Liz's Bloglet - Wednesday 28 October 2009

Of all the parts of me that hurt
The worst pain is
The last perfect fall day
And my whole body remembers
What it is to be a runner
And I will never run again _
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04:59:01 PM, Wednesday 28 October 2009

Well, this makes me feel safe on campus. So instead of being in danger from some random guy wandering around in the building in the middle of the night who made me nervous, I'd be in danger from the guy with the gun and the handcuffs I called for help. I'll be interested to see if there was something in this guy's background that meant he never should have been hired as a cop in the first place. _
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07:24:02 PM, Tuesday 27 October 2009

I just discovered that my beloved nurse practitioner has had added to her job title "Quality Information Coordinator". I guess the number of times I've written on the anonymous surveys, "I wish all of the doctors at Student Health had her bedside manner and competence" has finally paid off. I don't know if the really sucky doctors are even changeable, but if they were they could learn a whole lot from her. _
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10:28:36 AM, Monday 26 October 2009

I need more choral music recordings. And also at least a week off and lots of warm water. _
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08:14:05 PM, Saturday 24 October 2009

A sad little story about a sad little college. Since it was local and affiliated with the PCUSA, I grew up knowing about Barber-Scotia and not thinking bad things about it. I hope that they can find a way out.

This is in the back of my mind as one of the scary things about the sort of jobs I find appealing, because I'd be far more interested in teaching at a Barber-Scotia or Bennett than at a Duke or Davidson, but I also still envision myself on the tenure track and settling into a permanent job, and that's obviously not a given at a struggling college. _
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09:26:17 AM, Friday 23 October 2009

When Owls Attack--our neighborhood nature story made the newspaper. Neither of us has been attacked, but we do see them and hear them a lot. And I've warned Tuxedo to watch himself, even though at 15 pounds he's well outside of prey weight range for a Barred Owl. _
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11:35:40 AM, Thursday 22 October 2009

Rundown of new shows I have attempted to watch:
Flashforward--Fun sci-fi drama. What Fringe might have been if it hadn't also been trying to be the X-files. Interesting questions about time travel, but we can't currently tell if it's going to be more fantasy than hard sci-fi. Ranks above Heroes but below Lost for the genre (Fringe obviously doesn't even make it into the rankings)

Forgotten--It's CSI or Law & Order, but with Christian Slater leading a rag-tag team of earnest volunteers trying to give names to unclaimed bodies. Doesn't require much attention, but not terrible. Probably easily forgotten (ha!)

Mercy--Light and fluffy hospital drama. Smaller cast than Gray's Anatomy, therefore slightly less in-hospital sex, but same general idea, focusing on nurses instead of surgeons. Michelle Trachtenburg being herself but otherwise unmemorable cast. Includes an Iraq vet female nurse with PTSD.

Trauma--Ambulance drama, with helicopters and impalements. Like ER, but they rarely get inside the hospital. Meatier plotwise (and gorewise) than Mercy. Includes Iraq vet female helicopter pilot without PTSD, and her paramedic partner and his MD but working as a paramedic ex-girlfriend, both with PTSD from a stateside helicopter crash.

Overall, Flashforward is worth checking out, and Trauma isn't bad if you're missing your ER fix. _
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09:27:31 PM, Tuesday 20 October 2009

I can't decide if it's awesome or probably not that great an idea: The Savannah cat is a cross between a domestic cat and a serval. See one in action. _
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04:31:36 PM, Tuesday 20 October 2009

A tribute to women farmers _
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12:15:21 PM, Monday 19 October 2009

Today I am in love with lidoderm patches. That is all. _
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02:21:25 PM, Thursday 15 October 2009

Started the morning reading this.

And then people figured out that we knew him, that he had posted this. Folks had tried to provide what support they could online.

Not a good way to start the day. _
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08:39:59 AM, Monday 12 October 2009

I still maintain that the best policy analysis of healthcare is being done by The Onion.

But coming in a close second is Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida (link to Shakesville because they provide transcripts for those who can't hear or who would rather not watch a video) _
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04:47:02 PM, Friday 9 October 2009

Looked at the paper I was convinced sucked and would be a huge pain to work up enough to actually publish. It is not as bad as I thought. A good thing. _
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03:32:56 PM, Thursday 8 October 2009

Here's an article for Johnnies to hate. There are many ways I am unsuited to being an academic in the humanities. Most of them are made painfully clear by the fact that this article was ever written. _
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08:01:47 PM, Monday 5 October 2009

I'm only going to do this once, because I know people are getting a lot of these things and there are so many diseases out there worthy of donation (and many people have one particular cause that is particularly important to them where they concentrate their money). Oct 17th I'm walking in the Light the Night walk in Charlotte in memory of my friend Henderson's dad, who died a year ago, to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research. Henderson and I have been friends since elementary school and her mom and dad were always there for me when I was growing up. For me, this is about being there with the Elams to honor his memory, but I also want to help in some small way as they try to reach a fund-raising goal. If you've got $5 to spare and are willing to sponsor me in this, I'd be very grateful.

The Elams have always been huge Grateful Dead fans, so the team is Walk You In the Morning Sunshine _
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10:26:35 AM, Monday 5 October 2009

Where was someone like Ellen Page when I was in high school? I guess we had Claire Danes and Winona Ryder and (and Molly Ringwald in the near past). But we also had Tori Spelling, which almost cancels out anything good about our entertainment choices. And while Jennifer's Body is not unlike Heathers, we did not have anything even approaching Juno or Whip It. I still feel like this decade is a golden age in movies and TV compared to the 80s/90s, and that golden age happily finally includes teenage girls. _
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07:12:49 PM, Sunday 4 October 2009

In the interest of having some fun and meeting some more grad students (since so many people I've known for the past few years have gotten their degrees and moved on) I've joined our Women in Science and Engineering group's women's science fiction book club. This month we read Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson. It's a short, fun road trip story about a female robot learning what it means to be human. There are some obvious but interesting feminist overtones as she was created to be a companion and to worry about other people but literally reprograms herself as she learns that taking care of herself is part of taking care of others and meanwhile develops an identity and purpose in life of her own.

It was written in 1993, so some of the ideas about the internet feel pretty dated, but not as dated as I felt as I discovered that I was the only person in the room who had used a dial-up modem to go on a bulletin board in 1993. Also, wireless sure would have made parts of the book less complicated. But overall it was an interesting book that has stood up well to time and technological advance.

Also, it was fun to eat sandwiches and chat and feel that comradery that is the secret to St. John's where everybody has read the same thing and so you stick little allusions to it into whatever else you're talking about. I'm also rereading one of my favorite books, Pat Conroy's My Losing Season (I bought it so that Remi would read it but I'm rereading it first because it's so stinking good) in which he talks about how even in the midst of hating The Citadel, how he adored the feeling of being part of the Corps and having all suffered through the same things, and how their basketball team was the same thing in miniature. And I think that's one of the things than many people love about team sports, in general, and it's certainly one of the beloved things about St. John's: that even in the middle of the dark days of Kant or Maxwell or Nietzsche or Greek we were surrounded by people who were going through the same thing and we could see Seniors who had survived.

I think that might be something that gets lost sometimes in grad school, since the closer we get to finishing the more isolated we get both mentally and physically as we go off in a little corner and off in our heads to write. So it's easy for people just starting to not have the sense that they're surrounded by people who survived the first few years and it's easy for people finishing to feel like we're very alone while doing so. _
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07:32:34 PM, Thursday 1 October 2009

This is much better than anything else I can say. I thought about linking to this and this and of course obviously to this again (because certainly part of the bargain is listening to horrible rape apologism). But I think I'll content myself with a happy kid and Paul Simon instead. _
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09:08:05 AM, Thursday 1 October 2009

Remi's next art project should be scientific illustration _
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09:05:49 PM, Wednesday 30 September 2009

Revised paper sent to long lost co-author who had pretty much given up on me: done.

One step closer. _
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09:31:57 AM, Monday 28 September 2009

For the ornithology fans among us: State Birds _
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03:41:45 PM, Tuesday 22 September 2009

They just put all of Life up on Hulu. If you've never watched it, it's the story of a policeman, wrongly convicted of murder, who gets reinstated as a detective after spending years in prison. He used Zen to survive prison and continues to use it to survive life after prison. It's cute and quirky and the mysteries are actually pretty good. Obviously, with that much good going for it, it's been canceled. But thanks to the wonders of the internet you can watch it. _
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05:57:41 PM, Monday 21 September 2009

I've gotten so used to typing without my left pinky it will be weird to start using it again now that it's nearly healed. _
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12:37:42 PM, Monday 21 September 2009

Because I am not often kind to Pseudo Ivy on this blog, I have to say that one thing I adore about it is that my students come from every continent and represent every possible ethnicity and combinations thereof, as well as the entire political and religious spectrum, and a pretty broad socio-economic swath as well. What they all have in common is that they're really stinking smart and they thought or were told that a big name American university was the best path on the way to the amazing things they're going to do with their lives.

It was once named the most gay-unfriendly campus in America (outside of Bob Jones and such) and I've heard enough anecdotal stories from women and people of color to know it's far from perfect. Plus all that stuff that was in the newspaper a few years ago. But when I get away from the scandals and the ugliness and the snark, it's actually a pretty amazing place.

When I think back to my Sophomore Seminar and remember the truly remarkable experience of reading the Bible with a Ghanaian with no previous experience with Christianity and an annoyed Albanian Muslim, and realize that was the only experience even remotely like that I had at St. John's, I feel like I really missed out on something that is commonplace for my students.

It was one thing to confront those books with other people for whom, as for me, they formed the backbone of the culture in which we had spent our whole lives, and then to thrash around through the whole world of ideas within that context. But how cool to everyday hear about these ideas from not just one or two, but entire classfulls of people whose cultural language is completely different. _
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07:54:40 PM, Wednesday 16 September 2009

Number of residents per Waffle House _
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12:00:13 PM, Tuesday 15 September 2009

I've admitted my limitations and, unless an amazing job opportunity comes up that cannot be put on hold, I will not be graduating until December next year. It sucks, but I think it is better for my health and my sanity. Plus, it means I'll be able to buy the student health insurance for that whole school year, so that even if I can't find a job, I will be able to take the medicine I need to function. _
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09:23:02 AM, Monday 14 September 2009

Is the Obama-as-Heath-Ledger's-Joker a racist symbol? If it's not some weird white face/black face thing, what is it supposed to mean? And why do people use it as a live journal icon? _
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08:22:55 AM, Sunday 13 September 2009

I don't know how I missed this when it came out: The Collected Apologies of Lawrence H Summers, President of Harvard _
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06:21:57 PM, Tuesday 8 September 2009

Songbird speaks the truth about suddenly finding yourself uninsurable _
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06:08:57 PM, Monday 7 September 2009

Awww. This is what happens when dorks reproduce _
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06:22:07 PM, Saturday 5 September 2009

If the choice is between pain so bad I can't do anything and narcotics that keep me from doing things, I'm going to choose the drugs every time. The only real upside is that my finger hurts bad enough that my joints aren't even a concern, which is impressive given that I'm off Enbrel to try to avoid infection.

I am not a stoic or a real Calvinist and I don't believe I deserve this or that it makes me stronger. It just hurts. _
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02:17:45 PM, Tuesday 1 September 2009

I like Amanda's review of Inglourious Basterds and she makes some strong points about feminism in Tarantino movies, including this movie's destruction of the "Nice Guy" storyline. _
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11:40:06 AM, Tuesday 1 September 2009

Ha ha ha ow

"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It�s a very complicated issue." _
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06:45:44 PM, Monday 31 August 2009

Stuff Fundies Like: Witnessing to Presbyterians _
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04:48:19 PM, Monday 31 August 2009

Greg Palast has some Katrina stories. Nothing I can say here that I haven't been saying a lot for 4 years. I don't see myself being physically able to go back and work on houses, and it's becoming increasingly hard to persuade others to go in my place.

There are a couple of interesting post-doc opportunities helping with the ecological restoration of the wetlands, which is, ultimately, the only possible salvation of the Gulf Coast.

And, thankfully, President Obama has realized that putting the Corps in charge of it would be a huge mistake since they are largely responsible for the destruction of the wetlands, and more directly responsible for the destruction of New Orleans by constructing MR-GO. _
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07:33:50 AM, Sunday 30 August 2009

Seven years ago around this time I sliced the tip off of the 4th finger on my left hand with a pocketknife while doing field work in a stream in Atlanta. Today I sliced the tip off of the pinky on my left hand when a vial I was holding broke under pressure while filtering water from a stream in Durham. I really need to take it easy on my left hand.' edited to add: Looking at the scar, it's pretty clear that 7 years ago I cut the tip off of my index finger. Blame pain, blood loss, and Darvocet. _
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03:44:45 PM, Friday 28 August 2009

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