b l o g o s

aw.

The sweet older couple sitting next to me at the Champaign train station this morning were amazed at the number of young women who keep up with the weather forecast. The man kept marveling that they all wore their warm boots. The first time he spotted a pair of Uggs, he said "She wore her boots! She must know the snow is coming!" And all the subsequent times he leaned over to his wife and said "there's another pair of boots!"

I wonder what he'd have to say if he spotted uggs paired with shorts in early autumn.

on Edwards' bowing out

Much as I am a devoted fan of Obama and have been pleased with Clinton until last week, I am quite sad to see John Edwards drop out of the race. As Tenured Radical makes clear, Edwards is no doubt a worthy candidate. I like his commitment to finding a way to ease poverty in this country. The reports that he called both Clinton and Obama to ask them to consider giving more emphasis to poverty bring to mind the work of my friend (and colleague) who has statistically proven that the issue politics of losing opponents ultimately make a difference in the platforms and policies that those elected end up promoting (though she phrases it more elegantly, I'm pretty sure). Or, as I argue in my own book in a different context, the give-and-take of the contest itself can end up being quite productive. Heartening. And for that reason, I wish he could stay in the race even longer. Here's hoping that Clinton and Obama incorporate his message, and moreover, that they won't be the only ones. 

they don't call it central Illinois for nothing.

With tornadoes projected for south of us, and blizzards to the north of us, I suppose it makes sense that we are having the worst kind of blowy, whirly, snowy, mess. It's a neither-nor, but also kind of a both-and. A sucky middlin'.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the well-wishes. The virus seems to have heeded my command (or more likely there was nothing left for it, so it moved on), and we're waiting to see if it takes the other human member of this household as its victim.

dear virus,

I like to think of myself as a fairly good host. When someone visits I'll try to have their favorite drink on hand and make sure they have clean sheets and towels, and I try to prepare something yummy. But my guests are usually courteous and fun. You know, they offer something in return, like funny stories or financial advice. Good company. But you are the worst. You take everything and give nothing. I don't blame you for wanting to take those pancakes I ate last night, because they were fluffy and delicious. But then you decided to take EVERYTHING left in and around my digestive system, all at once, including the acid, the bile, the oxygen. Get out of here, you impatient, greedy fuck. And take this fever with you.

sincerely,

your host

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.

hometown gym culture

At the Y in my hometown, some men and women still wear T-shirts with the armholes down to the waist--maybe it's to match the 80s music, which, truth be told, no one will hear me complain about. But I do prefer arm-size armholes.

In the spinning class I tried where hard core heavy metal alternated with christian rock, and where the instructor exhorted us to "poooosh those pedals," the men apparently take seriously the instructor's strategy to take us to 'a fantasy place.'  One man, for example, requested that we ride down a beach full of naked ladies.

Before class started, one spinner told another spinner the following joke:

Q: How do you tell the difference between a Baptist and a Presbyterian?

A: The Presbyterian will wave to you at the liquor store.

laundry day

this is pretty funny.

hat tip to JM. happy Friday, everybody!

it's stunning, really,

how quickly two hours can pass catching up with a cherished colleague over giant glasses of frothy hot drinks in the late afternoon.

It's also stunning, come to think of it, how quickly one can do a turnabout on a place. It's not a huge secret that this time last year I was going through some bad shit here--some very bad shit--and came very close to leaving because of one pretty heinous act by one colleague and a small handful of enablers. But having closed off all that and having owned a decision to stay for countless positive reasons, I can't imagine being anywhere else.

And that's not just the sabbatical talking, I swear.

not a terribly uplifting post

A couple weeks ago I finished Richard Russo's latest novel, Bridge of Sighs*, a quietly devastating novel for the way its small-town characters just kind of live out their lives and/or meet their ends. Temporally, it sprawls, but geographically it's mostly confined to a tiny place called Thomaston in upstate New York. And even weeks after I've finished it--at which time I told JM it should be called "Bridge of Cries"--I'm still in it.

Mostly this is because the smallness of the town, with its shifting industry, toxic rivers, and corner groceries, shadows my home town in eerie ways. JM's too. There are marriages and divorces, births and miscarriages. There is racial strife, and there are secret lives. And yet with one exception, there are two kinds of death: the quick accidental kind, and the creeping, cancerous kind.

One key character leaves the town--it's obvious from early on because of the way time works in the novel so I'm not spoiling anything--and he remains as haunted by the place as those who stay. The main character and sometimes narrator who stays in Thomaston his whole life keeps in touch with the one who has left mostly by mailing clipped obits to him in Italy. It's a terrific fictional detail that treads ever-close to cliche, because that's what starts to happen in these places: time becomes marked by death, death becomes the thing to report, and deaths, it would seem, become more frequent. This is not to say other things don't happen in small places, they do. But the news that leaks out is ever grim.

There have been several notable deaths in my hometown of late, including the neighbor who loved to let me and my sister draw milk from his cows to feed the barn cats. He lost his ear and then his life to cancer. I've come to expect the phone calls or the emails with the person's name as the subject line. This morning, an email from my dad contained the name of the mother of my team's point guard during my sophomore and junior years. I hadn't known her mom had been diagnosed with cancer, but I didn't need to open the email to know why she was gone--she was too young to have died from anything else.

There's always, I suppose, the comfort of a good life having been lived. And most people where I'm from will turn to their families, their community, and their religious faith to get through. Being far away from all that won't erase the perpetual image of my teammate's mother's brimming smile when her daughter hit all those free throws--I think the total was something wild like 20--in the state championship her senior year. Nor does it mitigate the depth of sadness the news brings.

 

*thanks to cf for the reco.