The Dreaming Curriculum

As promised. Wish me luck presenting it on Tuesday! — L

***

Although some of it is thoughtless and even puerile, popular music has proven that a unique combination of words and sounds can offer a potent form by which to influence the masses. As pop moves closer to artistry, it may capture distinct moments in its creator's life or reflect significant passages in its culture's development. At its best, popular music is art, both a document of personal transformation and an invitation for listeners to identify, to empathize, and to learn.

Long before Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan there was Kate Bush, one of the first girl-and-piano singer/songwriters. Bush arrived on the music scene in 1978 with the single "Wuthering Heights" from her album The Kick Inside, a series of largely personal, introspective songs. The record launched her into the experience popularly referred to as "overnight success." Critics appreciated her intelligent writing, while her ethereal beauty appealed to the masses, creating an intense, sometimes fanatic following. Bush released a second album, Lionheart, similar to the first, and then a third album, Never Forever, a little more instrumental and experimental, in the span of just over eighteen months. Then there was the blank period, between 1980 and 1982, when Bush released nothing of her own and worked very little with other musicians. When her fourth album, The Dreaming, was released, fans and critics alike were taken aback: The Dreaming documents a personal crisis — a literal record of disintegration. Read through this album, the curriculum of our culture is a curriculum of alienation from the Self: the experience of education as existential angst. Bush uses her medium to articulate the lessons fame has taught her, offering up a catechism of madness.

Bush intended The Dreaming to be heard as a comprehensive whole, not a series of singles. Each song presents a Self adapting to and functioning in a political, social world. Track 1, "Sat in Your Lap," deals with learning and epistemology. Track 2, "There Goes a Tenner," recounts a bank robbery gone wrong. On Track 3, "Pull Out the Pin" — a protest song — a North Vietnamese peasant confronts an American soldier. Track 4, "Suspended in Gaffa," discusses the fear of dying without finding a sense of self, while Track 5, "Leave It Open," describes psychic collapse as side one ends. Opening side two is another protest song — Track 6, "The Dreaming" — which explores the plight of Australia's Aborigines. Track 7, "Night of the Swallow," is about needing risk to feel alive, while Track 8, "All the Love," discusses changing relationships after a death. Track 9, "Houdini," is a love song to the escape-artist; the track also helps listeners interpret the record as a whole: its central image is the mouth — and by extension, language: "With a kiss I'd pass the key..." (also the visual for the album cover). Track 10, "Get Out of My House," concludes the record with an angry, oppositional theme. Bush's instruction in the liner notes is informative — "This album was made to be played loud" — suggesting that the lyrics were intended to be shouted, not whispered, and that the music was meant to disturb, not soothe. The album is a carefully engineered syllabus, mediated by the technologies and influences that surrounded Bush as a subject in the late twentieth century.

From this provocative lesson plan I have chosen three songs to explore Bush's curriculum of angst. The first, "Sat in Your Lap," is about the elusive project of learning. Is knowledge received or earned? The speaker cannot decide. Perhaps knowledge is one of many heritable talents, as Howard Gardner might suggest — "something sat in your lap." Perhaps it is a construct of the powerful, created to control the distribution of scarce resources, as IQ test scores might suggest — "something that you never have." The speaker's quest for wisdom is interrupted by mundane concerns: work, status, material being. She believes she should learn, but is frustrated when her goal proves more elusive than she expects ("just when I think I'm king, I just begin"). Here Bush articulates a familiar model of curriculum as product, rather than process; her speaker is alienated from learning when her journeys go unacknowledged, unrewarded.

Wrapping up side one is "Leave It Open," a song about the psychic space of the mind and the struggle to remain receptive to difference. Ideological state apparatuses — the school, for example — seek to colonize the mind. Resistance is exhausting and possibly futile; at the song's conclusion, the speaker succumbs. The final, double-backward-masked chant "We let the weirdness in" may be a promise or a threat: we cannot know whether the speaker has accepted an alternative path of socialization ("weirdness" by a social standard) or opened her mind to conformity to the point of breakdown, letting go of her sanity. In the meantime, she has swallowed her ego and must shut her mouth to stop it from emerging — she is silenced. This song is a bitter indictment of the hidden curriculum of socialization: we cannot be our true selves if we are to survive in a world that demands conformity and obedience. Success in this world divides the lived Self from the perceived Self, leading to fragmentation and, as the highly processed, mechanical vocals suggest, a loss of humanity.

"Get Out of My House," the final song on the album, is about reclaiming the Self from forces that would dominate and destroy the speaker. It is sung from the perspective of an embattled individual confronting fear, anger, and violence. The house represents the embodied Self resisting psychic and physical violation. If we read in this text the aim of schooling as socialization, we discover an individual who can resist only by barring and bolting her Self, protecting it from invasion. Two statements of resistance — "can't knock my door down" and "this house is full of fight" — are clear. When reason and physical evasion are not sufficient to evade her pursuer, the speaker draws on animal energy for resistance ("I change into the Mule"); the song ends with a noisy, meaningless chorus in which the human rationality of language is rejected in favour of a rhythmic, wordless state. This text might then be read as a response to the scientific efficiency method of curriculum development; it is a curriculum of refutation, a reclamation of the embodied Self, but ultimately it must resort to wordlessness to escape rational thought. Like the other songs on the album, it ends with unresolved feelings and situations — the whole text reveals a striking absence of closure.

The curriculum of The Dreaming is both a curriculum of oppression and a curriculum of evasion. In this text, Bush adopts the roles of both student and teacher. As the student, she reveals the experience of depression and alienation in the classroom of popular culture. The songs offer strategies of resistance and survival within the psychic onslaught of life as a popular female musician in the late capitalist system. Bush sees herself objectified and responds with anomie: "I want the answers quickly / But I don't have the energy." As the teacher, Bush presents a structural-functionalist view of society: each element of her worldview exists in dynamic relation to the others and attempts to correct the system when another element breaks down. Notice the recurring imagery of fixing and cleaning: "Wide eyes would clean and dust / Things that decay, things that rust" and "I wash the panes, I clean the stains away"; equally, note the response that follows: "But now I've started learning how / I keep them shut."

The content of this curriculum is largely hidden: the intrapsychic shocks of living in an alienated, consumerist society (remember, 1982 was the height of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative England). Education, as we know, may be formal or informal; Bush's experience of sudden, worldwide fame affected her deeply (she was allegedly the most-photographed woman in Britain in 1979). This curriculum of notoriety, of exposure, teaches by turns the helplessness, depression, and rage we discover in this album.

However, a curriculum of resistance that turns to insanity, criminality, and wordlessness as its ultimate strategies cannot be a pedagogy of hope. Any sense of praxis — reflective action — is unclear. The Self presented here is battered by psychic storms. The gesture of expression — coming to speech (or in this case, song) — is important, and the text attempts to grapple with the silence and isolation of modern life, with more or less success; but ultimately this Self is defeated by the many forces attempting to confine her to a predetermined role: a vulnerable, sexualized, female object. On her next album (Hounds of Love, 1985), Bush turned to love as the answer to this crisis, but she needed to name the crisis, as she did on The Dreaming, before she was ready to take that step.

An addiction gone bad

It's now gone too far. Not only have I succumbed and driven my family into its insidious grasp but now I've started to broaden my scope to friends and other family members.

"...a sick addiction that conumes your thoughts, shreds your tendons and threatens your very existence."



That's my brother Doug working his way up the Unnamed 5.6 at Abraham Slabs. Been on a Gym wall exactly once and I forced him to climb 27m of sharp Rockies' limestone; and I didn't even feel guilty.

***

For more pics of this summer's activities, check out a selection at Macblaze or the whole online catalogue on my online image gallery.

I must say I wouldn't have predicted that climbing would be come such a fascination. I guess it has something to do with the unique mixture of challenge, fear, nature and opportunity to grow. I've always believed that life was about growing and learning. That if any universalraison d'etre, metaphysical or otherwise existed then it was to be more tomorrow than we were today. As with so much in life, learning can become stagnant, growth can become plodding progress and the increments can disappear into day-to-day details that leave no trace that they even exist. Mostly though, I thought of this a spiritiual or intellecual goal.

I'm not really into sports or physical competition but I've always understood that they provide an outlet for growth outside the self. For those lucky few whose bodies become a finely tuned tool, the nature of "sports" allows both the body and mind to continue to expand, explore and excel every day and honestly there are days when I am a bit jealous of that. I occasionaly remember that in our modern society, we have a tendency to elevate intellectual pursuits a bit too much. Ballet is nothing more than an exquisite blend of the body's potential and the mind's capacity--a lot like watching Wayne Gretzky on a breakaway if you can just shift you view 90 degrees.

Let's give credit where credit is due. All those high school jocks and beer league heros have learned to to grow and learn in a way that some of us never have. I've never minded a good game of catch, wasting an afternood at frisbee or a splash in the pool, but its always been as mindless as a classic episode of Three's Company. Playing sports is like watching sitcoms of reading a good trashy romance, fun but ultimately just a way to while away the afternoon. Still, I can picture a few moments from the past: my old friend Mitch, poised between 2nd and 3rd, snatching the ball out of the air and oh so gracefully pirouetting to land nimbley and blast the ball across the infield to make the play. I know it wasn't mindless because I grew up watching him push and push those skills so his body would do exactly what his mind told it to. I was alway just too worried about whether I could actually stop the stupid ball to wonder what I was going to do with it next. He grew, I watched.

All this is to say that I think I've found in climbing a way to push my body to learn and grow not because I want to be a jock or spray about my latest rock conquest, but because it is becoming a tool that allows me to focus my thoughts and learn to exist in a whole new way. There is something very, very unique about being 20m up a rock slab that you know you can't climb, know you can't descend, know you can't fall from and know you can't just cling to. I've said it to L quite a few times now..."that scared the hell out of me!" and followed up with a smile. "Scared" is definitely not the right word although if you can conceive of fear as a power for good, something to actually strive for, then you'd be close.

There is something inexplicable that occurs when you get all of your processes working in synch. The human psyche is is a construct of nerves and neurons, habits and hormones. I'm beginning to believe that if one can only get the system working together... if thought, perception, imagination, instinct, strength, flexibility, if all the elements that make the machine work are working in harmony, then it doesn't matter the level at which you perform, whether mental giant and world class power lifter or city bus driver and newspaper proofreader, what matters is that the system itself works and continues to grow, to work "stronger, faster, better" and that we learn to celebrate that.

I'll never aspire to being Chris Sharma, a lot of things I've read and done lately are allowing me to center my new addiction within my self: I grow, everyday. I think in the end, Jake's quote (above: "climbing is a sick addiction...") sums it up well when it ends with, "Other than that, it is just plain fun."

It is.

Kibbles and Bits

I am currently taking a graduate course in curriculum foundations. It's very interesting, but my brain is tired. Here are some bits and pieces to mull over. Meanwhile, I'm working on a little project about pedagogy and the album The Dreaming. I'll probably post it once I've presented it. Watch out! —L

Sadly, the history of language is too often a collapse of words for action into words for things. —Madeleine R. Grumet

From CBC Edmonton: Foothills-Rocky View MLA Ted Morton says if the province doesn't fight the legislation, homosexuality will creep into the mainstream and those that don't agree will be discriminated against. "If gay marriage has full support of both federal and provincial law, it would be very difficult, for example, for a teacher at a high school or junior high to refuse to teach this as part of the curriculum that presents this as normal," Ted Morton said.

Give me a break
Oh, let me try
Give me something to show for my miserable life
Something to take
Would you break even my wings, like a swallow?
— Kate Bush, "Night of the Swallow"

Nothing to lose but your chains

Karl Marx was a Taurus. That's all anyone needs to know.

"Today 50 of the largest 100 economies in the world are run by multinationals, not by countries. Mitsubishi is bigger than Saudi Arabia; General Motors is larger than either Greece, Norway or South Africa. The combined annual revenues of the biggest 200 corporations are greater than those of 182 nation-states that contain 80 per cent of the world's population." — Wayne Ellwood in The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization

According to the latest preliminary estimates released by R.R. Bowker, the total title output in American publishing increased 14 percent in 2004/5 to a new high of 195,000 — up from 135,000 titles only three years ago, although the 2004/5 increase is less than 2003/4's 19-percent jump. Source: Publishers Lunch, May 2005

Yes, it's 1:37 AM and I'm wide awake. Sigh. Still reading lots and lots. I believe I will reach my 50-book goal before the end of June, thereby setting me up to read 100 books this year — some of them even big books! Meanwhile, I'm contemplating dyeing my hair dark, dark brown. Hmm. Did I mention that I'm currently the acting chair in my dept? Once again, the key to the executive washroom dangles mere centimetres from my curious fingers...

Eliminate the metaphor of violence. Incense and lollipops. Find a man who is not. Violets and rosemary. Morning glories opening in August. Am I already a ghost? The taste of the wind, the blackberries of memory.

Somnambulantly,
L

Words, words, words

Just finished Dating Hamlet: Ophelia's Story by Lisa Fiedler, a playful retelling of Hamlet. Most of the action of the novel takes place between the scenes of the play. In this version, Ophelia is an amateur botanist (she calls herself an alchemist) and soon to be Hamlet's wife (in a nicely understated scene, she gives up her "virtue" to him, shortly before he appears mad before the court). The novel reveals a different reason for Ophelia's purported madness (like Hamlet's, it is a feigned "antic disposition") and offers an extended ending to the play's conclusion, beginning once the bodies of Hamlet, Laertes, and the Queen are taken to the castle morgue. Purists would cringe, but I like the more positive re-imagining of Hamlet and Ophelia's fate -- much like Ann-Marie MacDonald's reinterpretation of Desdemona's and Juliet's roles. My only complaint with the novel is the dialogue: it's roundly awful. Imagine, if you can, a California high school as Hollywood has repeatedly presented them to us; then imagine the students of that high school attempting to write Elizabethan conversation without the guidance of an educated adult. "Verily, a few knights short of a crusade," indeed. But that's a small quibble. Female YA readers would likely enjoy this work. It's certainly more accessible than Shylock's Daughter, Mirjam Pressler's serious but thoughtful retelling of The Merchant of Venice.

Earlier this week, I finished The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston. This is an astonishingly well-constructed cultural history of the term wife, ending with a hopeful, albeit less than plausible, call for change to our understanding of one of society's oldest roles. I recommend this book highly.

Over the weekend I finished Isabel Allende's Zorro, her richly developed portrait of Diego de la Vega's youth and education. As with most of Allende's work, this novel is romantic and energetic, with lush, detailed description and clever ties to contemporary issues. Although it's almost 400 pages long, it moves quickly. Excellent summer reading, although perhaps not quite vintage Allende.

Meanwhile, in other news (source: CBC online)

Andy Russell, one of the province's best-known conservationists and storytellers, has died. He was 89.

I remember listening to Andy Russell's series Our Alberta Heritage on the radio when I was growing up. Russell represented a compassionate spirit in Alberta, something too often lacking in our current society. I was sad to hear he had died.

Finola Hackett, a 13-year-old Tofield girl who made it to the championship round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, was stumped Thursday afternoon by the word nisse – a Scandinavian brownie that frequents barns. Before missing her final word, she successfully spelled these other words:

• heterocoelous (a type of vertebrae)
• verticil (parts arranged in a circle around an axis)
• whiffet (a small or unimportant person)
• merotomize (to divide into parts)
• cassowary (a large, flightless, Australian bird)
• fumulus (a cloud that forms over smokestacks)
• blepharoptosis (a drooping of the upper eyelid).

I doubt that I could have spelled ANY of those words. Eeks, what a smart girl!

On the left hand

The Tyee continues to offer provocative alternative media from Canada's West Coast. This week one of their editorialists wrote an article titled "Canada's Stupid Party," about the disaster the "ReformaTories" have revealed themselves to be. Here's an excerpt:

Here’s a party that has serious credibility problems when it comes to convincing women they’re not a bunch of sexist neanderthals. Their most prominent woman walks across the floor and when all the cameras and microphones are pointed at them, the best attack they can muster is that their biggest female star was an ambitious, stupid, heartbreaking whore. Yeah, that’s gonna convince all Canadian women that you’ve got their best interests at heart.

The rest of the article is here. Definitely worth your time. Another article in the same issue, coyly title "Meet the Genitailor," profiles a Vancouver-based plastic surgeon who specializes in gynecological retrofitting. Chilling and disturbing — see it here if you don't mind reading something fairly graphic and anti-feminist. Sigh.

Odds and ends

Some thoughts to fill your mind and soothe your soul. A bientôt!

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. —William Wordsworth

When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before. —Clifton Fadiman

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Leslie

Done with all of that...

Today's wise words, courtesy of William Styron...

To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear representation of its meaning, which sometimes, for those who have known it, is a simulacrum of all the evil of our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held in the intolerable equipoise of history.

Wow. "The intolerable equipoise of history." What a brilliant line. Don't you wish you had written that? The excerpt comes from his long personal essay Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. It's a harrowing, articulate exploration of his experience with depression at age sixty. Highly recommended.

And on the lighter side of life...

Away, you scullion! You rampallion! You fustilarian! I'll tickle your catastrophe. — Falstaff in Henry IV

Fun fact...

Scholastic says they will print 10.8 million copies of the regular trade edition of HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. — Publishers Lunch

Pace, Dr M...

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. — Source Unknown


Saw Humble Boy last night — wonderful! B is climbing in Nordegg today — he'll have to post about the experience later. Taught a fun pick-up class for a colleague today — my last official teaching this academic year! Had a lovely maguro don for supper tonight. All is clearly right with the world.

Putting on my walking shoes...
L

Wise words

In the wake of last week's very close confidence vote, I have read a great deal of ho-hum political analysis. In my opinion, though, this excerpt is rather insightful. (See Why Conservatives Should Thank Chuck Cadman for the full story.)

As for the leader of the loyal opposition, Stephen Harper just doesn't get it. Hidden in the media spin surrounding the budget votes yesterday is all the evidence the Conservative Party needs to rid itself of the man who cannot possibly win them power. Far be it from me to help this Reform/Alliance retread party be more effective, given its draconian, hidden agenda. But the fact is, this extremist agenda is exactly what Harper brings to the party. If the Conservatives actually chose someone from the old Progressive Conservative wing of their party as leader, not only would they do better, but Canada would not be constantly threatened by Harper's vision of creating a carbon copy of the US north of the border. While Harper is almost pathologically committed to an American vision of the country, what's left of the old PCs -- especially the Red Tories -- might just have enough good sense left to recognize that Canadians are moving to the left in their values and policy preferences.

Meanwhile, in another part of my brain...

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with. —John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

I've been writing a little lately, not all of it course proposals and evasive e-mail. Overall I'm still mostly exhausted and periodically lost. But on the bright side, I start holidays on the 29th, so I can sleep a lot then.

The weather here is rainy and cool, but most of the garden has come into leaf. You'll never believe what I found at the grocery yesterday: blackberries! They were delicious. Tonight I made ribs for dinner, one of Zak's favourites. Soon I may work up the energy to clean house or sew my summer dresses; or perhaps I'll get my mom to sew them after all. Hmm... : )

Today I like: buffalo, green days, long straight highways, blue gingham, sunflower seeds, mortarboards, and September 1.

Now reading: Adultery by Richard B. Wright (not enjoying it), Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (it's eye-opening), and Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (just beginning). Just finished An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman (not nearly as good as A Mind of Its Own: The Cultural History of the Penis, which I finished last week). I ordered a book called Who Killed Shakespeare? by Patrick Brantlinger — excellent fodder for my dissertation, from what I've read of it. So many books! But remember that I'm always looking for other suggestions, please.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that B's book What Grows Here was nominated for Trade Book of the Year at the Book Publishers' awards. It didn't win, unfortunately, but it should have. Oh well, there's another volume for next year!

Happy belated birthday to the Taureans! I hope you all have a wonderful year.

That's it: time to get ready for bed. Be well.

L

Coming back online...

Hello, hello. A long time since I've posted. Sorry. Somehow in the laundry of my brain, I got trapped in a spin cycle. Oh dear, quite wrinkled now. Ahem.

Here are some recent magpie wanderings. I'll try to post something more coherent soon.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, observes that "not all choice enhances freedom. In particular, increased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. Indeed, it may impair freedom by taking time and energy we'd be better off devoting to other matters." This quotation explains the conundrum of grocery shopping.

In A Mind of Its Own,David M. Friedman notes that "Over time the penis has been deified, demonized, secularized, racialized, psychoanalyzed, politicized, and, finally, medicalized...." Great book, by the way!

An anonymous journalism student recently told me, "Among my many duties and responsibilities, I have many unpleasant and strange encounters with customers, employees, and of course, ex-boyfriends." Ah, retail.

And finally, Francesco Petrarch commented, "Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."

Somewhere among these ideas is a kind of sense I can currently understand. And you?

L

Spring Alert!

6:15 a.m. and a robin is singing noisily outside my window. The saskatoon shrub is ready to leaf out. Crocuses and irises are up in the garden. Yay!

Soon to emerge from the piles of marking,
Leslie

Inspired

The article that follows is adapted from the editorial I have just written for Active Voice, the national newsletter of the Editors' Association of Canada, of which I am co-editor. (It's only a couple of weeks overdue.) I submit these thoughts about the state of our language for your blogging pleasure — please feel free to comment. A more typically quirky post is sure to follow soon, once I get some sleep... Enjoy! — L

Do you want to banish buzzwords? I have to admit, sometimes I do.

Back in January, Lake Superior State University published its annual Banished Words list. As I do most years, I reviewed the 2005 list with vigorous agreement.

Amid an array of US election-inspired catchphrases, this year's list features the ubiquitous über, the notorious wardrobe malfunction, the well-trod journey, and neologisms blog and webinar. Some of these coinages are indeed trite and uninspired, and while reading the list, I felt a community among sticklers for careful usage.

After all, what's at stake is nicely observed by writer and editor William Zinsser: "our love of the language's beautiful precision." Flat, soggy expressions like safe and effective, sale event, and all new diminish our ability to express ourselves by giving us clichés, pat solutions. We must guard against such vague misdirection; the LSSU list reminds us to be vigilant with our diction (as Don Miguel Ruiz would say, "impeccable" with our words).

But a line in a profile that my student, Sophie Lees, wrote got me thinking about the deeper implications of banishment. Sophie observes that, in Chinese publications, Taiwan must be referred to as a part of China; Taiwan's independence must not be suggested, or the government may censor the document — may even shut the publication down. Watching China's increasingly tense relationship with Taiwan, I know these are not idle threats — they mask a much more serious political reality, symbolized in points of phrasing.

Editors, writers, teachers, and others who care about our language may find buzzwords boring, but do we really want to banish them? And if we do, are we prepared to live with the greater implications of that attitude? Those who work with words recognize the power inherent in them; as history has shown, it takes only a few steps to move from banishing words to censoring ideas, from censoring ideas to banishing those who think them.

According to Zinsser, editors tend to be "liberal in accepting new words and phrases, but conservative in grammar." That seems like the right balance. Grammar is the necessary structure that allows us to communicate efficiently; no matter what vocabulary we adopt, we need secure syntax to carry our thoughts. We might not like über-shizzle-mastic language, but we can understand it — and then we can choose not to use it. What will our choices be if we banish words, even in play? For we know the metaphor has a lived reality in equal rights activists-cum-bra burners and freedom fighters-cum-terrorists.

I still don't like buzzwords, but I suppose they're like junk food. Now and then I can indulge. But do you think I can eat just one?

Did ya ever wonder?

What exactly was up between Donnie Iris and Leah that their relationship was doomed?

L,
still passing the open windows

It came from the marking pile...

In Distilled Prose last week, my students were given a two-part in-class assignment. In pairs, they were to write a complaint letter on the subject of their choosing. Each pair then received another pair's complaint letter to respond to. The pairs had 30 minutes to complete each component of the assignment.

This one was at the bottom of the pile...

Dear Ms V———:

Your name is too hard to spell. For the convenience of the class members (many of whom, despite being in professional writing, can't write) please eliminate at least two, if not upwards of four letters from your surname. We suggest ditching everything but Erm or Eer.

Think of the advantages: Your name would no longer be called last; your car registration renewal date would change, possibly to a much better and convenient time. And those annoying syllables? Think of the time you would be saving yourself and others around you by cutting your name down to one syllable.

Another bit of ridiculousness that must come to an abrupt halt is your pretentious habit of capitalizing the first letter of "Leslie". Who do you think you are? We don't know who "lie" is, but your insistence of having "les" of her borders on the absurd. It's a self-indulgent number of L's anyway. Two? Honestly. eslie Erm just rolls off the tongue. eslie Erm. eslie Erm. It has a certain amount of quiet dignity, a certain intangible X-factor, a certain je ne sais quoi. Plus it's wickedly alliterative and it's completely unique. We don't think there are any other eslie Erm's on this earth. Even if there were, they wouldn't be as cool as you. Come to think of it, you'd have to be stupid NOT to change your name to eslie Erm.

To conclude, we truly believe that it would be beneficial for you to become known as "eslie Erm".

Sincerely yours,
Pair XY

On my behalf, Pair XX replied...

Dear Pair XY:

Thank you for your letter. While creative and comical, it is completely unjustified. As a full-time professor of the PROFESSIONAL Writing Program, it is my duty to weed out the weakest links. The fact that you can't grasp the spelling of my name goes against every inch of my writer's being. It's spelled just like it sounds.

However, I will concede that others have had problems with the spelling. I also had problems learning how to spell it, but then again I was six.

Your suggestion that having a last name closer to the beginning of the alphabet is noted. However, sometimes they start at the end of the alphabet, in which case "V———" is very advantageous. Moreover, I was named after my great-great-great grandmother and the honour and tradition seem much more valuable than the few extra seconds I would save by changing my name.

As far as your "ridiculousness" goes, Leslie or Eslie is a proper noun, thereby requiring capitalization. You asked me who I thought I was. My answer is quite simple. I am L——— V——— and I prefer you call me that.

Once again thanks for your letter. It's so much easier to sustain the quality of graduates when the "slow" students find me. To learn the proper spelling of my name I suggest you look up my office hours.

Sincerely,
L---- V------

So there!

Purple Monday

Stretch your toes up to the sun, to the stars. Open the black night and find deepest primrose inside. There are undiscovered moons. The eyes of evening stretched, squinting: we cannot be seen in the dusk of dreams. Urgent silence. Where have you been walking tonight?

You can see the wrens fluttering their wings, truth beating through the fierce wind, the coy sun. Their voices sound like ghosts and they're laughing. Bring your knife: we will press palm to palm and commingle our histories. White daisies all over the meadow, pinks and heliotrope, violets, phlox, wild roses. Regret nothing. The truth may be inscribed only once.

***

Now reading: The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh: a style and usage manual from a Washington Post copy chief; The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer: a meditation on what teaching really means and also the base text for the teaching diamond I belong to; The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant: a fascinating novel about fifteenth-century Florence.

Waiting to read The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, The Dance of Anger, and The Return of Merlin. Et vous? Recommendations are always welcome.

New(ish) listening: How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb by U2 and The Beekeeper by Tori Amos. Listen deep.

"Peace is all around us. In our world and in nature and within us, in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice." —Thich Nhat Han

With love,
the queen of cups

It's been that kind of week...

Sigh. So glad tomorrow is Friday.

Just for entertainment...

“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.” —Henry Miller

What kind of magical creature are you?

You scored as Faery.

You are beautiful wonder, and you are very wise, yet young and spontaneous at times. You are kind and sweet, but may be somewhat too deeply involved emotionally in frivolous affairs.

Faery 70%
Troll 60%
Witch 50%
Mermaid 45%
Human 40%
Demon 40%
Werewolf 25%
Vampire 20%

Want to know how you would score? Click here.

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." —Mother Teresa

Off to sleep now...
L

Love may be blind but lust has a pretty sharp eye

My very own aphorism!

What does a sexy linguist wear on vacation?
A diphthong.

What's invisible and plays hockey?
A ghoulie.

Why was the cannibal expelled from school?
He was buttering up his teacher.

My favourite recent headline: Lawyers challenge Harper's same-sex position —CBC online

Today's thought: Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words words words

From Jann Arden's "Good Mother"

I’ve got money in my pocket
I like the color of my hair
I’ve got a friend who loves me
Got a house, I’ve got a car
I’ve got a good mother
and her voice is what keeps me here

Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
Be yourself
I’ve never wanted anything so bad...so bad

Cardboard masks of all the people
I’ve been
thrown out with all the rusted, tangled
dented god-damned miseries
You could say I’m hard to hold
But if you knew me you’d know
I’ve got a good father
And his strength is what makes me cry

Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
Be yourself
I’ve never wanted anything so bad...

***

I hope you are well.

L

Her Honour The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta
The Honourable Dr. Lois E. Hole, CM, AOE

or Lois...

I just finished making the Thank-you ad for the family to be published in the Journal and the Calgary Herald. It started out with a long-ish list of people who donated their time or services and add a longer list of people who went above and beyond to make the last few months something to be remembered.

In the end though, the ad holds nothing but the thanks of the family. There truly were too many people to thank, too many people who didn't want thanks, too many people that we didn't even know needed thanks. There were too many people touched by this event and by Lois' legacy. I think teh simple thank-you suffices.

I still get shivers when I do something involving Lois, I still discover new dimensions to how she touched my life, I still regret being unable to express the inexpressable and I really wish I had of asked her over for tea like I planned when we first bought the house.

Because you see, we all learn from our experiences, often without realization that learning has taken place. I learned along time ago from Lois' daughter-in-law that wealth is relative and the 3 bucks in my pocket is way more precious to another that it ever should be to me. I learned when I spent my first week working out of Lois' office that wealth and power aren't really synonymous with ambition, jealousy and unending moral compromise. I learned from working at Hole's that strength & confidence is actually one of the keys to charity. In the past month I have learned so much about myself, about the perceptions of truth that we all hold as a society and about the importance of strenght and the insidious eroding power of fear.

I learned a lot.

Kate, Lois' granddaughter, wrote a poem for her memorial which clarified some of what was racing around my mind.



...
I am not afraid to cry.
I will be strong of character
Strong of conviction
Strong of ethics and morals and values
And I will be strong in my beliefs.
...

We need to be strong and to be true and from this great things can come. To live up to Lois' legacy, we need not do great things, we need only to think, to learn, to listen and to do...


"and I said to myself, what a wonderful world..."

So this dyslexic walks into a bra...

I haven't felt much like writing, or anything else, lately. As you've probably heard, Her Honour Lois Hole, Alberta's Lieutenant Governor, died last week, and her death has hit me hard. She was an extraordinary woman, and I will miss her.

So, completely inappropriately, here's a melange of other stuff to amuse you. Perhaps after the memorial service on January 18 I'll be able to prepare a more fitting response to Lois' passing. In the meantime, if you want to read a beautiful tribute, click here.

And now, without further ado, my Friday blog.


• What do you call a fish with no eye? A fsh.


25 Most-Played Songs on My iTunes as of today

Tiny Thing, Jenson Interceptor
Fire Lake, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
I Drove All Night, Cyndi Lauper
All Hell For A Basement, Big Sugar
This Little Girl, Gary US Bonds
Without Me, Eminem
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Gene Pitney
Crazy in Love (featuring Jay-Z), Beyoncé
I Did It for Love, Harlequin
Get Closer, Seals & Crofts
I'm Your Baby Tonight, Whitney Houston
Don't Stand So Close to Me, The Police
How Do I Make You, Linda Ronstadt
Pour Some Sugar on Me, Def Leppard
Wednesday, Tori Amos
Summer Breeze, Seals & Crofts
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Urge Overkill
Brand New Lover, Dead Or Alive
Summer Night City, ABBA
Welcome, Heather Nova
Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
Hush, Deep Purple
Steppin' Out, Joe Jackson
A Sorta Fairytale, Tori Amos
What You Waiting For?, Gwen Stefani

(please don't comment on my execrable taste: I already know!)


A new outlook for the new year, courtesy of Dear Abby

JUST FOR TODAY, I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all my problems at once. I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

JUST FOR TODAY, I will be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill it with sunshine.

JUST FOR TODAY, I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot.


• Doctor to patient: "I've determined the cause of your illness. You have Tom Jones disease." Patient: "That sounds bad. Is it rare?" Doctor: "It's not unusual..."


Steinbeck's hometown to shut down libraries

SALINAS, CALIF. - The cash-strapped hometown of author John Steinbeck will close down its library system, including a branch named after the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, starting in early 2005.

Cutbacks in state funding, rapid growth of the city and rising heath-care costs have forced the city council of Salinas, Calif., to slash $8 million from its budget over the past year. It faces a similar cut for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Earlier this month, council voted to shut down its three libraries by spring 2005, after residents rejected in November a number of tax increases aimed at funding city services.

"The reality is that we live in a blue-collar community where people are struggling, and they're afraid of new taxes," Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero told the Associated Press. "I don't think they realized the enormity of what we were facing."

Steinbeck once described the region, which is dominated by produce farms, as "pastures of heaven" and memorialized the area in many of his works, including the 1952 novel East of Eden. Located about 160 kilometres south of San Francisco, Salinas also goes by the nickname "The Salad Bowl of the Nation."

A large number of Salinas's 150,000 residents are poor farmworkers and immigrants who regularly visit the three branches – The John Steinbeck Library, The Cesar Chavez Library and The El Gabilan Library – for books as well as for other resources, including citizenship information, literacy courses, English-as-a-second language material, after-school programs and to access the internet.

Library officials estimate that almost 2,000 people make use of the library system on an average day. The closings could leave Salinas the most populous U.S. city without a public library. About three dozen people employed at the libraries will lose their jobs.


• "If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot." —John Bunyan


L

New Year Notes...

We had a limited budget Xmas this year and it actually was a bit funner ..."fun funner funnest" ...

Actually we blew a tone of moola on climbing stuff including a year's pass to Virg. Went climbing and took some pics. But hopefully the investment will be worth it. I actually seem to be feeling a bit better as I get more exercise... who'd a thunk eh?

Doug's in... mostly. So far he hasn't complained but we'll see.

Anyway... just a note to start 2005.

Merry Christmas!

Just woke up, it seems, and suddenly it's Christmas. We're off to my aunt's house in a few moments, but here are some winter thoughts to entertain you in the meanwhile. I promise to write next week, when I will have hours and hours of free time.

Snow can wait
I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose
Get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart
When I think of winter
I put my hand in my father's glove
I run off
Where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping Beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice
"'You must learn to stand up for yourself
'Cause I can't always be around"
He says, When you gonna make up your mind...

— from "Winter" by Tori Amos


December will be magic again
Don't miss the brightest star
Kiss under mistletoe
I want to hear you laugh
Don't let the mystery go now

— from "December will be magic again" by Kate Bush (who is promising a new album in 2005)

with stars in my eyes from watching the Christmas lights of Beverly,
Leslie

It's not OK to throw stones ... unless they're small ones

The CBC news reports: "Premier Ralph Klein says it should be OK to discriminate against gays and lesbians when it comes to marriage." A reporter quotes him saying, "I do feel that gays and lesbians ought not to be discriminated against in any other form other than marriage, because I think that marriage is a sacred thing that exists between a man and a woman."

Why why why why why why why why why do I live in this province?

(banging head repeatedly on desk)

L

C'est chouette!

Just a quick one today, because I must race off to a final exam and have piles and piles of marking still to get through. But there's always time to play!

1. One of my favourite words was recently the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day:

ludic \LOO-dik\ adjective: of, relating to, or characterized by play: playful

According to the lexicographer's notes, "Ludic is ultimately from the Latin noun ludus, which refers to a whole range of fun things — stage shows, games, sports, even jokes."

2. Looking for something to cheer you up? Check out this link. Reason number 431 to hire a professional professional designer. Sigh.

More as soon as sanity permits...

L

That terrible, terrible time of year

I know I owe many people letters, or at least notes, if not phone calls and visits. I'm sorry to be so pokey lately. I will try to write or call you soon! I promise!

In the meantime, here's something to provoke comments, perhaps, or at least amuse you. Have you been watching the storm between Naomi Klein and the US administration in the Guardian? Wowsers!


All those with agency are confronted by a choice. We can use that agency to secure for ourselves a safe and comfortable existence. We can use our life, that one unrepeatable product of four billion years of serendipity and evolution, to earn a little more, to save a little more, to win the approval of our bosses and the envy of our neighbours. We can place upon our walls those tombstones which the living erect to themselves: the framed certificates of their acceptance into what Erich Fromm has called the 'necrophiliac' world of wealth and power. We can, quite rationally, subordinate our desire for liberty to our desire for security.
Or we can use our agency to change the world, and, in changing it, to change ourselves. We will die and be forgotten with no less certainty than those who sought to fend off death by enhancing their material presence on the earth, but will live before we die through the extremes of feeling which comfort would deny us. — George Monbiot


Please forgive me my lapses! Surely you know by now they're always mindless and never mindful. Or something like that... Anyway ... Must go "attack a stack" now.

Flitting around the stars,
L

PS: And lest you think B is the only one to comment on climbing, I will chime in that 1) I was surprised we passed our lead checks, given that we both had to fall off the wall AGAIN and neither of us wanted to (somehow I doubt it was a good idea to re-read "Saturday Climbing" before taking my lead test); and 2) B placed third in the Novice category at the Rip and Grip on Friday, which was only his second time taking part in the event (I didn't actually place at all, but I was feeling wispy, etc.). So congratulate the man with the rippling shoulders and massive biceps when next you see him!

PPS: Oh ya — EARL! That's KATE BUSH, not PG, singing the "jeux sans frontiéres" BV on "Games Without Frontiers."

PPPS: Check out the iTunes store!!! Click here and then follow the "Download Here" link. I've already spent much more money than is seemly to disclose, almost all of it on eighties hits... Yes, there were hits in the eighties ... though you probably don't remember most of them ... How about "Geronimo's Cadillac" by Modern Talking? I bet I'm the only one among us who remembered that particular gem ... probably with good reason ... bear in mind my penchant for both sarcasm and cheez ...

PPPPS: Being unreasonably indulgent tonight ... Remind me to tell you my thoughts about pie.

And in the lead...
...it's Bouncing Bruce and Lead-foot Leslie, scrambling to the top!

Well we had our last climbing class and miracles of miracles we overcame age and adversity to actually get our Lead Checks. This means we are now qualified to dispense with rope dangling and just put our trust in the fact that enough knowledge got into our heads that we we won't die without a rope...

Our team:

Aspire

Well, there ya go... L and I officially graduated from VIRG last night. With our fancy new Aspire T's and official certificate we are good to go. Very very interesting experience and some great people. One of our instructors was Jake the owner and more awesome, high-energy entrepeneur you are never gonna meet. If you are interested go and climb...

We have our lead checks to to next week and then we are set for the indoor climbing world. I'd liketo try rock climbing but don't see it as a passion in the making...too much risk, too much effort. Then again maybe I need to challenge my fears a bit more... you never know.

Those of you who know Leslie should come climbing with us cause she will rock your world with her bodacious belaying, brazen bouldering, terrific top roping and liquid leading. Seriously, it is amazing how much we developed in such a short time. It is also intersting how much a sport based on fear and trust can affect your outlook. Time was dangling from a rope was a real nail-biter... now its dyno'n for the jug whilst upside down with no hope of making it... I still get nervous the first time I let go of the wall but it passes. Actually the fear of falling is much less that the fear of letting go. I will posta few pictures when I remember to bring the camera along...

Walls
On other fronts, I learn more and more what a curse it is to be famous (not me of course). Everyone is yur best friend and and the pressure of keeping the world at large in its place isolates you more and more-- building a wall just begets more and bigger walls until you find yourself alone surrounded by impermeable layers... It seems to be unavoidable no matter what your inclinations.

Sort of makes you scratch your head because generally people who become famous are the ones that like people, want an audience or succeed because the play well with others...
Gives you an appreciation for the Princess Di's of the cosmos. Personally I like the recluse idea; Rapunzel had it good until that dang prince came along.

In conclusion...
Well must trundle: remember to doubleback and do your checks...always!

Falling in love again...

with Chaucer! Do pay attention. From Troilus and Criseyde:

She was nat with the leste of hir stature,
But alle hir limes so wel answeringe
Weren to womanhode, that creature
Was neuer lasse mannish in seminge.
And eek the pure wyse of here meninge
Shewede wel, that men might in hir gesse
Honour, estat, and wommanly noblesse.

...

For ay the ner the fyr, the hotter is,
This, trowe I, knoweth al this companye.
But were he fer or neer, I dar seye this,
By night or day, for wisdom or folye,
His herte, which that is his brestes ye,
Was ay on hir, that fairer was to sene
Than ever were Eleyne or Polixene.

Eek of the day ther passed nought an houre
That to him-self a thousand tyme he seyde,
`Good goodly, to whom serve I and laboure,
As I best can, now wolde god, Criseyde,
Ye wolden on me rewe er that I deyde!
My dere herte, allas! myn hele and hewe
And lyf is lost, but ye wole on me rewe.'


...so there!

L

Bloggy Bits

Time for more merry-go-round the language tree, courtesy of the goldarnedest grammar teacher north of the Sturgeon River (at least at the time of writing).

Thought 1: Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. — Potter Stewart, former associate justice of the US Supreme Court

Thought 2: It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle it without debate. — Joseph Joubert

• According to This magazine, on each day that you live in Edmonton, you inhale the equivalent of 32 cigarettes, based on the mean NOx content of city air. That's slightly better than the air in Calgary or Vancouver (equivalent of 38 and 34 cigarettes a day, respectively), but much, much worse than Hamilton, with the equivalent of only 18 cigarettes a day.

• A CBC comedian gave me my favourite one-liner of the last twelve months: "You've heard of J.Lo? Well, my wife has a bottom like Jell-O." Hmm. And now, this just in...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - J.Lo and Beyonce can take another bow. The booty-shaking stars have shaped the newest generation of mannequins, with hundreds of well-rounded plastic backsides appearing in shop windows across New York.

Bootylicious figures clad in tight low-rise jeans have spilled from the city's street fashion stores into more established labels.
"It's absolutely the trend," said Dwight Critchfield, creative director for mannequin firm Goldsmith. "These mannequins look great, and there is a real sex appeal about them." Am I reading this correctly? Does this man actually find mannequins sexually appealing?

The recent pop culture fixation on large bottoms has been around since at least 1992, when rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot scored a hit with "Baby Got Back." But some credit the recent booty shakin' efforts of shapely stars Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce for the fresh emphasis on bigger and rounder posteriors, coupled with the fashion explosion of the Brazilian-style low-rise jeans.

"J.Lo was the first to stress that women shouldn't be afraid to show their curves, and the popularity of rap made that shape more acceptable," said Critchfield. "And it is about these low-riding jeans looking good on a sexy, tight fit."

The company launched a "Sex" mannequin with "a larger booty and body" tailored for fashion label Express and for stores carrying lower-end trend clothing, said Critchfield.

On the juniors' floor of Macy's in Manhattan, Guess jeans and streetwear label EckoRed display jeans on a fuller rear-end bottom-half mannequin, known as a pants form, opposite a large poster of J.Lo and her clothing label, while a DJ mixes hip hop and reggae to teen and 20-something shoppers.
EckoRed launched the new mannequin — called the J.Lo butt form — at the store almost two years ago and sales have since tripled.

"It is a serious sociological trend that is positive for retailers and customers in that the tyranny of the undernourished perfect model is over," said Rich Rollison of Lifestyle Forms and Display, which designed the pants form mannequin. Other companies also are developing more realistic mannequins with larger posteriors in maternity and plus sizes. US label Lane Bryant, which caters to plus sizes 14 to 28, is launching a more voluptuous full-body mannequin across its 250 stores after a successful test run in New York.

"It originated from urban ethnic street wear, but it has transcended that," Rollison said. "Now you are going to see it projected in more urban markets and it will get bigger." Here's where pronouns can be fun: does Rollison's it here refer to the "serious sociological trend" identified several lines above, or to J.Lo's bottom? Or perhaps just her ego?

Too cool to wear jeans,
L

So much to read, so little time...

Another installment in my condensed news of the world... Did you know stories like this are called brite? Well, now you do.


NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York officials were red-faced on Friday after they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex.

The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan "Read Books, Get Brain."

What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that "get brain" is street slang for oral sex.

The ads -- from hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre -- was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials discovered the street slang meaning.

Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the "vulgar street phrases" in the racy ads he said were "demeaning women."

"To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy," Kelly told Reuters.

"It's easy enough to understand how that would get by based upon someone not knowing the expression."

A spokesman for the New York-based clothing maker noted the ad campaign had run since September and "we hadn't had any complaints at all."

New York officials may not be the only ones caught out.

Akademiks also placed the ads on buses and bus shelters in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia, the company spokesman said.

Kelly, who said he was his 60s, said that after he was tipped to the hidden meaning of the phrase on Thursday he ran a test among some young MTA workers.

"I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad," he said. "I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.

"Apparently it's on all the music, in music that's how they refer to it," Kelly said. "I didn't know anything about it and I'm sure the people that approved the ad didn't."

Kelly said it was sad that "you can't take things at face value any longer," adding, "We'll have to learn from experience before we accept ads." — Larry Fine

ex tempore
the mechanism of power are such that the more the power
the less the power means

the curve is against you, faster, harder - more more more
the slower and slower and slower you gain

in pursuit and never catching
the goal
keeps moving
on...

I think I like this side of the fence (it's easier- isn't it?)

Just a note.
A ground fall isn't unheard of... Actually we've heard of it often, repeatedly and incessantly. It also has many synonyms. I think its because they don't want us to try it, but I'm beginning to think its because they think its inevitable... ouch.

Climbing is very interesting. We do so at Virg. Eventiually I will add pictures but instead look at our newfie ones...

ciao for now

bruce

Tuesday's Thought

Flying through the ether, landing softly by your side...


"By words the mind is winged." — Aristophanes


Incidentally, from the online Webster's, the following etymology:

ether
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin aether, from Greek aither, from aithein to ignite, blaze; akin to Old English Ad pyre (SEE edify ... Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French edifier, from Late Latin & Latin; Late Latin aedificare to instruct or improve spiritually, from Latin, to erect a house, from aedes temple, house; akin to Old English Ad funeral pyre, Latin aestas summer...)

Oh for a less hypertextual brain!

with all my hert / heorte / herza
L

What did you get for your money's worth?*

Things I learned in Newfoundland

(the truncated version ... since it's been two months since I first promised to get to this)

• That in Grand Banks your day always starts with waking up.

• That the song lyric isn't "I's the guy".

• That, despite claims to the contrary, the moose in Newfoundland are mythical.

• That lighthouse keepers, like hatters, were made mad by mercury.

• That you shouldn't park a rental car on things that burn.

a buzzing buzzing bee with no voice,
L

* Asked of me by the customs agent in Fortune, Newfoundland, upon our return from St-Pierre. My answer was "A corkscrew, a commemorative spoon, a T-shirt, and ... some groceries" (including chocolate-chip-cookie cereal). Not exactly a stellar moment for international trade.

For my grandfather

W.W. Lowrie, 1912–2004

Farewell to Nova Scotia

Good-bye to Vestochk-Shotlandii, to you have a swim along the coast permission seabound to your dark and dull mountains at the moment when I remotely far on the will it is into air by ocean brimy to which you not you podnimayete never sigh or desire for me?

The sun placed in the West of bird kishes on each shaft entire, is which nature it pokazalas' inclined but there not ostalo by any rest for me

I afflict so that it would begin from my native soil that I afflict so that would leave my comrades all and my parents, that, I was which it considered so that it would be gamine so to the road and my bonny, bonny which I so much fell in love with

The drums of pobili and by the wars of potrevozhili my zvonoki of captain, I must it obeyed thus good-bye, good-bye with
charm Of vestochk-Shotlandii for his place of takings earlier it tripled, I will be the remote, distant party

I imeyu of 3 brothers and they on the rest to their handles fold in their centers but the poor and usual right seaman in proportion to me necessarily it threw news in air in the dark and blue sea


** This is the text of a traditional song babelized by translating the English lyrics to French, representing my maternal grandmother; and then translating the text back to English, representing my mother (and mother tongue); then translating the resulting English text into Russian, representing my paternal heritage; and finally the Russian text has been translated back into English, representing me.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye my love, goodbye.

Tonight I Have Officially Lost It

Good evening, and welcome to my mind. It's a weighty thing, my mind, on this cavernous October night, and so I'd like to share the burden with others. Read on if you dare.


A. My end-of-pennies campaign

How many times have you tossed a penny down the mall just to watch it skitter or thrown a penny out the window when you received it with your drive-through change? Many people perform these and other unusual behaviours to rid themselves of pennies, the laughably anachronistic coin. And when was the last time you stooped to pick up a penny? Perhaps, with the average hourly wage for a Canadian worker at $17.28 (Statistics Canada, April 2004), bending to retrieve a single cent simply isn't worth your time?

Pennies are silly in an age when the price is of the average Canadian home is $217,498 (2003, Canadian Real Estate Association, latest available figure). Minting pennies each year is a dreadful waste of money and resources, a harm to our environment, and a now-irrelevant support of the market apparatus. My campaign of four simply steps will do away with one of the biggest unnecessary costs in Canadian society.

1. Everyone turns in their pennies. Think about how many pennies you have stashed somewhere in your home: in your piggy bank, in your mad-money jar, in your wallets and purses, in your glove box, in the utility drawer, etc., etc., etc. OK? According to some informal estimates, the average Canadian has ready access to about $3.00 in pennies (obviously some of us have a few more than others). Imagine the economic benefits if all thirty-odd million of us suddenly donated all our pennies to the charities of our choice. This injection of some $100-million into the economy would have a substantial, and reverberating, effect.

2. The government rolls back the GST to five percent. Many people have campaigned to get rid of the GST entirely, but I don't believe that's on the government's agenda at this time, despite the fact that the GST is a regressive tax that unfairly burdens lower-income earners. A five-percent tax potentially eliminates the need for pennies, provided we gain the cooperation of one important party...

3. Retailers end the ridiculous practice of pricing by pennies. Can anyone explain the economic difference between $4.99 and $5.00? Right: there is no economic difference, just a certain psychological appeal. Well, the year-on-year savings to taxpayers offered by my end-of-pennies plan should more than pacify the right-wing capitalists among us who actually believe we're entitled to save a penny or two on the backs of third-world workers whenever we buy new shoes, shirts, sporting goods, incense holders, or superpacks of will-o-crisp at Wal-Mart. Pul-eeze!

4. The Canadian mint ceases to make new pennies. According to documents tabled in the House of Commons, since at least the mid 1990s (possibly earlier), a penny has cost more than its face value to mint, leading the Royal Canadian Mint to reduce the copper content of the Canadian penny and introduce other substances in its place. There are certainly enough pennies already in circulation to see us through the change to a decimal system. Within a year or two, pennies will disappear quietly from common coinage, like two-dollar bills and fifty-cent pieces: still acceptable as currency but rather unusual. Collectors can make their fortunes collecting pennies, and the rest of us will be relieved of the burden of this antiquated copper.

I know my campaign is hardly unique. Americans have been having this argument for years, and here's how one commentator summed up the situation in the US:

The Government's experience with the metric system and the Anthony dollar suggests that the public must be convinced that there is a pressing need to change anything which has become embroidered into the social and commercial fabric of society. Despite careful examination of the various arguments supporting the elimination of the penny, we cannot identify any benefits associated with price rounding and the cessation of penny production.

Aargh! It's time for Canada to be a leader and stop the insanity! Won't it be nice to know that those who buy and sell really are nickel-and-diming us? And can you tell that my heritage is only one-quarter Scottish?

The penny: its time has passed.


B. My end-of-daylight-saving-time campaign

Speaking of time: did you realize that most Canadians spend more months living on Daylight Saving Time than on so-called Standard Time? It's true: since 1986, North Americans (in those jurisdictions that follow Daylight Saving Time) set their clocks ahead one hour on the first Sunday in April and turn them back an hour on the last Sunday in October, giving us seven months on "daylight" time and only five on "standard" time.

The situation is even weirder in Europe. In the European Union, "Summer Time" begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October — creating a one-week lag between the two western continents. And Russian clocks are two hours ahead of Standard Time during the summer months, to take advantage of the early sunrise and lingering twilight. These discrepancies must pose some mathematical puzzles for international businesses!

Daylight Time has been with us consistently for almost a century, although the concept has its roots in the 1700s; it has been neither uniformly applied nor uniformly well received. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which is responsible for overseeing Daylight Time in the United States, promotes the adoption of Daylight Time for three reasons:

1. Daylight Saving Time saves energy.
2. Daylight Saving Time saves lives and prevents traffic injuries. (This point is contested by some agencies.)
3. Daylight Saving Time prevents crime.

These are all good reasons to adopt Daylight Time universally — that is, to get rid of the habit of swapping back to Standard Time for five months of the year. Since it would hardly affect the Majority World (areas of the globe between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, which receive roughly the same number of daylight hours year-round), I propose an international movement to shift the clocks forward by one hour globally.

Opposition to extend Daylight Time rests with the farming lobby, which argues that farmers' needs, production, and local conditions vary too widely to accept uniform application, and some religious groups (also with a few people who have sleep disorders or trouble setting their VCRs). The compromise position, of permanently setting clocks ahead thirty minutes, has been ruled out because of astronomers' preference that noon reflect the highest point of the sun in a time zone (although, given the geographical span of time zones, this preference is fairly arbitrary).

Perhaps a change would be the way to celebrate the centennial of Daylight Time, in 2016. I'm up for a campaign; how about you?

(In case you're interested in even more details about Daylight Time, here and here are two informative, if fairly similar, sites.)


C. The loss of Jacques Derrida

The intellectual world is a darker, sadder place today.

As CBC.ca put it: "World-renowned thinker Jacques Derrida, who helped found the school of philosophy known as deconstructionism, has died, French officials said Saturday [October 9]. Derrida was 74."

OK, so some of you are mourning other news, such as the death of Christopher Reeve or the announcement that Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer, or a personal loss, such as strikes us all. And these are equally terrible events, in their way. But I believe our world, caught up in its techno-positivistic late-capitalism tensions of the demands for ever-increasing production exceeding the capacity of sustainable consumption, needs more thinkers, more philosophers, more critics, and Derrida was one of the greatest.

Sure, maybe you can't define deconstructionism and maybe you wouldn't recognize a postmodernist if she tweaked your nose, but the world you know today was shaped by Derrida and other intellectuals in the late 1960s. Our society doesn't value intellectual labour very highly, but if we did, Derrida would have been one of our most valuable citizens.

Shortly before his death Derrida said, "Learning to live should also mean learning to die, taking into account and accepting the absolute nature of mortality with neither resurrection nor redemption." A person should keep this advice in mind, especially around family holidays.

I, for one, will miss Derrida.


And this just in...

VANCOUVER - A giant squid surprised a fisherman in British Columbia, worrying scientists who say its appearance could be another sign of global climate change.

Last Saturday, Goody Gudmundseth hoped to net a couple of salmon off the coast of Vancouver Island in Port Renfrew. Instead, when he felt a tug on the line, Gudmundseth knew he'd hooked into something else.

"When the rod went, I thought we got a really big chunk of weed or something," recalled Gudmundseth. "It was acting really different than usual."

The squid weighs 20 kilograms and measures about 1.5 metres long.

Scientists call it the Humboldt or giant flying squid [Dosidicus giagas]. They said it prefers warm water, which means Gudmundseth's catch is likely a long way from its home in the Gulf of California. The find is fuelling speculation about climate change.

"It may have come up with a ton of warm water or it might be that they're making their way north comfortably now," said Kelly Sendall, senior collection manager at the Royal BC Museum.

Gudmundseth almost decided to keep the squid for bait or to eat it as calamari. The squid has now become a reference specimen for the species in BC, Sendall said.

Another Humboldt squid was captured last month off the coast of Alaska. Scientists don't know whether the creatures' appearance will be a short-term one, or what effect they may have on the ecosystem.

Courtesy of CBC News Online Staff


Well, that's it for me. Thank you, thank you very much!

L

Leslie's Language Round-Up

An irregular feature about language in our time


From the "There's no defence like a good defence" File...

Library mural littered with misspellings

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - It didn't take a nuclear physicist to realize changes were needed after a $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the city's new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures.

"Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new library and it has all these misspellings in front," said city councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly the artist up from Florida to fix the errors.

Reached at her Miami studio Wednesday, Maria Alquilar said she is willing to fix the brightly coloured five-metre-wide circular work but offered no apologies for the 11 misspellings among the 175 names.

"The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people," Alquilar said.

"They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work."

Alquilar said creating and installing the work took a lot of time and money and the mural sat at her Santa Cruz, Calif., studio for two years until the city cleared the way for its installation.

There were plenty of people around during the installation who could and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.

"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.

The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said.

"The people that are into humanities and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said.

"In their mind, the words register correctly."


Editorial Comment: The ability to form words is not writing
Too few people have the ability or time to work out exactly what they want to say and then say it. They fall back on boilerplate text, shop-worn clichés, or inarticulate paraphrases of their real meaning. That isn't a matter of correct grammar, good punctuation or impressive vocabulary, and curing it will need more than style guides or diatribes. — Michael Quinion


Entertainment: Pink Words
Excerpted from Pink's fabulous single "God Is a DJ"

(Verse 1)
I've been the girl with her skirt pulled high
Been the outcast never running with mascara eyes
Now I see the world as a candy store
With a cigarette smile, saying things you can't ignore
Like mommy I love you
Daddy I hate you
Brother I need you
Lover hey fuck you
I can see everything here with my third eye
Like the blue in the sky

(Verse 2)
I've been the girl, middle finger in the air
Unaffected by rumors, the truth: I don't care
So open your mouth and stick out your tongue
You might as well let go, you can't take back what you've done
So find a new lifestyle
A reason to smile
Look for Nirvana
Under the strobe lights
Sequins and sex dreams
You whisper to me
There's no reason to cry


Births and Deaths
Noted poet and fascist T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. In his 1935 essay "Religion and Literature" he reflects, "It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be" — demonstrating in this observation both chiasmus and paradox. How rhetorical!
(with information from chiasmus.com)


and finally...

Fashion News from the Personification Department
Excerpted from Sarah Slean's much-anticipated single "Lucky Me"

(Verse 1)
Science wears a new suit
To his coffee toast and eggs
But he has to skip the stairs now
Because of two broken legs
Whine whine I cannot climb
Everytime's the same
I'd be more inclined to help him
If he could remember my name

(Verse 2)
Faith can't fill the dance hall
'Cause her powers have declined
But at the beauty pageant
She will always take the prize
Light light Easter white
Roll her in the dirt
When it comes time for kneeling
She'll say "You go first"


Pictures at 11! : P

Thought for voracious readers

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.
— Gene Wolfe

More to follow ... Stay tuned!

Sometimes I enjoy technology

Sorry to be offline for such a long time. The beginning of the new term — for both me and Zak — has been amazingly animated. Lots to do, in other words. But here I am, happy like an iguana in the sun, because I have a new toy.

Today we got an iTrip, a wireless FM transmitter for the iPod. What this means is now I have personal radio in my car. Perfect for Morning (One Fine, Broken or otherwise), Afternoon Delight, Late in the Evening, After Midnight, on Rainy Days and Mondays; on Manic Monday, Ruby Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Afternoon, Funky Friday, Saturday in the Park and Saturday Night, and Gloomy Sunday; in the Early Morning Rain, after A Hard Day's Night, and on A Million Vacations!

It works in Alberta, America, Africa, Asia at Odd Hours, All Along the Watchtower, At the Hundredth Meridian. And Europa. And it's controlled from the Driver's Seat. Now I've got a Ticket to Ride! Who said I Don't Like Mondays? Now I'm in Love with My Car!

OK, ok. I'll stop. It's the medication, probably.

I know I've promised to publish notes from my voyage to Newfoundland (which rhymes with understand) but I haven't got around to it yet. Soon, soon. In the meantime, I think I have to go Drive My Car...

love
me

Thought for the day

"Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them." — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ZAK!

Zachary is thirteen today. Have a fabulous birthday and a wonderful year to come.

love,
Mom and Dad

Back from The Rock

Had a great trip but am still living on Nfld time. Will post soon with details — and maybe pix.

love to all,
L

Raspberries help those who help themselves

Something to amuse you. Consider the sixties generation's preoccupation with figures of mythic violence. Are you a boxer, a sheriff, or an outlaw? For we all must be something.

The Boxer

I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest

When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of a railway station, running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know

Lie-la-lie ...

Asking only workman's wages I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

Lie-la-lie ...

Then I'm laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone
Going home, where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me
Leading me, going home

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame
'I am leaving, I am leaving'
But the fighter still remains

Lie-la-lie ...


The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

When Liberty Valance rode to town the womenfolk would hide, they'd hide
When Liberty Valance walked around the men would step aside
'cause the point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood
When it came to shooting straight and fast
He was mighty good

From out of the East a stranger came, a law book in his hand, a man
The kind of a man the West would need to tame a troubled land
'cause the point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood
When it came to shooting straight and fast
He was mighty good

Many a man would face his gun and many a man would fall
The man who shot Liberty Valance, he shot Liberty Valance
He was the bravest of them all

The love of a girl can make a man stay on when he should go, stay on
Just trying to build a peaceful life where love is free to grow
But the point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood
When the final showdown came at last, a law book was no good

Alone and afraid she prayed that he'd return that fateful night, oh that night
When nothing she said could keep her man from going out to fight
From the moment a girl gets to be full grown the very first thing she learns
When two men go out to face each other, only one returns

Everyone heard two shots ring out
A shot made Liberty fall
The man who shot Liberty Valance, he shot Liberty Valance
He was the bravest of them all

I sawed two boards!

With a cut-off saw! And those of you who know my fear of blades will recognize this accomplishment for the true wonder that it is.

Sorry for not writing much lately. Depression is depressing. I expect to get back to my regularly scheduled weirdness soon.

In the meantime, here's a thought about the circulation of power (ironic, I suppose, in the context of my discovery of sawing), taken from a series of articles about reinventing politics.

State communism and the market fundamentalism of today's globalization era share a belief that a single system, universally applied, can deliver all that is required. Seen in this light, industrial monocropping, genetic engineering and contract farming seem to have much in common with the 20th-century socialist disasters of enforced collectivization. Both are top-down solutions that ignore diversity, on-the-ground needs, knowledge and reality, and a democratic requirement that those who are most affected should have a say in implementation. — Katharine Ainger

In other words, because today's political discourse is dominated by paternalistic government and vicious corporatism, we rarely recognize how powerful we as individuals and communities actually are.

So go out and make the world a better place today. Kiss someone you love and keep smiling!

love,
Leslie

"Autonomy is the right to invent one's own future." — Thomas Sankara

Stifle is an anagram of itself

The multiverse is quiet, so quiet. Rain is falling softly down. Do you know where the willows grow?

So, what's new? How about some one-liners?

• Goth's not dead — it just looks that way.
• Talk minus action equals zero.
• No matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers.

Moments to consider: As I was growing up, my father used to say there were only two things he couldn't fix: a broken heart and the crack of dawn.

This has been the century of mass storytelling. We live under a Niagara of stories: print, television, movies, audio, and the Internet deliver to us far more stories than our ancestors could have imagined, and the number of stories available to us seems to grow larger every year. This phenomenon, the rise of industrialized narrative — storytelling that's engineered for mass reproduction and distribution — has emerged as the most striking cultural fact of the twentieth century and the most far-reaching development in the history of narrative.
...
A broader question springs from the high density of storytelling in our daily lives. Mass culture and mass leisure have given all of us the opportunity to spend far more time absorbing stories than any of our ancestors could. Has this been to our benefit? Has it made us larger people than we might have been otherwise, or has it so filled us with aimless fantasies that we are emotionally and intellectually constrained? In this context, storytelling becomes an issue in the history of human development and democracy. Does our habit of seeing the world as stories make us understand ourselves better? Does it make us better citizens or worse? — Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture

A lovely thing happened. While surfing the other day, I dropped by a student's live journal. Her current entry was the answers to one of those 100-question surveys that make their way around by e-mail from time to time. Anyway. Here are two of her answers:

27. FAVOURITE SCHOOL SUBJECT? Sadly, grammar. (Hush! I am going to be an editor!!!)
29. FAVOURITE TEACHER? L—— V——

Awwww!

Tired, tired. Almost finished with school. Looking forward to two months off. Well, not really off. I have plenty to do, after all.

Now reading: City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende. The Spooky Art, Norman Mailer. Words, words, words.

... but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it.
Leslie

Hippie chicks and the crisis of consciousness

This quotation may explain something about the contradictions of my character. Must meditate on this ...

"On the one hand you had the politics of revolution and equality and liberation and on the other hand you had silent women in long dresses, gathered in the kitchen, preparing great meals of meat, which were brought out and served to the men — who ate alone. The men and women didn't eat together. The men ate before a gig or after a gig. They'd come home and pound on the table like cavemen. And the women were very quiet. You weren't supposed to hear from them. Each one was supposed to service her man quietly." —Danny Fields in Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

Happy Birthday, Dave!

Because I used to draw ghosts in my spare time

Howdy howdy,

It's been a while, huh? Sorry about that. Apologies to the Taureans whose birthdays I missed announcing this month — the time of year or the time of man? We'll just say that I don't know who I am and life is for learning.

Moved all my detritus from my parents' basement last week. One accumulates a great deal in 30-odd years (that works without the hyphen, too). Most of it I'm giving back for the purportedly giant garage sale. Perhaps there is something of value for someone else. If not, plan B is a big donation to a garbage fair. I don't know anything about it, but my brother does; he'll make sure my stuff finds a new home somewhere.

Did I mention that I'm teaching two spring courses? One of the startling discoveries of this reality is that I need the ritual of dinner. Grabbing a muffin and a carton of milk is just not satisfying (not to mention not nutritious). If I don't sit down to eat with others now and then, I get rather lonely and crazy. What else? The weather is still frightfully cold and the garden is shivering, stuttering. Zak tried to make an impression on Bellerose Drive earlier this afternoon. For his efforts he'll have a scar to match the one on the right side of his face, from when he tried to go head to head with a tree of indeterminate species. Guess who won?

Haven't gone climbing in weeks and weeks — didn't make it enough of a habit, I guess. Did I mention that we're going to Newfoundland this sumer? Daily more complex. Hmm. We're renovating the basement so Doug can move in. Next Sunday is the Super Cities Walk for MS — if you have a donation to send my way, please let me know soon! We fixed the washing machine! A tiny plastic spoon was making all that noise and finally jammed up the drain pump. But now the Bosch works perfectly again and restores my perfect place to meditate (in absence of the pergola). Did I mention that I got ill from having the furnace cleaned? Strange toxic chemicals, I think.

Sorry this is dull dull dull dull — rather like the dimes that I also found in the washing machine. My creativity reservoir is down a couple of litres. More later, I hope.

From a windy, craggy place,
Leslie

Grumpy grammar girl

Grammar is an x-ray and your head is made of lead!

Now reading: Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (incidentally, when I first heard the panda joke, it involved a prostitute, not a waiter), The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, and Book Business: Publishing Past, Present and Future by Jason Epstein

Happy Birthday, Bruce!

We hope you have a wonderful day and a happy, successful year ahead.

Love,
Leslie and Zak

Today's thought

(a quotation, of course, since I am so overwhelmed by marking that I can no longer form independent thought...)

"In our cynical world, where suspicion is a necessity, insisting that something is true is not nearly as powerful as suggesting that something might be true." —Thomas King in The Truth About Stories

Only 21 more piles to go...

Happy happy congratulations to us all!

The Alberta Book Awards were presented last night in Calgary, and two Edmonton-area publishing personalities were among the winners.

• Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year was awarded to Hole’s (Edmonton) for Lois Hole’s Favorite Bulbs: Better Choices, Better Gardens, edited by Jim Hole and Valerie Hole, and published by Bruce K——, publishing manager for Hole's.

• Trade Fiction Book of the Year was awarded to The University of Alberta Press (Edmonton) for An Ark of Koans by E.D. Blodgett and with illustrations by Jacques Brault. (Apparently the jury didn't read the text, because it's a volume of POETRY!). Leslie V——, former managing editor, had acquired the volume for the Press. In a move that shows a startling absence of creativity, An Ark of Koans also won awards for cover design and book design, despite that the designer has now used (and been awarded for using) both designs twice before.

Ah the ironies of the publishing life. In other news, Bruce and I passed our belay checks on Saturday. The walls of the world had better look out!

Must continue marking — I may hit 100 pieces of student work marked in a single day tonight. Sigh. Exam week has begun.

L

It's raining!

It's been a long stretch, but I can see light at last. (Bruce would probably disagree, as it's been a few weeks since he could see the floor of my office.) I have marked pages and pages and pages and pages of student work in the last week. (That's an example of polysyndeton.) I want combat pay! But just two more weeks of school and then final exams start. Then I have a week off and then ... spring session! Or two months off.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

Or...

That that is, is; that that is not, is not; is that not it?

Went climbing on Saturday. Soon I will be qualified to belay climbers while using an ATC rather than a gri-gri, so we can climb many more interesting routes. And one day perhaps even challenge the wall at the Butterdome (!). Celebrated my parents' move to Skyview on Saturday night. Must go get my "stuff" from the old house one of these days. Walked through the yard on Sunday. So many plants are emerging already: crocuses and tulips, the arctic raspberry, the irises, the violas, the saskatoon. We have about a million new strawberry plants: yum. I planted some new lily of the valley, and the lettuce trough is already out. Soon, soon it will be summer.

Now reading: My Invented Country by Isabel Allende.

Also flipping through the many many free books that come to me in the mail (e.g., This is P.R.: The Realities of Public Relations — doesn't that sound fascinating?). The list of books I want to read is getting longer every day. I'm so grateful for the library! — if only I could get there. Have you noticed the preponderance of blogs by librarians? I think ref-grunt started the trend, but there are dozens of them, most very good. Urm, yeah. Whatever.

OK, that's my break. Back to marking very bad essays on editorial ethics — as if! : )

L