Monday Update, exam week edition

The strangeness of exam week never fails to impress.

Glad to say that The Runner finished another half marathon this past weekend.  She was not pleased with her performance in the race, but I think that running any half marathon at all is pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, I was at the in-laws' house with the children . . . and I had intended to grade a whole mess of papers.  I would have done that, but I had managed to leave 60 or so of those essays sitting at home in my bedroom.  Not very well done.

So here I sit at my desk, after a good ten hours at work, waiting for the end of this little "exam period" so the remainder of my first year students can turn in their final assignments.  Number One Son is having a baseball game at the moment, and The Runner is limping through the rest of what has been a stressful day.

We got The Mutt back from the kennel yesterday . . . and she was absolutely WILD.  Glad she had a good time, but it was also a stern reminder that we will have to be working with her for months to come. 

Another colleague note from a meeting late last week:  if in a meeting one feels the need to preface comments with a phrase like, "This isn't a big deal, but . . . " or "This is probably not important, but . . . ":  one should not continue speaking.  One should take one's own words seriously . . . and shut the pie hole.  Lest someone like Piers speak up with a snarky growl.

Self-importance drives me absolutely insane.

Colleagues, episode 2

Had a retirement reception for one of my department colleagues this afternoon.  Sparsely attended, of course.  It caused me to wonder about the trajectory of my career:  at the end of it all, is that what it'll amount to?  Some coffee and other beverages, a fruit plate, and mixed nuts? I don't expect to be worshiped or anything, but one likes to think that one's efforts are counting for something significant. Maybe little retirement receptions aren't a good measure of a career well-spent.  On the other hand, she's more than ready to be out of here, so it probably made no difference to her one way or the other.

Colleagues, episode 1

From an email advertising a political discussion forum to be held today:

Colleagues:

From Ted Nugent’s comment that he’ll be in jail or dead or in jail if President Obama is reelected, to the alleged comments SGA members made recently stating that Chancellor Rakes could “suck it,” where has all of the civility gone in public discourse? It seems, instead, that public discourse has turned into a morass of vitriol where competing sides of a debate degenerate into a pool of ad hominem attacks and shouting matches where no meaningful and constructive discussions can occur. Where is all of this hate hubris come from? Are we doing enough in the academy to teach our students to be good citizens? What can we do to promote civil discourse?

Join us today at noon in UC 125 as Dr. _____________ tackles this troubling issue. The article under discussion is below. 

I would like to add one question:  Where has all the art of not overwriting gone?  Are we all just now at the mercy of whichever colleague wants to write melodramatic emails?  It seems, instead, that emails are now an opportunity for one to take one's wits for a walk and to throw in an inkhorn term or two if one can.

Also:  even a cursory understanding of rhetoric, or of political history (or just plain history), would allow one to recognize that "civility" has never been a particularly strong point in American politics.  It is also my observation (anecdotal only) that "civility" is only of concern to most academics when their favored politicians and policies are the ones being pilloried.

In which Piers gets five stitches in his lip

"sutura" is Spanish for "suture"

The word is "mucocele," and today I had my second one removed.  It's an interesting experience to watch as the surgeon snips and slices a bloody mass out of your own lip.  Here's hoping two in the same spot is plenty.

In an unrelated development, I had my students correcting my Spanish today!  What the heck!

The situation as of now

1.  Little league is a "hit," no pun intended. Number One Son is having a great time with his team and at the games.  His coaches are encouraging, his attitude is bright and cheerful, and the facilities in our town are pretty nice.  If only they weren't having games at 7:30 pm on school nights.

2.  Casey is now living at our house--we picked her up yesterday.  She is a three month old lab/husky mix with an incredibly sweet temperament.  She loves the children, and apparently loves the dogs next door.  Our first night in the crate was accident-free.  She has been going leash-free in the back yard all afternoon.  Little Red AND Number One Son are both absolutely in love. 

3.  The main trainer of this sweet puppy will be The Runner, since she is the one who is at home all day most days.

4.  I spent part of this week effectively blind--something got a hold on me on Saturday evening, and by Sunday evening, I was so bad off that I was sitting in my darkened bedroom with a cold compress over my eyes.  My eyes were completely red.  We thought pink eye for sure.  I suffered my way through teaching on Monday and went to the doctor on Tuesday.  Diagnosis:  super-ultra allergic reaction.  Thank goodness for steroid eye drops.

5.  This is the penultimate Friday for the semester.  It doesn't seem possible that we are done so soon, but isn't that the way time works?  Always shortened in retrospect.

In which Piers gets implicated

Here is a "letter" copied from another publication that is currently making the rounds by email at my institution.  My name is attached, though obviously it's not me.  I've already had to correct one colleague who apparently took umbrage.

Though I have to admit, if I were going to write something sarcastic, I could do worse than this performance.

Zero-sum

Reading and teaching portions of Paradise Lost for something like the 14th straight semester, I am struck that one of Satan's most contemptible qualities is his unwillingness to see happiness as anything other than a zero-sum game.  If the Son is exalted, it must also be a denigration of Satan.  If Adam and Eve have Paradise, it must have been taken from stuff that was rightly Satan's.

I always ask my students if they know people whose reaction to another person's good news is to be either cynical or envious . . . as if others cannot be happy on their own terms without taking happiness or goods from someone else. 

I wonder how many times I have a similarly contemptible attitude, even though I try to remember to be unselfish.  Actually, I hope it's fewer times than I'm tallying in my head.

Keep Pedaling!

via

In which Piers hears an odd story

Yesterday, just before I was due to leave work, one of my former students came in to talk for a bit.  He has a habit of doing this, and sometimes he overstays his welcome, but oh well.  He came in for a serious reason, though--he had experienced something extraordinary.

In his Ethics class, taught by a colleague I know fairly well, the discussion had recently turned to the effects of immortality on moral behavior.  This student had voiced the opinion more than once that if humans were to extend life indefinitely, they might very well end up monstrous--because life would cease to have meaning.  As he put it, "personally, I don't know if I wouldn't end up being murderous, simply because I had gone nuts."

Perhaps not the wisest words to speak in a class, but in a case of hypothetical reasoning, certainly even an unpleasant or weird response isn't totally out of bounds? 

This instructor reported this student to the campus police for uttering "threats;" they tracked him down in the University Center, escorted him out, and subjected him to a search of his belongings and to questioning.  Fortunately, he cooperated and didn't give them any reason to get nervous. I am not at all comfortable with this treatment of a student who did nothing more than respond perhaps too honestly to a classroom hypothetical.

It's nothing more or less than the human condition

In the age of Big Pharma, we have, of course come to medicalize such thoughts — not to mention just about every other whim and pang. When I once confided with a physician friend that one of my children seemed to overheat with anxiety around tests, he smiled kindly and literally assured, “No need to worry about that, we have a cure for anxiety today.” On current reckoning, anxiety is a symptom, a problem, but Kierkegaard insists, “Only a prosaic stupidity maintains that this (anxiety) is a disorganization.” And again, if a “speaker maintains that the great thing about him is that he has never been in anxiety, I will gladly provide him with my explanation: that is because he is very spiritless. ”

Kierkegaard understood that anxiety can ignite all kinds of transgressions and maladaptive behaviors — drinking, carousing, obsessions with work, you name it. We will do most anything to steady ourselves from the dizzying feeling that can take almost anything as its object. However, Kierkegaard also believed that, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”

In his “Works of Love,” Kierkegaard remarks that all talk about the spirit has to be metaphorical. Sometimes anxiety is cast as a teacher, and at others, a form of surgery. The prescription in “The Concept of Anxiety” and other texts is that if we can, as the Buddhists say, “stay with the feeling” of anxiety, it will spirit away our finite concerns and educate us as to who we really are, “Then the assaults of anxiety, even though they be terrifying, will not be such that he flees from them.” According to Kierkegaard’s analysis, anxiety like nothing else brings home the lesson that I cannot look to others, to the crowd, when I want to measure my progress in becoming a full human being.

--from Mockingbird.

Let's talk about symptoms

There is the "anhedonia" phase.
Then there is the "I just want to sleep" phase.

Then there is the strange "I don't give a sh*t" phase.

Meanwhile, the disorder in my office and at home grows & grows.

Lapis Lazuli

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay. 

--Wm. Butler Yeats

I owe everyone an apology

...The Black Dog is making me a bit self-absorbed these days.  One of its greatest tricks is to make me want to isolate myself, which makes me feel isolated & lonely & self-pitying, which is a self-reinforcing cycle even while I try to fight it.  Trying to make it a day at a time right now.

How fragile a thing . . .

 . . . is trust.

Monday Update, Post-Florida Edition

In short, I could use about another week of break.  This past week was grueling.  I have learned that traveling like I did this past week really takes a toll on my energy and my mind.  Sarasota is a wonderfully nice city--but also awfully expensive to visit.

Seriously, I feel like I need to find a reset button.  It's hard not to get overwhelmed by the simplest things these days.

I have learned some things recently that are hard to swallow.  Best to choke them down, though.

I guess people get used to it

Thoughts upon completing this trip to The Sunshine State, mostly involving the interminable airport parts:

1. The TSA shoe tango is utterly absurd.
2. Car rental may be the most baroque process ever devised by man. Trying to return the damn keys was an ordeal...and apparently the agent got frustrated with me because I parked the car in a spot designated for the company from which I was renting...which was apparently the wrong place to park it.
3. Traveling is brutally expensive. Why? Because when waiting for flights at the terminal, we will pay whatever they want to charge us for our coffee/cocktails/beer/soda/water.
4. How come the Sarasota airport has a B terminal but not an A terminal?
5. Props to this airport for the free wi-fi. Or for hiding the charge in the ticket prices, etc.
6. Why do people dress this way?? Eeek!
7. I think I become almost invisible when I travel by myself. You could probably put your hand right through me right this very second.

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Little Red

Tomorrow is his 4th birthday, and I'll be heading to Florida. 
I would rather spend the day with him.

In which Piers takes stock

• Papers to grade:  meh.
• Conference presentation to write:  uhhhhh...laterrr....
• Prepare for class tomorrow:  nah...I'll just wing it.
• Catch up on reading:  ooh! Facebook!
• Committee work:  ye gods, no.
• Call Sodexho for banquet arrangements:  I HATE THE PHONE.
• Find and roust out the beastie that is marauding in our garage at night:  aw hell, really??
• Write blog entry:  okaaaay, fiiiine.

Shakespeare only gets better with age

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

In which Piers bites his truant pen

I am seriously incapable of sustained concentration these days. To the left is the bulk of what I did today. Aside from teaching, that is.
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