b l o g o s

OFL on being a librarian

It's been awhile since I've seen Our Favorite Librarian (OFL), and so I was delighted when she wandered over to the stacks desk to discharge my book today. When she did, though, she was a little confused about who was already being helped (me or the other woman standing in front of the other computer terminal at the stacks desk), and this slight confusion produced today's topic of conversation.

But first OFL gave me her sly look. It's hard to describe, really, but her eyes widen a little, and her head moves slightly to one side, and she gives a little closed mouth half smile, and I know it's coming: OFL is going to let me in on a little secret. Then she said, "I always tell people that being a librarian is like having twins." Just like that. She stopped her utterance as if what she meant is obvious.

Not having had twins before, and thinking that this may be good OFL on blogos material, I pressed a little. In response, her arms started flailing, her head swiveling (think the robot dance circa 1980s) and she explained to me that a librarian has to keep track of who got left where and in what process because transactions are always getting interrupted--it's the definition of library work apparently--and so the resumption of an in-progress activity becomes key. I helpfully added that we patrons also all look alike, and she agreed, launching into a tale about how people expect her to remember them when they see her at the mall.

When I left, I wanted to say "bye mom!" but I got interrupted, because another librarian was approaching me to search my bag.

file under broke and broken

This afternoon I have a set of sad errands to run, or at least it seems so to me. They are sad mostly because they involve things that are broken or failed in some way. First, I have to go to Denny's the drycleaners to pick up my drycleaning. Now this seems like a normal errand, yes? Not so sad, you say. You would be wrong. The thing is, if I want my clothes, I have to--as in, I am required to--pick them up today, August 30, between 11 am and 1 pm. This is because Denny's is broke. As in bankrupt. And for more than a month my clothes have been held captive there. I don't actually remember what clothes they are, so this is also a moment of rediscovery. I hope it's something I can teach in.

Then I have to drop off my bike which has in the past two months had no fewer than 5 flat tires. We keep replacing the tubes, and they keep getting holes in them. Last time I swept the inside of the tire to make sure there's nothing puncturing the tube: nothing was there. So I put in a new tube and biked around for two days, and on the third day, it returned to the dead. (Dad, if you're reading this, yes I kept the tubes properly inflated! Mom, if you're reading this, sorry about the Jesus joke.) The reason this is sad is that we have sworn off the shop and want to fix our own damn bikes but apparently we don't know what the hell we're doing.

Finally, I've got to get new glasses. The krazy glue did a nice job but only lasted for three weeks. I don't want new glasses! I love my old ones! But now not even krazy glue will repair them, and so I've got no choice. The saddest part of this is that I bought my last pair of glasses at a bright, white, achingly hip store on Champs d'Elysee in Paris, and now I have to go to Lenscrafters on Neil Street in Champaign. Wow, that was one sad sentence to have to type.

[update: all you bike fiends--Dad, Spencer, Senioritis--were probably reading the second paragraph and thought, 'she needs a new tire.' Yep. One final inspection turned up a bent nail or industrial staple, no doubt from all the construction on Lincoln Ave. I just replaced the tire, hooray.]

rubbing statues

cross posted at the body blog

Yesterday our seminar readings (Blair, Crowley, Hayles, and Ratcliffe) clustered around materiality. Carole Blair's essay on memorials (in Rhetorical Bodies), and her discussion of supplementing memorials--i.e., how people sometimes leave things like flowers and notes behind--got us thinking about other ways visitors change such sites. At stake in this inquiry is the question of material's mutability. It is intriguing that structures made of stone, bronze, granite, or marble can still be encountered interactively.

We looked at some images of bronze statues in particular and talked about the practice of rubbing statues, usually on their noses or feet, but sometimes, ahem, elsewhere, and the way that rubbing acts as a kind of polishing, so that the nose on Lincoln's tomb remains shiny while the rest of his face has darkened over time. (I'm including the images we examined here.)

Does anybody know where this practice originated? I know the Buddhist practice of rubbing the Buddha for health has been around since ancient times, and this practice of rubbing statues of local heroes for luck is common in Europe and the U.S., especially on college campuses (see, e.g., John Harvard's shoe below). I haven't been able to find any information on how this cultural practice got started, but I'm kind of obsessed with it.

 

more improprieties

This afternoon John and I ventured down the street for the Michigan Ave block party. Lots of delicious tomato-y salads and talk of recent house additions, nervous chatter about kids leaving for college or entering high school, a rousing plastic swordfight among the 3-and-under set, and mild confusion over whether John and I are married and whether our house is white or grey (answers: yes, and I think it's supposed to be white; the latter question seemed far more urgent in fact). When we arrived, the hosting family hustled us over to the nametag center and the mom slapped two index cards on the table in front of us and instructed us each to write a question about ourselves for a game of neighborhood trivial pursuit--"to help us learn something about you," she explained.

I was stumped for awhile, then came up with what I thought was a pretty funny and very trivial detail about me. Yet as the game got underway and the hostess read the questions I began to have second thoughts about my question. The first spate of questions helps illustrate the genre: "he denied the neighborhood squirrels their supply of peaches," and "he will be a freshman at Urbana high school this fall," and "he can sing the first verse of 'Row Row Row your Boat' in Latin," and "they live in the same house and work on the same floor in the same building on campus," and "she's an economist who knows more about insects than the stock market," and "he moved back to his boyhood home on Michigan five years ago." That kind of thing. We have an overeducated and charmingly quirky set of neighbors. No surprise there. And then came my bit of trivia:

"She scored 80 out of 100 on the sexual harrassment quiz at her last university."

The crowd emitted a low "woooo"; my easily scandalized neighbor and friend Massumi looked around wide-eyed, and I could tell all the men (95% of whom are themselves faculty members, the rest are emerita) were a little sympathetic but damned glad it wasn't them. One kid leaned over to her mom to ask what kind of quiz it was. But no one would make a guess who wrote it.

So I finally shouted "I was overly cautious!" And the double block on Michigan Avenue emitted a tittery exhale.

conference call confession

This morning I participated in a conference call from home at 10 am, only an hour after finishing morning email, a dog walk, and an entire carafe of coffee. The conference call was for a meeting of a PhD exam committee on another campus, and the meeting went well--it was efficiently run; the project to which the exams will lead is really cool; the fellows on the committee had a lot to say; and the soon-to-be examee very politely let them say what they wanted while judiciously interjecting his thoughts and responses here and there.

Participating on these sorts of things by phone can be awkward, but it can also be easy. For example, when I want to say something, I don't need to wait politely and read people's body language for signs of whether they too are about to say something. Instead, I just blurt it out. I picture everyone freezing and looking at the speaker I'm on. When the political theorist couldn't quite recall the title of his colleague's book on toleration and religion, I silently googled it to find out. (Though it's also the case that I didn't get the opportunity to share the title, and it might also have been a little Pollyannaish to announce that I'd googled it.) An only mildly funny joke made on the speaker phone seems to draw much more laughter than it should as well, but hey, I'll take what I can get. And finally, I participated in this meeting wearing a sleeveless Washington Mystics shirt, the shorts I slept in, and no shoes.

And so here's my real confession. This meeting was scheduled for two hours, and one hour in, that carafe? of coffee? It needed out. So rather than making a big deal about excusing myself as I would need to do were I present live at this meeting, I waited until after we had a brief chat about the rhetorical theory list, which I and the meeting leader are overseeing, and then when the committee moved on to talk about the liberalism list, I heard the philosopher take a deep breath and make one of those introductory comments indicating that it would be a little while, so I gently set down the phone and made a quick trip to the bathroom. When I picked up the phone again, the political theorist was in the middle of a reflection on Charles Taylor and I knew no one had missed me or my Mystics shirt.

Wednesday as Monday, students as shoppers, and other first day idiosyncracies

Yesterday my grad seminar in rhetorical theory, "Bodies and Rhetoric," met for the first time under this somewhat bizarre institutional tradition called "the first Wednesday is a Monday."  This tradition has to do (I think) with Labor Day and our luxurious weeklong Thanksgiving break. Anyway, it's confusing, this rule, and since for some reason my graduate seminars have been on Mondays in fall semester, they have often fallen prey to the WiM rule. This means that the first two class meetings happen in rapid succession--Wednesday, then the very next Monday--followed by a long lull while we observe Labor Day and wait for the second "real" Monday (third if you count the first Wednesday) to roll around. So it makes for an odd start, though it allows me to pile on the reading for that lully week (mu ha ha).

It seemed rather appropriate too that on this Wednesday that is really a Monday, our assigned seminar room turned out to be really someone's office. Luckily I have always been the kind of teacher who pokes her head into the room in advance, checks out the air temp--that sort of thing. I was surprised to find that the room listed in the course catalogue instead had someone's name newly etched on the glass and a note about how her G-5 is now installed and working. So the department secretaries and I made a room change sign and they notified everyone else who had a seminar scheduled for the now-office.

The new seminar room was pretty packed, including one person not registered for the course who cheerfully announced he was "shopping for classes." I cheerfully told him that he was shopping at a store that was sold out, since the course is already overenrolled, and so he asked if he could have a copy of the syllabus, stayed for 15 minutes, and then continued on his spree. I hope he finds the goods he needs!

Once the seminar got underway and I made it through my overview of all the stuff we are going to be doing over the next three and a half months, we settled into our first discussion of the readings. I'm trying to figure out why, but it seems to me that this seminar was missing the usual (and understandable) reticence at the beginning of the semester, and that everyone was instantly engaged and contributing. There also seemed to be very little anxiety about the workload--I'm accustomed to questions and more questions about the assignments and requirements--but nothing. Just a group of thoughtful people with diverse backgrounds who know what they're doing and seem genuinely interested in the course material.

I think this is going to be a good class, initial idiosyncracies notwithstanding.

[UPDATE] Since Aspasia herself has made the request--thanks, A!--I'd be happy to make my syllabus available. You can access it here.

my most recent telephone conversation--or, I wonder what we'll be eating tonight?

(ring!) Hello, Antonio's? Can you hold?

me: Sure.

Antonio's guy: hello?

me: yes, I have a question about a coupon I have

AG: I said can you hold?

me: Oh, sure.

AG: Okay ma'am, what is your question?

me: I was wondering if the special on cheese pizzas applies to pizzas with any sauce, or is it just with tomato sauce?

[lots of background noise]
AG: I'm sorry ma'am, I can't hear you; it's so loud here. GUYS! SHUT UP!

me, shouting to do my part: The COUPON? for two CHEESE PIZZAS? Does that apply to pizzas with other sauces besides tomato?

AG: Hold on ma'am; I'll get someone who can help you

(jostling)

New Antonio's Guy: Antonio's, can I take your order?

me: I have a question about the coupon for two cheese pizzas: does that apply to any of your different kinds of sauce?

NAG: Sauce?

me: Nevermind. I'll have two cheese pizzas. I'm at 604 West Michigan Ave

NAG: I'm sorry ma'am; we only go to the 200 block in Urbana

me: But the 200 block is further away from campus, and I just got a pizza the other night

NAG: Ma'am, it's different during the summer, but I'll tell you what, we'll deliver this time. Just know that we normally only go to the 200 block.

me: Great. But what I'm telling you is that the numbers get bigger as the streets get closer to campus and that 200 is four blocks east--further away from campus--than the 600 block.

NAG: Okay, ma'am. This time only.

maybe it's not so bad that the students are back: an exercise in positive thinking

1. sodas, everywhere, on sale
2. well stocked grocery shelves (must get there early on Sunday, though, before the neat rows become piles of jumbled remains)
3. roads flanking campus are well signed and monitored, even if traffic barely moves
4. one develops creative ways to secure one's bike, because the 250 bike racks near the campus gym are all taken by shiny smart bikes belonging to the shiny smart freshmen moving into the dorm next door
5. the ever-unpopular because oh-so-nineties stairmaster, the only open cardio machine in said gym, which closed eight hours early today for the "campus rec block party," offers a nice 2nd story view of the dorm's circle drive, so it doesn't matter that all the trashy magazines are damp, torn, or in use; the vantage point offers 30 full minutes of glistening dads (sweat) and moms (tears) and their stringy, detached, newly ringtoned children

Rhinelander, WI: these puns don't run

information

Where I'm from, community bears on statistics, making them sag and wail. And so it seems like every year there around this time, it's always someone--young, often a boy--and a motorcycle, a car, or water. Headlines dumbly chase phone calls. But this time, the headline reached me first, at a public library, in an email message, among stock tips and sale notices, departmental announcements, and friendly hellos. Murky hints of an accident, paralysis, death; a broken link refusing to fill in what a shaky google search otherwise can, in excess: a boat, my coach, his son.