my heart

Thinking of my all loved ones this New Year's Eve--I wish we could be together more often!

corazon

What's in the fridge before Christmas dinner in Zaragoza

There is a site called "What's in my fridge" that has pictures of exactly that: the contents of people's refrigerators, all over the world. Here is what was in the fridge before dinner was made for Nochebuena, Christmas Eve. On the left in back are the long razor clams, under them the crabs, then the langostinos and little clams on top of the mussels.

For the fruit salad, I cut up pineapple, oranges, apples, persimmons and a pomegranate, then added some orange juice and mosto.

Navidad

We've made the journey so many times, but there's always a wrinkle. This time it was the taxi that never came. We were waiting at my garage at work, where I could leave the car for free while I'm away, safe from being towed during "snow emergencies" (I just love that phrase). But the cab we called didn't come, and didn't come, and then it turned out to have arrived at the wrong address way across town. In order to make our flight, I drove to the airport and left the car in the rather expensive parking lot. But them's the breaks; we made it in time, there were no delays, even though flights were being canceled left and right due to storms in the rest of the country, and our transfer in Amsterdam went smoothly. It's just a long long trip. I had either seen or didn't want to see all the films on the personal video player, so I read a novel by Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net. I had read it when it first came out in 1988, when it was science fiction. Now, so many of the things he has predicted have come true (he makes his living as a "futurist" now) that it was extremely interesting to read it again.

Here in Zaragoza we had a lovely dinner last night, and everyone is gathering again for the midday meal. After the King's yearly speech at 9, it was time to eat. Quique outdid himself with the shellfish and fish: little sea snails steamed with a bay leaf, mussels, baby eels, giant prawns called langostinos, razor clams, and fish called lubina cooked in rock salt with potatoes and tomato. Everything was absolutely fresh, perfectly cooked, lightly seasoned so you could taste the different flavors of the seafood. The composed salad was a work of art. Of course there were also little aperitivos, and Florencio made sure we all cleaned our plates. We set the bowl of fruit on the table, but just looked at it and went straight to the turrón. In addition to the traditional almond nougat, there were various kind with chocolate, coconut, nuts. Rubén made a dessert with lemon sorbet and champagne put in a blender.

Today we will have more little canapés, little crabs called nécoras a fish/seafood broth, roasted squash, duck, a big fruit salad.

Everything is so expensive--the cost of living keeps going up here so fast. The joke making the rounds is that one of the agricultural ministers made a remark at an event promoting rabbit producers about how Spaniards should have rabbit as an alternative to more expensive dishes this Christmas.

This immediately became transformed into "Let them eat rabbit!"

and now everyone is making jokes about it.

Felices fiestas

Leaving winter behind...
Well, we are off to Zaragoza for the holidays. If we're lucky, we'll get one of those planes that has the personal movie screen and we can watch movies until our eyes boil over on the flight to Amsterdam. Then a quick hop to Madrid, with the hope that our bags make the flight with us. This time, instead of the metro-train-cab thing, we will be met by Blas and Loren who will drive us the 3 hours or so over the mountains, arriving just in time for Nochebuena and dinner for the family--Blas's parents, his brother Florencio and Angela, his sister Carmen and Quique and their children Alba and Ruben. I will be able to kick back while all the serious cooks in the family do their magic. Quique is the more adventerous chef, and he often handles the fancy composed salad and the seafood/shellfish. Florencio is great with meat, and Primi (Rosemary's yaya) always has some delicious caldo for Daniel's finicky stomach. There will be turrón, champagne, and probably some Christmas end-of-the-year special on TV. All this is just a warm-up for New Year's Eve, of course, and then there will be Reyes on Jan 6. I will smile, wash lots of dishes, and exclaim about how delicious everything is. My kind of holiday.

On a pain scale of 1-10, in which 10 is passing out, this was a 9

I"m too lazy to mess around with the template code to get the picture to line up in the header banner, but I decided to make a change.

Yesterday was my visit to the radiologist for the cortisone injection into the shoulder joint. Because I am allergic to iodides, and the tracing fluid has iodine in it, they decided to do the injection "by feel." They used the X-ray machine to locate the spot, drew an X, and then gave me a numbing agent. Then the doctor inserted the surgical needle. It hurt like hell, so he pulled it out and tried again. This time, he slipped it in the right spot, and pushed in the lidocaine and the meds. It's not a pleasant feeling, and they warned me that the joint capsule might hurt later because of the extra fluid, but we were all happy it seemed to work out, and that I didn't break out in hives or have an allergic attack.

I had to bring a driver, but I felt fine for the several hours afterward. Then the lidocaine wore off and I spent the rest of the evening in the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced in my life: worse than when I broke my foot, worse that the appendicitis, worse than childbirth (at least what I remember of it, because that memory of pain has faded, no doubt due to the intrathecal morphine I got at the end). I felt as if my entire arm and side were exploding with pain. No position made a difference. I could move it, but every move was agony. Since I had gone with some friends to see Sweeny Todd, I couldn't tell how much of my pain was physical and how much was psychic at having to watch Johnny Depp slit several throats in bloody close-up while singing about Joanna! Yikes. Talk about a nightmare. I love me some Tim Burton, but the throat-cutting was way beyond my gore tolerance level.

Once I got home, I called the after-hours nurse line to make sure that I wasn't having an allergic reaction (no problems breathing, no rash), took four aspirin and four sleeping pills and went to bed with an ice-pack. This morning, the agony is gone, it just hurts in a more normal way, as if I sprained something. They told me that I would have some discomfort, but they freakin' lied. They should have said, "Here, take this Vicodin, curl up in bed and be prepared for your entire right side to feel as if it is on fire." I'm still pissed that they didn't give me any pain-killers, but the worst is over. Now I have to see if the result is that I can increase my mobility by keeping up with my physical therapy routine. I refuse to think that this was a mistake, YET, but I have to wonder if he hit a nerve the first time he inserted the needle.

"Medieval Faire" in Portalrubio!

In the village of my daughter's ancestors, in Portalrubio, the community association sponsored a "feria medieval" this fall. It was like a mini Renaissance fesitval, with artisans, people in dress-up, activities for kids. The difference is that the village was really around in medieval times, and in many ways it probably hasn't changed that much. If you go to this link, scrolldown and click on the video!

More about frozen shoulder

Arrgh! the last push of the semester is always such a challenge! Although I have read the rough draft of all thirty senior projects in the last two weeks, I must reread them because they are often quite improved. I also promised I'd write comments for those who want them, and this time most of them want them. Then I have to find a balance between my good wishes for the nice folks who finished their degrees and my irritation at those who made the same mistakes I exhorted them not to make, didn't follow instructions, or in some other way got up my nose. I've found that I can manage to read two or three in a row, and then I must do something else. This week that something else has been going to a daily health appointment, physical therapy, the orthopedist, etc, to see how far I've come with my shoulder recovery.

The good news is that I have much more range of motion and less pain. The bad news is I still only have about half my range of motion, and a lot of pain. It's definitely frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, and I am scheduled to have a second cortisone injection in a few days, this time into a part of the joint that is harder to reach, so I have to go to radiology and find someone to drive me home (probably due to anaesthesia). Because I showed such marked improvement after the first injection, I'm very hopeful that this one will also make my recovery faster. I'm trying hard not to get down about the slowness of the process, which is just the nature of the recovery for this particular problem. It has been almost a year and a half since I started having these shoulder problems, and I miss dancing, biking, and being able to move my arms without pain. But I also just spoke to may sister who has rheumatoid arthritis, and is facing the choice of taking a very toxic medication if she wants to be able to walk very well, so I'm comparatively fortunate. My hope is that the time between the semesters will give me a break from some of the stress of work so I can rest up.

Poking around on the internet, I've learned that frozen shoulder, as oppose to rotator cuff impingement which was my earlier diagnosis, affects primarily women between the ages of 40-60, is often associated with diabetes (but all my blood work is normal), and is often of unknown cause. Of course! But it's likely that contracture, in part aggravated by subscapular trigger points, is a big part of it. In other words, I suspect that the underlying condition that causes the symptoms of fibromyalgia is a contributor, since the trigger points seem to be the result of contractures in locations other than the shoulder joint.

Memory Lane

Part 1/6

Part 2/6

Part 3/6

Part 4/6

Part 5/6

Part 6/6

Siouxsie and the Banshees

How the University Works--the big picture for the AFSCME strike

How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation is a book and a blog by Marc Bousquet. He brings a class analysis to the business of higher education as a workplace. He is also the editor of The Politics of Information, an e-book you can download and read at altx e-books
Here's the blurb for How the University Works, published by NYU Press:

This is the seamy underbelly of higher education — a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates all work long hours for fast-food wages.

Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses.

Burdened by debt, millions of undergraduates work multiple part-time jobs but quit before they earn a degree.

Meanwhile college presidents and basketball coaches rake in millions, even at schools where fewer than half of students are able to earn a degree in six years.

Assessing the costs of the corporate university at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of higher education.

I love Minnesota!

It is sunny and zero degrees Fahrenheit this morning. Time to break out the BIG coat the one that is like wearing a sleeping bag, and the big ugly knee high Sorrel boots i bought when I first moved here and didn't have a car. And the special mittens. I'm so glad I got the oil changed, the car checked out and washed yesterday. It will warm up to the toasty twenties in a few days, but the high today will probably be ten degrees.

I know this means a big storm somewhere else, and folks are having a hard time, but that purple bulge of cold air coming down from the North Pole is over our part of the weather map for a few days, so Minnesotans will all be smiling and there will be some "you think THIS is cold. Why I remember..." weather talk. Hey, they're doing it on the radio right now! The coldest time of the year is usually in January.

After about five years of relatively mild winters, now we are having some real cold before the holidays. Why, I remember that time I was taking the bus (no car) and got on the wrong bus and had to walk about a half a mile back to campus and it was -11. I wept bitter tears and they froze.

Oh yeah, just in case you forgot? we don't like your kind.

Just in case I'd forgotten what it was like to work in a hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist climate, some kind soul saw fit to remind me by anonymously leaving me two photocopied hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist articles, decrying the "corruption" of universities by women, gays, black people and leftists. This is not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. It's not random, because nobody else got them. I guess some people see me as very powerful, much more powerful than I actually think I am. Maybe I'm doing something right.

Dude is zany

The very first video I saw on the internet was Ze Frank's How to Dance Properly. I was a faithful viewer of the Ze Frank show. Alas, that project is over. But you can still watch episodes in the archives.
Inspired, no doubt, by Ze, are some of the most viewed videos on YouTube.
Evolution of Dance is one of the most viewed videos:



and we also like How to dance at a rave.

Merry mayhem with Beckett

Last night, the skies were clear and the temperatures went below zero. It was that kind of cold evening when your cheeks start to go numb. We went out because we were joining a crowd of fellow lovers of the work of Samuel Beckett for Beckett 101, an event in honor of the 101st anniversary of his birth. When I taught French many years ago, we used En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) as the first literary text the students read at the end of their second year. I think I taught it three times. Later I read one of his novels, Molloy, for a class, and became enamored of it as well. This was during a time when I was immersed in the works of high modernism, and Beckett appealed to me, although I never became a fanatic.

The Beckett fans, or "Beckett Heads" as Maria called us, were out in force last night. There was Guinness, Jameson's, beer and wine, dried fruit and nuts, cheese and bread (challah because it was Friday night), clementines and apples, dates and figs, and a giant sheet cake from the local grocery store with chocolate frosting and "I can't go on, I must go on" written on it. Our meeting place was one of those odd corners on campus that I had never seen before: a very old fashioned reading room of the type one sometimes discovers in odd nooks on campus, a wood-paneled room with round tables, study nooks, and a grand staircase leading up to a book gallery that ran around the upper level Large portraits of the doners looked down on the crowd. I think there must have been 60-70 people there, many of them students, others professors, and a few teenage kids who'd been kind enough to accompany their parents and participate in the readings (the Russian kids were the most Beckettian in their dress and demeanor!)

We began with a mass reading of the first scene of Waiting from Godot, with one half of the room taking the part of Vladimir and the other half Estragon. This got us warmed up for the main attraction, readings in 17 or 18 different languages. My dear friend Maria had sent out a call, and there were people who had volunteered to read the first or last scenes from Godot, passages from Watt, Krapp's Last Tape, and the last passage of The Unnamable in various languages. We proceeded in more-or-less alphabetical order: Bulgarian, Chinese and Japanese (alternating lines), Danish, English, Finnish, French, French and Latin, German, Greek (ancient) Hungarian, Irish and Korean, Mongolian, Papua New Guinea Talkpidgen, Russian, Spanish (us!), Swedish and Norwegian, Turkish and Urdu. I think I remembered all of them! Some people had done their own translations, as none existed in their language; a few people had memorized their parts, some acted out scenes while others just read. I had never heard several of these languages spoken before, and it was thrilling. Because many of us knew the texts intimately, and because we had all read one of them together, we could recognized and follow along with the shape of the text.
We ended with a mass reading of the end of the Unnameable, which was hilarious--some read along with the loudest voice, others read to themselves in their own rhythms, a few formed little groups that ended earlier or later than the group. Someone recorded the whole thing, and took picture--I hope to get to see them!

We had a few props--a branch for "the tree" that is part of the opening of Godot, a bowler hat that evoked the Chaplin/French clochard characters, even a tape deck for the two performers who did bits from Krapp's Last Tape. One reader had directed Godot in China, another was an actor who had performed in a version of Godot.

I was happy that my daughter was willing to come, and willing to stand up with me and read a scene in Spanish. We bought the souvenir T-shirt that has "I can't go on, I will go on" because she enjoyed the energy, the glorious sounds of all these languages, the enthusiasm and charm of each of the readers, and the chocolate cake.

"I had to get that anagram flame fiery!"

Featured on CitizenTube, the YouTube politics vlog
.
"If you anagram Presidential Campaign Diaries, it will spell out...."

ROFLMAO!

The collective imaginary: some anecdotes and scholarly events

This Halloween, my daughter and several friends continued their tradition of coming up with a group theme for trick or treating. The group is much bigger now, and included older and younger kids, so their efforts to decide by consensus were interesting to observe. They finally settled on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and picked their roles, came up with costumes, and gathered to get ready together at the friends' house that has become Halloween central. The book, and both movie versions were deemed acceptable sources of inspiration, and several kids had fun with the Ooompa Loompa possibilities. There was a Charlie and a Willy Wonka, and a few minor characters that the public might not have recognized, but that the kids knew very well. It was extraordinary to watch their process of coming to an agreement about the theme: first there were phone calls, email, and playdate consultations to brainstorm, then they all called a meeting to which their parents brought them. We, the parents, drank wine, yakked, and walked in and out of the living room, but basically stayed out of the way as they sat around and negotiated. When there was an impasse, smaller groups would split off and run upstairs to the attic to caucus. The objective was to figure out which shared literary and film combinations they all knew and could relate to: they'd already done Harry Potter and A Midsummer Night's Dream in previous years, to great success. This year's choices included Alice in Wonderland or Miyazaki anime films. The littler kids didn't know the Miyazaki stuff well enough to get excited about it, and one girl objected violently to Alice in Wonderland because in the book, there was a disparaging remark about pigs, and she likes pigs. Since they were operating by consensus and not a majority vote, she was able to stymie them for quite a while. Those who objected to Charlie (I can't remember why) finally gave in.

On Halloween, once they had all put on their costumes, we tried to take a group picture, but it proved difficult because someone had pulled up the YouTube Dan Meth video "Internet People," and all the kids were watching it and singing along. It combines a very catchy song with animated versions of some of the most popular or famous video clips of the last few years; (Leonardo Golden redid it with real clips). ALL the kids knew the song, and obviously got at least some if not all of the references it makes to popular videos or memes that circulate on the Internet. It struck me as they were singing along that their collective costuming and their participation in the YouTube imaginary were not that different, but what was noticeable was that the parents could "get" the themes they were coming up with for costumes, but only one or two of us were able to get the references in the video clip. I was able to catch a lot of them mainly because I've been making a conscious effort over the last two years to ride this wave so that I know what the kids are talking about (and I include my students in this group). Besides, I've always been a pop culture junkie, and now this has turned into a scholarly interest; my next conference presentation will be about the way Mexican writers and artists are using digital media, blogging, etc, to do more or less what my kid and here friends are doing: work together on a theme, create new performances together that reference wider cultural phenomenon, negotiate them, play with them, and then meet up in real life to share them with others.

The scholarly version of this Halloween "conference" is the upcoming ROFLCon, organized by a group of folks, some of whom are affiliated with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and coming in April. They are trying to get all the folks associated with widespread memes and viral videos to attend. One of their posts turned me on to this compilation song We Didn't Start the Viral which, like Internet People, registers the Jokes-in-common that are one phenomenon of our new collective imaginary.


ETA: This video is funny, but the comments are all about chocolate rain!

Blade Runner 25 years later

I've been on a kick with trying to remember those "sea change" moments or the pre-digital era. I have been reading science fiction since I was a lonely nerdly junior high school kid. The extrapolation of existing scientific or political or anthropological frameworks to imagine alternative worlds has always held as much fascination to me as the reimagination of the past. I remember the whole "cyberpunk" moment, as well as other shifts in the cultural imagination that were registered by science fiction and fantasy writers.

Wired has an interview with Ridley Scott about his definitive final director's cut of Blade Runner. Ultimate fan site BRmoviec.om has every detail about all the versions of the film, the Philip K. Dick story that inspired it.

Visually, Scott, along with writer William Gibson, cite Moebius (french artist Jean Girard) as a major visual influence.