Memorial Day Weekend, by the numbers

12:   aggregate number of hours put in on yard work since Friday.
4:  aggregate number of hours I've put in reading and looking at my computer since Friday.
5:  band-aids applied to various little boy appendages.
0:  trips to Rural King (shocker!!)
1:  nap for me all weekend (shocker!!)
25 or so:  miles put on the bike
10:  times per night we have had to repeat the following phrase to Little Red:  "go back to your room."
4:  hydrangeas planted
2:  azaleas transplanted

Good cable, to enforce and draw

The yard will absorb as much work as you can throw at it, and the children will absorb as much attention as you have to offer.

The coming week will be a busy one, not in the yard so much--but in most other respects. Got big-time reading and writing to do, especially between now and the end of the coming month.

Feels good to have been so constructive this weekend.  I only wish I could have had more time/energy to devote to reading.

Ups & Downs

"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world"
-Helen Keller

What a crazy couple of weeks it's been.  The start of summer (or, lately, the gap between commencement and the start of the Governor's School term) always throws me for a loop, because the routine is broken; I've got stuff to do in all sorts of areas and find it hard to focus (even more so than usual).  People ask if I'm enjoying my time off, and I just kinda chuckle.  No time off, not when there is Important Scholarship Waiting To Be Done.

Speaking of which:  right now it's back to Thomas Nashe.  Ah, it's like talking to an old friend.

Reading War and Peace is a bit easier and frankly more enjoyable if you can get over the fact that you're reading War and Peace.

Little Red is going to have a ton of freckles by the end of the summer.  He also likes pancakes:

Then there's this:  Big Brother with a Grade Two reader:

This video is off the record. It never happened.

Here comes the science--

Below, a conversation I overheard while walking past the boys' bedroom door:

BB:  You have to be careful of lightning!

LR:  Whyee?

BB:  Because it could hurt you.

LR:  Whyee?

BB:  Because lightning is SHARP!

Number One Son,

a.k.a., "Big Brother"

He's frighteningly like me:

• shy in company,
• sometimes needs to be by himself,
• gets utterly absorbed in what he's looking at,
• cautious about new things,
• plenty of imagination,
• big head (literally),
• bookish to a fault.  Just now:  we sent him back to his room to change his clothes after church.  Upon looking in on him, he was squatting on the floor in just his tighty-whiteys, reading a book.

not quite Appleton House.

Fair quiet, have I found thee here,
And innocence, thy sister dear!

How well the skillful gard'ner drew 
Of flowers and herbs this dial new ; 
Where from above the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
And, as it works, th' industrious bee 
Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!





(with apologies to Andrew Marvell)

Caturday

Went out looking for a new sofa today--one not hopelessly soiled by 14 years of second-owner use and toddler abuse.  Pickings are slim where we live, but we may have found something that will work.  It's guaranteed not to sleep as well as this one does.

Hissy cat mystery solved!  It happened again last night, while we were playing Lego Star Wars (Episode V) in honor of the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back.  Anyways, we heard a catfight out in the garage, so I went & opened the door and in streaks a most bottlebrush-tailed Sidney.  I look out of the garage door, and there stands a feline shape.    Aha.  This is what happened last time, too:  Sidney got in the fight with one of the local cats, and the scent of the other cat on Sidney's fur was setting Simon off.  Sure enough, as Simon approached Sidney last night, his fur got big and the funny noises started.  They settled down more quickly this time. 

Little Red has discovered the word "whyeee."  Now, no matter what we tell him, it's "whyeeee?"

Flip video camera.  If you don't have one, get one.

Recipe for success, i.e., not having a rotten, grouchy day:  have things to do and get out and do them. 

"Now all the truth is out . . . "

" . . . Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

(Yeats, 1914)

papaya

Found some at the Wal Mart in the neighboring town just across the state line . . . bought one on a whim, remembering how good they can be.  Of course, being papaya, they can also be pretty bland . . . and this being West Tennessee, not Southeast Asia, it should be obvious how good it tasted.  And no calamansi to put on it, either, darn the luck!

Big-time reading

Here's the summer reading project; we'll see if I can get it done in three months, or if it takes me the remainder of the year.  One of the difficulties in a project like this, aside from the difficulties inherent in reading Tolstoy in general, is that the mass of names and languages and footnotes feeds into every grad-school reading habit I have:  i.e., it's easy to lose sight of the forest because I'm too busy trying to identify all the trees. 

Still, I'm excited to be reading it--these two translators are consummate artists.  I loved their edition of Anna Karenina.

I got my grades

Three interesting comments from this semester's batch of student evals (i.e., comments other than the usual "he's very enthusiastic about what he teaches"):









"his class was very enjoyable and is the only one I put my phone away for." (HAHAHAHA)

"I did not like a single thing about it.  It was horrible.  I do not need this for elementary education so I basically just wasted my time, and brought my GPA down."  (um.  way to play to stereotypes)

"got me hooked on Donne especially, and Paradise Lost" (FTW!)

Observations Upon a Second Day at Home

The yard will take all you can throw at it and then some; it usually takes three days' work to do a proper job of getting everything done, especially in the Spring when everything is growing like crazy.

There was an interesting dispute between Big Brother and his mother this morning:  he wanted to read a book while outside; she thought that wouldn't be a good idea.  I explained that bookish lads like Big Brother are just that way.  He got to take his book out there; he didn't read it a terribly long time.

New plants this year:  broccoli, cauliflower, kale, pumpkins, black-eyed susans, lavender, creeping phlox, more roses, more azaleas, gladiolus, forsythia.  A couple of the azaleas need to be transplanted, as do the peonies, and the hostas desperately need dividing.  Still doing the impatiens out front; more volunteers this year than ever.

Yardening can be liberating in the focus & exertion it demands.

More Antique Roman than a Dane

HAMLET: What ho! Horatio!

 [Enter HORATIO]

HORATIO: Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET: Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
 As e'er my conversation coped withal.

HORATIO: O, my dear lord,--

HAMLET:                   Nay, do not think I flatter;
 For what advancement may I hope from thee
 That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
 To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
 No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
 And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
 Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
 Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
 And could of men distinguish, her election
 Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
 As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
 A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
 Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
 Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
 That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
 To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
 That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
 In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
 As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--

(picture:  Delacroix)

"The dooms of men are in God's hidden place."

"Then Conchubar, the subtlest of all men,
Ranking his Druids round him ten by ten,
Spake thus: 'Cuchulain will dwell there and brood
For three days more in dreadful quietude,
And then arise, and raving slay us all.
Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
That he may fight the horses of the sea.'
The Druids took them to their mystery,
And chaunted for three days.
                                               Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide."
--Yeats (1893)

(When the brain is tired, poetry can be a good balm.  Just posted final grades, and now I'm fielding the inevitable "questions.")


(picture:  Cuchulain depicted in the Gundestrup Cauldren)

Best get cracking on a couple of these.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-Robert A. Heinlein

Announcement

message heard, loud & clear.

From a Monday of Grading

The following statements strike me as sentiments that came from secondary sources, and I'll bet that if I were to ask the students what these sentences mean, I'd get blank stares:

"His lyrics have a mixture of Cavalier grace, with metaphysical wit, and complexity."


"writers like Pope carefully cultivated a style that would achieve the maximum of clarity, precision, and energy."


"he attacked people's most prominent bad habits, and he made the abstract concrete."


"This allegorical poem was not published until 1596 and it is the longest and most important poem in the English language."

Bittersweet:  time to say goodbye to some students I've known for a long time.

It's not the armor; it's the person wearing it.

Only two people out of a class of 30+ have correctly identified what a "Carpe Diem" poem is all about (i.e., "seize the day" by "seizing me.")  They all want it to be inspiring and high-minded and Dead Poets Society and stuff.  Don't want to talk about sex on an exam, I guess.  Can't blame them.

I love reading a self-aware, conversational exam.  Of course, that's what got me in trouble on my MA exam, for "flippancy."

I could use a cup of that wine.  Without Iocane Powder, plz.

Nuggets of wisdom . . .

...from final exams I'm grading:

"he finally discovers that happiness where [sic] you make it, it can't be found."

"The ultimate aim of erotic love is not to actually hold possession of love, bit it is to be loved.  Desire and erroticism play into effect because erotic love is purely sexual or desirable.  A person wants to feel needed and have a reasons for excitment.  Erotic love is a game to the heart, just a god time."

"Sidney did not agree, he wanted people to pleasure themselves in rations and to truely love someone."

"The fear of striking out shouldn't keep you from the game."

"pretty people should make babies for us to coo at rather than wasting their youth!"

Byzantium

"That is no country for old men.  The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
--Those dying generations--at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies."

(Yeats, 1828)

Indicators

I've been in a lot of meetings.

I've got a lot of grading to do.

LOL, ecommerce

I love the name of this bike shop, and I love the fact that this is an online store devoted to one component of one class of bicycle.

These Gravitas brakes do look bad-ass.

Perhaps there's a connection?

I played Resident Evil last night, seeing as I was alone at the house and could deal out carnage at will.

And then my dreams were violent and scary.  I barely got away with my life!  Seriously.

Dusting.

I read today about "student incivility" being aimed at young and female professors, mostly.  Really?  I had no idea!  Imagine that!  In other news, I tend to not get exercised about "incivility" . . . people are going to be rude when they feel like they have something to gain from it.  Plus, excessive concern (or faux-concern) about "civility" often leads to nasty things like speech codes and abrogations of First Amendment Rights. 

I wonder how old I look, really.  Do I look ridiculous on days like today, when I'm in jeans, t-shirt, & chucks?

Then again, who gives a crap?










Is it possibly because there's no political angle that the Nashville flood is getting relatively zero nationwide media coverage?  I was at a lunch yesterday and heard some things that made my hair stand on end.

I would get distressed if it weren't such a common occurrence:  I read a stack of papers that would be pretty good, if it were only the case that the students had paid attention to revising/proofreading.  Alas.

Ah, Facebook.  Every day I'm getting close to delete-y on you.  The only reason I'm sticking with you is that I don't want to lose touch with all the people.  I've done that too much in my life as it is.

Yeah, you heard me right.  I know, I know, I'm a pessimist, but still:  I think there's something to the notion that much of my life has been characterized by loss of those I care about.

Ink-stained

It's gotten to that point in the term, where my professional obligations boil down to two things:

a.  grade student papers
b.  write.  Write scholarly material.  Write exams.  Write comments on papers.  Write letters that I've been putting off "until the term is over."

here I sit, putting it all off--of course.  On the upside, my office is getting cleaner!

Don't read this one.

subtitle:  caught between heaven and hell.

Self-love. -- The nature of self-love and of this human Ego is to love self only and consider self only. But what will man do? He cannot prevent this object that he loves from being full of faults and wants. He wants to be great, and he sees himself small. He wants to be happy, and he sees himself miserable. He wants to be perfect, and he sees himself full of imperfections. He wants to be the object of love and esteem among men, and he sees that his faults merit only their hatred and contempt. This embarrassment in which he finds himself produces in him the most unrighteous and criminal passion that can be imagined; for he conceives a mortal enmity against that truth which reproves him and which convinces him of his faults. He would annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as far as possible in his own knowledge and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his attention to hiding his faults both from others and from himself, and he cannot endure either that others should point them out to him, or that they should see them.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognise them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive us; we do not think it fair that they should be held in higher esteem by us than they deserve; it is not, then, fair that we should deceive them and should wish them to esteem us more highly than we deserve.

Thus, when they discover only the imperfections and vices which we really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; they rather do us good, since they help us to free ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be angry at their knowing our faults and despising us; it is but right that they should know us for what we are and should despise us, if we are contemptible.

Such are the feelings that would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. What must we say then of our own heart, when we see it in a wholly different disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth and those who tell it us, and that we like them to be deceived in our favour, and prefer to be esteemed by them as being other than what we are in fact? 

 .  .  .  

How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man, which feels it disagreeable to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some measure it were right to do to all men! For is it right that we should deceive men?

There are different degrees in this aversion to truth; but all may perhaps be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable from self-love. It is this false delicacy which makes those who are under the necessity of reproving others choose so many windings and middle courses to avoid offence. They must lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, intersperse praises and evidence of love and esteem. Despite all this, the medicine does not cease to be bitter to self-love. It takes as little as it can, always with disgust, and often with a secret spite against those who administer it.

Hence it happens that, if any have some interest in being loved by us, they are averse to render us a service which they know to be disagreeable. They treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the truth, and they hide it from us. We desire flattery, and they flatter us. We like to be deceived, and they deceive us.

So each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us farther from truth, because we are most afraid of wounding those whose affection is most useful and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may be the byword of all Europe, and he alone will know nothing of it. I am not astonished. To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it makes them disliked. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the prince whom they serve; and so they take care not to confer on him a benefit so as to injure themselves.
This evil is no doubt greater and more common among the higher classes; but the lower are not exempt from it, since there is always some advantage in making men love us. Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart.

Pascal, Pensees 100