b l o g o s

gr8!

Last night Tennessee won its eighth--8th!--national championship. Their full-court press was nothing short of heroic.

the gear

This NCAA commercial, which features people who are presumably former student athletes in their professional garb, makes me and JM giggle. This is because if I were in it, I would be wearing pajama pants, a ratty tee shirt, and no shoes.

grounds i used to stomp

In a span of about 20 hours, I have visited the two places on the University of Tennessee campus in which, with the possible exception of my dorm rooms, I spent the most time as an undergraduate: Thompson-Boling Arena, where the basketball happens, and McClung Tower, where the rhetoric and literature (and all the humanities, for that matter) happen. Last night we went to the women's game against Arkansas, and this afternoon I did a little talk on my research in my old department.

Both the arena and the central part of campus have undergone significant changes: the arena has all new seats, and a main thoroughfare that runs by McClung tower got transformed into a pedestrian-only walkway. At the game last night, I recognized several of the media and facilities staffers working on the main floor, and half the coaching staff  remains the same, with Holly Warlick and Pat Summitt still going strong. Today, I recognized some of my old professors in and around McClung and chatted with them briefly.

This seemed to be the obverse of so many other places I know where the people come and go while the structures go on unchanged. And yet somehow the continuities are as reassuring as the new seats and bricks are lovely.

memories in teeth

An elbow, a knee, a bagel. These are what spun through the backs of my eyelids, squeezed tight at the bright noise of dental drills and grinders (yes, grinders). Tooth number 8 (right front) took the elbow and, later, the bagel.

The elbow was courtesy of a player at Erwin High School--or was it Mountain City? (they're rather close if I recall)--a tall player with big eighties hair. I think she resembled the character Glory from Season Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her elbow flung me about as far across the floor. But things are a little fuzzy up to the point where I was screaming and rolling. The scream definitely got more deathy when I spit out half my tooth, and I was a little embarrassed later about how loudly I screamed. But it fucking hurt.

Tooth number 10 (two left of 8) took a knee in college. If that sounds odd in a basketball situation, that's because it wasn't a basketball situation exactly. For some reason my teammates and I thought we could be gymnasts in our spare time--spare meaning the few minutes between class and practice, when we usually goofed off in the locker room. That day's goofing was more elaborate than the usual dashing off of letters or flipping of channels or playing of tapes. A few of us decided Lisa Harrison would achieve an assisted back-flip. So someone--I forget who--got on her hands and knees, and  as the assist person, I was supposed to help flip over her legs. Gymnasts don't need this, but that's probably because none of their legs are nearly as long. Lisa came tumbling in and I leaned my head in along with my spotting arms. Her knee caught me on the jaw mid-flip, and my lower tooth chipped the upper tooth, #10. I never got it fixed because I liked how it looked.

Ten years after the elbow, #8's bond came off in a big chewy Irving's bagel right before I was to teach my second or third class ever as a new TA. I thought I would just write on the board the whole class, or stare at my students unsmiling, but the humor of the situation won out, and when I finally exposed my half-tooth the three hockey players in the class developed an instant, collective crush on their TA.

And so today, numbers 8 and 10 got "updated" to the tune of "Make a Wish, Baby" and about a dozen other equally forgettable songs.

on time

I am in a heavily-paneled hotel room a la Almost Famous somewhere in Kentucky, where I have stopped on my way to my parents' house in Tennessee, having left so late in the day that I could only get through part of my drive before needing to sleep. (Plus I'm too much of a wimp about driving more than nine hours alone and so I couldn't bring myself to do it all tomorrow.) The day began with Nietzsche in rhet trad, then turned in to a mash of meetings and emails (the meetings were lively and fun, thank goodness); zero time for working out; barely time to eat. Definitely no time to get lost finding the rental car place, because it moved from its location four years ago when I last rented there. Packing consisted of scooping warm clothes out of the dryer and into the newly-emptied suitcase. Ugh.

Tomorrow night I'm joining in with women who played basketball at my high school over the past two decades to gather around our coach, a hard-nosed, driven, warm, funny, and loving man who was badly injured in a boating accident this past summer. Very badly. Still can't walk. Not sure if he will. The whole thing is flatly awful, not least because he lost his son in the accident too.

But I think the idea for the gathering is to remind him just how many lives he has shaped--for awhile there, every player of his played in college on scholarship, and he coached four teams to state championships. Coach Ricker loves winning, that's for sure, but he lives for the moment just before winning--the crucial moment when a surge of intensity will put away a game, what he has always called rally time. And I guess to some extent that surge is what we're trying to create.

I hope it works.      

interruptions

A few months ago, I wrote about a conference call scenario during which I had to make a decision. Today I was on the phone with the same group of people no less (context: I'm on a PhD committee at UI of Chicago), but a whole new scenario. This time the decision was easy, but the circumstances were still distracting. What happened is simple. During the exam, four different people tried to call our house (five if you count the time one of the people also tried my cell phone). Just for informational purposes, in normal circumstances, this is roughly the total number of phone calls we get in two weeks. This exam was only two hours.

Additionally, our caller i.d. is tied in with call waiting, so I admit that I took a peek to see who was calling in. Let's just say these were some seemingly intriguing callers.

I wondered what would happen if I clicked over but of course did not: that would have been really, really rude.

This scenario actually reminds me of a time when I made the wrong choice where call waiting was involved, a time when I was incredibly rude. This was back when call waiting was brand new. In fact counting out the years, I can't believe call waiting has been around that long. I was a senior in high school and was on the phone with Andy Landers, the smooth talking coach from Georgia, and a famous recruiter (I'm pretty sure my mom would have signed with him). Landers is also known to be as mean as he is charming. So I was talking to Andy--had been for a half an hour--when a call beeped in, and so I asked him to hang on. (Note: as suggest above, I now think this was pretty rude, but in my defense, I was 17! It could have been a potential date or something). Anyway, so I clicked over and it's Lea Henry, the (then)  assistant coach at Florida. Henry was an all american point guard from Tennessee who wore cool wristbands, and I a little bit worshipped her. So I asked her to hang on and clicked back to Landers and told him I had to go. He asked me why, and with stars in my voice I said "it's Lea Henry."

And Landers hung up. I kid you not: he hung up on me. I was mortified. I now pretty much think I deserved it, but still. [There's a whole other discussion here about why I did not go into college coaching: having one's livelihood depend on 17-21 year olds does not seem all that attractive. Though the choice I did make instead doesn't exactly vary all that much, it occurs to me now.]   

Anyway, so today after the exam (MP, you did great, btw!), it occurred to me that a similar 'plot' would make an excellent segment in Metaspencer's and BP's 9-interviews sequel: (the phone interview edition--see M-S's comment in the post linked above). Here's a sketch of the scene:

Nervous interviewee waiting for the phone to ring, notes spread out everywhere, browser pointed to the website of the department that will be calling any minute now. Printouts of the interviewers' photos taped to the wall. Dogs scratching at the door.

[insert lots of other great turns once the connection gets made, like the muffled person you can't hear, the person who coughs loudly right into the speaker repeatedly, that kind of thing--suggestions are welcome in the comments]

Then, while the interviewee is rolling on a teaching answer, there's a call waiting beep.

Search chair: I'm sorry, [name of interviewee], something happened to the connection and we missed part of that last word. Did you say in your writing classes you emphasize Pynchon?

Interviewee: What? Oh, no, I said [beep]tion

[Interviewee glances at the phone to see that a call from Dream U is beeping in].

Search chair: Hm. There must be something wrong with our connection, we missed the last word again.

Interviewee [speaking quickly now]: Right. I said invention. I'm sorry, can you hang on just a second? I'm getting a call--so sorry.

Search chair: Uh, er--

click

[Interviewers blink at each other around the table; cut to interviewee setting up an interview with Dream U and then clicking back all chipper]

Interviewee: Are you there? I really needed to take that.

Hello?

Hello???

Helloooo?

epideixis

All month I've been looking forward to yesterday, what had affectionately become known in our household as "Danielle Allen Day," since Allen was scheduled to visit campus to talk about The Odyssey Project, and since I was lucky enough to share two meals and good conversation with her and even to present a rather encomiastic introduction to her audience (though what introduction is not encomiastic?). I also got to meet her dog; he licked me on the nose.

Yesterday in fact took me back a little, to basketball camp on another campus the summer I turned 14, and to the day I met Mary Ostrowski, a longago Tennessee player who was strong and fast and sported high cheekbones, high socks, and thick black wristbands, and who I thought was pretty awesome. I got to know Mary O at camp; she learned my name and autographed my vinyl adidas bag which I then carried everywhere despite the fact that the bag was yellow with black stripes, the school colors of our cross-county rivals.

It's probably a little dumb or uncool for an academic (or an adult) to admit she has a heroine, but my feeling on the matter is this: if I ever find myself in a position where I can't admit to admiring someone with intelligence so fierce and yet so tempered with generosity and humility, someone who makes everyone around her smarter (qualities she in fact shares with the only other MacArthur fellow I know)--or worse, if I find myself no longer coming into contact with such people, then it's probably time for me to get out.

half ass

Today I wasn't really planning to work out because I try to rest on the days before we do 400s, and also because the Wednesday indoor cycling instructor took us through a crazy high-speed routine she designed in the fog of stress the day before her kinesiology qualifying exams, so I was pretty beat. And so when I decided to go along with John to the gym, I wasn't planning to do a whole lot--probably just a light workout on a machine, I thought. On our way in, I asked John what he was going to do, and when he said he thought he might shoot around, I decided to join him. But shooting around sometimes gets boring, so when he asked if I wanted to play one-on-one, I also agreed to that, but only if we could make it a "half ass" game. Which means no sprinting after balls, no breaking sweats, no going strong to the basket, and definitely--definitely--no hesitation dribbles unless they were super slow-mo, for comic effect only.

In college we actually would sometimes practice like that on the day before the game, but our coach wouldn't dare call it half ass; instead she called it half speed. I L0VED half speed days, in part because they felt restorative and focused on placement and motions rather than the intensity, but also because they allowed the knowledge of what full speed really means. In today's game, of course, any time John would beat me to something I'd accuse him of going more than half ass--3/4 ass, perhaps--and finally realized that I wanted my half speed to be the gold standard, which meant that any time he beat me down the floor or blocked my shot, he was cheating.

July seems like a good time for a half speed day here and there.

an experiment

For some reason I've been thinking a lot lately about the only college summer I spent at home. I had a job at a home-town law firm to which I had to wear shirts with collars and pants or a skirt. I think dots were in that summer (this was 16 years ago, mind you). I also had a physical training regimen motivated not by some personal virtue but by my athletic scholarship and--truth be told--fear of my coach.

Mornings I would wake up at 4:30, drive 20 minutes to the Y, run 7 x 400 on the mulchy outdoor track (with timed rest that decreased each week), drive home and shower and sleep for two more hours before getting up to put on my dotted collared shirt and pants or skirt. I've been eyeing the track over at Urbana High and for some reason thinking about trying to run some 400s. In fact, maybe I'll head over here between thunderstorms to see what kind of time I can make and if it's even possible to do seven. I'll post an update soon, but if you think I'm posting my times, you can think again my friends.

UPDATE: Woo, that was hard. John, who has never run on a track (!), came along and smoked me but as usual was sweet about it. We made it through six of them, and let's just say that if I would have posted these times in college, my teammates and I would still be running the punishment laps. I'm going to try to shave 10-15 seconds off each one by summer's end: totally doable.

venue

Heading down to Memphis on the train tonight, and like most conference cities, Memphis is a city I've been to, but not really been to. That is, my last time there was 14+ years ago, when my team played at Memphis State (now U of Memphis). As with most places my team visited, this means that I may have a vague memory of the inside of the arena and of getting my ankles taped in a hotel room, and that I've probably done one or two touristy things. In the case of Memphis, I think the arena was blue and silver (?) and also I have both stayed at the Peabody Hotel and eaten barbeque at the Rendezvous. I have a hazy recollection of ducks and maybe an indoor pond and a glimpse of the Mississippi which looked (at the time at least) pretty muddy. The rest of  my sense of Memphis, of course, has been brought to me by movies and music; as in, John and I just watched both Walk the Line and Hustle and Flow, and so my guess is that Memphis is hard for struggling young musicians and pimps alike.

It also occurs to me, too, that experiencing cities via a conference isn't all that different from an away game or tournament: standing out to the locals, eating in large, noisy groups, and spending a lot of time inside.