I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king!

Yes, yes.  I have two friends who have a remarkable ability to mimic accents.  They always make me howl with laughter, and they always make me quite envious.  I have no such gift.  Not even close.  Oh, sure, I can entertain my preschool-age children with a made-up accent if I want, but I can't do the brooklyn, or the jersey, or the french, or the cockney, or the latino, or the irish, or the scottish, or even the german! 

That's a skill I wish I had.  I probably find it so hilarious precisely because I can't do it.

I tried to pull one out a couple of times, but I had one of my more saucy students look me in the eye and say, "uh, don't do that.  You're not any good at it."  zing!

Speaking of my speaking voice:  this is day two of my teaching with essentially no voice except a rasp or a squeak.  It's a good thing that I rely so heavily on self-deprecating humor!  If I was wedded to the manly-man approach or something like that, this would be a disaster.  As it is, I can squeak away and not lose any cool-points. 

Whole drifts of pages

below, an incomplete list (in no particular order) of the books I have at home that are waiting to be read--books that I have purchased or asked for on purpose in the past couple of years:







Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day.
Johnson, The Invention of Air.
Pascal, Pensees.
Mattingly, An Imperial Possession:  Britain in the Roman Empire.
Tolstoy, War and Peace. (this may be my summer project)
Bolano, 2666.
DFW, Consider the Lobster.
McCann, Let the Great World Spin.
Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl.
Heller, Catch-22.
Sides, Ghost Soldiers.
Norman & Norman, Tears in the Darkness.
Mantel, Wolf Hall.
The Artist, The Philosopher, and the Warrior.
MVL, The Bad Girl.
Naylor, Mama Day.
Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.

I don't put these in to indicate anything other than how ridiculous it is that I have so many books in my own house that I am queuing up to read.   I certainly don't see it as a mark of virtue or anything like that!

I would put in all those near-obligatory Amazon links, but I'm too lazy.

What a lot a little music can do.

Dotted about the deck they doze or play,
Your loyal subjects all, grateful enough
To know their place and believe what you say.

Antonio, sweet brother, has to laugh.
How easy you have made it to refuse
Peace to your greatness!  Break your wand in half,

The fragments will join; burn your books or lose
Them in the sea, they will soon reappear,
Not even damaged:  as long as I choose

To wear my fashion, whatever you wear
Is a magic robe;  while I stand outside
Your circle, the will to charm is still there.

As I exists so you shall be denied,
Forced to remain our melancholy mentor,
The grown-up man, the adult in his pride,

Never have time to curl up at the centre
Time turns on when completely reconciled,
Never become and therefore never enter
The green occluded pasture as a child.

Your all is partial, Prospero;
My will is all my own:
Your need to love shall never know
Me:  I am I, Antonio,
By choice myself alone.


(Auden, The Sea and the Mirror, Part II)

Reaching for my wallet

Received the above in the mail today . . . it strikes me as unfortunate timing that I should get such a notice just as I'm teaching a dystopian novel (We) and digesting the commentary concerning the recently passed health care bill.  I don't know that I'm a cynic, but it's hard not to be skeptical about the state offering "comprehensive, affordable, and dependable benefits," especially when that phrase is followed by "must bring costs under control." 

Let me add that I know (since I've been admonished on this point before) that we have it very good.  My skepticism arises more from the way the state bureaucracy uses Ingsoc-type language. 

But at least they spent the time & money to make a snazzy new logo, prominently featuring the letters "TN"! 

**
Little Red is on a hunger strike or something:  our last four meals or so, he's barely eaten a thing. 

**
This was an incredibly busy week.  Highlights included:  getting hung out to dry in front of the whole faculty senate, throwing one composition class out for not completing a short reading, grading papers, interviewing two candidates for the position of dean, Alpertuesday, and Dad's Night at the day care.

**
We did take the boys to the easter egg hunt at the town park today . . . they enjoyed it.  Piers was less excited than the others about being around approximately 739426 of our closest West TN friends.   The boys discovered that those candy eggs (you know, the ones with the hard colorful shell that looks like plastic and tastes like . . . plastic) are inedible, and that marshmallow ropes are yummeh.

"The word doesn't scare me--limitation"

The old legend about Paradise--that was about us, about right now.  Yes!  Just think about it.  Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice:  happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else.  Those idiots chose freedom.  And then what?  Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains.  That's why the world was so miserable, see?  They missed the chains.  For ages!
 . . .
It was him, the wily serpent.  But we gave him a boot to the head!  Crack!  And it was all over:  Paradise was back.  And we're simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve.  None of these complications about good and evil:  Everything is very simple, childishly simple--Paradise!  The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians:  All those things represent good, all that is sublime, splendid noble, elevated, crystal pure.  Because this is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say, our happiness.  Here's where the ancients would stand around discussing things, weighing this and that, racking their brains:  Is it ethical, unethical?

(Zamyatin, We, Record 11)

**
Freedom means that we're not protected from our own tendency to self-destruction. 

all that cold ire, never once aired on a dare

Ham.  Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

In which Piers is swamped.

...

The one thing I'm going to say about the Big Vote last night

 . . . is actually from Ann Althouse:

The mistrust that made people say "no" will be processed into jadedness and aversion to politics. People will try to live good lives on their own and be fatalistic about how the reforms will affect them. My basic political orientation is aversion to politics, and I found myself thinking, as soon as the vote count reached 216 last night: Well, I hope some good comes of this and the bad isn't too horribly bad. 

If anyone gets exercised about the above statement, let me suggest that you get a life.  That is all.

Bear

I like to look at Spring Break as a new start (something about the old English idea that the new year actually begins in the Spring seems pretty compelling, really), but it can be hard when one wakes up on a Monday morning after an extremely uncomfortable, fitful-sleeping night to find it cold and rainy. 

Coffee helps a little bit, but not enough (!)

Still, I expect that the day will even out as I go from class to class and bury myself in all the details of another day at work.  I probably do better at work, actually.

Big Plans

End of break . . . as grey as the day. 'tis a bit of a let-down, mainly because I always go into a break with inflated expectations.

Got a few things done over the break.  "Learn how to parent three children" at the top of the list, along with some research, some paperwork, some housework and some correspondence that needed to be done.  I probably got to roughly half of the list.  "But," you'll say, "you do have an infant in your house; perhaps that ain't so bad?"  I'll say, "yes, you're very kind, but the other things still need to get done.  They'll just have to be done while taking care of the regular slate of work.   This coming week isn't going to be the most congenial for it, either:  there are multiple meetings of all sorts to attend.

I also got distracted by this prospect . . . there's a possibility that I will soon own one of these gorgeous singlespeed items, so I had to do a lot of "research":

. . . several things have to fall into place, though, so this is probably a long shot.

Saturday, wait--

here's the way it typically goes, especially now that the weather is warmer:

wake up--
make coffee & breakfast--
children eat two or three breakfasts, depending on what is put on the table--
attempt to write in the ol' journal--
facebook, blogs, etc.--
explain (again) to Big Brother that his programs don't play on Saturday--
referee toy-related conflict--
think about a shower--
(naaaaahh)--
wrangle children into clothing other than pajamas--
send children outside--
play something with children--
get distracted by some item of yardwork--
determine a trip to Rural King is called for--
tell Little Red to stop eating dirt--
stop yardwork project for lunch--
post-lunch naps and mental lull--
late afternoon sports viewing or errands--
scramble to find something to feed children for dinner--
eat while monitoring mayhem created by children eating (or not eating)--
wrangle children out of clothes and into bath--
splash, sploosh, etc.--
contend with children over tooth brushing and getting into bed--
read story--
collapse in chair--
think, "now, what did I intend to get done today?  What student papers did I bring home?"
sigh--
give up on work--
play video game or watch movie or watch sporting event (if football season)--
read silly novel before bed--

Hey, isn't the light okay,

Isn't the day alright?
Well, what if your head won’t raise to the sun?
Catch the rain on your tongue.

**
You sure should rise from the dead
When the sun shines through the branches
Lift your head
Take to the heavens
To the sky


**
I wanna swear it’s true but it’s hard to defend it
I know it comes from You and I don’t comprehend it
Love never fails
Mercy will prevail
I wanna swear it’s true but it’s hard to defend it

In the chill of a cruel word
In the nest of a wounded bird
In the shadow of doubt
In the smoke
In the smoke of a torch blown out

Piers and the bedtime adventure

The house erupts in utter chaos between 6:30 and 8:30 every night, because it is around then that we all endure the process of cleaning up and getting ready for bed.  Because we have two bedrooms for children, and three children, we've had to get Little Red and the Big Brother to double up in the older one's room.  Due to several constraints, we've had to do a makeshift trundle-bed situation (read:  a mattress on the floor).  This doubling-up of two preschoolers in one bedroom is not without its challenges, namely the tendency of Little Red to be wide open whenever anyone else is around.

Well, last night beat all.

Big Brother had already experienced a couple of big-time meltdowns before bed-time, then had another when the usual story privilege was revoked because of cleaning-up issues.  Once that situation had been calmed down, and the parents were busy guiding Indiana Jones and Short Round through the wilds of the Indian Subcontinent, and after Piers had already instructed Little Red that bedtime was not the time to be playing with Legos, we heard the unmistakable sound of an entire container of Legos being dumped out. 

sigh.

Piers removes Little Red to former bed; Little Red, taking exception to the changed plan, screams bloody murder--and for the first time, I hear anger in his voice.  Oh, there was an unpleasant scene.  He was already tired, though, so by about 9:30 or so (!!!) both boys were finally asleep.

Little Red was in my bed by about 4:30 this morning, laying half on me.  The boy is a little brick.

It's about that time.

...now that the weather is turning warmer (mostly).  This has nothing at all to do with my desire for this.  Nosiree.

Manila

shot taken from Antipolo--the view from my school--out behind the gym & overlooking the soccer field--used to look like this (there are a few more tall buildings now than their used to be).  Sunsets were especially remarkable.

Equilibrium

In the iconic red envelope in the mailbox today:  Equilibrium, a dystopian film.  I've started on a project of seeing as many of these as I can, partially because the genre is interesting to me, but also because I'm teaching the course and always have my students do an essay on a dystopian film. 

Other movies I plan to watch:

Logan's Run
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Battle Royale
District 9
Demolition Man
Idiocracy
The Omega Man
I am legend
Escape from New York
Brazil
Rollerball

Those are for starters, at least.  I'm open to suggestions (Brother D?  Blakbuzzard?  Haymbone?  any ideas, my movie maven friends?)  I need to go ahead and buy  Lang's Metropolis, and I ought to get my own DVD copy of Blade Runner, the two films I always use to illustrate visual points to the class.

Once they have that Netflix-streaming-to-the-Wii thing down,  I can watch some of these streaming online!  Isn't it amazing!  It will be, until the agents in dark clothes come knocking on my door.  heh.

Observations Upon Dropping off Children at Day Care

They both enjoy it a lot:  Little Red walked directly away, went around the corner and tried to put his jacket up all by himself.  This while all of his friends stood at the little gate like inmates and waited for him to join them.

Big Brother went in and immediately got mobbed by his friends.  His response was classic Big Brother:  he made a funny face, said "blaaahhhhhh," then walked away with them without a backward glance.

awesome.

I bike bike

Introductions

Over the past week, I've introduced the Big Brother to:

Tintin.

Calvin and Hobbes.

and today, the following Warner Bros. cartoon shorts (among others):
Duck Amuck
Robin Hood Daffy
What's Opera, Doc?
Long-Haired Hare

Better not go to the Forum today.

It's the Ides, the Ides, the Ides of March!

Today I get to be about 75% daddy and about 25% professor . . . spring break is a good time, but for some of us it's just a change of routine . . . the work doesn't just go away. 

Looks like it'll be sunny and cool for most of the week!  If I were really smart, etc., I'd get out on the bike.  We'll see if that happens.  In the meantime, I'll be paying attention to any soothsayers that happen to come my way.

Words to live by, perhaps?

. . . even if a little hard to believe?

Calvin's Dad

The Big Brother has discovered Calvin and Hobbes, which means that he is having us read the strips to him.  It's a real hoot for us, and he loves the pictures.

And yes, I do find it funny when the two worlds collide.  Calvin's dad is my hero.

ha! ha!  I kid, I kid, I kid.  (yes, and that's part of my problem . . . hee hee)

To remind,

750 Words

All writers out there ought to give this a try.  Fascinating concept. 

The idea is to use it as a "brain dump"--not a blog, not a status feed, but a way to track your own progress at getting your ideas on paper.  It can be as private as you want, and it has a neat feature that tracks the topics and moods you express most frequently.  I'm supplementing my pen-and-paper journal with this, and it seems to be working quite well.

In which Piers joins the 21st Century

now all we need is an LCD HDTV and a DVR. 
not likely. 

It's Spring Break

...just hanging on, hanging on.

The Garden of Forking Paths

]This looks incredibly awesome:

Julie sent out a reminder of the visit by the group from the University of Michigan but I want to remind everyone that the group is making an interdisciplinary visit: E/MFL, Music, Physics. March 22 (Monday we get back from break) at 3:00 in HU 312 they will be conducting a workshop on the intersection of music, lit, and physics using Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths.” You not only can find the story on the internet ( http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/rraley/courses/engl165/scanners/garden1.htm) but also lots of commentary (this is from the official Borges web site: http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/borges/garden.htm). Please invite your students and please come yourself. We will have some kind of refreshments.

Dr. Chris Hill explores rhetoric - Arts & Entertainment

Here's the link to the UTM Pacer article on my lecture. Just in case anyone is interested.

Dr. Chris Hill explores rhetoric - Arts & Entertainment

If we don't laugh . . .

from the Twitter feed of Alain de Botton:


I like my philosophers a little crazy – I don’t want them to escape human folly, I want them to describe and interpret it well.

oh, this will be a fun s***storm to watch!

 No, it wasn't me that sent the above response.  Though it is a good one.

Childcraft

So The Spouse has been having some minor medical mystery going on, and the word "Gall Bladder" has been tossed around by several medical professionals and by us adults in the house.

Apparently, the Big Brother is listening.  In the middle of the day yesterday, out of the blue, he marches into the room holding an old Childcraft book we picked up at a yard sale:

"Mommee, I found your gall bladder!  It's greeen!"

Sure enough, he turns to a page with an anatomical illustration, and points to the word "Gall Bladder."  He then turned to the page about where babies come from, which I'm sure led to an interesting conversation.

(the illustration above is an actual endpaper illustration from the Childcraft series)

Spring Awards Banquet

I'm glad to take responsibility for instituting the practice of having a spring banquet; I'm also glad to take responsibility for keeping the banquet focused on students rather than us old people. 

I'm glad to give credit to my colleague BP, who did the heavy lifting this year and last. 

She and I are both glad it's done, and glad that it has proven yet another success.

To review--

Little Red, whom I have often thought of as two years old anyway, is now actually two years old.  It is difficult for me to put in words just how different he is from his older brother. 

And how delightful that is.

**
Last week was exhausting:  emotionally, mentally, physically.  It kinda caught up with me on Friday.  I could have slept for most of the weekend.  Work, and a certain three-week-old, prevented that. 

**
Got a case of "Medical Mystery" at my house . . . The Spouse is under some malady, but it's proving difficult to pinpoint what it is.  We may be experiencing first-hand the lovely and fabled "round of medical tests proving inconclusive."  Let's hope not. 

**
I can tell that I'm due a little break . . . the brain is having a hard time making any contributions.  Reading a couple of interesting things, though--including William Morris's News from Nowhere, the famous English utopian romance.  My mom arrived over the weekend with some additional books, so I'm pleased to add another few volumes to the "incoming" pile. 

**
Unfortunately, some interesting reading isn't enough to make me interesting or pleasant . . . which may be the story of the week. 

Two Years

He is all boy, all redhead--

He is also the most friendly, good-natured, helpful little boy--

He looks just like his dad (apart from that hair), and acts just like his mother--

And every day, I'm thankful for him.

This came across the transom today

And since it's now in printed form, I guess I can share an excerpt from the letter I found in my mailbox:

 I'm pleased to inform you that a member of your faculty, Dr. Chris Hill, is a finalist for this year's UT Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher award. . .

According to my department chair, this is an award that one needs multiple nominations for.  In her words, "it's a really big deal just to be nominated."  

I Cannot Keep Decorum Personae

 

 

I don't take a good picture, really, but I thought everyone might like ocular proof that I actually did that lecture.  It was a good night--and if I'm willing to say that, then it must have really been a good night.

pause

Every once in a while it's good to have a night when you can just sit quietly.  Goodness knows I've needed this one.

Not all bad, then?

NYT article on the "Upside" of the Black Dog.

This radical idea — the scientists were suggesting that depressive disorder came with a net mental benefit — has a long intellectual history. Aristotle was there first, stating in the fourth century B.C. “that all men who have attained excellence in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in politics, even Socrates and Plato, had a melancholic habitus; indeed some suffered even from melancholic disease.” This belief was revived during the Renaissance, leading Milton to exclaim, in his poem “Il Penseroso”: “Hail divinest Melancholy/Whose saintly visage is too bright/To hit the sense of human sight.” The Romantic poets took the veneration of sadness to its logical extreme and described suffering as a prerequisite for the literary life. As Keats wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

Ah, yes.  Keats.  It would be Keats, wouldn't it? 


The bad news is that this deliberate thought process is slow, tiresome and prone to distraction; the prefrontal cortex soon grows exhausted and gives out. Andrews and Thomson see depression as a way of bolstering our feeble analytical skills, making it easier to pay continuous attention to a difficult dilemma. The downcast mood and activation of the VLPFC are part of a “coordinated system” that, Andrews and Thomson say, exists “for the specific purpose of effectively analyzing the complex life problem that triggered the depression.” If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments. Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.

That's a fine bit of writing right there at the end.

I learn. I have learned. I will have learned.

But when by the balance of experience it was found that the astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall into a ditch, that the inquiring philosopher might be blind in himself, and the mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart; then lo! did proof, the overruler of opinions, make manifest, that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have each a private end in themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called [Greek], which stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man’s self, in the ethic and politic consideration, with the end of well-doing, and not of well-knowing only:—even as the saddler’s next end is to make a good saddle, but his further end to serve a nobler faculty, which is horsemanship; so the horseman’s to soldiery; and the soldier not only to have the skill, but to perform the practice of a soldier. So that the ending end of all earthly learning being virtuous action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that have a most just title to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show, the poet is worthy to have it before any other competitors.

(Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy)

I can't see what you see

 

lyrics from a u2 song that has come to mean a lot to me:


When you look at the world
What is it that you see?
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees

I see an expression
So clear and so true
That changes the atmosphere
When you walk into the room

So, I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you, it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world

When the night is someone else's
And you're tryin' to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever wanna keep
When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now, do you?
Don't even look away

So, I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you, it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world

I can't wait any longer
I can't wait till I'm stronger
Can't wait any longer
To see what you see
When I look at the world

I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
When the rest of us choke

Tell me, tell me
What do you see?
Tell me, tell me
What's wrong with me? 

that last stanza is a killer.