Liz's Bloglet - Friday 7 October 2011

If I didn't have to teach this afternoon, I would so totally run away right now. But I do, and midterm grades are due next week. _
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09:09:43 AM, Friday 7 October 2011

As I took the elevator down in our town MARTA station a few minutes before 7 this evening, it was with a heavy heart, knowing that my newly adopted state was about to kill an innocent man. When the train emerged above ground 20 minutes later, I was shocked to discover that the Supreme Court had delayed the execution. By the time we reached the station across the street from the capitol building, what had once been a vigil in front of the steps had turned into a celebration of hope. I walked through quickly, smiling at the cheering folks in the "I am Troy Davis" t-shirts, and looking nervously at the vast numbers of state police lining both sides of all the streets.

The choir room at my newly adopted church is on the third floor, directly facing the capitol, and tonight giving us prime seats at the celebration. We had planned to go down and join the vigil. To sing "Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, help me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Precious Lord, take my hand, and lead me home." To do what we could to provide some comfort to the mourners.

Instead, we got on with our business of rehearsing Sunday anthems and Durufle's Requiem, with occasional interruptions as the singing and cheering below drowned us out. Earlier, I was ashamed of my state. I don't know what the night will bring or what the final decision of the Supreme Court will be. But, for now, I am content to have seen a glimpse of hope in our hopeless world. _
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10:22:41 PM, Wednesday 21 September 2011

I'm saying this here because I don't dare say it anywhere else.

The only changes needed to be made to prevent what happened on Sept 11, 2001 were locking cockpit doors, for the CIA and FBI to actually communicate instead of both intentionally watching/and or supporting suspected terrorists to see what would happen, and for the President and his security team not to ignore terrorism warnings because he was on vacation. The attack was foreseeable and preventable.

It was a great tragedy, but it needn't have happened and having happened it needn't have completely screwed our country up for the next 10 years.

The Dept of Homeland Security and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan must be counted among the reasons we are in the financial situation in which we currently find ourselves. The attack was used to justify completely screwing over our country. They made defense contractors wealthy and gutted our ability to fund anything else, so that we were unable to respond to the mess those other rich guys made with their wild gambling and are now wasting time talking about cutting the deficit in the middle of a recession.

I will now disappear from the internet and turn off the radio and television until Monday. I just can't take this year's stuff. _
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01:06:22 PM, Friday 9 September 2011

I am working at a unique place, a public, open-access college committed to the idea that a liberal arts education with small class sizes, active learning approaches, and individual attention from faculty should be available to anyone who wants it. The powers that be firmly believe that our approach is the answer to the shockingly low (<50%) 6-year completion rate for the public university system in the state. So far, we haven't had enough graduates to demonstrate that conclusively, but our freshman retention rate is 80%, on par with Georgia Tech, which is one of the most selective schools in the country. We are getting 80% freshman retention with an open-access population, including students who were too apathetic to apply other places, some who never took the SAT, some who have GEDs, some who did not do the "college prep track" in high school, many who are coming to college for the first time later in life.

Because if you really believe in the value of a liberal arts education, and I really do, it should not be restricted to those whose families are wealthy or well connected, who excelled in high school, who are willing to take out student loans, or even those who have ever heard of liberal arts education before. An educated populace is supposed to be the foundation of our democracy. So I decided to walk the walk. And last night I helped welcome incoming students to our school.

_
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07:17:40 PM, Wednesday 17 August 2011

This. Just that. Especially the last couple paragraphs. _
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12:26:36 PM, Sunday 31 July 2011

Feds may be muzzling scientist over Arctic research This is as bad as Jane Lubchenco abandoning science in her response to the Deepwater Horizon spill. _
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07:29:33 PM, Saturday 30 July 2011

We are married. Remi gets health insurance. _
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07:02:37 PM, Wednesday 27 July 2011

Just in time for me to start work next week, the hometown paper is slapping us around a little. Please note that the full version is only available in print or in their iPad app. _
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02:03:25 PM, Monday 25 July 2011

Okay, I've been convinced to stop calling Jesse Eisenberg the poor director's Michael Cera. I actually really enjoyed both Adventureland and Zombieland. And he fosters cats! _
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11:52:58 AM, Wednesday 20 July 2011

In praise of Joanne Rowling's Hermione Granger series.

Oh how I love Sady Doyle. _
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04:32:31 PM, Tuesday 19 July 2011

We saw HP 7b on Friday. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was one of the better made of the movies, especially in terms of providing enough information to prevent plot holes but not explicating every single thing to death.

The Deatheaters were terrifying, as they are supposed to be. They reminded me of this. Much has been made of the comparison between the darkening of the HP books and darkening of the mood in British and US society post-9/11/2001. But the books were never about terrorism. They were always about the ugliness within our society, which uses fear to engage in witch-hunts against the other. The fear of Lupin's lycanthropy was clear allegory to homosexuality and the Pure Blood/Mud Blood dichotomy was obviously about xenophobia. Yes, I am basically saying the Tea Party are Deatheaters, and I don't think that's even an exaggeration anymore if you listen to likes of Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann. These are power hungry people who are willing to destroy everything that's good about our country. And they're real. _
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10:44:02 AM, Sunday 17 July 2011

So frustrated with bad web design right now. I ordered new contacts 2 weeks ago. Frustrated that they hadn't been delivered I went back to the webpage and discovered that my address had not been updated, even though I remembered very clearly typing in the new address.

Here is what happened: In line below the name, address, city, and state rows is a button that says "back to shipping info". So after entering all my data, I clicked that button. What I didn't realize was that, if I expanded the browser window to full size, there would be all the way on the right another button that would say "update" that would actually update my address. Since, rebel that I am, I frequently use the internet without the browser window fully expanded, I completely missed the update button and my info did not get updated. I actually did the same thing a second time today, before wising up and expanding the window until the other button appeared.

So my contacts are possibly sitting on the stoop of our old house or lost forever in the morass of the USPS. But the company is actually going to reship my order to the correct address for free.

Now I just have to persuade it to change my billing address, as well, before the next time. Grrr. Bad web design. _
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05:10:59 PM, Friday 8 July 2011

President Obama, I thnk jobs are important, too. Way more important than worrying about the deficit right now, for instance. But we're about to have the last shuttle launch, ever. At this point, you're pretty late to the discussion, oneslt. Couldn't your press conference about jobs have waited 20 minutes? Those folks will all still be unemployed at noon, I promise. _
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11:11:48 AM, Friday 8 July 2011

My parents got me an iPad. It is the niftiest thing I have ever owned I think. Any suggestions about apps and such are appreciated. I'm thinking of checking out some ebooks next--I'm definitely seeing this as a reader among other things. If anybody knows anything about styluses, that's something else I'm contemplating. _
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08:33:25 PM, Saturday 2 July 2011

The horribleness on the internet lately reminded me of what remains one of my all time favorite analogies, as both a woman and a banjo player:
If you hit someone over the head with a banjo, that�s violence, not bluegrass. Using a sexual organ as a weapon doesn�t make the violence �sex.�. The excellent Chris Clarke from here _
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10:00:55 AM, Saturday 25 June 2011

We're now living a few miles from my two primary field sites for my master's research. I've been meaning to drive over and see how they're doing. They're in a cute mid-twentieth century neighborhood of brick ranch houses with an elementary school and park in the middle, and a cool nature preserve on one side, buffering them from the mall and expressways. Very much an idyllic suburban setting in the middle of the city. Except I've discovered that they've closed the elementary school. I guess that's a neighborhood that's going down fast. Maybe a bunch of people without kids will be getting good deals on houses.

I've always lived places where the population is growing and the talk is all about money for new schools. Changing housing patterns, and the amazingly huge impacts of the recession here, mean that many intown neighborhoods are shrinking fast and the ones that aren't shrinking are attracting young urban professional types rather than families with kids. In combination with the (largely inaccurate) negative views of public schools and the rise of charter schools as the purported saviors of our nation, this means that lots of pleasant, successful schools like Medlock are just being shuttered. The remaining kids are as likely to end up at charters or private schools, now that the public school closest to their house is closed, just compounding the mess.

New jobs would help. The ability of any of us to feel at all comfortable buying a house here would help. A recovering economy would help. _
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11:02:07 AM, Saturday 18 June 2011

Tuxedo is making substantial progress in the chipmunk obliteration. He just brought us one through the cat door. Thank goodness the cat door only goes onto the screened porch and not into the house. It was still somewhat alive, so I put it back outside (to inevitably be caught by Tuxedo again). _
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08:18:49 PM, Thursday 16 June 2011

Access to specialty care for children with public insurance. Single-payer now, please. _
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07:30:36 PM, Thursday 16 June 2011

Princesses, ultimate fighting, and gender roles _
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12:58:59 PM, Thursday 9 June 2011

The official unemployment rate hit 9.1% in May. Including all of those who had part-time jobs but wanted to work full-time as well as those who want to work but had given up searching, the rate was 15.8%.

What will it take to get the government to do something about jobs instead of wasting time talking about the deficit? People who don't have healthcare and people can't buy food for their kids don't care about the deficit. _
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11:11:27 AM, Thursday 9 June 2011

So angry at Rep Weiner. Seriously. All I want is to be able to vote for a politician who is actually a decent human being and who actually values women as human beings. And I get taken in over and over again: Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Spitzer, Weiner. I've always given them the benefit of the doubt, I've always expected better, I've always thought that this one was different, that this one really was "touched by the better angels of our nature" (to use the words of Lincoln, who undoubtedly knew whereof he spoke).

And I've always been wrong. _
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05:40:44 PM, Monday 6 June 2011

We live in Georgia now. More to come when I'm not using my free trial of the city's wireless service. _
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10:53:20 PM, Tuesday 31 May 2011

The best news I've read in awhile. I've been taking these drugs despite the possible risks, but now I'm less worried about those. _
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12:57:16 PM, Saturday 28 May 2011

This is different for cats. Tuxedo, who has moved before, has decided he wants to be in the house, sitting with us, having his head rubbed (that it's been in the 90s all week has probably helped encourage this behavior). Artemis, whose entire world consists of our house, has decided she will hide under the futon until this is over. Who knows what happens when we move the futon out. _
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07:56:21 PM, Thursday 26 May 2011

Julia was here. It was awesome. She helped us pack! Now she is somewhere between Durham and Boston. _
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06:36:52 PM, Wednesday 18 May 2011

Grad School Wisdom
After 3 years to get my master's and 6 to get my PhD, surely I have learned some things. Yes, I am the ecologist expert for my region of country on one particular management practice, and I know a whole lot about microbial respiration and how leaves decompose in urban streams and I've learned a ton of theory, both ecological and pedagogical. But, really, here are the most important things I learned:

1) You should always try to accomplish one thing each day. If that goes well, you can try for two. But as long as you get one thing done, you've made progress.
2) Don't try to remember what you have to do. That uses mental energy. Make a list and then break that list into subtasks, until everything on the list is single tasks. Do one of those (see number 1).
3) Grad school is lonely. No matter how collaborative your research, excellent your advisor, or amazing your hired assistants, ultimately the work is done in solitude. For that reason:
4) Your people are important. Some of your people should be fellow grad students in your field and the people you work with every day. They will be invaluable in surviving. Many more of your people should care nothing about your research and think you're cool for completely other reasons.
5) Have things in your life that matter to you that have nothing to do with grad school. A partner, kids, pets, community service, religion, government, sports, art, music. Whatever. Just something else that matters.
5) Every now and then, give yourself a break. You will always be your own worst critic, so sometimes just cut yourself some slack.
6) Failure is inevitable. Some days all you can say is, "I will try again tomorrow."

Yeah, really, that's all I've got. _
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08:15:52 PM, Tuesday 10 May 2011

This article is worth browsing because iguanas are interesting, but also because of the presence of the phrase "frozen iguana shower". _
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09:39:40 AM, Sunday 8 May 2011

I had a happy dream about my new job last night. It was about hanging out with the really nice, interesting people in HR (no joke) getting my paperwork taken care of and then going on the campus waterslide with a bunch of students (there is no campus waterslide as far as I know).

But still, this was not a stress dream. This was a happy dream. It's about time. _
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03:06:09 PM, Saturday 7 May 2011

Wandering around the house contemplating packing and gathering up all the books I have been saving up to read:
South of Broad Pat Conroy (in progress)
On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching James Lang (in progress)
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Bart Ehrman (in progress)
The Shame of a Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America Jonathan Kozol
Imperfect Birds Anne Lamott
Teaching What You Don't Know Therese Huston
Midnight Robber Nalo Hopkinson
What the Best College Teachers Do Ken Bain (who offers approving comments on the back of the other two teaching books)
Sister Outsider Audre Lorde
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood Janisse Ray
The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood
The Lacuna Barbara Kingsolver (who I missed giving a speech on campus last week)
Microcosm: E. coli and the new science of life Carl Zimmer
Sunrise Alley Catherine Asaro

Oh, and move, and get my chapters published, and plan for the coming fall. _
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06:38:22 PM, Wednesday 4 May 2011

Jasika Nicole, Astrid on the painfully bad Fringe, does autobiographical comics that are very good. Click on "artwork" and then on "high yella magic". _
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09:55:58 AM, Wednesday 4 May 2011

Three stories about the generation a few years younger than me, and the one younger than them, and ethnicity and worldview:

On the first day of organic chemistry lab at NCSU in the Spring of 2001, I, the weird older post-bacc student, asked my new lab partner where she was from. She gave me an odd look and said, "What do you mean?" I had recognized in her voice the Western NC markers that are in my own, and so I was just wondering where she grew up. This nice young Asian-American woman explained to me that she grew up in Kernersville, NC, but that when people at NCSU asked her where she was from it was because they assumed she was from another country.

When teaching field ecology at Pseudo-Ivy, it became clear that two of our students had a lot of friends and social activities in common. They were both odd, geeky white kids from the Carolinas, but it turned out that their friendship stemmed from the fact that their freshman year they had both been assigned roommates from East Africa and so had each individually become adopted members of the close-knit East African student community on campus. It was obvious that this cultural experience was really important to both of them and had shaped their college life and their perceptions of the world. In many ways, they had gone to an entirely different college from their classmates whose social lives mostly revolved around frat parties and basketball (I'm not being mean or stereotyping, I simply have some students whose social lives revolve around frat parties and basketball. They would not disagree if you asked them).

This morning, on the radio, I heard young people the age of my students shouting, "USA, USA, USA", and celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden in roughly the same way they celebrate a basketball victory. And then I heard some of them trying to explain themselves to the BBC and NPR reporters, and I came to understand what it meant that they were 8, 9, or 10 on September 11, 2001. Because of or despite that being the context of their formative years, they had no reflections last night on religion, race, or geopolitics. They were just celebrating that the Boogie Man of their childhood is dead.

I hope that this new generation will be more reflective in the coming days. I not sorry that the monster of their childhood is gone, but I hope that they know the history of Bin Laden, the Mujahideen, and Al Qaeda, and of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also hope that they are following the news of the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen and that they see that young people their own age are involved in those revolutions. _
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09:20:29 AM, Monday 2 May 2011

3 stained glass windows broken at Duke Chapel during the "L-DOC" party last night. I'm not annoyed because it's a church, I'm annoyed because it's a really lovely building and the motivations for vandalism are probably negligible beyond "Hey, I'm really wealthy and drunk and about to graduate from college. My actions have no consequences!" _
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02:00:15 PM, Friday 29 April 2011

I admit to being fairly disappointed by this. As long as they (we?) stick to the NAIA and forgo football, it will probably be okay. _
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10:26:14 PM, Wednesday 20 April 2011

We found a house and this morning tried out my potential commute. I will be going right past the largest Hindu temple outside of India nestled incongruously in suburban sprawl, directly behind a Walgreen's, _
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06:16:57 PM, Sunday 17 April 2011

The fact is that there is no liberal establishment willing to validate liberalism. Indeed, for reasons only they can tell us, they almost always go out of their way to exclude anyone who can readily be identified as a person of the left and rush before the cameras and into print to reassure America that they have no support...When you wake up one morning and see a Democratic president praising the biggest spending cuts in history at a time of 8.8% unemployment, it might be time to take a look in the mirror.

in other words

When the only acceptable discourse is between The New Republic and The Free Republic, what you're going to get is basically a solidly Republican outcome. _
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09:40:36 PM, Monday 11 April 2011

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08:08:21 AM, Sunday 10 April 2011

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