b l o g o s

NYE

2009, for us, has been the Year of Change. We started off the year making use of our winter break at Illinois by readying the house for the market. In between we have a) sold a house; b) purchased a house; c) moved all of our things from point a to point b; d) gotten ourselves pregnant; e) started new jobs; f) finished our first semesters.

My first semester here at Penn State is a blur of weekends spent mostly in other cities, in my attempt to clear out all the travel for the end of (d) above. This included a few talks, a conference or two, and two dissertation defenses back in C-U. Weekdays are a blur of hard-charging spinning classes at my new gym; childbirth classes that ran way too late in the evening; graduate seminars that were simultaneously exhilerating and exhausting (this latter mostly because of the time of the seminar and my hellacious travel schedule); and appointments with doctors. 

The year is about all I can manage. To look back on the decade would mean to reflect on even more head-spinning change. Ten years ago today I was hunkering in the Poconos with a case of wine, 5 gallon-jugs of water and a small handful of grad-school friends, recovering from MLA and the plague it brought and wondering whether the compooters of the world would all stop working. 2000 was the year I got Jada and my PhD and left here to take my very first academic job; and it was the year before I ripped a giant hole in my knee mountain biking and (not entirely unrelatedly, actually) JM and I got together. We added little Tillie Fry about halfway through, in 2005, after our year in Pittsburgh.

And now we will be starting off this year, this decade, making way for a new little family member, whom I am very much looking forward to meeting. Happy new year, everybody.

places and things

I'm too attached to people here to blog about them, and they know who they are and how much I will miss them when we leave. But it does feel somewhat safer or less daunting to reflect on the materiality--the places and stuff--of Champaign-Urbana.

Like the parking meters next to the Champaign post office that only take pennies. I will miss those. It makes me happy that they're there.

And locker 276 at the Activities and Recreation Center, in the turquoise aisle. It is positioned perfectly in relation to the showers and the bench, and it is always available. I used it today in fact.

And the expresso bikes at the ARC. These have fun video routes and let me track my past rides and race my "ghost." When JM and I discovered that if we chose the same routes we could race each other, oh the delight. I never beat him, though.

And the bike racks next to Lincoln Hall. I have perfected my jump off the curb and no longer need to slow down to curl around for parking. On my dismount I frequently see my colleague Tom standing just outside the door, having a smoke.

And my office, its dusty windows, peeling plaster, 29-year old paint job and all. I have a couple more weeks in it, but with my lovely restored antique sofa on its way to state college, and a big dusty spot where the old (heavy!) lawyer's cases were until we moved them down to cf's office, it's already not the same.

And the Comm office in Lincoln Hall. The door to it is rather heavy and requires some leaning to open it. But behind it are the nicest people in the world, and I will miss their greetings and smiles.

And Gail's house, where we have a writing studies potluck twice a year, for which I can't ever recall having bad weather, and the back yard, in which I have watched many a baby grow into toddlers and then kids, and colleagues' kids into high schoolers. 

And the porch next door to the mouse house (C & S's porch). It's where I'm sitting right now, and it's where I will have spent significant chunks of three transition summers. It has apparently been raining for awhile, and I only now realized it.

And, well, the house on Michigan Avenue. The one that C found for me, and where she and JT and S joined us for tornado warnings. I will miss them, but I will not miss the tornado warnings. We cleaned out the whole house today, and I cursed the day I bought that bag of peas, an ingredient in the vegan pot pie that S and M and I devoured. The recipe only takes a half cup of peas though, and the open bag stayed in there for over a year, leaking peas everywhere. As I picked them out, chasing some under the stove, I thought about that pie with its warm whole wheat crust and how happy the three of us were when we were eating it.

from the inside

do not fear the cold

the way cheeks turn solid and raw, and glasses and teeth, nerveless, conduct the cold straight to the center of your face, and no hat or gloves can keep the wind from whipping and slicing through dermal layers as thin as a camisole, and feet sting and then become big hunks you must drag around, and your whole body comes the closest to resembling a large slab of meat (except when it is dead of course). just keep moving.  okay, i'll admit. i fear the cold.

buck flagojevich: the unraveling

Just a few excerpts from the 78-page affidavit I decided to spend some time with this evening. I'm particularly intrigued by the escalating awareness of possible surveillance interspersed with his highly illegal utterances. As awful and of course corrupt as the senate-seat trading is, I find the attempted quashing of the Tribune writers to be the most stomach-turning. Oh, and by way of OA, here is a terrific little one-act play drawn from an earlier part of the affidavit, and starring Patti Blagojevich as Lady MacBeth, er, Patti Blagojevich. 

76.
[On the Chicago Tribune] ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that “our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there and get us some editorial support.”

84.
On December 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Spokesman. On December 4, 2008, the Chicago Tribune announced it was reducing the size of its workforce by 11 members. During the phone conversation, Spokesman informed ROD BLAGOJEVICH that the Tribune had its “cuts” but that Spokesman did not think the “person we mentioned” was cut. ROD BLAGOJEVICH asked “McCormick?” Spokesman responded “right.”

91. On November 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Deputy Governor
A. This was the same day as the United States Presidential election. With respect to the Senate seat, Deputy Governor A suggested putting together a list of things that ROD BLAGOJEVICH would accept in exchange for the Senate seat. ROD BLAGOJEVICH responded that the list “can’t be in writing.”

92.
On November 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with JOHN HARRIS regarding the potential vacant Senate seat. ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the “trick . . . is how do you conduct indirectly . . . a negotiation” for the Senate seat. Thereafter, ROD BLAGOJEVICH analogized his situation to that of a sports agent shopping a potential free agent to various teams, stating “how much are you offering, [President-elect]? What are you offering, [Senate Candidate 2]? . . . Can always go to. . . [Senate Candidate 3].” Later ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that he will make a decision on the Senate seat “in good faith . . . but it is not coming for free. . . .It’s got to be good stuff for the people of Illinois and good for me.”

101.
On November 10, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, his wife, JOHN HARRIS, Governor General Counsel, and various Washington-D.C. based advisors, including Advisor B, discussed the open Senate seat during a conference call. (The Washington D.C.-based advisors to ROD BLAGOJEVICH are believed to have participated on this call from Washington D.C.). Various individuals participated at different times during the call. The call lasted for approximately two hours, and what follows are simply summaries of various portions of the two-hour call. [ . . . ]
c.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.” (Senate Candidate 4 is a Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois).

111.
Later on November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with JOHN HARRIS. ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that his decision about the open Senate seat will be based on three criteria in the following order of importance: “our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation. This decision, like every other one, needs to be based upon on that. Legal. Personal. Political.” HARRIS said, “legal is the hardest one to satisfy.”

ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A that “you gotta be careful how you express that and assume everybody’s listening, the whole world is listening. You hear me?” ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D if there is “tangible political support (campaign contributions) like you’ve said, start showing us now.” Fundraiser A stated he will call Individual D on the phone to communicate ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s message. ROD BLAGOJEVICH responded that “I would do it in person. I would not do it on the phone.”

here's something (else) cool about illinois

Thanks everybody for your comments on my bittersweet post. But enough about me, let's talk about Oronte Churm, one of my favorite features of these here parts. Oronte, for those of you who don't know, has a column called "Dispatches from Adjunct Faculty at  Large Research University" at McSweeney's and a blog/column at Inside Higher Ed called "The Education of Oronte Churm." "Oronte Churm" is of course a pseudonym, and while it used to be an air-tight pseudonym, it's now a pseudo-pseudonym, because he revealed his identity earlier this year, and with a fair bit of local publicity, I might add.

But I had been on to Oronte before that. It started when I was sitting in the waiting room with my colleague who was about to have his wisdom teeth removed, and said colleague (also a fan of Oronte's) announced to me that he had almost tracked down this person's identity and that maybe I could help him because he was fairly sure Oronte taught in my other department. He explained that he kept noticing little local coincidences. Apparently the clincher was the topic of a particular talk Churm mentioned in one of his columns, and it happened to be a talk my colleague had noticed in the scores of titles that flash across our screens. He then started to narrow things down.

While my colleague's head was rolling from his surgery drugs, I came home and picked up the matter from there. I looked through McSweeney's backlogs and discovered an anecdote that overlapped with my first year here in which Oronte was asked to leave a job market meeting. It was a meeting I also happened to be in (as a guest speaker), and I remember the moment as quite tense. I didn't understand why people who didn't happen to hold degrees from our program ought to be asked to leave, but as a brand new assistant professor, I really couldn't say anything. Anyway, his descriptions of the players were unmistakable. This particular entry, like so many of his others, combines range with wit, the intimate with the political. His prose usually makes me forget I'm reading on a screen, or reading at all.  

Anyway, it has been cool knowing that he's in our department, and reading his occasional pieces that reference life in and around the University of Illinois Hinterland University, even though I never see him. Check that: ours was one of the random houses he brought his kid by this year for trick-or-treating, and it was kind of appropriate that his son, whose screen name is "Starbuck" and whom I've read about but have never seen, was in disguise. I was distributing candy and looked up at John/Oronte waiting on the stairs. I have never properly met him, but not knowing his son's real name, and not bothering to introduce myself, I asked: "which one is Starbuck?" He sweetly pointed out one of the masked characters clamoring for tootsie rolls.  Being a local celebrity is probably weird that way.

All of this is to say, that the department that hires him will be a lucky department indeed.

on leaving

I am not good at leaving places. The summer before I started high school, my team spent a long week in Pulaski, Tennessee, a wretched place. We slept on hard tiled classroom floors, the only good thing about which was that the tile was cool at night, and summers in middle Tennessee are blazing. We played basketball for 10 or 12 hours a day and got sick on long john silvers fish. I got kicked out of a game for fighting with a girl who weighed way more than me, and our coach yelled and yelled and yelled at me and our point guard, the only two rising freshmen who would (he could only hope at the time) become starters that year. I should have been miserable--it was objectively miserable--but I cried when we left.

When I left for Illinois from central PA in the summer of 2000 to start my new job as an assistant professor, with my new (to me) whippet Jada rolled up in the back seat next to my big television, I went off the road a couple of times because my vision was all blurry and watery. State College had been so good to me.

When I left Illinois the first time (and yeah, yeah, as one colleague helpfully pointed out, I know we can't come back again), I was totally fine, quietly excited even, until I went to give my office keys to the secretary, a sweet woman who had just started working in the English department. One moment I was cheerfully offering her my keys, and the next moment I was sobbing so uncontrollably that her eyes filled with tears. Before that day, she had never even met me.

All this is to say what some of you already know: we are moving. I told my last phd advisee yesterday, and appropriately it was the most wrenching of the conversations. Let's just say there were, once again, tears, and I have been mopey ever since. If I think about how great my Aristotle students have been this semester, I'm afraid I'll break down even more.

JM and I are very, very excited about where we are going (Penn State), but the joy of going to a great department where rhetoric is cheered by department heads and higher-ups alike, and where there are hills to bike and hike, and where there is my favorite indian restaurant ever, and where E! and Z will both be seven or eight hours closer, still does not make it any easier, any less heartbreaking, to leave a wonderful place with such smart, good people and great friends.

anticipation

Waiting for Tuesday feels a little like waiting for a really important championship game, only the players will have gone home; many of the judges don't seem to have watched the same contest I did; and the scoring system may or may not work properly. In the meantime, though, lots and lots of things to keep me busy, in addition to shaking my head at the latest Palindrone: that the press's labeling her critiques of Obama as "attacks" threatens her freedom of speech. I mean, please. Pretty please?

Those scoreboards had better fucking work.

Anyway. My first full weekend at home since early September (and end of D.S.T no less) means catching up by tending to deadlines and promised reading and also some really, really good mountain biking. Nothing gives those endorphins a kick quite like riding at high speeds deep in the woods where the fall colors have turned the sun into a gigantic, super high wattage red/orange/yellow disco ball. I would have enjoyed it even more if not for our governor's plan to close down those trails, along with so many rape crisis centers, to balance his budget. Last week his approval rating was half--half!--that of W's.

Which brings me back around, worrying toward Tuesday. Get that vote on out, people.

sustenance, sustainability

This post by Ianqui Doodle, and this nonsense courtesy of the president who will be remembered (by me)  as the Nonsense President, and a discussion this evening on NPR about lifestyle changes people have made in response to the economy, food prices, and gas prices (all of course one complicated, inter-related bundle) all have me thinking too about what sort of future we're looking at in this here country.

Yesterday John and I walked eight blocks to our gym, and then on our walk home stopped to pick up this week's CSA bounty--arrow root and napa cabbages, red- and green-leaf lettuces, corn meal milled by the supply farm, broccoli, green onions, and something called kohlrabi (also kind of a cabbage). On the short walk home from there, we were marveling at how low maintenance life in Urbana is. Indeed, one of our many motivators for returning to Illinois was peak oil, news about which wasn't quite in the mainstream when we left Pittsburgh, but it was close. This is why we bought a house in the neighborhood close to campus, and it's why we invested in a bike trailer. We have train access to a major metro area, and we live in a walkable/bikeable small city that is surrounded--on the way outskirts--by farmland (which is key in the broad scheme of things). In other words, it's a relatively sustainable life. Oh, and as John pointed out, our good friends just moved nearby, so we have mostly everything we need--including our jobs--within a one mile radius.

Not bad.

But we are lucky. If we hadn't landed jobs at Illinois, we could easily be working in a place where it's not an option to live close to work, and where public transport (which is rather good here for a town of this size) sucks or is non-existent. My parents live in a rural area, and their fuel costs are climbing so high that my dad, ever the fan of a big roomy buick, just had a look at hybrids. (Hybrids really do need to become more affordable for more Americans, and frankly, they need to be even more fuel efficient, but that's another post.)  My sister's family lives in suburban Knoxville, where walking isn't an option--there aren't really even sidewalks. And my niece will start driving next year. I wonder how long it will take before teenagers just stop driving so soon? Or at all?

Ianqui and some of the folks on NPR suggest that perhaps people will start to migrate back to cities, and this may happen in a trickly kind of way, but it's hard to imagine what such a migration--even a trickly one--would do to housing markets, etc. Or what it would mean for food availability. It's all very disconcerting.

Of course all this could lead to a passionate appeal for people to vote for Obama in November, even though that's not what I intended to do (updated to add: appeal, that is! You're damn straight I intend to vote for him!). He has his eye on all this stuff and sees the folly of wasting so many lives and dollars in Iraq--dollars that would be far better spent developing alternative fuel sources, and building a new (and modest) economy around restructuring this country, sustainably.

around here

May is a nice time around these parts. The bike trails are all muddy but still (somewhat) ridable, the vegetables and plants are growing apace with the weeds, grad students are either scattering or hunkering down, colleagues are in the midst of their in-town moves, I remain in denial about the impending out-of-town moves, neighbors are spontaneously gathering in driveways, and as June comes on the days open up like the prairie itself. I like that there is still daylight for our evening dog walks, and I like that there are lots of noisy-ass birds yakking it up in the early morning. I also like that I'm going to be around here until mid-July. Now that I've finally (just today) unpacked my suitcases, and now that it's nearly June, it's time to settle in to a laid-back routine.