Ha!

Continuing to work on that pesky article has led me to The Real South:Southern Narrative in the Age of Cultural Reproduction, a book by one of my former grad school teachers, Scott Romine. You don't need me to tell you what a smart book it is. The blurbs on the back cover do that quite well. (Okay--just one choice cut: "With The Real South, Scott Romine shows why he may be the best critic ever to come out of the venerable Chapel Hill southern studies program." That's pretty good, right?) 

Anyway, this one little chestnut made me laugh out loud so I thought it was worth sharing, a fine example of how funny this book can be at times: "But if Southern Living conjures a kind of imagined community, it is attenuated community that fails one of Benedict Anderson’s primary criteria for the nation: no one is willing to die for it. There is some comfort, I think, to be taken in that” (15).

The Fall

Holy cow, did I love this show! This article helps explain part of the reason why. Also, Gillian Anderson is amazing amazing amazing. Just wow.

So many TV shows that have thrilled me recently have been from Britain: Call the Midwife, In the Flesh, and now this. Keep it up over there, UK folks!

Zero

Zero. That's the number of emails currently in my work-email inbox. Every email has been answered. Every task addressed. Every document reviewed. All the stuff that needs to be printed has been printed. Amazing. This won't last long--probably not even twenty minutes, but still. Pretty cool.

Rainy Sunday evening links

Given what I've just posted, I am not feeling my (sometimes) usual Sunday evening melancholy, but I did find myself moved by these couple of links.

The first, a letter from Allen Ginsberg to Neal Cassady. This part kills me:

"I still have love longings and yet have not in my lifetime founded a relationship with anyone which is satisfactory and never will unless I change and grow somehow out of this egoistic grayness and squalor. Drifting like I am or could would leave me with no hope but stolen fruits. I had begun to get hung up on the metaphysical image and the subterranean peyotelites here. Must stop playing with my life in a disappointed grey world. Maybe go back to analysis. I am miserable now—not feeling unhappiness, just lack of life coming to me and coming out of me—resignation to getting nothing and seeking nothing, staying behind shell. The glare of unknown love, human, unhad by me,—the tenderness I never had. I don’t want to be just a nothing, a sick blank, withdrawal into myself forever. I can’t turn to you for that any more, can’t come to Frisco for you, because how much you love me, it is still something wrong, not complete, not still enough, not—god knows what not—you know how I was before and what I am, my hang-ups. Do you think that is all I shall get ever, so that is why I should come out? Maybe that is not bad idea but I still want to seek more. I suppose maybe I’m looking too hung-up at a simple sociable proposition."

Then there's this piece on recent biographies of Kafka. Andrew Sullivan highlights one of the more poignant anecdotes that stood out to him in Kevin Jackson's piece, involving Kafka, a little girl, and a lost doll. I love this part: "Stories can cure the sadness of small girls. They can also frighten, console, give courage. They can help even a sick and dying writer make some sense of what remains of his short life. Kafka seems often to have thought of writing as a curse or (to borrow a term from the literature of shamanism) a sickness vocation. And yet the thing that makes you ill may also, from time to time, make you powerful."

 

Just a little getaway

It has been a lovely weekend overall. Yesterday evening, I drove into my friend/"work husband's" Tim's house (about an hour away) and had dinner with him and his partner. Iyt was his birthday, which made it even more festive and fun. I crashed at their place for the night (sleeping on what I think of as a "Princess and the Pea" style bed in their guest room--I have to climb onto it!).

Today was the highlight--or at the least the main reason for my visit--a trip to Daedalus Books. Amazing. We were there for at least two hours. Eighty bucks later, I have a shopping bag full of books--new, awesome books. So much fun. Then lunch at a yummy lunch at an Indian restaurant and home again to WV for me.

I really needed this tiny little getaway. This summer seems to be flying by and I've been more busy than I anticipated. I feel like I am juggling a dozen different tasks and projects and not making much progress with any of them. But just a day away with people you love can really make a difference.

Tomorrow, back to work: Session B of this year's first-year advising and registration sessions gets started.

"I'm not blaming the girl, but..."

Hey Serena: just some advice. In the future, go ahead and put a full stop after "girl" in the sentence above, quoted in this article where you discuss the Steubenville rape. And then just shut the hell up.

Sunday evening ruminations...

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

I am working on an article that is, in part, about noir/hard-boiled fiction. These lines keep running through my head. They are some of my favorite from the book because they tell you so much about Jake Barnes and because they are, frankly, true. (They are also part of the header to the critical article I am taking notes on right now.) My usual Sunday evening moodiness is adding to their resonance, I suppose.

Anyway, back to work I go.

The BEAR on campus today...

Weirdest text from campus alert service ever: "Black bear reportedly sighted on campus near north King and High Street. Please use caution."

Follow-up message a little while later: "Bear last seen going into the wood behind the Clarion Hotel. If bears are seen avoid contact move to a safe place and report by calling 911."

Here's a picture, courtesy of Shepherd's Facebook page. Apparently someone in Admissions snapped it.

Happy birthday, Walt (a bit early)!

Walt Whitman's birthday is tomorrow. (It's also my parents' anniversary, so two events that were deeply formative for me happened on May 31.) Anyway, check out this terrific response to a truly complicated situation. I love Walt so much, but yeah, he had some pretty deplorable ideas. How do we deal with that complicated legacy? Click the link!
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/30/quote-for-the-day-ii-69/

Picture it...

Here's a crazy image from yesterday that would be sure to entertain (or scare!) anyone driving by my house yesterday: Me, in gym shorts, a ratty t-shirt, and a sweaty baseball hat (lovely, right?), listening to my iPod, pushing a lawnmower, and singing along to "Rainbow High" from Evita. That's some juxtaposition of glamor and well, the opposite of glamor. If you don't know the song, you can give it a listen here. (The link is from the Elena Rodger version, which I saw on Broadway last summer. My preferred version, of course, and the one I was singing along to, is the Patti LuPone version, but I couldn't find a decent youtube version.)

Most of the time, I listen to podcasts when I mow the lawn, but I felt like music yesterday. This is probably not the best decision for my public image (which matters so very much to me!), though, as I find that I can't help but sing along and even kind of dance when I do so. The mower becomes a reluctant dance partner.

Again, what an image!

Krista's Baptism

Previously.tv and Rectify

After a long wait, the folks behind Extra Hot Great, one of my all-time favorite podcasts, and, (before that, one of my favorite websites) have started up their new venture: previously.tv. And it's pretty amazing--tons of great writing about television. Even though the site just launched on Monday, they've been collecting writing for some time. Explore a bit and you'll see some great pieces from earlier this year. Check out, for instance, this lovely piece about Andy on Parks and Recreation, written back in February. Or this one on Chummy from Call the Midwife. Both are parts of a "Characters We Love" series.

Which leads me to my next point: you all need to be watching Rectify. What an amazing show. So much is said through gestures, single images, the way a scene is laid out. The people behind this show get everything right. And of course, previously.tv has some smart writing on it. I just finished watching the episode that first aired a week ago and it blew me away, especially the last scene. Sarah D. Bunting says it best: "Don't let the pace fool you; Rectify is the unlaziest storytelling on TV right now."

So close...

I was less than ten minutes away from having the lawn completely mowed and the skies opened. I had to stop. Now there's this weird patch on the side lawn that will have to wait until tomorrow. It's driving me crazy (you know, "perfectionist, type-A personality" me).

Making matters worse, I pretty much waited all day until the skies looked clear and the radar on weather.com looked clear to get started. The best laid plans of mice and men...

So add one item to tomorrow's to-do list: finish that weirdly shaped patch of grass.

Done!

I finished my grading on Saturday morning, but things have been crazy busy since then. I know that doesn't seem to make any sense since one would think, "Hey, how can it be busy when the grading is done?" but trust me...things can still be busy! (Meetings, workshops, parents visiting...) So busy that I didn't even get to do my proper celebration complete with chair dancing. But better late than never. So here we go: a little Paul Simon.



Now I need to write that syllabus for Summer I...

Look who turned nine...

This little face greets me every morning as I finish drying my hair. He sits on the dresser and peeks around the frame of the bathroom door, meowing at me until I go downstairs and feed him. Actually, first he peeks around when I start to dry my hair. Then he gets scared of the hair dryer. Then he comes back when I turn it off. Then he gets scared when I spray some hairspray. Then he comes back. It's like this all morning. He follows me, meows at me incessantly, gets scared by something (the shower turning on or a splash of water from a faucet, for instance) and then comes back. If I am not too cranky with fatigue, I realize that it's actually pretty cute.

Anyway, my favorite "little gray baby" turned nine last week. He's still such a kitten to me and makes every day much sweeter.