b l o g o s

Levitation

From the wind advisory text at weather.com: A TIGHTENING PRESSURE GRADIENT IS BRINGING BLUSTERY WINDS IN EXCESS OF 35 MPH TO PARTS OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS TODAY...AND GUSTS UP TO 50 MPH. WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO REMAIN GUSTY THROUGHOUT THE DAY...EVENTUALLY FALLING BELOW WIND ADVISORY CRITERIA THIS EVENING.

A WIND ADVISORY MEANS THAT SUSTAINED WINDS OF 30 MPH ARE EXPECTED...WITH GUSTS TO 45 MPH. WINDS THIS STRONG CAN MAKE DRIVING DIFFICULT...ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES. USE EXTRA CAUTION.

Aside from making me wonder why forecasters used so many ellipses (these are not omissions), and also what a 'high profile vehicle' is, which then made me flash on that gigantic red white and blue bus we saw in Austin last year, the one with police escorts and a motorcade and which claimed it was carrying the Declaration of Independence, this advisory made me wonder vaguely what a 'tightening pressure gradient' is, and more interestingly, what all this means for those of us who don't drive high profile vehicles. So when Tillie asked to go in the backyard to play, I found out.

Leaves were swirling over from my neighbor's back yard at a height way above my head, and Tillie, a little freaked, stood very still in the center of our yard looking at me. Slowly the wind lifted her ears up, up. Kind of like the legendary Marilyn Monroe dress shot. I called her inside, and she didn't protest one bit.

know thyself

Yesterday's chaos--three rambunctious dogs in the house--has given way to quiet, with the dogs who normally live here snoozing all morning. Time to return to writing. Having followed through on the interesting diversion that is Burke's early short fiction, and having decided that this 'diversion' is actually perfect for the book's introduction, I'm free to return to that last chapter. I haven't written that much page-wise, just rearranged some things, and put together a few key sentences that frame out the moves I want to make. But no matter. The chapter seems ready to be cranked out, a good comfort on a Friday.

The chapter will likely be called "Ailments, Ailments, Ailments" and will work through the Nietzschean idea of illness as creative, how sick, broken down, or stalled out bodies can offer up different or multiple perspectives, even, at times, protesting the 'normal' order of things. 

Here's the short verse of Burke's that will open the chapter:

Know Thyself

One-third insomnia/One-third art/One-third The Man/With the Cardiac Heart.

[Update]: This entry got me going, and I wrote a ton after lunch. hoo ha. Who says blogs are a waste of time? Suckahs!

thunk.

When Tennessee doesn't make it to the Final Four, I hear a sound of something being dropped. The sound is best rendered as the word thunk but just a word doesn't quite capture the thunk I hear, which is a strong memory of something actually being dropped--thrown down really--on a post-game bus seat: a giant cardboard box, full of a thousand tee shirts.

In 1990 when Virginia beat us in the elite 8--I mentioned this before--it was the year the final four was to take place in UT Knoxville's shiny new arena. Predictions were that the capacity of that arena (over 25,000), combined with the possibility of the Lady Vols playing on their home floor for a championship, would shatter attendance records for women's final fours. Someone, I'm not sure who--some venture capitalist, or superstitious fan with a firm belief in the power of suggestion--in anticipation of the FF instant sellout should the team advance from the Elite Eight, printed 1,000 tee shirts, ready to sell at the moment Tennessee won. Here's what the screen looked like:

After the box went thunk, Pat pulled a shirt out to show us. My response, which I kept to my hunkered-by-the-window sophomore self, was one of outrage. Who made these? Setting aside the obvious fact that the shirts jinxed us, what hubris would lead someone to think of this slogan, "Tennessee and the final three," as if there would never be another final four without Tennessee in it? Who on earth thought it would be okay to print such a slogan? Pat's response, of course, was different. In the capitalist risk gone bad, Pat saw the possibility of daily reminders. She held up the shirt and announced through a tight, thin snarl, "this is next year's practice gear."

And it was. Over the summer, as players transferred to other schools or went on medical leave, and as the remaining ones, wondering if they should have transferred and feeling rather ill themselves, spent the summer months instead conditioning like no other summer before, the coaches added sayings on the back of the obsolescent shirts, chiasmatic sayings like "WHEN YOU FAIL TO PREPARE, PREPARE TO FAIL" or spelling lessons about how many "I"s TEAM has in it, or just plain old phrases they'd repeated frequently, not-so-gentle-reminders, such as this one:

During grad school I dusted furniture with these artifacts, keeping a few to drag out to tell the story, and every time, just like today when I dug it out of a moving box for these photos, the thunk becomes a shudder.

down, out

John and I had tickets to see the Kronos Quartet tonight, which was probably a good thing since it kept me from watching Tennessee get eliminated from the tournament. I'm having too many flashbacks to comment at the moment, but sometime soon I'll blog about the time one of my teams got put out at the elite 8 level, back when final fours weren't necessarily on neutral courts, and this one was slated for Knoxville, TN. Woo, dog.

plans and pants

When it comes to writing, I tend to be part planner, part seat-of-my-pantser. And while these two parts usually balance each other nicely, right now they seem to be dueling. E.g., I'm supposed to be working on my last chapter. It feels good to say that but it turns out, or it turned out in the past couple of days, that this isn't the case. The last chapter, which is supposed to focus on a fictional piece of Burke's about an operation he--I mean the main character--had in '56, has set me on to broader questions about illness and medicine, questions that I really can't ignore if this is going to be a book I'm happy with. And so I'm at work on a new section or chapter or something, and I'm not sure where it will go (and I mean that in a couple of ways, arrangement wise and direction-wise). In other words, I'm letting myself be a seat-of-my-pantser for just a little while so I can poke around in some really cool scholarship on medicine and physiology in the 1920s, hatching a new claim about illness in Burke's very early fiction, and wondering where in the hell it will fit in to my otherwise tidy manuscript.

Maybe that's the lesson, though: if something is too tidy--or as Burke might say, too healthy--then it could use a little shaking up.

more random elite 8 observations (Sunday)

1. It's okay not to have cable! I watched the entire Tennessee-Rutgers game at the gym, on machines the whole time. Down sides: The elliptical machine is not like the couch; I almost injured myself trying to keep balls from going out of bounds. Also, I am hungry. Up side: I could track my pulse in relation to the game's intensity level. Shanna Zolman's three pointers drew the biggest jumps.

2. I think UConn is too cool to play really hard. Z, I hope you'll let us know what an aneurism feels like.

3. PALM?! With one minute left? I'm about to have an aneurism. Is there such a thing as refs making up a game (rather than just a call)? I'm rooting for GMU, and these GMU players are playing out of their minds, but the palm call was bonk.

4. Cinderella needs to practice free throws.

5. [for Spencer; we got a little technical there] Maybe it's because men's college coaches tend to not to be terribly good looking (Rick Patino excepted of course), but does Villanova's Jay Wright remind anyone else of George Clooney? From a distance?

6. Florida has the best hair (includes facial). I especially like Taureen Green's lovely, meticulous tiny locks and Walter Hodge's goat-rows combo. Very dapper.

7. March Redness

Players	RD1	RD2	Sweet 16	Elite 8	Final Four	Champion- ship	Total Points	Final 4 Picks
BillySunday	67	22	15	5	0	0	109	Duke, [UConn]Villanova, UCLA
hawhee	39	21	12	11	0	0	83	LSU, N. Carolina[Villanova], UCLA
bgwalsh	30	28	15	5	0	0	78	Duke, N. Carolina[Villanova], UCLA
trishloughran (Admin)	30	22	12	5	0	0	69	Duke, [UConn]BostonCol., UCLA
apmoss	31	26	9	0	0	0	66	Texas,N.Carolina, Georgetown,[Kansas]
somerville	32	22	9	0	0	0	63	Duke, [Illinois]Villanova, Gonzaga
zlesser	29	23	9	0	0	0	61	Duke, [UConn]BostonCol., Kansas
esty	34	18	9	0	0	0	61	Texas, [UConn]Boston Col., Kansas
sdennis	37	12	6	0	0	0	55	Syracuse, UConn Ohio St., [Gonzaga]
cprender	24	18	9	0	0	0	51	Duke, UConn Villanova, [Gonzaga]
joev	21	19	9	0	0	0	49	Iowa, Washington, Ohio St., [Memphis]
Illini	25	14	9	0	0	0	48	Duke, Illinois] Ohio St.Memphis

random elite 8 observations (Saturday)

1. LSU plays some killer defense, exhibits a rare mania when it comes to rebounding, and, ahem, is slated in my bracket for the final four.

2. This Memphis team looks a bit sluggish, but I have to wonder: is it their shorts? Tall size capri pants in the JCrew catalogue have shorter inseams. While I've always thought it was retrograde to grumble about changing sports fashions, these 'shorts' are getting to the point--i.e., way below the knee--where they really should be called gauchos, or better, warmups.

3. Doesn't Land's End sell sweaters the color of UCLA's uniforms?

4. UCLA is also slated for my final four.

5. Lemon and wine-braised lamb over brown basmati rice, while delicious, is a little too fancy and unwieldy to eat on the pullout couch because the LSU-Texas game went into overtime, though the whippets weren't complaining.

6. College players seem to commit more traveling violations these days (see number 2).

7. Today's games have featured a surprising number of off-balance three pointers that have come surprisingly close to going in.

8. Most cheerleaders, like most players at the end of the bench, look bored out of their minds until the last three minutes.

9. Greg Gumbel's pen matches his tie. When did Land's End start selling pens?

10. I may have mentioned this somewhere else on this site, but LSU and UCLA are both in my bracket's final four.

jiggety jog

I know everyone knows what I'm talking about: the weird limbo time after you arrive home and catch up on the re-entry items like greeting those in your house, grocery shopping, mail opening, sleeping. I'm talking about after that. The time before you really feel like settling back into work routines, even though you know you need to, and even though you claimed you wanted to; before you feel as if you're neglecting something important, like papers or reading or a workout or dinner. 

Before the thrill of routinelessness wears off.

I've been pretty restless today in that limbo, and so I read a bunch of blogs; forecasted my permanent resumption of the coveted second place spot in our hoops pool (John took mathematical advantage of the upset points and put everyone out of running for first during--not even after--round 1, leaving the rest of us to clamor for a newly established second place pot. BWalsh, you can go to Yale, but you can leave second place here!); wondered vaguely how weird it was that I wore jeans at the conference, and on the first day; took care of that dumb requirement that we dig up all citations of our work in order to demonstrate our 'importance' to the committee that metes out merit raises; thought vaguely that I could have written a few pages for a new article for all the time it took to locate of those citations; also thought how much easier it is now that .pdfs are so common; chatted idly on the phone with Elizabeth; wandered through U of I's neurophysiology courses, inspired by a book I read on the train ride home, The Transmission of Affect by Teresa Brennan (I wanted to see who could teach me more about this notion of 'entrainment,' a pheromonal/hormonal process by which bodies and affects alter by association with other bodies and affects); thought about putting that book on my fall syllabus but decided to read Denise Riley's new book first; and at last went to the gym, where I happily got to watch women's basketball (Stanford v. Oklahoma).

The workout, which took me into late afternoon, finally took off the restless edge. I wonder if that's women's basketball related, routine related, endorphin related, or all of those. Maybe that advanced neurophysiology class could tell me.

Conference Bum

Yesterday I bounced around from person to person and fun event to fun event here at Cs, and the most pressing question is this: should I, someone who came to the conference mostly to see old friends from grad school and to recruit new graduate students to our program, someone who is not on the Cs program, register for the conference? Registration for NCTE members (I am a member, btw) is $100.

I know it's probably my association duty to register, and Collin kept telling me yesterday that I would get my 'CCCC license' revoked. But I ask you, is it worth it to pay $100. for a name tag and a program? Before you answer, consider this: my position at Illinois is half in Communication and half in English, which pretty much doubles my big corporate conference requirements. This year I've already presented at National Communication Association's conference--the most corporate, and expensive, of all. I also presented at MLA, and I'm attending the Aphthonius seminar at the Rhetoric Society of America meeting in May. I just became a life member of RSA, which I'm happy about (it will pay for itself by my next promotion, since life membership includes conference registration and membership dues for life), but which took a big chunk out of my tiny research account. When I'm tenured next year, my allowed conference trips will be reduced from 2 to 1, and so that tiny research account will no doubt dwindle even more quickly.

So I didn't register. One interesting effect of not dropping the Jefferson Franklin (dammit) on Cs--besides thwarting those nametag-searching eyes--is that I don't feel obligated to go to that many panels. This could be of course because I didn't get a program, and so don't know what cool stuff I'm missing. I admit to feeling a little weird without the tag, and the fact that I've changed jobs recently adds to identity confusion. People I know by sight basically scan my midsection where the tag should be hanging and say "now where did you end up?" Others, understandably confused by whether to call me Debra or Debbie, end up going for the common chummy denominator and calling me 'Deb,' which I really, really, can't stand. Long story about why. Yeah, yeah, next year I'll register.

So many Cs, so much time.

This year's Conference on College Composition and Communication adds one more C to the mix: Chicago. I'm not presenting but figured I'd come up for the fun of it. I should have known this day was going to go smoothly when the train from Champaign to Chicago left on time, and when I discovered I had a delightful train buddy, Sam, a grad student in our program. Spaghetti lunch in the Loop with grad program friends, a panel on literacy and citizenship (nice job, Amy!), a vodka flight at the Russian Tea House, and a relaxing trek through the Art Institute, both with Cathy; a super crowded Illinois partay despite the expensive cash bar, and a late-evening, post-reception thai dinner in Boystown followed by two VERY exciting NCAA game endings (Texas and UCLA). The last bit on the heels of news that Duke lost.

This trip has so far been as tremendous as the Bruins' full court press, and, if I may say so, my pool bracket.