Mimosa Pudica

I remember seeing these as a kid growing up. Even in our yard!

A moment of self-reflection

If I could just come to peace with the fact that I'm a passionate person, instead of working to keep it tightly sealed all the time, I would probably be more . . . at peace.

Yeah, not likely. 

Google is hard

I read this comment yesterday on the official blog for the faculty senate president at my institution:

No doubt you have often wondered, as have I, how it has come to be that P-16 educators are paid so little in our country. The main reason, I believe, has something to do with how career educators are attracted to the human-improvement project; in love with both the ideas and with the people likewise attracted to the project. Now, if food, clothes, shelter and books were just not so darn pricey.

He ends with a smiley face, just to let us know that he's not all that serious.

I'll grant that this is a small point, and a common one that people bring up:  teachers aren't paid enough.  One doesn't get into education to get rich, etc.  Fair enough.  But here's the thing:  on an official forum from an elected faculty official, hosted on the university website, might one make sure one's pronouncements are accurate? 

I googled for salary figures. It took all of two minutes to find the following from a government site:

national mean salary:  $38,330
national mean salary for educators:  $50,440

$12,000 more than the national mean for all professions.  Plus (if you are in a public institution) high job security, far better than average benefits, a relatively kind work schedule (i.e., not working the night shift, etc.).  To make a point like the one above, especially in a region of the country where unemployment and poverty is particularly high (and in light of a recent plant closing one county over)--well, I think perhaps he might better have just kept that little thought to himself.

I mean, don't we expect a bit more from tenured university professors?

Monday Update, Kitty Heaven Edition.

Rest in Peace, and enjoy the heavenly buffet, Watermelon Kitty.

Sad news:  Simon the Watermelon Kitty is apparently gone.  Given that he was fat and lazy and neutered, and hasn't eaten from his bowl in three days, I have to assume that he was killed somehow.  He was perfectly fine on Friday evening, and then, *poof!* 

I think I'm the only one who really misses him.



Well, to be fair, Fluffernutter misses him too . . . she's obviously lonely and has been extra insistent about being let inside.

I spoke at an induction ceremony yesterday . . . something I've never done before.  It's not the same as lecturing!  But!  I was brief, so it's a win.

Little Red is slowly getting better thanks to judicious and regularly delivered breathing treatments.  Every evening he falls asleep while he's sitting and getting it . . . so at least this simplifies bedtime for Number One Son and the two parentals.

While I was on campus doing various things yesterday afternoon, the children asked to see the wedding video.  At the very opening of the video, there are baby shots of the two of us.  Definitive proof:  The Youngest looks just like The Runner did at his age; Little Red looks just like me (aside from the hair color).  If I had the pictures, I would post them to demonstrate. 

The schedule last week was mostly simple; this week it gets complicated, with a work function, and a student-teacher conference for Number One Son, and zillions of meetings for me.  The weekend is free . . . for now.

In a sobering turn of events, my job as Faculty Senate secretary has been enormously complicated because I simply don't think El Presidente is doing his job properly . . . or even that he has his priorities straight.

Quote of the week:  On Saturday at lunch, while Number One Son was enumerating all the people he has to take care of (i.e., all the children in the extended family who are younger than he is...which is all of them...), Little Red remonstrated, "nuuhh uhhhh!  I can take care of myself!!"

Poor Little Red

Second night in a row he has fallen asleep while getting his breathing treatment.

In which Piers prepares a speech

I have to speak on Sunday.  Not preach!  no, no, no no no nononono.
Part of what I'm writing down today that I may use on Sunday:

I'll tell you what else this isn't about:  it's not about preparing yourself for real life. I would never think to insult you to say that it is! As many of you can attest, this college business is quite real enough, thank you.  Many of you carry jobs, maintain relationships both pleasant and otherwise, and manage crises involving keys, flash drives, cars, friends, grandparents, and any number of other real life things.  Some of you have faced pretty stiff pressure from home and are here in spite of it.  That's all real life, as is the studying and the lectures and the meetings and the movies.  Each of you, in short, has a story to tell full of joy and woe, and you're in the midst of telling it even now.

I will be brief.

Poet-king

Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,
To make my end too sudden.  Learn, good soul,
To think our former state a happy dream,
From which awaked, the truth of what we are
Shows us but this.  I am sworn brother, sweet,
To grim necessity, and he and I
Will keep a league till death.

(Richard II, 5.1.16-22.  My students don't like the play, but I love it.)

Tunay ng Pilipinas

This put a lump in my throat.

Some make a question,

graviores morbi corporis an animi, whether the diseases of the body or mind be more grievous, but there is no comparison, no doubt to be made of it, multo enim saevior longeque est atrocior animi, quam corporis cruciatus (Lemnius, lib. I, cap. 12), the diseases of the mind are far more grievous.

--Robt. Burton, Anat. Mel., 1.4.1.

Monday Update, Wise edition

I drove to Wise, Virginia.  I attended several presentations and gave one, then I came back to NWTN.

I shall now call my good friend JMA "The Ageless Wonder."  He looks exactly like he did in high school...it's amazing.  Thanks to him and his spouse WTA for putting me up as they do every year.

Thanks, too, to Honey for saving my bacon not once but twice.

A sample of what transpired this weekend

The xii weapons of spiritual battle which every man should have at hand 

when the pleasure of a sinful temptation commeth to his mind:

1. The pleasure little & short
2. The folowers grief & heuynes
3. The lost of a bettir thing
4. This life a dreme and a shadowe
5. The deth at our hand & vnware
6. Ye fere of impenitent departing
7. Eternal ioy eternal paine
8. Ye natur & dignyte of man
9. Ye peace of a good mynde
10. The gret benefites of god
11. The penyful cros of crist
12. The witnes of martyrs and example of seyntis.

In which Piers takes his annual eastward pilgrimage

An accurate representation of the orderliness of my mind

I start the drive today.  I hope Mollie the CR-V can make it as far as Nashville.  She's showing her age a little bit.

You know, doing this job is not all that difficult.  I enjoy the research I'm doing, and of course I enjoy the teaching and student interactions.  The difficulty comes in trying to take care of actual life while doing the business of this research/teaching/service gig. 

I actually understand how it is that some academics become strange, even unpleasant people--the work of creating balance is just too much, so they give up (that is, assuming they weren't strange, unpleasant people beforehand).

I realized last night that if something happens to me on this trip (not that I'm expecting it to!), neither Little Red nor the Youngest will have any actual memories of me.  I can't let them down.

"Accursed be a cowardly and covetous heart!
In you is villainy and vice, and virtue laid low!"
Then he grasps the green girdle and lets go the knot,
Hands it over in haste, and hotly he says:
"Behold there my falsehood, ill hap betide it!
Your cut taught me cowardice, care for my life,
And coveting came after, contrary both
To largesse and loyalty belonging to knights.
Now am I faulty and false, that fearful was ever
Of disloyalty and lies, bad luck to them both!

It was a Tuesday.  I was driving to Weldon Thornton's house to mow his yard.  I had NPR on just as it was switching to a BBC feed.  The Beeb's presenters mentioned that a plane had hit the south tower, and briefly commented that it was rather "fantastic" (in the sense of "surprising") that such a thing would happen.  I went on and mowed the grass.  Two hours later I turned the radio back on, and the world had been utterly transformed.

I cannot bring myself to watch the news today, because the talking heads on the TV cannot possibly be worthy enough to tie the shoes of those that died ten years ago, let alone talk about them.  In the face of such horror and heroism, the only fitting response is silence.

In which Piers goes to the Soybean Festival

And the youngest gets to ride the carousel.

Tonight's band:  Kansas!  Too bad the concert starts at 9:00.

In which Piers gets an invitation

From the email I received last night:

T____ T___, our president, nominated you to be our induction speaker and/or to become an honorary member of Phi Eta Sigma. Our induction fee is $40. You do not have to be inducted to be our keynote speaker.
 
It is my pleasure to invite you to be our keynote speaker and to be inducted into Phi Eta Sigma!
 
If you choose to speak, the traditional topic at our induction is the importance of achieving and maintaining exemplary undergraduate academic performance. The projected time to speak is approximately 10 minutes.
 
Please email me regarding your decision to be our keynote speaker and/or to be inducted.

I'm bemused, but I have accepted, of course.  It's an honor to be asked!

September is busy.

This week:  Soybean Festival. 

Next week:  conference in Wise, VA.

Following week:  lots of meetings.

...and then we're into October, and we all know what that month is like.

Fluffernutter

She is a little fuzzy ball of awesome.  Once or twice a day she sneaks into the house and streaks to Number One Kitty's food bowl.  Little Red then gets her, hoists her over his shoulder, and carries her back outside. 

She also likes to attack bare feet with her itty bitty (sharp!) kitten teeth.

Monday Update, Maximum Warp Edition

We are glad to have the issue with Number One Son that we do have.  To keep us humble, we have Little Red apparently showing some mulish tendencies in his day care class.  He does not like to be told what to do.  In this respect, he is exactly like his mother.

Speaking of Little Red, the "why would you put that in your mouth??" issue weighs heavily on us these days.  Just this past Saturday, he came in from the sandbox chewing on something.  I held out my hand and said, "what do you have in your mouth?"  He spat out this yellow foamy object and said, "earplug."  Sure enough, it was one of those foam earplugs . . . nicely swollen from all the moisture it had absorbed.  I wanted to take a picture of it, but apparently it got lost.  Probably ingested or something.

We are thinking of turning to sugar free gum for our orally-fixated child.

I have spent part of this Monday up at the office, catching up on some work that was starting to get away from me a little bit.  It has been more difficult than I had anticipated to get my feet under me this semester.  Some of it's an energy thing (I don't have much); some of it's a focus thing (what's that you're saying?); some of it's a matter of having harder work to do than before.  It's hard to be patient with myself.  I'm trying desperately to get up to speed.

We have officially branded this summer the summer of the garden FAIL.  The veggies just never seemed to thrive.  And then there was the fact that we got basically ZERO rain all of August.  Not sure what we did wrong, really.  We're looking into fall/winter crops.

I grilled/smoked a brisket for the very first time yesterday.  It worked out pretty well for a first attempt.  I would have posted that on Facebook, but I get kinda annoyed when I read statuses that provide nightly menus in exhaustive detail (you know the kind I'm talking about).  I like cooking, but I don't do it for recognition by my Facebook posse.

I was told this past week that I'm "kinda a legend" at this institution.  I didn't really know how to respond to that.

Adventures with Students, Vol. 35

I read a lot of student writing; I see a lot of student handwriting.  I know that many students develop their own style of script--some in cursive, most in an amalgam of print and cursive.  I am familiar with the tight, crabbed style that many college age men use.  I'm pretty good at interpreting even the messiest of manuscripts.  But every once in a while, I get handwriting that just gives me a headache even to look at it. 

I mean, seriously?

Adventures in Parenting, vol. 31

I had to help Little Red settle down.  It worked all too well.

What is it about the parental bed?

Sonnet 76

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent;
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love, still telling what is told.

--Wm. Shakespere