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.

Byrne/Eno

Crooks and Liars, one of my daily stops on the blogroll, features a Late Night Music club, with regular contributions from Howie Klein (super influential founder of 415 records, music producer, DJ, music chronicler,and blog host of Down with Tyranny!). He posted a cut from Brian Eno and David Byrne's 1981 collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This album was absolutely ground-breaking in its use of sampling, in the pre-digital era, especially in its use of sounds produced with objects and voices found on the radio. Like many others, I played it over and over: it was hypnotic, rhythmic, like tuning in to the radio late at night and hearing several stations at once. It's right up there with Eno's Another Green World as one of my favorite musical events of all time.

In 2006, Byrne and Eno released a new version of the record, with added tracks. The also have put up a site where the entire album and assoicated videos, interviews and press are all available through a Creative Commons license for download, remixing, and sharing. What generosity!

flarf flarf flarf spimes

Do not read or listen if you are easily offended. No, really, I mean it.


intentionally bad poetry + ludicrous obscenity + the Internets= flarf

The Double-Tongued Dictionary has an entry on flarf.


Gary Sullivan (no, not that Gary Sullivan)tells us about flarf in Jacket Magazine.

Listen to the MPR podcast about flarf

Charles Bernstein, poet and scholar, teaches about flarf.

BoingBoing posts about flarf.

Science fiction writer and for real prescient dude Bruce Sterling discovers flarf.

He is the guy who thought up SPIMES.

On alienation and faculty life

In his blog "Reality Check"John Lombardi, one of the academic bloggers who writes regularly for Inside Higher Ed, has an extremely smart piece called Deconstructing Faculty Work on the major changes that have occurred in academic life and the ways the institutions are measuring our "productivity." He shows how the life of the tenured professor has been reconceived around the metrics of the faculty activity report, and how this has changed relationship between tenured faculty and non-tenured, or contingent, faculty. I think he is absolutely right about how this change is redefining our entire enterprise, affecting the way we teach, the way we conduct research, and how the institution is forcing us to comply. What he doesn't mention is the toll this taking on the mental and physical health of people who have made a lifetime commitment to the academic life under an older model, one which we internalized in order to achieve success in a highly competitive and insecure world.
Yesterday I had an argument with colleagues about how the College was dictating the content and standards of our first year language courses, how the fear of bad student evaluations has warped the way our non-tenured track faculty teach, and the impact this has had on the quality of the preparation of our students.
If the College wants us to dumb down our language courses so the non-majors who are only taking the language to satisfy their language requirements don't get mad, if our third-year students are being taught by instructors who are afraid to hold them to higher standards because they'll get dinged on evaluations, and if our faculty are so unaware of this dynamic that they think they can redesign the curriculum AS IF our students were of the same quality as our aspirational peers (those institutions where we got our degrees) then the experience of teaching our under-prepared students is going to be extremely frustrating.
I highly recommend reading it to understand the disconnect between what most of us were trained to expect and what our jobs really are. We will either take this change into account as we plan our curriculum and think about our work, or we will be buffeted by these winds.

For the institutions, however, the deconstruction of faculty work offered a great incentive to reduce their commitment to an inflexible work force of tenured faculty and increase their investment in short-term, highly efficient faculty dedicated to specific purposes for specific periods of time and whose productivity and performance could be reliably maintained. The argument about whether it’s better to have part-time or full-time contingent faculty is surely important, but it may obscure the remarkable transformation of much academic commitment from an investment in a person who produces many products over a lifetime to the investment in specific products that ensure the competitive position of the employing institution.

Muffin is a star!

Muffin is our guinea pig in Zaragoza. She (we think she is a she) is much plumper than she was before she spent several months being cared for by Daniel, a friend from school. Apparently, she was very well fed, because now she says "mweep mweep mweep!" every time someone opens the fridge. If you look closely, you can see her little guinea pig toes.

Two laughs a day, guaranteed

I can has cheezburger? and Cute Overload

Saludos zaragozanos

They don't have Thanksgiving in Spain, but we got a message from there just the same. Alas, the store was out of brussel sprouts! But it was full of happy people, humming and anticipating their wonderful meals. So I've made a side dish of chard, mushrooms, with raisins and pine nuts instead, along with my mother's fresh cranberry sauce. If my daughter doesn't stop sneaking tastes of the cranberries, there won't be enough to take to the potluck!

Here is the voice I remember when I'm in the kitchen, because my mother and I always watched Julia Child.

Brussel sprouts

The dish I've been asked to bring to the Thanksgiving potluck is Brussel Sprouts, one of my favorites, and one we always prepared in my family.
I can't decide if I want to use this recipe by Deborah Madison, as recommended on The Splendid Table, which does not have chestnuts, or this one, from Domino magazine, in which the brussel sprouts are roasted instead of boiled. Either way, I'll be off to the market to buy enough to serve twenty people (that's a lot of sprouts!). When I was a kid, it was my job to cut the X in the chestnuts and then peel them after they were roasted. It can be a tedious job, which is why I'm not sure if I'll do it, but oh, do I love them!

Do you have a dish that must appear on your Thanksgiving table? corn pudding is another one we always used to make.

La grande bouffe

My dear friend and sister in epicurean delight treated me to the meal of a lifetime for my 50th birthday (which I will be celebrating until the end of the month). Thank you, thank you!

La Belle Vie, Chef's tasting menu

(little gougere to start, and a sweet fresh scallop for an amuse-guele)

Blue Prawn Ravioli with
Fennel, Tomato and Pernod (just one raviolo, but the prawn was fresh and perfect)

Sautéed Branzino with White Asparagus,
Jerusalem Artichokes and Trout Roe

Pan-Roasted Poussin with Polenta Fondue
Buttercup Squash and Wild Mushrooms

Three Preparations of Rabbit with
Porcini Mushrooms and Balsamic Vinegar

Grilled Lamb Ribeye with Truffled
Turnip Greens and Garnet Yams

Seckel Pear Tart with
Barkham Blue Ice Cream
and Caramelized Onion

Concord Grape Granita
with Goat’s Milk Blancmange

Olive Oil Cake with Heirloom
Apples and Apple Sherbet

Teeny tiny portions, each perfectly prepared.

Otra vez Frida

Judy Arginteau has a great piece in MinnPost about the Frida Kahlo show at the Walker and the Georgia O'Keeffe show at the MIA. I've seen the O'Keeffe show twice now, and I went to the opening night party for the Frida show. I even got to see her art, in spite of the crush of people.

Here are some more fragments of film with Frida and Diego:

A clip from the 1983 film Frida: naturaleza viva, which I still haven't seen:

and one of many photo-homenajes, this one with music by Lila Downs:

Kucinich has no fear

Strip away all the faux controversy over whether CNN planted the stupid "diamonds or pearls" question to make Hillary look good or because they are just as sexist as the rest of the world: who really made sense in the Democratic candidates debate in Las Vegas? Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. He's moving up in the polls of Democratic voters, although the party bosses would love to exclude him from the debates.
Is it because he grew up working class and often homeless as the oldest of seven children? Is it because he knows what it is like to take a principled stand in spite of the political cost, as he did when he was mayer of Cleveland and stood up to the banks (who later were found guilty of criminal conspiracy)? Is it because he's short, has big ears, and is a vegan, and doesn't care that people have been making fun of him throughout his political career? He voted against the war, against the Patriot Act, and if you look at his record, he votes consistently with his values. He introduced the resolution to impeach Cheney. If only the other candidates had his guts. Check it out:

Professor Zero and The Unapologetic Mexican beat me to the post!

Jacques Brel, "Les bonbons"

Professor Zero posted a courtship song in French, and it reminded me of one of my favorites songs by Jacques Brel, "Les bonbons." I have heard this song dozens of times on one of my favorite old records, but now, with the magic of YouTube, I can see how Jacques Brel inhabited his characters physically when he performed. There are several versions, and each one is unique: some are more pathetic, some more restrained. This one has English subtitles, so you can appreciate the pathetic character of the suiter who courts someone who takes advantage of him to meet her real boyfriend.
Apparently all of the existing footage of Brel's performances and interviews has also been collected on a DVD for the delight of Brel fanatics.
I like this version of "Les bonbons"

Paroles et musique : Jacques Brel
(c) 1964 Éditions Pouchenel, Bruxelles

1 J'vous ai apporté des bonbons
Parc' que les fleurs c'est périssable
Puis les bonbons c'est tell'ment bon
Bien qu'les fleurs soient plus présentables
Surtout quand elles sont en boutons
J'vous ai apporté des bonbons.

2 J'espèr' qu'on pourra se prom'ner
Qu' Madam' votr' mère ne dira rien
On ira voir passer les trains
À huit heur's je vous ramèn'rai
Quel beau dimanch' pour la saison
J'vous ai apporté des bonbons.

3 Si vous saviez c'que je suis fier
De vous voir pendue à mon bras
Les gens me regard'nt de travers
Y'en a mêm' qui rient derrièr' moi
Le monde est plein de polissons
J'vous ai apporté des bonbons.

4 Oh ! Oui ! Germaine est moins bien qu'vous
Oh ! Oui ! Germaine elle est moins belle
C'est vrai qu'Germaine a des ch'veux roux
C'est vrai qu'Germaine elle est cruelle
Ça vous avez mille fois raisons
J'vous ai apporté des bonbons.

5 Et nous voilà sur la grand' place
Sur le kiosqu' on joue Mozart
Mais dites-moi qu' c'est par hasard
Qu'il y'a là votre ami Léon
Si vous voulez qu'je cède la place
J'avais apporté des bonbons.

Mais bonjour Mad'moisell' Germaine
J'vous ai apporté des bonbons
Parc' que les fleurs c'est périssable
Puis les bonbons c'est tell'ment bon
Bien qu'les fleurs soient plus présentables

The word of the day is

sarcomere.

"¿Por qué no te callas?"

So, all over Spain and Latin America, in the press and on the Internets, people are saying "¿Por qué no te callas?" (although Google keeps asking me if I mean "porque no te callas?" but really, I don't!). When I showed the clip to my daughter, she laughed in recognition: the king's gesture, his tone, and the expression are just SO SPANISH! There are now dozens, maybe hundreds of versions of the same few clips posted in YouTube with comments that range from the virulently anti-monarchical to the grotesquely racist versions of Chavez-is-the devil, with a lot of very impassioned arguments in between. And of course there are now lots of parodies, remixes, ringtones, and arguing about whether King Juan Carlos (or Juancar) should be praised for telling Hugo Chavez to shut up, whether or not he was rude, or who is the most fascist, Aznar or the King who was chosen by Franco, ad infinitum.
Every so often, someone actually says something sensible, but this is one of those viral moments when an image of an event becomes the pretext for other kinds of speech acts that really are more about venting spleen than reasoned political discourse. And, of course, they are occasions for relajo of the kind that circulated after Zidane's infamous head butt incident in the World Cup final against Italy.

Fall Sunday

A dear friend met us for lunch in the Birchwood Cafe, one of my favorite Minneapolis places. The coffee is excellent, the food is "good real food" and the folks who work there are both laid-back and efficient, a great combination. I had the French toast made with brioche, and topped with a sauce made with pears andwalnuts cooked with butter and sugar until they had become a kind of caramel delight. No maple syrup necessary, and the brioche is the perfect texture to sponge up the egg/milk without getting soggy. The dollop of whipped cream was real. It was like the most delicious bread pudding, but as light as air. We also shared the scrambled eggs with potatoes, toast and fruit. When we finished, we were satisfied but not overstuffed.

Today is the perfect fall day--warm enough to walk around without a jacket but cool enough to allow you to enjoy a sweater and a scarf. The leaves are only half off the trees, so you can still admire the colors and crunch them underfoot, in keeping with the late onset of winter in the last few years.

On the way home we stopped at the Produce Exchange. The free salsa class was just winding up as we stocked up on pears, clementines, pomegranates, oranges, and bananas.
In the car, my girl and I talked about the high school choices. We will got to two open house events next week, and she'll make a decision. I have my preference, but both are good places, well recommended by friends whoses kids have gone there, so we're lucky.

We'll each do our homework, then take a walk. Who knows when the weather will turn?

Dennis Kucinich introduces the resolution to impeach Cheney

Listen to the man. He speaks the truth in the halls of power.

There was a lot of complicated voting with the result being that the resolution was not tabled but referred back to committee. This means it is not dead, but will be up to John Conyers to move on it or let it languish.

"Pulsación No. 1"

Damian Rosenthal and Celine Ruiz dance. Filmed in Paris and Buenos Aires. Music by Astor Piazzolla

Relief!

This morning the orthopedist gave me an injection of cortisone in my right shoulder joint to alleviate the inflammation of the bursa. It relieved the pain almost immediately, although I still have limited range of motion. She has also authorized physical therapy twice a week. It will probably take several months to recover, but right now, I am so grateful that the pain that was taking over my waking and sleeping hours is gone.
So here is a Thank You song, from Sly and the Family Stone, my hometown faves.

Impeachment before the House! HRes 333

The press consistently treats Dennis Kucinich as a fool, talking about UFOs, how his ears stick out, mocking his height and appearance. But Kucinich represents the political aspirations of many Americans, and he is about to do what democratic Congressional leadership has been too cowardly (or too bought off) to do: introduce a House Resolution for Impeachment of Dick Cheney. The charges are serious: Cheney lied to manipulate this nation nto war, and continues to do the same in an attempt to provoke a war with Iran. There is overwhelming evidence that he has betrayed his oath to uphold the law and the Constitution. The bill is H Res 333, and because it is a priviliged resolution, it must be considered within two days. Even if Pelosi and co. try to table it, the issue of impeachment will be on aired for the first time. Professor Zero points us to After Downing Street for a detailed listing of the actual charges, and a list of more that could be brought. More impeachment news, including a consideration of arguments for and against impeachment, can be found at Impeach for Peach, one of many, mnay grassroots organizations that has been working tirelessly to make our representatives take action on our behalf.

I am proud that my congressional representative Keith Ellison is a co-signer of the Kucinich H Res 333, along with a group of principled House Representatives. You can call you representative to urge that our leaders be held accountable to the law.
And Wolf Blitzer is a tool.

Street market in Amsterdam

I have a lot of pictures from the last several months that I haven't labeled or organized. Here are a few from my summer trip to Amsterdam--the street market had a combination of food, clothes, and oddities. I had never seen cabbages this pointy before, and I was highly tempted to get that blue wig in the middle.

50! Fifty!

Happy birthday to me! This year I am 50 years old, like Sputnik,West Side Story, and the European Union.
A birthday wish come true: I will travel to Ireland for the first time in January.

EPIC 2015: future possible?

I went to the Twin Cities Media Alliance public forum today at the Minneapolis Central Library (what a wonderful building!). Matt  showed us a film, EPIC 2015, that he made with Robin Sloan about what could happen to the media. He had a lot of extremely smart things to say on the first panel.

Keith Ellison in action!

My congressional representative is Keith Ellison. Here is a clip of his questioning of the US Attorney in the Jena 6 Congressional hearings.

More thoughts on newmedia

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by journalist Jeremy Iggers yesterday. He has written about food, and has a PhD in philosophy. His columns about ethics and his active role in founding the Media Alliance give him a great perspective on the changes occuring in the Twin Cities media scene. The topic was, generally speaking, the future of newspapers. He pointed to the importance of newspapers is shaping an informed citizenry, and discussed the changes taking place now as the result of two forces: the culmination of decades of corporate consolidation in the dismantling of the news corps of many major newspapers in the chase after market demographics and profits, and the challenges posed by emerging digital technologies. As younger people turn to alternative sources for information and news, the corporate papers attempt to win their readership by dumbing down their news sections, but their strategies are neither successful with a younger generation, which can get better infotainment online, nor conducive to retaining their older readers who are disgusted with the abandonment of local and international political coverage.
Hence the anxiety about the future of the newspaper, and of serious journalism in general. On the other hand, both professionals and a growing number of "citizen journalists" are trying out new models of news gathering (blogs that aggregate and comment on news, for example), news production (operations like Alternet and the much-heralded MinnPost which will debut next week), news delivery (multi-media magazines, various kinds of interactivity, etc. After listening to his talk and to the questions and comments from the crowds, I came away with three thoughts: there will be some merit in finding new business models that attempt to make online/print versions of public television and pubic radio (like MPR or NPR) with greater editorial freedom and the ability to follow subjects in depth without the slavery to ad sales, although we have seen an ongoing corporatization of both of those enterprises as well); the more interesting experiment to me is the site that acts as a portal to the web presences of a variety of small specialized papers (Twin Cities Daily Planet with its 40+ community papers serving smaller interest groups or neighborhoods) because, while it aggregates and prioritizes, it is more of a portal for reader than a hierarchical virtual newsroom; we still haven't explored the full potential of blogs as a venue for public intellectuals to engage with the public, although we are seeing many experiments.

One area of profound unease over these changes has to do with the issue of expertise: whose standards will distinguish "real journalism" from amateur ranting? how to judge accuracy? how to build relations of trust between readers and writers in the absence of the culture of the craft or guild?

Another source of unease seems to be the illusion that at some time in the past, because there were fewer TV channels, there was more of a shared group experience, in which we all saw ourselves reflected as a community (I'm paraphrasing what Iggers said, using my own take informed by Benedict Anderson's ideas about nationalism and "imagined community" but this is not what he or the audience articulated explicitly). I think that this idea of a shared community was an effect, not something that really existed for a majority, and that what we are witnessing is rather the crisis of the intellectual class, whose expertise, whether in academia or in journalism, is being displaced in favor of other forms of judgment. This is why I like the title of Cristobal Cobo's book "Planeta Web 2.0: inteligencia colectiva of medias fast food?" The new media can be both forms of collective intelligence, populated by specialists and intellectuals as well as others, and can also be incredibly banal, sleazy, silly, fun forms of infotainment. And sometimes they can be both. What excites me about some fo these new media endeavors is that new voices are gaining audiences, audiences are becoming collaborators, and the mainstream media, which has demonstrably failed in its duties to provide civic engagement as well as a vehicle for ad sales, is having to respond.

A tiny bit of wisdom, after all these years.

I had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was about 22-23. I only had the two in my lower jaw, so I was lucky that it wasn't more painful. In the past month or so, I've had terrible toothache and jaw pain on my left side. It felt as if a tooth was cutting through the gum on the inner part of my jaw, below the place where the wisdom tooth would have been. Was it possible to have another wisdom tooth? Why could I feel this hard bony or toothy protrusion, cutting through the gum when I touched it with my fingernail? My dentist said it was possible that a tooth fragment from the original wisdom tooth removal had worked its way to the surface over the past few decades. I am about to go to an appointment to see if there is anything else wrong, but yesterday, it hurt so much that I clawed at the little bony bump, and it came out!!! It was exactly like a grain of sand. Tooth? bone? whatever. It still hurts, but not as much.

So, here I am at almost 50, and this little bit of the past has worked its way to the surface and broken free. I'd like to think of this as a sign. Of something or other.

This is Halloween!

What Halloween would be complete without The Monster Mash? Chris Rule reposted his original recut, "Scary Mary." I love it!

Here's "This is Halloween" from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, a family favorite.


Seriously, I saw Dracula Has Risen From the Grave when it came out in 1968 and I was 10, and spent the next year absolutely sure that he lived in my closet. Only if I slept with the sheet over my head would I be safe.

The Daily Mole, beta

If the Daily Planet is a fabulous aggregator of local new publications (neighborhood, ethnic group, labor, women, all the folks whose interests are not taken seriously by the mainstream media in this town, which is to say most of us), another new Twin Cities media venture is The Daily Mole, put on/out by Steve Perry (former editor of City Pages), Cecily Marcus, and Co. It's a very fancy Wordpress site, with a home page that bills itself as "Twin Cities", and four other categories on separate pages: pop media, talk, multimedia lounge, and listings. I've already posted some comments there as I get a feel for the content. The site is still in beta, and their really interested in responding to their readers' input.

We'll see how it shapes up as a site that can do a lot of what City Pages and VitaMN do on their sites, but better. Their banner says, "A thinky/talky approach to the news!" and "your new virtual watercooler." What I'm not sure of yet is if they will have the kind of in-depth articles that Perry used to write/edit for City Pages, that went into more of the background of local or national/international stories than the Strib did. I think that is the territory that the new MinnPost, scheduled to rollo out on Nov. 8, is staking out with its long list of eminent journalist collaborators. Since this is a daily, it may not be geared to the long read the way a weekly is, but it will bring us multiple feeds that link politics and the arts better than MNSpeak is doing currently. I'm afraid my experience of MNSpeak is of that it has devolved into a bully pulpit for a small, vocal and obnoxious set of commenters who scream at each other and insult folks who aren't members of their club. Attempts to engage their grew tiresome quickly. Maybe the Daily Mole will create a space for smarter conversations. We'll see how they handle the inevitable moment when they have to moderate comments or intervene in flame wars.

We *heart* Frida

Fridamania hits Minneapolis! I went to the opening night party on Friday. As someone put it, too many people! It was like waiting for space mountain. LOL. I lurked by the box office and spied on all the fabulous people in their fabulous clothes as they waited in a a super-long line that snaked around the lobby. Once inside, we waited in line for drinks, for food, and to get into the space where the show was mounted. But it was a fun, happy vibe, with great decorations, good food, and busy bartenders. The show itself is incredible. I have seen posters, photos, or digitized images of almost all the paintings in the show, and some of them in other shows, but to see them all together and to see how SMALL so many of them are changes one's whole relationship to the art. She was a good draughtswoman, with a complex use of color, and the recurring vegetal motif in so many of her painting are fascinating. I plan to return more than once. There are a lot of Frida related activities in town. KFAI's show Encuentros did two programs of music Frida would have listened to. You can stream the shows: in addition to the music, the commentary is very smart. Here's the playlist form the first show: popular dance music of the twenties. I sure do love my KFAI-Radio without Boundaries!

A film series has been programmed in conjunction with the show, called Cinemateca. The Highpoint Center for Printmaking has a show of Mexican contemporary printmakers that I don't want to miss.They are having a workshop on Saturday afternoon that I think my daughter would really enjoy.

Warning: Don't read this if you don't want to hear me whine

My rotator cuff tendonitis coupled with my fibromyalgia has meant that this semester my normal levels of chronic pain have shot way up. It's bad when I just wake up--I spend about half an hour stretching gently in bed, and that helps, but the pain in my shoulder is acute, and doesn't respond to that. After five o'clock at night, I'm in agony. It's hard to be completely present to my child, continue working, or enjoy time with friends when you're in pain. Some things it hurts too much to do: tuck in my shirt in back, put deodorant on my left armpit, write on the blackboard, raise my right arm above shoulder height, carry things with my right hand or arm, put on and take off my clothes, doing dishes, carrying in groceries, carrying laundry downstairs, putting it in and out of the washer and dryer, getting dressed, wiping a counter. I'm turning fifty, not eighty, but my body feels old and crippled.
I'm going to ask the guys to clean my house as my birthday present. Isn't that pathetic?

I have been seeing a physical therapist, and that has helped a little, but the screwed-up thing about constant pain is that it wears down your body and then it wears down your spirit. I'm starting to get to that well-known point where I am having difficulty coping on a daily level. The shoulder pain has meant that the usual exercise that I do to manage the fibromyalgia pain is out, and the fibromyalgia means that I am hyper-sensitive to the shoulder inflammation and slow to heal. I hate the fact that it is preventing me from keeping my house clean (vacuuming is probably the worst for fibro), and it even hurts to write on the blackboard in class. About once a day, I manage to move my arm is such a way that the shoulder joint pinches the muscles and tendons so hard, I want to cry.

The shoulder pain has become so bad this week that there are times when I can hardly bear it. Icing, pain relievers, the exercises my therapist has recommended, all are a small help, but the need to work so many hours in the last several weeks has me feeling as if I'm sliding back rather than making progress. I'm starting to lose brain function from lack of sleep: I blank out on words, my memory is shot, I react sluggishly. Most distressing is that this kind of pain and fatigue can also kick me into a mental space that I've worked hard to leave: cranky, paranoid, snappish. That's scary.

Then there's the fact that the shoulder pain interferes more with sleep, which causes the fibromyalgia to flare up, so that now I have returned to the state where I feel as if someones has been beating me with a stick--everything hurts, all over, but my hands, arms, shoulders, neck, face and upper back are either aching all the time, or feel as if they are laced with barbed wire.

Ironically enough, I'm actually very happy these days. That's the paradox of the physiology of pain-induced depression; I love what I'm doing at work, my family is wonderful, I wake up thankful for my good fortune. But the pain acts as a curtain that I have to push aside, separating me from myself. I'm familiar with this cycle. If something doesn't happen soon to improve the pain situation, I risk falling into the hole of exhaustion and the effects on mood that this brings.

I don't have many people I can talk to about this because frankly, who wants to hear about it? I suffer from the hyper-competent single mother complex as well: if I don't do it, nobody will. That's not actually true, but it's hard to let go of that mind-set.

Coping strategies for the day: hot bath, walk around the neighborhood to buy birthday presents, gentle stretches, ice shoulder, eat healthy food, breathe, leave work until tomorrow. Long term: see my doctor again, try to get back to twice a week with PT, mental health therapist, massage. All those things take time from work. So I will need to talk with my department chair to document my situation, not something I look forward to doing.

Good news: I got a paper accepted to a conference in Ireland! Bad news: I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to write it.
/pity party>

Citizen journalism on YouTube

I just learned that YouTube is more than talking cats and DTWS recaps. OK, I knew it was more, but I had't really looked carefully.
Here is a great use of YouTube for highlighting citizen journalism: CitizenTube is the vlog of Steve Grove, YouTube's editor for politics. He lives in SF, but he went to college at Carleton, the school where Paul Wellstone used to teach Political Science. I'm missing his talk today because I'll be at work, but I can catch up on his vlog.

We miss you, Paul

My senator, Paul Wellstone, was speaking for me when he addressed the Senate about the war in Iraq. I saw him speak in person only once, at a party before he ran for Senate. So many people are mourning him, his wife, his daughter, and his co-workers who were on the plane. We mourn them as people, and I mourn what we lost as a country when he died only eleven days before the election.

Some favorite places

CoolHunting.com posts videos as well as posts about the intersection of art, design, and whatever. Here are two that give you a little tour of Minneapolis.
Enjoy!

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center.

An architectural tour of Minneapolis.

Twin Cities Media Alliance and the future of newspapers

With the implosion of the two city newspapers and the weekly City Pages, all victims of corporate takeovers that included mass firings and layoffs of experienced journalists, the print news outlets in the Twin Cities have gone down the tubes. Sure, I still pick up copies in the cafes, out of habit, but there's nothing there any more. It's sad and frustrating because I have always loved reading newspapers. I don't subscribe at home any more because I hate adding even more to my recycling, but I would still buy a paper or pick up someone's discard every day.

But the changes in the works in the Twin Cities media world right now are very exciting. Journalists had already been exploring the possibilities of new kinds of news delivery through online formats for the last few years, and now several new groups are moving to reconfigure our media landscape. There will be a forum on Nov. 3 that I plan to attend called "life after newspapers", organized by the Twin Cities Media Alliance and sponsored by the Minneapolis Public Libraries.

One venture that has been around for a little while, that I like very much, is The Twin Cities Daily Planet, which bills itself as "local news for global citizens." It is a site that aggregates stories from the smaller papers and hosts blogs and community announcements. It has a strong component of citizen journalism, and links to a few sites with discussion forums in their Planet Cafe. Here is a list of their media partners. You can get your news in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali on this site as well. It's a project of the New Media Alliance.

The Twin Cities Media Alliance brings together media professionals and engaged citizens to improve the quality, accountability and diversity of the local media.

We envision a participatory democracy in which citizens from all segments of society and especially those who have been traditionally denied access are able to use the media as a tool to share information, hold the powerful accountable, build community, and work together for the common good.

Our community newswire and syndication service, the Twin Cities Daily Planet www.tcdailyplanet.net, features the best work of the neighborhood and community press and local independent journalists, and provides a public forum for engaged citizens. Our goal is to produce citizen journalism with professional standards, and to become a national model for other communities.

Does this happen to you?

If you haven't seen this one on YouTube, you'll have seen it on CuteOverload.

This is more or less accurate. My cat does not understand the concept of the weekend, so there is no sleeping in. And my cat's voice is much whinier and more demanding. The claw poke to the face usually happens on my nose, not my ear. My feet are also a target. There is some sitting next to/on my head with purring. He never feigns sleeping, he always jumps down off the bed and looks at me accusingly.

Annie, the Queen

Annie Lennox had the audience in the palm of her hand from the moment she walked on stage at the State Theater. She began her first set, mostly her solo work, with "No more I love yous" and then did a group of songs from Eurythmics days, but arranged for the piano and her voice. The long string of 80s hits were not neglected, but she ended the show with her Sing project to raise awareness about HIV/AIDs and its devastation in South Africa. She's the queen of performance--with a well-staged show: lights, bits from her amazing videos, her dancing and amazingly powerful and flexible voice. Even from far away, her eyes are incredibly expressive. I lost count of the standing ovations. She seemed sincerely moved by the love and energy the audience was giving to her.
Here are some of her amazing videos from over the years, before they hit it big;

Love is a Stranger

Song for a vampire

"Waiting in Vain"from Medusa

"The Gift"

Bummeration

PEOPLE! There is a whole site where folks post pictures of what is inside their fridge! It's called Fridgewatcher.com, and you can "watch" fridges! from other countries! I need to be amused right now, because I just watched a month of work go down the drain.

I'm too tired and bummed out to take a picture of the inside of my fridge tonight. I went to the airport to pick up a guest I'm hosting for work, only to get a message that she has to spend the night in Dallas due to flight delays (I swear, I had this feeling). Wah! I spent the last four weeks getting funding, arranging a meeting with fifteen! people for project planning, and she won't get here in time.

Well, excuuuse ME!

Sometimes when I was a child, my mother would say to me, "That's an explanation, not an excuse." It took me a long time to understand that she was trying to help me understand the difference between making a sincere apology and defensively arguing that I was justified in say, hitting my brother because he hit me first.

This hilarious article in the New York Times illustrates how often public figures go through the motions of apologizing but end up compounding the original offense.

The New Standards at the Dakota

I saw these guys again last night, for the third time. They don't play around here often-they've had some gigs in New York recently--and last time I tried to get a ticket at the door, they were sold out. So I made sure to call ahead, and had a great view from the balcony of The Dakota (my dinner was splenderific!). They are working on some new material. They didn't mention a new CD, but I assume one is in the works. It'd be great if they recorded their show--I think they are best live, when they feed off each other's energy.
They did a little fashion spread for The Rake Magazine a little while back.

Things that make me want to take out my red pen

For that anal-retentive writer or teacher in your life, here are some hilarious blogs:

The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks "making fun of bad punctuation since 2005."

Literally, a weblog
An English language grammar blog tracking abuse of the word "literally."

Apostropher Abuse. Because its everywhere! and an apostrophe can't defend it's self!

lowercase L. This one was new to me, but now that I've seen the photos, I will be looking out for those signs that say PlEASE.

Do you know any other snarky language sites?

Anthropology field work on YouTube

Anthropologist vlogger asks folks gathered at a YouTube meet-up "Would you say that YouTube is a community?" The answers are varied and thoughtful. Some of the comments are as well.

The project is part of the work at this site. Exciting stuff!

National Coming Out Week

This semester I came out to my students as a member of a Rainbow Family: I'm a straight woman who co-parents with two men who are married to each other (legally! at least in Spain). I didn't think about it for a long time; it came up naturally when a student said she wanted to study the differences between gay marriage arguments in the US and in Spain. There was no particular reaction, at least not a public one. I've been reading some coming out stories, and tomorrow I'll attend the National Coming Out Day luncheon at the Convention Center. I'll get to sit with co-workers who have become friends through the work I've been doing as an ally on the Transgender commission and as a networkers for GLBT faculty and students. Next week, I'm bringing someone to campus who has been working to incorporate sexualities into university curricula in a number of countries. I hope the visit make possible some new connections, projects, relationships among folks with common interests.

I've been feeling like one of those Tinker Toys, the round part with the holes where you stick the spokes.

John Fogarty still singing against war

Credence Clearwater Revival is the soundtrack of my younger life. John Fogarty has a new record out, but this song is from a few years ago. Still singing anti-war songs.

Here is Credence on the Ed Sullivan show singing "Fortunate Son".


Some folks were born,
Made to wave the flag,
Ooh, the red white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, y'all.

It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks were born,
Silver spoon in hand,
Lord don't they help themselves, y'all.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.

AAUP report on New Orleans Universities after Katrina

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization that exists to protect academic freedom, has sent out the following message about its report on how Administrations of institutions of higher learning took advantage of the crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina to restructure and fire tenured faculty, without cause or due process:

A few months ago, the AAUP reported to its members on the results of the largest investigation we have undertaken in half a century. We were faced with fundamental violations of academic freedom and tenure not just at one school but across an entire region. Under the cover of unsubstantiated declarations of various versions of financial exigency, university administrators at five institutions engaged in a “nearly universal departure from (or in some cases complete abandonment of) personnel and other policies.” It has been called the storm after the storm, or the perfect academic storm. I am referring to the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina on universities in the New Orleans area.

Many tenured faculty were fired with scant notice, no meaningful due process, no stated reasons, and no appeal save to the very administrators who released them. Faculty were not consulted about these actions or given an opportunity to suggest alternatives. Some found out they had already been taken off payroll and health care. Departments and programs were closed without appropriate review. While a number of institutions had suffered serious damage from the hurricane, we found no justification for this wholesale abandonment of due process and shared governance. Indeed, as the report eloquently declares, this is exactly the kind of challenge that requires wide consultation and full participation by the faculty before drastic actions are taken.

We believe all members of the higher education community need to know the story of how the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was unnecessarily compounded by administrative fiat. That is why we are sending this e-mail.

The report is a warning to all of us about how not to handle a crisis, a warning as well about the dangers we face if our shared governance guarantees are not strengthened. Four administrations were censured at our annual meeting in June because of their post-Katrina actions. Negotiations continue in order to gain justice for New Orleans faculty and restore due process to the region.

The full report is available online.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

Across the Universe

Julie Taymor is fearless. People seem to either love this movie or hate it. Count us in the first camp.

ETA: This Beatles' "Internet Album" is a great site for Beatles' stories!

Georgia O'Keeffe:Circling Around Abstraction

My brain is overheated from the intense activity of this week. I hope to persuade my girl to accompany me to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction show that just opened. If you go here, you can click on a link to an audio slide show on the left.

"Information is shock resistance: arm yourself"

Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein's film, illustrating the thesis of Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. It is necessary viewing.

Milton Friedman's doctrine of economic shock treatment, that Klein calls "the secret history of the free market," is to take advantage of disasters to push through an economic agenda. He said, "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces change." The use of systematic violence to enhance or achieve a state of collective shock is not a aberration, but a requirement for the shock doctrine.
Via Professor Zero.

Why I love my job, part two.

Portability. I can take my work on the road. Today is one of those days when I sit down and crank out all those boring letters so I can get them off my list of things to do: recommendations, reports, requests, meeting minutes, student evaluations. Only a few more left to do, but I need a break. Once again, I must sing the praises of the Midtown Global Market! At the Produce Exchange, I was able to buy perfectly ripe red Bartlett pears, not those rock-hard, sad pears I get everywhere else, even at my co-op. Then I went downstairs to the Hennepin County Service center where I got my drivers license renewed without waiting in line. In fact, they called my number so fast, I barely had time to fill out the form. The kind woman took my picture and then said we should take a better one, so my next picture will not be wacky-looking. Then I had a Cuban sandwich from Manny's Tortas. I always think I'm going to try something new, and I always end up getting the same thing because it is so GOOOOOD. And they have Wi-Fi, so I can keep on working while I watch the rain fall outside, and eavesdrop on lunchtime conversations while I chip away at the list of things-to-do. Hey, maybe I'll even have time to read something something today, what a thought!

I've been to the Global Market more lately because my physical therapy center is right across the street. I've been going once a week for this shoulder problem. Last year it was the left shoulder (rotator cuff impingement they called it. Ouch is what I called it). Now it is the right, the writing arm. The pain when I make the wrong move is so intense I want to cry--effectively, a tendon is being pinched between the bones of my shoulder joint. Imagine slamming your hand in the door, but on the inside. Progress is slow, but real. I'm still feeling intense pain when I move my arm the wrong way, but I've recovered a lot of range of motion, and I can see that it will get better. Patience is not one of the qualities for which I am best known, so living with this limitation has been an exercise in acquiring more patience. Ryan, my therapist, is a wonderworker. I am in awe of his ability to do exactly what is needed to help me heal. This is the first time a physical therapist has given me such relief. I think it is because in this office, they specialize in sports therapy, and the therapists themselves seem to be atheletes. My hope is that my shoulder will heal completely so I'll be able to dance without fear again.