Will it Never End?

Seriously.... I feel like this is the term from hell, and winter break promises little relief. The paper is in process, but I am not sure it is making any sense. Oh well. I will simply be glad to be done with it.

Birthday

Yes. Today I am 31.... I still procrastinate.... 9 more pages to go.

Introduction So Far

On November 9, 1989 representatives from fifteen countries gathered together to discuss the politics of food. From their discussion the Slow Food International movement was formed and began to promote their manifesto that, “[i]n the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer” (“Manifesto” par. 8). Since its inception the Slow Food movement has spread to 122 countries. This movement is not the only one of its kind. In recent years the focus on food has been a critical part of the ecological movement, introducing new concepts and even new language to describe the human relationship with food (locavore for example). These movements represent a sensible ordering of thought around a logical central idea. Food is a logical point around which to organize ones feelings and actions regarding their relationship to nature and resource use, because food is one of the few items that make obvious human reliance on and interconnection with the natural world.

The body of American literature contains multitudes of works focused on humanity’s relationship to the natural world. Many of these works, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, rely upon a worldview which vilifies the urban and elevates the wild as a sacred place apart. This tension between urban and wild is a central element in Willa Cather’s 1925 novel The Professor’s House. Characters such as Tom Outland and Louis Marsellus seem emblematic of this dichotomy. Even their names provide support for this concept, Outland (out-land) as the mesa dwelling place apart, and Marsellus (mar-sell- us) as the eager capitalist who Cather portrays as corrupter of Outland’s legacy. While this division has been widely accepted in many circles for generations, the concepts of glorified “wild” and vilified “capitalist” are not in the end polar opposites, but rather reflections of a similar human desire to manipulate and organize the natural world while conveniently ignoring the relationship between humanity and nature that exists at all levels of landscape.

A useful place for interrogating this binary in The Professor’s House rests in Cather’s representation of gardens. According to garden enthusiast and philosopher Mara Miller, “[t]he task of the garden is to mediate those tensions or polarities which are important for a given culture” (25).

Ending with a Boom/ Beginning with Slow Food

It was the last regular day of 121 for my classes today. We ended on a great note, especially in my 10 am class. They were so intensely interested and interactive, it was tremendous. We laughed and joked and learned. I was totally delighted by the experience and I hope some of them will end up in my 214 class. 

In my own work, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that very little has been done addressing food and ecocriticism. In my brief preliminary search I found only a few links. One of the most interesting was a Call For Papers that I wish I'd found sooner.  Even this however does not make the link between food, ecocriticism and fiction. It seems much more interested in the literature of slow food or locavore movements. 

I am eager to really begin the paper, hopefully my enthusiasm will last. 

I also need to find a copy of "Loving Ourselves Best of All". A brief glance at this article has me pretty excited.

Ecocriticism and the Locavore

Today I started working on the introductory paragraphs of my Cather seminar paper. In the paper I intend to look at how productive garden's in The Professor's House occupy a place between the idealized wild and vilified city. For me the garden is a place that destabilizes the civilization/nature binary. 

To kick off the essay I've begun by looking at how food has become intimately related with ecology and environmental movements. I will claim that food is a logical point around which to organize ones feelings and actions regarding their relationship to nature and resource use... then examine it in the Cather novel... 

It is only a beginning, but if feels like a good move.

GP Once Again

We traversed down to GP again. The roads were foggy in the mountain tops, but otherwise fine.

I've graded most of my student's papers and I admit I've been pretty strict, but I feel as though I coached my heart out and if they failed to follow my lead it's their problem. Next term is business writing, so a whole new adventure. 

I gave my presentation on Salsa music today in Spanish, and took every opportunity to highlight the connections between Africa and Salsa.  I even included clips of Celia Cruz performing in Zaire and images of Santeria and Yemaya. It was nerve-wracking, but fun.

So much more to do...

Short Week

I am so thankful that this week is going to be short. I just got a stack of student papers and I have so much of my own work to do. Meh. This is getting a bit intense. I am anxious for the term to end so I can stop all of this and focus, or try to focus on my thesis.... panic, just a little touch of panic.

The Three-way Dance

In Betj's class today I noticed that I see in two of Cather's novels (Death Comes for the Arch-Bishop and The Professor's House) an argument for an intermediary space between to "poles". In both of these books this intermediate space seems somehow related to gardens or orchards. I have not worked out all of my thoughts about this, but I do know that I totally adore both of these works of fiction and it will be a pleasure to write about them, I only wish I had more time.

In other news nothing has happened with the thesis....stasis.... I can only hope that my ecocritical work with other texts and in other contexts will prove fruitful when the time comes to crank out chapters.

Back to the Grind

Back in Corvallis, and back to school. I am very ready for this term to end despite the fact that I haven't completed my seminar papers yet.

Much work to be done!

Another Classic Translation of My Spanish Work & More

The Slow Travellers

I am a traveller. In my life it was many leases. One of my favorite adventures I happen in September 2006. The first day of year 2006 meets my wife to me Bird. In that one time it lived in Oregon and I lived in Massachusetts. This situation this good by anybody, then in September we did not decide move from house to Massachusetts. September 25, 2006, went to Massachusetts with Bird in the truck of her. The hard trip eleven days. We were very slowly because our U-Haul weight but by the truck. In Wyoming, next the Rockies we considered we left our possessions. After mountains it was easier to lead. We liked Wyoming in spite of all problems. In Wyoming to the area of listed rest many squirrel played with us. We gave to eat to. We gave nuts, peanuts, and granola. We pass of mountains and prairie. We sleep in the truck and one night in hotel. One night we slept in the truck and I begin rain. We were a little wet. We wish to travel per months, but our horse I travel to Massachusetts in another truck, therefore we traveled by only eleven days. Perhaps in the future our hope it would realise.

Good stuff.

Even better is to take this translation, translate it into French and then back into English....

The slow travellers 

I am a traveller. In my life c' was much of beams. One of my preferred adventures I occur in September 2006. The first day of l' year 2006 meets my wife with me BIRD. In this time he lived in Oregon and j' lived in Massachusetts. This situation this good by whoever, then in us September n' did not decide mudar house in Massachusetts. On September 25, 2006, went to Massachusetts with the BIRD in the truck of it. The hard voyage eleven days. We were very slowly because our U-Transport the weight but in the truck. In Wyoming, after the Rock ones that we were considered our possessions left. After qu' it was easier to carry out mountains it. We liked Wyoming despite everything the problems. In Wyoming with the sector of the much enumerated rest accumulate played with us. We gave to eat with. We gave nuezes, groundnuts, and the granola. We pass from the mountains and the meadow. We sleep in the truck and a night in l' hotel. One night we slept in the truck and I begin the rain. We were little the wet ones. We wish to travel per month but our horse which I travel to Massachusetts in another truck, therefore we travelled by only the d' days; ounces. Perhaps with l' future our hope qu' it would realize.

Decided that INaDWriMo 2008 sounded like a challenge... I pledged to write 18000...we'll see. Right now it's looking sad. Do blogs count? Ha!

500 / 18,000 (2.8%)

Primal Scream

The past few days I have felt like I am just squeaking by. It's conference week so almost every minute of my day has been tightly packed with scheduled events. On top of this the term is winding down so there are many projects with fast approaching due dates.

I managed to get all of my reading done on Death Comes for the Arch-Bishop, which is great, because I actually enjoy this novel, (which means I got to do something I enjoy for a little bit) and I always feel miserable when I fail to complete the reading for Betj's class.  I also tapped into the Cather Studies website and found a bunch of info for my upcoming seminar paper. 

I have a presentation of sorts at the upcoming Information Literacy Summit which I haven't worked on much and will likely spend my weekend trying to tackle. There's also a draft due on Tuesday for my final paper in SJ's class, but I feel pretty much prepared for this.

It's nice out today, lightly overcast, warmish...

Fifteen conferences, two large assignments, and several chapters to go until the week-end

Arggg!

In Light of This

Some of my conferences are frankly depressing. I know that I've done my best as far as instructing these students but many of them are quite transparently trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Many have submitted frankly useless drafts which seem to have been put together in one night. There are few if any quotes, no citation and little organization. It is overwhelming because I am not sure what more I could do.

In light of this let's forget about 121 for a moment....

Here's a little floundering bit of semi-recent poetry


Yaquina Head

Sooth on sooth the sea
tosses and wears away the meanings

in an arching skyward cauldron
combusting ginkgo

A delta leaf vein tremulous
stilled in Holocene weed fields

Rosebay pointing up and up
spike on spike between clusters

Salal all finger-linked haunched
and sea air rounded in great hills

O Tomorrow...

Tomorrow I have a test in Espanol, and my conferences start for paper two. It is rough. I don't really understand my Spanish that well with regards to verb conjugation, and I don't know why, but my students seem awfully confused lately, as though midterms sucked out their brains. My plan is to have them read their essays out loud to me while I take notes or ask questions about what I hear. We'll see how it goes.

In the joys of Sunday, my garden is doing well. We ate fresh strawberries this morning, and there are beans ripening. One sunflower has blossomed and many more are on their way. The peas have blossoms also. Oak leaves are crowding the lettuces, and it is a daily battle fending them off. Soon I'll be planting chard and kale. The herbs look great and the pansies too, some gladiolus soon to bloom. Sweet Oregon!

Hysterical Translations

So for giggles I ran my recent spanish essay through a translator. These translators are so funny because they sort of know what is being said but thet arrange things in an insane way. Here is what the translator made of my paper:

Me Life This text is a window present life. My life this ventured but is not pleasant. I am called Julie and I been 30 years old. In the past I lived in many states but now alive in Corvallis, Oregon. Alive in a house “Witham Hill Oaks” is called. I share my apartment with handcuffs to me, our Jan friend and our dogs Freyja and Moose. We are a very contented family. Our apartment is very small, but it is sufficient for me. I like to live circa on the University. I am instructor and student of English. I like to teach. Desire to teach in the future also. Work and study much. Every week work and study in a demanding way. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to very early wake up and way to me to the car shutdown bus. I teach to classes of writing to eight and the ten. At noon I visit me wife and ways the coffee by lunch. Two I attend the Spanish class. I like Spanish, but it is very difficult on long time of English writing and Literature. I need much concentration by the orations easy. The nights I cook food by my family and mirro CSI and The Colbert Report. Tuesdays and Thursdays I attend a class of Willa Cather and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This class is favorite me. Tuesdays I help to teach new instructors. I do not have long free time but I like to work in my garden Saturdays and Sundays. Now culture the peas, brócoli, onions, cucumber and lettuce. My life is similar garden, always money changer and to bloom.

Saturday Morning with Georges Bataille

Today I got started on my Ciceronian project for Betjemann's class.

Since we were invited to make this a visual project I thought I would take the opportunity to paint something. Back in the day, 2000-2003, I was in love with abstract art. I painted for hours on end in my parent's garage smoking clove after clove in the wee hours of the morn. Lacking a garage this project is a bit less "animated" but is still coming out well. 

I have so many other things to work on, but spending Saturday morning rendering my understanding of Georges Bataille's "The Solar Anus" in cheap acrylics is delightful.

in parting...a little Andre Masson pour inspiration

ILP: Day One

Today we previewed ILP assignment one. It was great fun. 

I've never taught through the ILP before and I am so glad I'm doing it. Usually no matter how much I remind them or update them about the ILP, their reaction always feels vague and sort of disengaged, but the reaction today was for the most part quite different.

I started the day by having them jot down three or more possible ILP topics. They did this and then I collected them for later approval.

I then showed them where to find the assignment online, and let them know how to use the rubric to determine the quality of their answers.  We opened up the ILP itself and I guided them through all of question one. We talked about biases and values, read the Academic Writer and then had a quick write addressing their biases. If they want I imagine they could use this quick write as the answer to question one.

Then we moved on to the other questions.

Number 2 instructs them to go to Wikipedia and look up their topics. In my 8am class I used Manatees as at test topic, then in my 10am I let them shout out a topic. The one I heard loud and clear was Hip-Hop Dance. We Wiki'ed it and looked around. I showed them the discussion and history tabs and we had some fantastic conversation about hip-hop v. rap, and what the relevance of what they learn in Wiki might be to their paper.

We also went over keywords and search terms. This was especially productive in my 10am because the students were amused by "popping and locking" as a potential search term.

Overall I feel really good about the class and the ILP topics they chose. I've gotten back to them all with my input on their topics. There is an amazing array including: woolly mammoths, country music, African languages, hip-hop, sharks, Bigfoot, and more...

Hybridity

I enrolled in a class about Hybrid classrooms that started this week. By Hybrid Classroom I mean a mix of online and in class teaching. This type of teaching is totally my thing. This term I've turned my 121 into a totally hybrid experience.

So far the class has been interesting. I've been able to discus my views on hybrid classrooms with a number of people who seem to be a bit skeptical about online classes and how they might be able to meet the needs of their students through something that seems to appear to be limiting in their view. I've been an online student and I have a different take on it.

In fact I'm getting pretty passionate about the hybrid class, so much so that I'm using this topic as the project for my Comp. Assistant class.

Nature, Identity and Force: Cather's Alexander's Bridge

Prepare for rambling...

In our class examination of Willa Cather's first novel Alexander's Bridge (1911), I was particularly struck by the final sentence of the work (pre-epilogue). This sentence reads, "The mind that society had come to regard as a powerful and reliable machine, dedicated to its service, may for a long time have been sick within itself and bent upon its own destruction". 

What is so striking about this idea for me is the way this text, or rather my reading of this text, establishes a close relationship between scientific, mechanic and market forces in futile opposition against nature and identity. 

This final line is tremendously loaded. Following the destruction of the bridge and the death of Bartley (and many of his workers), this line seems at first glance to allude only to the death of the protagonist, but for me it is suggestive of so much more. 

Allusion to the mind suggests the scientific energy of the Professor, which is predominantly voyeuristic and taxonomic. Emblematic of the mind and connected with Psychology, the Professor seeks to document, organize, and control the natural force of human thought and behavior just as the mechanical force of Bartley's bridge building and engineering. Furthermore I think other forces are also subtly implicated such as notions of romance, and the forces of the market, which also seem to be reliable forces "in service" of society, yet act in this text to bring about destruction. 

Although by the end of the work most readers seem to regard Bartley Alexander as an unsympathetic character who has perhaps used and manipulated those around him, (as the Professor suggests, "He belonged to the people who make the play, and most of us are only onlookers at best") I think this assessment is deeply complicated by B.A.'s own sense of his lost identity.

A number of times in the text it is suggested that B.A. has progressively lost control of his identity. This suggestion is made explicit in his letter to Hilda. The text also seems to couple this loss of identity with a move away from the west where Bartley was raised. Although this loss is initially perceived as a loss of youth, or a quest to regain the energy and bliss of young love, it seems as though the reunion with Hilda is insufficient precisely because it does not allow Bartley to regress far enough, to a place where he felt he still had command of himself.  

This agency of youth seems linked to nature, the very thing that the protagonist in his maturity has worked successfully to overcome. 

I don't know...just some thoughts.

Español

I am both loving and hating Spanish class. 

I dislike the fact that I MUST pass this class and two more terms of Spanish... Although I see how the requirement might be useful for a Literature person, especially in Lit and Culture,  I don't think it is ultimately useful for a person studying 19th and early 20th century American Literature. 

I like Spanish though. 

I like Spanish poetry and music. I like many elements of Spanish culture. This class however is sucking out my brain. Although I feel like I understand la professora when she teaches (all en español) I really am no good at speaking. Meh... frustrating. Frustrating because I am failing at it and also frustrating because as a Ph.D. speaking will likely never be part of my need to comprehend the language. 

Argh.

Pre-Terrm Madness: How to update updates...

The past few days I've been working with Sara J, Peter and Laura to orient the new TA-folk. This has been an exciting and exhausting process for me, and likely for the incoming TAs as well. I sense that many of them might be feeling a bit overwhelmed, but it can't really be helped.

When it comes to my own situation I am at the moment bewildered but indifferent to the challenges of finding the correct classes to fulfill all of my requirements. I've decided to dedicate this term to completing one chapter (and hopefully the preface) of my thesis. I've also compiled about 12 schools that I am "interested" in attending (although really only two or three are totally desirable). The next step is signing up to take and studying for the subject GRE. I am not a big fan of standardized tests, and I typically don't do that well on them, so this is a source of some minor anxiety. To remediate this anxiety (a little at least) I am dropping most of my classes this term and taking some thesis hours to round out the gaps.

My teaching plans are in order so I am happy to say there is no tension surrounding that particular issue.

Wharton, Spanish class, Writing 121 and more Wharton look like the immediate future of my academic life.