a student worker to take my place in a meeting. There have been times I have let classes out early or had to get a "guest lecturer" or there was even once when I had to reschedule a DENTAL APPOINTMENT because of some time-suck meeting I was "required" to go to.

And "just set a time" is not helpful because I know if I set a time, it will be the ONE SINGLE TIME he or his assistants cannot possibly meet, so they will either complain about being excluded, or demand I move the meeting, or some damn thing.

Personally, karmically, I'd like to see him wind up as chair. But for the good of the university where I teach, I really don't think that would be the right thing.

So many freaks, so few sideshows...

this is the kind of thing...

...that makes my head want to explode.

The whole Foley story.

In a nutshell: dude heads up commission on missing and EXPLOITED children. Dude turns out to send hot e-mails to his young male pages. Dude is going to have to resign. Republican party investigating to see what they can do about the guy.*

Um...I'm not that internet savvy but *I* know that if I'm doin' anything funky, and someone wants to find me out, they'll find me out. I'm even a bit leery of this blog despite the fact that I anonymize everyone and haven't said anything too immediately non-denyable or damning about anyone I know.

But, it's like congress - they don't get the IntarWeb. Wasn't there the Alaskan senator, who infamously said the Internet was a "series of pipes" (so - if my email is slow that means I need to get out the Liquid Plumber?) and "someone sent me an internet" (The whole thing, man? Wow. That musta been one big honking file attachment.)

Oh, I realize it's a generational thing. There's stuff my dad doesn't know about the internet (but he apparently knows more than some of the Congresspeople). But still. If you're in a position of power, you should know how these things run.

And of course, there's the little fact that Foley apparently wants to diddle teenaged boys, which is disgusting in and of itself. (Dude. If you want to be gay, be gay. Most people can deal with that now. But don't try to be gay with men below the age of consent. That's not gay, that's pedophilia, and it's creepy.)

(The fact that he's now claiming alcoholism changes nothing, IMHO. You don't get off that easy).

What chaps my hide so much about this is that I'm bracing myself - just bracing myself - for the first "this is so typical of Republicans" comment from my leftist acquaintances. No. It is not "typical." It is one guy who's a flaming hypocrite who screwed up big time. It is no more typical of Republicans than Clinton's diddling an intern is typical of Democrats.

And that is precisely what I hate about political discourse these days. Yes. There are people in each party who are stupid, puerile, scheming, depraved...whatever adjective you want to use. But just because there is one person - or a few people - like that, it does not make them all like that.

If you extend the thought: is this not unlike what bigoted people used to say about Blacks? Or Japanese? Or gay people? I realize that being Republican is a "choice," but that doesn't make it okay to immediately assume we're all corrupt, or sneaky, or evil genii, or idiots, or evil genii who are also idiots, or whatever.

I don't know. all of this stuff makes my head hurt. I mean - I have NO power whatsoever, I'm a professor at a teeny tiny college in the middle of flyover country, and I KNOW it's a bad idea to send e-mails from work (or, for that matter, on my personal account) that:

a. proposition (regardless of WHO. I wouldn't even use an e-mail from work to ask out a guy that was my age, single, clearly interested in me, and without any attachments to complicate things).

b. chew out

c. cuss

d. propose ethically and/or morally questionable behavior

I don't even like it when we get mass e-mailed by someone hitting us up for gift contributions for baby or wedding showers. that feels inappropriate to me and I wouldn't do it. (Especially not to people outside my department, people who've never met me. Then it's just a big "gimme!")

I don't know why we seem to have people who find it difficult to behave in a morally consistent manner in government, but we do. And I don't care WHAT party they're from - they can be a Neo-Whig or a Bull Mooser for all I care - it just makes me frustrated and angry and sad. I mean - you're a congressperson. You're supposed to be held to a higher standard of behavior than Joe Six-Pack or Jane Highheel in your district. Maybe I'm hopelessly old-fashioned, but two things I believe in:

1. If you are in the public eye, you should behave yourself. You should strive to bring honor to whatever office you hold. And you should strive to NOT embarrass your family. If you have a problem - like alcoholism - be forthright about it. Admit it as early as you realize it. And then take whatever consequences you face without whining, or justifying, or "but everybody does it..."

2. In return: we the people should treat our elected beings with respect. We should treat our governmental process with respect. I worry when I see folks like Jon Stewart mugging and joking and seeming to belittle democracy. Oh, I know: democracy, like the flag, is better and bigger than those who would spit on her. But I worry if it doesn't cause dangerous thoughts in some parts of the populace - the idea that maybe the ideals of this nation are laughable and thus not really worth protecting - and it becomes even harder for those who DO value them and who WOULD protect them (especially the military men and women). Can you imagine fighting for something that you believe in, and then coming home and finding that your friends didn't believe in it, and in fact, thought you were a chump for going to the trouble? That's a vague undercurrent I get in this country some days - that the people who put in the effort, who care, who don't just let everything get lost in the vague gray miasma of "whatever!" are seen as chumps or nerds or worse by the populace.

and, by extension: everything gets lost in the vague gray miasma of "whatever" - and there's no religion, no family, no friendships...nothing that makes life worthwhile any more, because it's all "too much work" or it's "all hypocrisy anyhow."

I'd like to see a return to more decorum. When I was a kid, my dad would have tarred my hide (and worse: he would have explained to me precisely why what I did was so wrong) if I had shown disrespect to the flag or to a veteran (or, heck, to anyone who was my 'elder'). There were certain things that were more or less sacred: the flag, those who fought in wars, voting and other civic duties, places of worship, the legal process, courthouses...nowdays, churches are prime sites for vandalism and theft, people won't stand in line to vote, the legal process is too often subverted...

and while I don't want to lay this all at the feet of Foley (and people like him), I will say it makes it harder to respect your elected representatives when they so blatantly SAY one thing and DO another.

(*Standard disclaimer: yes, I know the story is spun. Everywhere - everywhere it's spun one way or another. Trying to get news these days is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant - one network grabs onto one part and says, "It's a rope!" and another grabs onto another and says, "It's a tree!" and no one really actually has the truth, and the closest you can get is to look at the reportage of each of the blind men and try to build a picture up in your head).

Motivated to Google search this stuff...

And another person's take on the motivational poster. "Together Everyone Achieves More," indeed.

More! More!

Damme, this is FUN....

This is for Emily....

Over at It comes in pints?, they're having too much fun with the Demotivator make your own "motivational" poster tool.

Emily quoted a member of Pink Floyd who couldn't bear to eat pie with crust, and then finally came to accept the crust...and there's a deep philisophical truth in that, that sometimes life just gives you crust, and you have to accept that.

As for the "motivational poster" trend...well, it's something I hate with supernova power. With wonder-twin-activated-to-the-form-of-an-erupting-volcano power. Because to me, it's all that's wrong with how we do business these days...instead of having real loyalty or real mission or a real sense of accomplishment, instead, we get these crap posters telling us to "Achieve" or have "Compassion" or seek "Excellence."

And it's even crept into academia. No, the posters haven't shown up yet, and when they do, that'll be my cue to get out and find some other kind of livelihood (what, I don't know...). But we do have Mission Statements and Vision Statements and damned Five Year Goals and all that...and my contribution usually is, "What about: we teach. They learn. They graduate. They get jobs. So their Social Security dollars support us when we're too old to teach?" I usually wind up getting shot down in favor of some vague and syrupy statement including words like "strive" and "excellence" and "community spirit." But of course, we all know that the REAL goal is to do a good job get paid while still having enough free time that we don't feel like robots...which is partly why I hate these motivational-statement meetings; because they take away time I could spend either honing my teaching or research OR having a life. Maybe I'm a closet anarchist, but I just don't see the value of sitting around a room and trying to decide on what face we are going to present to the world...

Because Sheila asked...

The "improving" books to which I referred are generally books that would have been deemed (at the end of the 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th) as appropriate Sunday School graduation gifts for girls.

I believe - from what I've got from context - that "wide awake" was code word for "Christian."

One of the books I have, for example: called Bertha's Summer Boarders. As best I remember, it featured two girls and their widowed mother. The girls were teenagers (I think 14 and 16). They were, of course, big helps around the house. The main social life of the book focused on church socials (which are not as extremely pious as they'd sound; people played games and even 'forfeits' [but probably not the kissing-kind of forfeits] at them).

The girls grow up through the course of the book and the older one even has a gentleman caller of sorts...but the book ends before even marriage is proposed. VERY old-fashioned, in the stereotypical view we have of the 19th century - a (probably mostly imaginary) world where there were no "six month's babies" or hurried marriages or furtive gropings in the parlor, and where girls grew up to be either good wives and helpmeets who had many children, or else they were spinster schoolteachers beloved by their young charges (but apparently sexless and without much of a social life outside of caring for aged parents or working to better the lot of the poor)

If people die in the book it is beatifically and usually after some crippling suffering illness. And you know they've been whisked up to Heaven. Sentimental books. V., v. sentimental.

The book I referred to was published by the Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society in 1893. So there's no doubt as to the intentions. They also have a list of other acceptable books in the line in the back - most of the titles are lost to the mists of time but The Water Babies is there, as is The Princess and the Goblin.

Some of the descriptions of other books:
"this is a story showing in a charming way how one little girl's jealousy and bad temper were conquered..."
"Jill is a little guardian angel to three brothers who tease and play with her..."
"...the cheery helpfulness of spirit developed by the girls in their shared circumstances.."

In other words: improving. Moralistic. Designed to teach the kiddies how to behave.

The books would make any feminist's skin crawl but in their odd way I kind of like them - I think it's because they present an idealized world where everyone is happy and "pure" and thinks good thoughts and if they're poor, they're clean and quaint, and if they're rich, they're either generous souls or they're a Scrooge-type that you know will be shocked into redemption by the end of the book.

They're very simple, and I think that's why I like them. Even if in the real world there were marriages of necessity, or women so weakened by childbearing and corset wearing that they were dead by 45, or people addicted to opium or "Lydia Pinkham's" as an escape from their dreary world, or factory labor, or tainted food...I can kind of close my eyes to what I really know what happened from history and read about apple-picking and playing whist and girls sitting around in the evening sewing on their "waists," and the whole thing seems so cozy and SAFE.

Actually - The Bird's Christmas Carol that you spoke about some time back is not too far off of this style of book.

booking

Sheila had a link today to an article about people's bookshelves. Or, more specifically, about snooping in others' shelves and what might be found there.

And here, I openly admit my snobbery: I am very suspicious of a person who owns few or no books. I grew up in a bookish family. We had to rent a separate, small, moving van JUST to move the extra books when we moved house. (But no thought was given - at least no SERIOUS thought - to discarding the books).

When I moved to my current home, I had 36 boxes full of books. I have lived here 5 years now and I've probably acquired at least 10 more boxes.

I love books. They are the first thing I notice in a room (or in a picture of a room, as I commented on Sheila's blog). I love old books, new books, any kind of books.

I have a lot of older books because I was a grad student for years upon years, which meant I was well-nigh broke all of the time, which meant I generally frequented used book stores. (There was one just a short walk from my office when I was in grad school. When I was fed up, tired out, and close to throwing my computer against the wall while writing on my thesis, I'd pick myself up and go down to the book store for some sweet sweet bibliotherapy. I always felt better afterwards.)

It was there I discovered Heritage Press. This was a company - kind of like Folio Press but without the "veddy British" attitude - that published fine books. They'd get a classic book, find an appropriate illustrator, choose a good paper, choose a typeface, a binding method...whoever ran that company must have been incredibly anal and he was probably a right prick to work for, but the books are so wonderful I'm willing to forgive him for his anal qualities.

Most of the books came slipcovered; they originally came with a little flyer that talked about the illustrator, and the company that made the paper, and what the typeface was, and all.

And this is a mark of how big a book fetishist I am, but I LOVE those little flyers. I will pay more for a Heritage Press book if I know it has its flyer intact. There's just something so wonderful about thinking that the book even hs a special PAPER that it's printed on, different from the run-of-the-mill (literally!) papers that most books were printed on. And the fact that the books were illustrated - I love illustrated books and I think it's a shame that most "grown up" books don't have them. (Yeah, I know: they're expensive and they take up space in the binding. But I still love them).

So I have a whole bunch of those. Some from my beloved used-book store (which, I recently learned, is closing: apparently the whole block of shops where it used to be has been bought out by some "civic minded" idiot with no interest in history; he's going to tear down the neat old buildings and put up a damn "upscale" restaurant or something. In a college town. Well, I suppose he'll be able to exploit hire college labor, but I'm willing to bet none of the students OR faculty will be able to afford to eat at the place). Some of the Heritage Press books I own were bought from Alibris or Abe Books or Powell's. A few I've picked up at other used-book stores over the years.

It makes me happy to see them on the shelf. Even though I've not really read them that actively. Oh, I'll pull one of the tomes of poetry or the book of Poe short stories off the shelf now and then and read a bit, but I've never even attempted Don Quixote or Zuleikia Dobson or War and Peace or any of those. Will I? I don't know. At the rate my life goes now, I can barely push my way through the book-club book-of-the -month.

But - I have a good memory. Most of the books I own, I can actually remember where I got them and when (the used ones, at least: new books seem more anonymous). I remember the shelf of South Sea books got started on a trip to Hawaii when I found that the Waldenbooks in the mall near where I was staying had a whole raft of University of Hawaii press books. And then, I found more, oddly enough, in a used-book shop when I was on a trip to Madison, Wisconsin. And the copy of Lucia di Lammermoor was bought one rainy fall day when the computer had seized up on me and I deserted my lab for the friendlier confines of my local used book store.

Looking at them all is a catalog of my travels. Even down to the weird mid-century novels by authors I've never heard of (A.J. Cronyn? The "Oaks of Jalarna" series?) that I bought when I first lived here, was desperately homesick and missing my beloved used-book stores, so I'd buy whatever wasn't too water-damaged or roach-eaten at the local antique shops, as long as they didn't overprice it.

I have a huge range of books on my shelves. I have some classical stuff: a new translation of the Peloponessian War that I do intend to read sometime, my college-copies of Plato and Herodotus. Books on learning Latin, something I still want to do someday. I have many biographies, including the two-volume set on Washington and a gigantic one on Bach that I will probably never read. I have my South Seas books, my "classics," my 19th century "improving" novels (Another fascination of mine: the books for "wide awake" girls that are SO moral and SO hokey and yet are also strangely fun to read). I have shelves of historical essays, books on mathematics and quantum physics (another pet interest of mine). I have piles of mysteries - almost all of Rex Stout's mystery novels, mostly acquired used, in hardback, in the old Viking Press bookclub editions. I have lots of Ngaio Marsh, I think everything Josephine Tey wrote...and lots of the nice little paperbacks of the Maigret stories. (I should read more Maigret. I forget about him.)

In my bedroom - well, ignore the piles on both sides of my bed, I intend to buy another bookcase soon - I have three more bookcases. (small ones). One loaded with the "chapter books" saved from my childhood - Narnia, and some of the Oz books, and My Side of the Mountain, and the Borrowers, and Mary Poppins, and the Madeline L'Engle books - most of which I only came to as an adult, and regret what I missed when I was 10. Another shelf holds my spiritual books - ranging from pretty straight Christianity into Buddhist-Christianity mixes to more mystical stuff. And a third shelf where things that I don't have room elsewhere for go - lots of the recently-purchased novels, a couple of books on the Balkans, the Jasper Fforde series. And in my dining room: my cookbooks (a whole wall full) and my gardening books.

Books everywhere. Which is paradise to me.

one thing I know

If, on a college campus, you EVER suggest that you 'could' do something that technically wasn't your responsibility, all of the people that the thing you 'could' do is the responsibility of, will slough it off onto you.

there is a committee I used to chair, but do no longer. I'm not on the committee any more even. I sent an e-mail out to the people who are NOW on the committee saying, "Hey, guys, you need to select a chair. People are asking me when you're going to meet because they know I'm former chair." And I made the mistake of saying, "I could help you in the first meeting."

so now, everyone expects ME to set up a meeting and play schedule sudoku and find a time when everyone can meet. And it's precisely THAT that was making me go grey, gain stress-weight, develop a twitch under my left eye...

maybe it's generally true, and not just profs who are wicked lazy and will leap at the chance to let someone else do their work for them, but most of my experience is on a college campus.

oh, how I hate grading.

I'm a college prof.

I teach at a small campus - really no grad students (we don't have a doctoral program; what few ta's we have are on loan from the larger psychology program). So I do all my own grading.

I loathe it. And yet - I keep assigning homework and giving tests. (The tests I have no choice in. The homework I could dump but my informal, non-statistically-analyzed study convinces me that students get higher grades if they have homework to do over class topics).

The worst part is interpreting what the students write. Some will write in teeny-tiny-eye-strain-o-vision so, I suppose, they figure that if the prof can't read it, they won't bother to check it. (I usually just mark it wrong, if I can't read it. Sometimes the students complain and I make them tell me what their answer was.)

Others - they just put these cryptic scribbles and expect I can interpret it.

I gave a genetic analysis homework to one of my classes and I am kind of regretting it now - trying to figure out "is that an R or a K?" for the different alleles they're working with is giving me a headache.

I have a colleague who's totally dumped doing homework. (He's kind of become bad-attitude-guy in the past year; part of it was he got a lot of plagiarized papers in one of his classes, part of it he's got a successful book out and I guess a contract on another one, so I think he has a short-timer mentality, that eventually he'll be able to chuck it all, tell us what he REALLY thinks of us, burn his bridges, and go live on advances and royalties.) But for now, he's trumpeting the damn "work smarter, not harder" propaganda that the b-school types love; for him, "working smarter" means sloughing off as much of the actual work of teaching as possible - including assigning papers or homeworks.

And it pisses me off on two levels, because first, I feel like a chump for continuing to spend HOURS reading students' cryptic scribblings, and second, he has free time to, like, write. And I'm expecting the "But the students in Professor Utonium's class don't have to do THIS!" complaints any day.

I don't know. I think working through mathematical analyses of problems, or figuring out the results of genetic test-crosses are valuable - it's not that I'm giving busy work - but a lot of times the students see it as such.

I'm getting fed up with the instant-gratification attitude that so many of them - hell, so many PEOPLE - have. The "it's tooooo haaaaaaaAAAAARRRdddd!" whines. Or the "But it's BORING!"

well, gut up, folks. There's a lot in life that's hard and boring. But you put up with it, you do it, and you don't do a half-assed job.

Even with grading. Even when you can't read what they've written and you suspect the tiny crabbed handwriting is a ruse to keep you from telling they've answered the question wrong.

Voting

I listen to the radio news while I work out early, early in the morning.

Probably it's not good for me because most of the news these days, rather than "just the facts, ma'am," is designed to elicit maximal emotional response from the listener.

And as I am somewhat of a cynic, and as I am someone who hates being manipulated, it frustrates me at times.

And this morning: they were talking about voting machines. New spangly touch-screen computerized voting machines. And there was someone frothing on the radio about it - about how teh TERRORISTS or CHINESE PEOPLE could screw up the voting, that they could disrupt the machines, and I suppose, vote some terrorist-friendly write-in candidate in or somesuch thing. In fact, according to this chap, the CHINESE PEOPLE could CONTROL the machines without EVER LEAVING CHINA.

(The capital letters are to give you an idea of the urgent emphasis in his voice).

And this is the kind of story that frankly pisses me off. I have no idea how "risky" the new internet-based voting machine things are. I suppose someone somewhere could game the system. And in this day and age, it seems that Your Candidate Losing seems to many people to be grounds for claiming someone is gaming the system, because, you know, Your Candidate is so wise and so wonderful and is going to cut taxes on 'families' while taxing those "fat cats" who "won't feel it." And he's pro-schools and pro-recreation and pro-four-day-work-weeks and pro-minimum-wage-being-$15 and all that - so no one in their right mind would not vote for Your Candidate.

But like I said: I have no grounds to evaluate how secure touch screen voting is, and I'm sure someone will make hay with concerns over security, even if it's double secret super secure.

But I was thinking about the various voting methods I've used. Where I live right now, we use optically scanned ballots: they hand you the ballot and a black marker, and you complete a line next to the candidate or the yes/no on the issue you're voting for. You have to be pretty inattentive to mess up this kind of ballot. And if you do, there's a mulligan: you can go and tell a judge and they'll give you a new one.

They're easy but boring.

I've also voted using the infamous butterfly ballots (no, not in Florida though). Yeah, you have to pay at least minimal attention to what you're doing and make sure the thing's properly aligned with the voting booklet. And frankly, the method kind of irritated me - the little stylus and all.

My favorite way to vote ever - which was how I first voted, back in the day, and which for me will always be the Platonic ideal of voting systems - were the big old literal "voting booths." I lived in Michigan when I turned 18 and registered to vote. The first election ever that I voted in, they had those big old giant booths. You stepped in and closed the curtain, and were faced with a wall of little levers. You flipped down the levers for the candidates you wanted, or for the yes/no on issues. You could check yourself and unflip or reflip levers easily if you realized you had made a mistake.

Then came the best part - the part of voting that made it real to me, far more real than sticking my little drawn-on ballot in the ironically trashcan-shaped optical reader will ever be - you pulled down a big honking lever. I remember it as being like the lever on a slot machine. There was something very physical and very satisfying about voting that way - you KNEW you had voted; you KNEW your vote had registered.

There was also something very patriotic-70s, very Bicentennial, about those voting machines to me (even though it was the 1980s before I was old enough to vote). Perhaps it was my vague memories of being taken along by my mom when she went to vote when I was a small child. Or perhaps it was having seen cartoon versions of the machines on Schoolhouse Rock. But I loved those machines and I miss them now. I guess they've all been sent to the scrap heap.

Which is sad. I think voting should feel like something. Or rather, feel like something more special than filling out the "what did you think of your food and service" card at an Applebee's, which is what the complete-the-line ballots always feel a little bit like to me.

I've also heard reports that people won't vote if it's raining, or if they have to wait more than a couple minutes in line. And that makes me sad. Maybe I'm a big geek, but voting is important to me and it's still special, even if the ballots are kind of anticlimactic. I guess it's because I had suffragist ancestors. I guess it's because I've read too much about dictatorial nations, or had junior high school teachers tell about how in the Soviet Union, you got to "vote," but there was only one choice on the ballot, and you were in trouble if you did not "vote." (I have no idea if that story was true or just designed to inspire patriotism in us: "Hey -we can vote. And we have more than one choice!")

But I think of that when I go to vote. I usually go early in the day. There's almost never a line. But it's important to me.

I still miss the big old impressive voting booths, though.

Nation of adolescents

Sometimes I wonder if we are seeing a fundamental change in how we do business as a society. (Other times I wonder if this is just the regular generational complaint that people in their late 30s or early 40s make, looking at the rising generation).

But I worry a little bit - and sometimes, more than a little bit - about a lot of my students.

I teach, among other things, an introductory-level college biology class. I try to get discussion going in there. So I ask questions about things in the news.

It alarms me, the blank stares I get about stem cells. Or the blank stares about genetic disorders - sometimes, if a student in the class has a relative with cystic fibrosis or something, then I can get some discussion going, but often, there's just this sense of "we don't know and we don't care."

And that alarms me. Because probably these people are going to be voting - if not on the issues, certainly voting for people who will be talking about the issues. And they'll be having to make decisions about their lives. And what are they basing those decisions on?

It's not like it's hard to stay informed - it's not like my parents' college-days, where maybe a few people in the dorm had radios (and no one had televisions, not even the rich kids). And it's not even like my days, when most people had radios, lots had televisions, but there was no internet yet.

The students in my classes get free cable hookups in the dorm. And they get free high-speed internet. And there are newspapers delivered around campus.

But I guess they're not using them for news.

Now, maybe I'm just strange - I brought this issue up with a friend who's a few years older than I am. She laughed, and said, "When you were a college student, did YOU read newspapers or watch the news?"

And you know, I did. I subscribed to the town newspaper where I lived - it was an afternoon paper and I'd come home at 5 or whenever from class, and I'd sit down and read it. It was part of my decompression from the day. Now, I didn't always read it cover to cover: usually I read the local stories, those pertaining to my university. I might have skimmed national or world stories that caught my eye, and I usually checked the editorials page to see if there were any that were entertainingly frothy-at-the-mouth. (Typical college town, so usually there were. On both sides of the aisle, so to speak.) And I frequently watched an evening news program.

I just did - because it was something my parents did. It was, I considered, part of being a grown up. You needed to be informed about your world. Ideally, you got information from a bunch of sources - you didn't just listen to NPR or watch ABC news or something like that.

I guess the idea I internalized from my parents was (a) news was part of being a grown-up and (b) if you have the privilege to vote, you should be informed so you're able to vote intelligently.

And that's part of what worries me - if people choose to be ignorant (note: I did not say "stupid," I said "ignorant." Those are two different things; ignorance can be fixed if you have the motivation), what's to stop them from voting for some dangerous person who panders in slick advertisements? One thing I've learned as a grown up is that political issues are never as simple as they seem on the surface. (For example: my father was generally known as the best advisor to have if you were a woman because he treated you as an equal and some of the other guys in his department didn't. But my father didn't support the ERA for some very specific reasons - which I didn't understand as a child, to me the ERA was a simple matter- because that's how the Weekly Reader or whatever presented it as).

But it's as if lots of people don't want to think about that.

I ask my students how they get information. Some of them just kind of shrug. Some of them say they half-listen when the news comes on on whatever country station they listen to. A few boldly claim that Jon Stewart is their source, and is the only source they need.

(I've tried watching the Daily Show. I really have. I cannot like Jon Stewart. To me, he seems symptomatic of the whole culture-of-extended-adolescence - the way he grins and mugs at the camera, the way he subtly makes things about HIM rather than about THE NEWS. The way serious issues are batted off with a snarky comment).

And you know, that's a big part of my concern: it seems that for a lot of people, what "should" be serious is not treated seriously any more.

I think there are some rules of grown-up-i-tude that I keep in my mind:]
1. Be informed, know what's going on around you

2. Be appropriately serious. That doesn't mean NEVER laugh at stuff - this morning I was racking my brains trying to come up with a good "attorney-client privilege" joke after hearing that Anna Nicole Smith's attorney is claiming he's the father of her new baby. But it means not making terror threats a big joke, not laughing off the very real possibility of danger. (I think one of the problems with the Hugo Chavez issue is that the translator - the flat expressionless way she spoke - made Chavez' very real and very dangerous [and very unhinged] comments about Bush being "the devil" seem funny, and therefore, less dangerous and alarming).

3. Take responsibility. (This is a big frustration of mine. I can't count the number of times I've had someone agree to do something and then not - because they were "too tired" or some other lame-ass excuse. Guess what? I'm tired too. I'm frequently "too tired" and yet I manage to do things other people are depending on me to do).

4. Uphold the social contract. One of the reasons we have so many idiotic nannying laws springing up is that people don't uphold the unwritten rules that stick society together. Like unwritten rules about noise. I don't run my lawnmower or other power-lawn-tools early on weekend days. Even if it's going to be killingly hot later and I'm courting heatstroke by waiting, I don't turn on the edger until 11, because I know there are people in my neighborhood who work the night shift and might need to sleep in. But I also expect people to do the same courtesy to me - to let me sleep at 11 pm because I get up at 5 the next morning. (I'm glad it's getting cooler out because boom cars seem to be less attractive in cooler weather. But for a while, we had this one guy in my neighborhood - I'm not sure what he did but he basically turned the metal panels of an old, old Cadillac into a sort of metal subwoofer. So not only did we have to listen to his tooth-jarring bass, but we also got the half-second-later, discordant added noise of the body panels on his car rattling from the music).

5. At least some of the time, put others' needs before your own wants.

I think of the people I think of as "grown ups" - the firefighters who ran INTO the WTC to try and get people out, even though some of them probably knew they were likely to die; soldiers; the parent who goes without a new widescreen television because their kid needs braces or because it would put the family into too much debt; the politician who thinks carefully about the issues and then chooses his or her positions based on what he or she considers best for the country - not best for his or her own re-election. And on and on.

But I look at a lot of the people around me - the students who sleep in on rainy days because it's too far to have to walk 500 feet in the rain from the dorm to the classroom buildings. The faculty who snipe and gripe about the pettiest damn things and keep meetings running long with their complaints. The local businesspeople who fight against anti-litter ordinances until it's someone in a competing business that they can blame litter on. - and I just see a shortage of grownups, of people who are willing to shut up and gut up and do what needs to be done without necessarily getting credit for it.

And it makes me sad. And it makes me wonder - on my more optimistic days, I say "The world isn't getting worse; you just notice it more than you once did." On my pessimistic days, I think "Good people are few and have always been few. And there is so much to be done, and so few people willing to work."