SurfnPoetry

Academic Vindication

2011-11-07T10:16:00.002-06:00

In September of 2006, I shared a small observation about Sport's research on pap smears and HPV. Just a little over 5 years later, her research was vindicated on an NPR morning edition story. Sport's conclusion, which she delineates in her 2010 Feminist Formations Journal article, is that "terms like 'risk and "sexually transmitted disease (STD)' are used to simplify the discussions about HPV to simple 'for' or 'against' positions about vaccinating women and girls. Such positions limit the ways actors can address Gardasil and place public health responsibility upon the bodies of women and girls." Turns out that HPV causes "cancers of the cervix, vagina and vulva in females; penile cancer in boys; both get HPV-associated genital warts" and may be at least partially responsible for "an epidemic of head and neck cancers, and we are seeing this increase in ... nonsmokers." HPV is not an STD, insofar as warts are not only spread through sexual touching. Foucault, were he alive would have a field day with this. Instead, Sport took it upon herself to identify this problematic cultural enthymeme that NOBODY seems to tackle.

Sport knew that the rhetorical force of incorrectly calling HPV an STD set all sorts of social machinery in motion. In the process of trying to get this article published, Sport felt pushback from nearly everyone. The primary investigator in the CDC Gardasil trials both resisted calling for boys to be immunized and calling HPV something other than an STD (and she considers herself a feminist). Friends questioned her expertise (and right) to dabble in seemingly settled medical issues. Colleagues cobbled together anecdotal evidence to suggest that perhaps HPV should indeed be called an STD (or that she should sympathize with those who continue to do so). When she brought up the topic on the feminist blogs, most commenters would protest that this kind of dangerous attitude might hurt girls (turns out that calling HPV an STD made immunizing girls a non-starter for many, many parents). Even the editors at Feminist Formations suggested to Sport that she back off of her conclusions.

Anybody who knows her would be unsurprised that Sport was undeterred. Her passionate advocacy for women's autonomy--medical or otherwise--kept her on a path of declaring that the Emperor had no clothes. To be fair, all of the critique and criticism from others DID help her point her critique squarely at the heart of the problem--gendered formulation of medical research, diagnosis, and treatment regimes. Feminist Formations did publish this article (I can send a copy if you would like it). Perhaps most gratifyingly, it turns out, the medical establishment has begun to recognize what she knew nearly 5 years ago--gender assumptions still permeate the medical industrial complex. Breaking these gender chains might better help us prevent pain for 12,000 women who have cervical cancer, 1,400 men who have penile cancer, and 50,000 men and women who have head and neck cancer. EVERY YEAR.

It's nice to see academic work vindicated--doubly so when so many people cast doubt on it. Sport did a good, good thing.

Perspective

2011-09-07T20:15:00.000-05:00

There are moments in your life when the distance of your journey snaps into clarity--this afternoon I had one of those moments.

About 20 years ago, I was an undergrad trying to keep the glow of my time in England alive. I poured the inspirational energy of a chance meeting with Toni Morrison into my honors thesis on Morrison's Song of Solomon--a book tracing the adventures of an African-American protagonist who travels south in search of his past, and who finds himself in a parallel journey with the flying African, Solomon. My frantic attempts to connect this artistic tradition with the postmodern theorizing of Henry Louis Gates Jr. found its echo this morning. The first piece of work I did today was to email two colleagues at Kenyatta University to set up a classroom translation collaboration between our two universities. Next, I found myself in a high-level meeting discussing the possible creation of an immersive media M.A. program, and the possibilities of dovetailing it with my posthuman studies of an African social movement. Finally, I had a meeting with a city employee looking for ways to set up a social media campaign for a six-figure NEH grant which aims connect a Manhattan artist, local artists, and an under-represented/underserved part of the Fargo community to create an ecological art installation/community commons. All three projects are completely fantastic, and frankly beyond what I would have imagined even a few months ago, but here I am combining my interest in Africa, my American pragmatism, and my understanding of our strange, postmodern historical moment.

The line between that naive undergrad and me seems strangely straight, but the distance is very clear. It was at that moment that I sort of sat back and wondered how the heck I've made it this far. I really don't know, other than through the generosity (and occasional underestimation) by others. Thanks. For both.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Ten)

2011-06-06T13:39:00.048-05:00

This was day we circled to board the plane, which, means that we had to get a lot packed in. Our queen of hospitality, LK, was nice enough to give us some amazing French-press coffee. Not only did she not complain about our coffee snobbery, she pretty much exceeded our skills at placating caffeinated savagery.

Before departing back to the mainland, we knew that we had to see where LK works--The East-West Center. Yes, kids, this is where the magic happens. ALL of the magic.

Fortunately, there was an exhibit from North Korea when we visited. I like the way that this artist mixed both photo-realistic techniques with some of the more rough-hewn elegance of traditional brushstrokes.

As we walked the campus at the University of Hawaii, I was pretty amazed at how much it resembles Fargo year-round. Or something. Not jealous. Nope.

This lion with the groovy eyewear was just BEGGING for a snap with the Docs Marai.

I had seen a sala before, but never one quite this beautiful (and never one on a campus). There are many days that I wish I had a quiet outdoor space for contemplation.

I had been begging LK and Miriam to allow me to go to Hank's Haute Dogs since LK had first mentioned it (and, no, it's not because this guy featured it on his train wreck of a show). The carnage of being dragged through Fierispeak did catch my attention, but it was mostly the lobster dog that attracted my interest.

The interior at Hank's was both inviting and minimalist clean. I love me some modernist postmodern food.

LK opted for the Hawaiian, with with pineapple relish, passion fruit mustard and grilled sweet Maui onions.

Mirm and I shared the Lobster Dog (described as "Lobster sausage seared in butter then dressed with garlic aioli, relish and pickled takuan radish"). We bought a side of truffled mac-and-cheese and house made ginger soda (Hammer, I'll let you know who wins the ginger-off).

After lunch, we had to get rid of all of the gear we had accumulated coming to Hawaii. Our snorkel gear was barely used. Luckily, it served its secondary purpose of signaling our gender to onlookers. Thanks Snorkel Bob!

One of the drawbacks of Oahu is how built up it is. I find the development quite stunning (both positively and negatively stunning).

Our final dinner was at a distinctively Hawaiian kind of Japanese restaurant.

This place has a bit more in the way of food that you might find in a restaurant in Japan (not just sushi). It seems like the Hawaiian Japanese restaurants also have more garlic. Lots more garlic.

The appetizers were probably the best thing we had. The spicy tuna was particularly amazing.

The curry was quite different than Middle Eastern curry (more like gravy than a broth). It was good, but not nearly as good as the appetizers.

Tempura with ponzu sauce? Always good, of course.

Benito busted out the modestly-floral Hawaiian shirt for just this occasion. Naturally, LK decided to up the ante with these decorative earrings designed to be brandished. I think LK was signaling that she was "lo" on her beverage.

Yes, Mirm and I were pretty dang content pre-departure.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Nine)

2011-05-26T11:29:00.000-05:00

Nine days seems like a long pause between arriving and doing one of the things you most want to do on vacation. When it comes to surfing, though, that which most attracts also most repels. You see, surfing scares the sea foam out of me, which is approximately 75% of its attraction. Surfing in Hawaii scares me doubly, because of the treacherous coral outcroppings and shallow surf breaks.

Despite the horrific story 'Ito told us about his surf instructor friend almost dying at this Waikiki surf spot, I decided to get past my fears and sign up for a morning surf course/session. I chose to have my surf lessons with the recommended Hans Hederman Surf School (yes, that was who Ito's friend worked for).

As you can might guess from the photo, we had to paddle out past coral during low tide. I didn't wonder why we went over how to both get up on our boards and to crawl back down without actually falling onto the coral. I have not had a lot of long rides on a surfboard, and the prospect of not only popping up and sticking usually doesn't require the added difficulty of crawling back down.

Fortunately, the added fear factor helped me have my longest rides. In fact, I had to come in a bit early because my legs and arms were completely wrecked from successfully catching and riding waves (sadly, being out into the low-tide distance meant that my weak camera couldn't capture any of these rides respectably). I will have to wait for a future surf session for that, sadly.

When we got back from the surf session (and post-surf nosh), LK and 'Ito hosted a party for us (to both celebrate and meet more of their friends). Nothing compliments a morning surf session like pre-party mojito.

Miriam's lei had survived the 9 days with the aid of refrigeration.

A trip to the local Whole Foods netted us this piece of New Mexico. Yes, we had a bit of adult beverage variety going on here. It's Hawaii!

Of course, you know that wherever members of Supper Club™ meet, good food is sure to follow.

Miriam are a little enamored with this zucchini pesto salad (serving the raw zucchini in thin ribbons with basil, cheese, pine nuts, olive oil, and lemon is pretty much my definition of a perfect food). When we got back from Hawaii, we ate this every week.

The party guests did impressions of their drinks. Here we have the dread of an Irish Guinness.

The casual friendliness of a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Hanging loose with nary a glass or tumbler.

LK and 'Ito not only organized our day and evening, they made us feel like honored guests. Thank you for the hospitality!

Hawaii 2011 (Day Eight)

2011-04-27T16:41:00.000-05:00

The final day on the North Shore started a bit more calmly. The 30-foot swells had been replaced by a more summerly gentleness. We even recognized our snorkeling spot.

Of course, by this point, the rich restaurant meals had started to get to me. This morning, Starbucks oatmeal seemed to be the perfect antidote to too many lipids. Of course, the fact that there is a Starbucks in the middle of a chicken-infested semi-rural stretch made me question why Fargo can't seem to keep their Starbucks. Perhaps we need more chickens.

As you may have guessed by now, we tend to veer off of our "plan" (really, it was just a google doc that we used to snarkily collaborate with LK in creating a stroll through a Magnum P.I. episode). This day was no different. When we saw humpback whales in the distance (during our healthy breakfast), we hatched a plan that can only be described as "unsound." At 9 a.m., we were going to squeeze in a whale-watching adventure before circumnavigating the island to return to Honolulu for dinner. Fortunately, a quick trip on the internets, and we found a whale-watching catamaran that would take us, if we could pack our gear and drive to the dock in a languid 25 minutes. As you may have guessed, we made it.

Of course, being married to the love-child of MacGyver and Xena meant that we sat in the netting on the front of this particular craft. Unsurprisingly, the size of the waves (now only 15-20 feet) combined with the netting did not help to keep us dry. Fortunately, we wore our rashies.

Despite the fact that our crew members were interesting and very professional....

...they DID seem a little like extras from the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Our voyage did not disappoint. Despite the fact that it took us a while to catch up to the whales, catch up we did.

This mother/calf pair were only two of many we saw. The rockiness of the ride, and the desire to actually SEE the whales did not result in the taking of fantastic shots. Still, it was magical to see humpback whales slapping flukes and pectoral fins.

Naturally, the brine and the waves made us think of sushi. Yes, it was fresh.

Yes, it was delicious.

The rolls? Yes.

The pork? O.K., so I DID have a few bites of this. Yup. What you might not have guessed is that they served it with potato salad. I. Kid. You. Not.

Green tea ice cream. What's not to like about the perfect end to the nearly-perfect day?

Logic Boxes

2011-04-18T07:13:00.004-05:00

In order to more fully experience the argument/line of reasoning/essay Geoffrey Sirc makes in his chapter "Box Logic," we all created a version of the Cornell Box. I added in the caveat that some sort of writing must also be incorporated. Here is what we came up with in the hour we allotted to this particular task.

Stash Hempeck

Creation = life. Life = experience. Experience = nostalgia. Nostalgia = creation.

Chris Lindgren

Invisible Code
i := us[them] - sense; prnt := wrt + i; dig := prnt + i;

loop:
loop: prnt := prnt - i;
while us[them] < dig repeat; loop: dig := dig - i;
while us[them] > i;
if us[them] = i then dig[i];
end

Heather Steinmann

My box presented itself like a found poem, with a city street already printed inside. The poem "The City," by C.P. Cavafy reflected on the encapsulated nature of the subject; the world. The toy ball armed with the means to burn the city down just fit; in the poem and in the box.

Alyson Guthrie

My box entitled "Idealism" is a representation of the idealistic views I often find myself believing in and hoping for. The dreamlike sky, the image of a child, a peace rock, along with different quotations and lyrics evoke these views.

Steven Hammer

My box is titled, "Once a toy, always a toy," and it is an old memory game by Tiger Electronics that I've opened and circuit bent, creating an experimental sound machine. While the sounds aren't universally pleasing or understood as music, both the process of bending and the performance of the sounds exemplify finding the art in the ordinary. The materiality is exposed and nude, and the bender is invited to redirect energy and reconstruct the instrument. The most valuable lesson in the practice of bending is the element of chance, or if you will, the absence of dominant constructions of sound classification (notes and scales, logical and linear). And so on...

Doc Mara

My box, "California Dreaming," offers a chance to examine constructed nostalgia. A picture of a past celebration combines with festive, floral, tropical, and exoticized signifiers. Post-It notes covered with lines of Shakesepare's most celebrated marriage sonnet juxtapose the mundane with the popular imagination of enduring social bonds. The box which contains all of these objects is clementine box from Morocco, and it's final passenger sits in anticipation of its eventual demise.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Seven)

2011-04-15T20:18:00.003-05:00

There are some things about Hawaii that are just a little bit different than other places. Breakfast seems a particularly interesting intersection of urbane, mundane, and funky. On the second day on the North Shore, we decided to get away from our tea-house/waffle palace preferences. Instead, we decided to try something a little different with our Starbucks coffee (how different can we get, really?). A bowl of acai sorbet with bananas, granola, honey, and frozen blueberries/raspberries/blackberrie was maybe one of the best things we bought on this side of the island.

A little less successful was the Shark’s Cove Grill veggie scrambler. Great concept, but a Velveeta execution.

One of the pleasures of the morning was getting to sit across the street from Three Tables and Shark's Cove, watching them being absolutely pummeled by huge swells, and realizing that we avoided getting crushed by these waves by a mere few hours. Thank you again, LK, for letting us know these monsters were on their way.

Of course, these waves were really only a fancy invitation for the surfers to wax their boards and get out in the water. Despite the pull of our singularly-important morning hike at Ka'ena Point, the surfers hitting the large waves in Waimea Bay were too much to resist. There was a huge crowd at the beach, and it was just amazing to watch these surfers drop in on these huge waves in groups of 3, 4, and even 5 people.

By the time we got to to paking lot for the Ka'ena Point hike, the sun was getting pretty high in the sky. What I thought would be an easy hour-long hike turned out to take more like three hours.

I wanted to turn back petty often, but the azure color of the waves (and even the foam) against the backdrop of the lava rocks, the beach, and the succulent plants was just too mesmerizing to us. We pushed on.

At moments, when we peered over the edge of the rocks, it seemed like it would be pure bliss to just jump in. It was only in our imaginations did this plunge into the turquoise bath actually take place.

Although these waves were huge--we could feel them hitting the beach through the vibrations conducted through the sand--pictures don't usually do justice to their scale.

When we got to Ka'ena point, we thought our only reward was seeing predator traps (to protect the albatross nests), and to see the Coast Guard practicing their high-wind maneuvers.

Upon a little closer inspection, however, we realized that we happened upon two rare Hawaiian monk seals.

It took a few seconds to see these sleeping beauties. We would have kept even more distance had we been able to more clearly distinguish them from their background.

After our brush with these wonderful creatures (and our decision to invite sun stroke), we took a leisurely drive back down the Kamehameha highway to find Giovanni's famous shrimp truck.

Regardless of your dinner choice, your lunch requires a flotilla of napkins and/or wet wipes (personally, I'm a big fan of wet wipes).

We stuck with the garlic shrimp, and did not regret the decision thankyouverymuch.

A day at the shore wouldn't be complete without a sunset on the patio. Good night sun. Good night dolphin statues.

Of course, a few tropical drinks complete the picture. Good night Piña Colada. Good night Blue Hawaiian.

Doc Mara's Media Materiality Manifesto

2011-03-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

Change is inevitable, and best handled by many hands, feet, eyes, heads, and hearts.

Because communication mediation is inevitable, we should seek to build transparency, malleability, customizability, and human possibility into each medium.

To do this, media producers/authors/hackers/grokkers must:

1. Build in affordances.
2. Create affordances that offer the fullest range of individual change.
3. Reveal the limitations of the medium.
4. Build in possibilities to exceed limitations.
5. Invite participation through semantic, syntagmatic, paradigmatic, and tropic alignment and misalignment.
5. Identify and isolate cultural values the medium favors.
6. Build in the ability to toggle size, function, and pace of medium input and output.
7. Identify limitations as such.
8. Invite stability through participation instead of building stability as a de facto valuation of particular cultural forms.
9. Offer different levels of contexualization in artifacts.
10. Allow the widest range of juxtaposition possible.
11. Create the possibility, but not inevitability, of repetition.
12. Allow for a range of representations that could include a range of styles.
13. Invite contemplation of embodied consequences of medium use and production.
14. Avoid foreclosure of signification possibilities.
15. Eschew naturalization of inherently social participation.

Distributed changeability in media = Sustainable materiality

Hawaii 2011 (Day Six)

2011-03-28T17:21:00.000-05:00

When I'm traveling, it usually takes about a week for my documentation plan to unravel, and this vacation just reinforced the pattern. Our journey across the belt buckle of Oahu to the North Shore (or, as I mistakenly called it one day, "North Beach"), started to relax my photography ninja reflexes, and let me see some of the smaller details of island living.

To get us to the north side of the island and well past the tourist-trapping sugar enticements of the Dole Plantation, LK decided that we needed fuel for the journey. More soyrizo and eggs, as well as the remainder of what I think was quite possibly the largest avocado I have ever seen.

This breakfast was, as usual, delicious, but we still decided to stop in for a pineapple/frozen yogurt sundae.

When we got to the North Shore, I expected both more grandeur and more luxury. Instead, we were treated to some of the more laid-back aspects of Hawaiian life. Our hostel/cabin had resident pigs as well as walking alarm clocks.

To be perfectly honest, Miriam and I were kind of spooked when we pulled into our hostel. Maybe it was the electric-white sheen of Fargoans, but people seemed to stare at us wherever we walked.

I imagine that we are kind of strange looking to the tanned North Shore regulars, so there's that; however, we've probably picked up a bit of the midwestern fish-out-of-water-in-paradise vibe. Once we got settled in and stopped returning stares with every semi-stoned and half-naked island visitor (most had foreign accents), all felt fine.

One of the biggest disappointments of the vacation was the short amount of time we got to snorkel. Even though we rented some pretty sweet gear at Snorkel Bob's for a week, we only had about a two-hour window to get into the water. While we were enjoying our pineapple/yogurt sundae at the aforementioned Dole Plantation ("Hawaii's complete pineapple experience!"), LK texted us that 30-foot waves were on their way. We were not amused, as our destination, Shark's cove, is notoriously dangerous to snorkel in during the winter. 30-foot swells certainly didn't fuel our hopes that we would get into the water.

The mural on our wall did NOT reassure us, but we took our gear across the street and looked for a place to snorkel.

Fortunately for us, Pupukea beach has one sheltered spot where we could get in. We saw needlefish, a whole range of common Hawaiian reef fish, and even a Moray eel. Never. Lose. Hope.

Our cabin, while rustic, seemed to reinforce our urge for risk-taking.

Luckily, we got out before the waves got too big to brave.

What these waves took away with their power, they gave back in beauty. Seeing the wind peel off the wisps of surf wash from the crests of breakers was completely mesmerizing.

Waimea Bay, just a short 5-minute walk down the beach, gave us a chance to see some sunset surfing (and to get some of the saltwater our of our ears and other assorted places).

Once we finally settled in our cabin for the night, we could feel the waves pounding the lava shore just across the street.

Our informal wine glasses, ESPECIALLY my Tigger cup, seemed to underline the informality and the energy of the place we now found ourselves. It didn't matter that we hadn't taken pictures of everything--the waves, people, and even chickens were starting to truly transport us away from memories of snow and work.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Five)

2011-03-25T21:02:00.001-05:00

As my childhood guru used to say, Sunday's fun day, and this Sunday was no exception. In order to prepare for the difficult hike, LK made us breakfast of soyrizo and eggs (I THINK this memory is correct--our "host with the most," LK reminded me that my last breakfast was not the homemade granola, but rather fantastic chocolate croissants that 'Ito picked up for us before he joined us at the sunset picnic). After some coffee and eats, 'Ito, took us up to the Kolowalu trailhead and we were off!

I was thrilled, if a bit nervous about trekking up the side of a dormant volcano covered in red mud and all sorts of creeping vine-like things. I hope my hesitation didn't show TOO much.

Other than the slightly "Raiders of the Lost Ark" feel to this initial ascent, it was a perfect way to get a good view of Honolulu and the surrounding ridges (on a side note, I'm not entirely sure that even this height would have saved us from the future Hawaiian tsunami of doom).

Of course, one has to ignore a few signs to get this kind of view. *heh*

Of course, marked trails cannot compare with a guide (and some...um...handholds and ropes) when trying to find the best path. Our guide, 'Ito, provided excellent guidance which, had I not cramped up, would have likely gotten us to the summit.

Our reward beyond the view and sense of accomplishment, fish tacos at South Shore Grill for lunch, an ocean swim, and some pretty fantastic Indian food with Benito and LK at dinner. Who says Sunday's fun should be all work?

Hawaii 2011 (Day Four)

2011-03-15T23:12:00.004-05:00

After the Magnum P.I. waterman day, we knew that we wanted to add a little more fitness to the routine. After all, Magnum had a steel breastplate under all that chesthair, and he didn't get it by going to picnics and sitting on the patio at the King Kamehamea club drinking beers (or did he).

We started the day with a wonderful breakfast of homemade granola, yogurt, dried cherries, and honey, thanks to Linda K., and quickly got to the business of running around Diamond Head to the Saturday Farmer's Market (it seems that it helps to get there early).

All was shaping up for fitness and the ability to get into Magnum P.I.-tight shorts (if one wanted to do this). Just then, we encountered a bit of a hitch. Soul had a booth at the market.

For the record, we SHARED the crab benedict with mango hollandaise and the "chilaquiles." We walked back to the apartment, so I figure that we worked off second breakfast. Our colorful friend seems a little suspicious of my logic, however:

Fortunately for us, the Honolulu Festival was in town. We walked to downtown Honolulu to watch hula, Japanese, Chinese, and other Pacific cultural performances. Despite the tragedy in Japan, several Japanese groups were able to come and perform (they had left before the destruction, we guessed).

Although it was all interesting, we were particularly blown away by an indigenous Australian dancing/music/culture group called "Descendance."

Of course, no walk downtown would be complete without a stop in to the Surfrider for a few tropical drinks. Despite the plastic cups, these Mai Tais were more authentic than yesterday's megadrinks at the Elks/KK club.

Of course, the view was the real attraction to this little corner of paradise.

After watching others on their boards, I'm starting to get the itch myself.

Although the running and walking seemed to help get us back on track, we didn't want Supper Club: Hawaii Edition to destroy the work/leisure balance so crucial to the Island Detective Lifestyle™. For dinner, we used much of what Linda K. found at the market.

Corn sprouts (which taste like corn!), blue sweet potatoes, local plum tomatoes, feta, and bread made this dinner particularly healthy, while it tasted like you just pulled everything out a garden (which we kind of did).

Of course, Benito was there to pour drinks (in this case, lychee saketinis), and add to the laid-back vibe. Our friends put the magnum in Magnum.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Three)

2011-03-15T01:08:00.006-05:00

After two days of false starts and misconnections, day three of our Hawaii sojourn had a lot to live up to--fortunately, two members of our original supper club made sure that this day would count. In the morning, our fearless host Linda had secretly arranged to get us into the infamous King Kamehamea club (of Magnum P.I. fame--a show that was part of my childhood background landscape, but which has become more of my psyche, thanks to our friends Dayna and Mazz). Linda's friend Elisa has a membership to this club (an Elks Club in RL), and showed us the glamorous side of Honolulu.

Although there was no Rick, T.C., or Higgins (not to mention no damsels or sinister international types), we were able to watch whales breaking the surface in the distance. There were also some pretty fancy Mai Tais and Bloody Mary's on the menu.

Although nobody would confirm this, we're pretty sure Rick was hiding behind this particular door.

After our noon trip to the club (and a nap), we weren't finished with our beach time. After shopping and packing a picnic dinner, we walked back down to Kaimana beach for a sunset meeting with a few of Benito's and Linda's friends. Initially, we had to plunk ourselves down on the wall because of few of the locals had commandeered the usual bench.

Once we got over the shock of the change in venue (really, only about 20 feet difference from their "usual" spot), we got down to eating and drinking. Although the couscous, watercress-tofu salad, brie on french bread, ahi poke, potato-blue cheese salad, and spicy-fried tofu were divine, what really stood out was the hospitality.

Of course, the reason these are called SUNSET picnics became obvious about halfway through the meal.

Although it took a while to get here, the smiles of old friends, the hospitality of new friends, and the quiet moments of beauty can balance the weight of so many difficulties. Small revelations.

Hawaii 2011 (Day Two)

2011-03-13T20:34:00.001-05:00

By now, you know that on Friday, March 11, 2011, Japan suffered its worst disaster since WWII. Although we spent much of the day in a travel bubble (4+ hours to LAX, a layover, and 6+ hours to Honolulu), we never imagined that our first few hours in paradise would be spent with friends worrying about whether or not we would be running for the hills. Although our first sightings of Linda and Benito "stalking" us near the Honolulu airport baggage carousels with leis (and beautiful, at that) were pure joy, it did not take long to figure out that all was not right in the world. Miriam and I were exhausted from the cross-country trip, a bit discombobulated from the jet lag, and more than a bit...um...ripe from not having access to our travel bag for two days (it spent night 1 in the Fargo airport), but we were ecstatic to be on the island and in the company of friends. After a glass of champagne (Gruet, naturally!), and introduction to friends who would be leaving for Bali in the morning, we were soon greeted with hourly tsunami sirens, and a mad scramble to find out information. Our host, Linda K., was methodical in finding pertinent information (it turns out that despite our close proximity to the beach, we are not in an evacuation area). Benito and the other friends who joined us were also good at sorting through the confusion. We stayed in the second-floor apartment near Waikiki beach, but we did not sleep much. Knowing that the first tsunami wave was supposed to hit at around 2:38 a.m. made the 2:34 a.m. tsunami siren all the more frightening. As is obvious, we made it through the night. Thank you everyone who has expressed concern for our well-being. We are fine. We hope you direct your attention to the people of Japan, who have, and continue to suffer unimaginable suffering because of the earthquake, tsunami, aftershocks, and nuclear plant problems. It is good to have friends near and far, and I think Japan will need friends from all over to get through this.

Hawaii 2011 (Day One)

2011-03-12T21:59:00.002-06:00

Sometimes, the best parts of the trip are the unexpected surprises. Not today. Mechanical problems with the jet that was supposed to start our journey to Hawaii proved that serendipity doesn't always rule the day.

We made it to Chicago and stayed near the airport. About 12 minutes before our already-delayed flight was supposed to depart, I was aware enough to call the airline. Incidentally, this is a very good idea if you want to get rerouted. For the record, United Airlines was very nice and as accommodating as they could be under the circumstances.

Was it was nice to get out of town? Yes, but there doesn't seem to be any grand lesson to learn in this particular missed connection (beyond obvious humility. Let's be honest here, though--even I don't feel like I'm in control of large jets).

On the plus side, our Chicago hotel bed was nice, and certainly better than staying in O'Hare overnight, which I have done). Next stop, Hawaii?

The Kids Are Definitely All Right

2011-03-02T14:14:00.004-06:00

Lisa Cholodenko’s "The Kids Are All Right" does what few comedies have dared to do in quite some time--it examines the slowly fraying edges that inevitably result when people make long commitments to one another, and it does it with both ferocity and tenderness. Although the central differences that the characters Nic and Jules (the protagonist mothers--played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) have with heteronormative Hollywood productions inevitably draws the attention of cultural critics, the heart of this movie resides in familial relationships that the children (18 year-old Joni and 15 year-old Laser--played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson, respectively) have with their two moms and the "interloper" sperm-donating father Paul (played by Mark Ruffalo). Of course, the norms that the characters adhere to are as heteronormative and patriarchal as the values that the lesbian mothers battle; still, these norms are at once more sublely-played and powerful than the heterosexual economy that the seducing Paul re-introduces into Nic's and Jules' love equation. This movie foregrounds a highly-emphasized sexual motif, with several sexual encounters between characters--and even a rather stylized gay porno-- and rather graphically emphasizes the sexual implications of life choices. Underneath the encounters and cuckolding, however, lies more profound feelings of abandonment, insecurity, longing, and wishing.

Laser's desire for a fatherly connection awakens after his awkwardly-bullying friend/acquaintance Clay gets into a very rough wrestling match with his own dad. Laser, a rather quiet teenager, convinces his sister Joni to look up and contact their biological father Paul, and the once-clear family lines begin to cross. The viewers initially get to see Nic and Jules as a rather normal couple, with separate identities and different power situations. Nic, an OB-GYN is played somewhat unflatteringly, though humanely. Nic's obviously the breadwinner, and brooks little discussion on matters of protocol or propriety. Jules provides the bulk of the nurturing for the family, and we meet her as she is trying to launch a landscaping business. It is during the scenes where Nic and Jules discuss her fledgling business, and during dinner interactions that we see that Jules is somewhat inarticulate and at a disadvantage to Nic's well-polished, disciplined, yet often cold demeanor. Clearly, these two people love each other, but 18+ years with two children have required compromises, and it looks like Jules' flakiness has provided much of the cushion.

The entrance of a very sexual, and casually entitled Paul (he enters not by design, as it was the children who asked for his presence) happens at Jules' emotional ebb. His affirming and flirtatious support of Jules' career through a backyard commission quickly turns physical, as Paul does not miss a chance to compliment Jules' work, philosophy, and looks. Moreover, he does not turn her advances back, as his encounters with his biologically-connected kids awaken feelings of yearning for rootedness and even a family of his own. The physical relationship that ensues seems sadly funny, as both of these characters don't know where the "off" switch resides. Jules' knows that she loves her family, but she cannot stand up for her own needs, and Paul doesn't know how to appreciate what he already has. Paul's need to stay open for the advance puts everyone into an awkward position, as families do not have the same kind of resilience as the young women he has bedded. Or do they? As this family goes churns through the crisis, you find out that Jules' has much more strength and sticktuitiveness than first portrayed. She provides the climactic and heart-wrenching living-room talk that reveals just how aware she is that she has betrayed, and has been betrayed by, the woman she loves. The "marathon" she describes is one that Nic must also admit to--Nic's uncomfortableness with her physiciality, her easy comfort with overdrinking, overstating opinions, and her overdependence on her economic and professional superiority all come crashing down. She knows that she's been shutting out Jules, and only the quiet affirmation of Jules' worth can help her meet the inarticulate and wounded heart of her partner on more equal ground. This reversal of Jules' and Nic's articulateness marks the turn in admitting that they don't know how things will turn out, but that they are committed to each other and their children regardless.

While the acting is generally very good, Julianne Moore's acting comes across as genuinely rich. Ms. Moore shows an attention to character that I have not seen in any of her roles (she generally depends upon the depth of her expressive eyes--something I might attribute to her choice of roles in thrillers and dramas). Annette Bening is, as usual, excellent. She presents a bit more of a hard edge with her silent cruelties, but underlines her role with a genuine warmth. Unlike her role in American Beauty, she is a sympathetic character (as are all of the characters--including Mark Ruffalo's clueless lothario).

What is genuinely a delight, though emerges from the way that Laser eventually enunciates the heart of the family. His rejection of Clay (during his "friend's" attempt to urinate on a stray dog) and his embracing of his mothers, with all of their flaws, provide a bit of honesty to the perfectionism of Nic and Joni and the self-doubt of Jules. Probably not "Best Picture" material, but a pretty frank and, ultimately hopeful, look at the contrast between family dreams and family realities.

Boys to Men

2011-02-17T16:01:00.002-06:00

Contemporary global culture celebrates movies, the opera of our contemporary historical moment, in some surprisingly limited ways. There is much made about the technical artistry of movies, the quality of the visual effects, the acting, and the poetic sensibility of the storytelling. Additionally, critics and awards organizations recognize movies that capture a particular zeitgeist--movies that, say, reinvigorate our belief in simple, yet absorbing worlds (Star Wars), or that make us feel better about our chances to have an impact on the world (Rocky). Much less celebrated are the movies that touch our ethical sensibility, that guide our sense of how one negotiates the world's complicated, and often contradictory demands. Movies that give us these ethical touchstones are only celebrated when wrapped in an epic (Dances with Wolves) or historical (Schindler's List) sensibility.

Small, quiet movies that explore the paradoxes of a life well lived (Groundhog Day, The Fisher King) typically fall under radar, and only find their audience through word of mouth. One movie that was lucky enough to find an audience did so by disguising itself as a contemporary Brit-com in the tradition of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love, Actually. This movie, About a Boy, stars the same troubled, but charming, adultboy Hugh Grant. In this movie, the manboytagonist Will provides the narration about his lonely life of abundance. Will employs disarming banter about how he eschews complications from his relationships and structures frittering away his days (using interchangeable "units" to describe what are essentially luxurious distractions). The viewer can be very easily taken by Will's roguish disaffectedness, and is invited to do so with long looks at Will's luxury loft-style apartment, his modernist furniture, an eclectic collection of hobbies, and an even more exotic collection of girlfriends. Rather unsubtlely, Will's opulent, but empty existence gets contrasted with a rather unflattering portrait of "the boy" (Marcus, played by Nicholas Hoult) and his mother Fiona (played by the inimitable Toni Colette). Marcus, a rather awkward tween, ineffectively fends off school bullies and tries to understand why his granola-laden mother unhappily keeps trying to kill herself. Even though the audience could get backstory to understand what drives Fiona to her suicidal maudlin behavior, or why Marcus never seems to defend himself, we are denied that background. Instead, the audience is allowed the discomfort of admiring a trust-fund nothing and feeling less sorry for two characters in truly pitiable circumstances.

The reversal of charisma that arights this ethical incongruity hinges on Will's attempts to pick up on single mothers (the chant of the group SPAT, "Single Parents Alone Together!" is almost worth the price of admission alone). Will's narration on his reasoning for picking up on single parents only highlights just how emotionally parasitic he is, and just how little he actually lives up to his credo that "all men are islands." By plugging into the emotional needs of single mothers to increase his own ego, and then taking advantage of those mothers' ambivalence towards an emotional competition with a child to provide an easy exit, Will harvests the emotional void of vulnerable people. It is in this scenario that Marcus sees an opportunity to harvest Will's emotional void through blackmail. Marcus, like Will has a shaky relationship with any male figure (something that becomes abundantly clear when he volunteers to play "Killing Me Softly" during the high-school talent show using only his squeaky voice and a sad little tambourine). Unlike Will, though, Marcus is not yet resigned to always taking or buying the simularcrum of love where he can from the women in his life. Instead, Marcus still seeks authentic relationships with women, and instead enters a more capitalistic emotional exchange with boys and men (especially Will).

During the initial stumblings of their relationship, Will and Marcus attempt to steer each other toward the heteronormative and capitalistic models for different-sex relationships. Marcus tries to set Will up as a romantic partner with his mother, Fiona (at the same time Will is desperately trying to figure out how to have an honest relationship with Rachel--played by Rachel Weisz]). Meanwhile, Will is trying to buy Marcus' good graces by using a bit of his trust-fund money to buy him shoes and music. Both of these schemes to buy/force love fall flat, and Will and Marcus are both left trying to square up with people who genuinely like them, but with whom they feel like they cannot fully connect. Rachel's child (a bully) hates Will and bullies Marcus to hog his mom's energy. Fiona sees through Will's strategies, and eventually exposes his masquerades as a single father. The difficulties that Will and Marcus face creating an atmosphere of honesty and trust seem insurmountable, as both of them come from an emotionally stunted upbringing ("No. No. You've always had that wrong. I really am this shallow. ").

It's only at the moment that you think that Will and Marcus aren't going to ever make the connection that you learn about Will's and Marcus' connection to an overshadowing parent. Marcus' social suicide attempt at the talent show somewhat melodramatically folds in Will's disconnection with his now-dead songwriting father who left him a small fortune, but seemingly never helped him grow up. The solo (which eventually becomes a duet) takes the title "Killing Me Softly" rather literally. Fiona encourages a show of love that will likely seal Marcus' fate as the bottom rung on the social ladder, and Will exposes the fact that his father's "one hit wonder" musical fortune buried any chance that he would grow out of his childish need to buy affection. The song that pays Will royalties ("Santa's Super Sleigh") has really been killing Will emotionally.

Fortunately, this show of solidarity on the stage has all of the right people watching, and forges a real connection between the formerly disconnected characters. This neat tying-up of narratives avoids cliché in how it handles the resolution. Instead of re-establishing the heteronormative and capitalistic order, Will's narration takes a decidedly ethical turn in announcing that "every man is an island. I stand by that. But clearly some men are island CHAINS. Underneath, they are connected." Marcus adds to this narrative (a narrative echo to the musical duet) by building on that Robinson Crusoe-esque observation: "I used to think two was enough. But now things are great; there are loads of people... I don't know what Will was so pissed about. I don't think couples are the future. The way I see it now, we both got back-up now. It's like that thing Jon Bon Jovi said: 'No man is an island.'"

Even further, Will discovers the secret to really connecting with and loving others resides not in the one-to-one exchange that he excels in (and something that compels him to maintain the illusion of desirability, ultimately leading to the lies he constructs to maintain that illusion), but rather in accepting, supporting, and loving the people that those people love. To care about someone means you have to genuinely care about the people that someone has in their lives. Will grows by spending time with everyone in Marcus' life, by sharing who he is with everyone, and by accepting and helping those on the edges of Marcus' and Rachel's life. Marcus' and Will's shared humiliation on the stage provides the metaphor to guide their interactions with others around them. Marcus becomes visible to loved ones and possible friends for the first time and Will can finally offer something of substance because of the courageous stand they both take on the most fickle of stages.

In the end, no character changes so much as they emerge into honesty. Marcus is still awkward. Will is still struggling to grow. Fiona is still depressed. Despite these flaws, each has prospects, both in romantic love, and, more importantly in family.

2011 Spring Fitness Goals Log: Week 3

2011-02-06T15:21:00.001-06:00

Bench Press: 82%
Squat Press: 70%
Standing Curls: 80%
Military Press: 75%
Gymnastic Situps: 100%
Indo Balance Board: 7 minutes
Yoga: 1 day - short session
Short Run: 3 miles (speed), 2 miles (speed)
Long Run: 11 miles (speed)

On the Interwebs

2011-02-06T15:17:00.003-06:00

2011 Spring Fitness Goals Log: Week 2

2011-01-26T20:10:00.000-06:00

Pull-ups: 66%
Dips: 92%
Seated Dumbbell Reverse-raises: 70%
Shrugs: 60%
Sit-ups: 100%
Yoga: 1 day - short session
Short Run: 3 miles (speed)
Long Run: 7 miles (speed)

2011 Spring Fitness Goals Log: Week 1

2011-01-17T15:09:00.003-06:00

Bench Press: 82%
Squat Press: 65%
Standing Curls: 80%
Military Press: 67%
Indo Balance Board: 5 minutes
Yoga: 2 days - short session
Short Run: 4 miles
Long Run: 10 miles

Movie Editing as Gender Construction

2011-01-10T08:59:00.001-06:00

Editing can have HUGE implications for how one experiences a film/video. When Peter Ramus divided invention from what he thought were the ornamental elements of rhetoric, he failed to see the constitutive powers of arrangement and style. To illustrate my point, I'm going to contrast two trailers for the surfing documentary Step Into Liquid. In each trailer, notice who speaks first, who speaks most, and note the way that the genders are portrayed.

In the first, more gender-balanced trailer, note how the title of the movie is derived from an interview with Rochelle Ballard, one of the best professional surfers on the tour. She distills the joy of surfing by describing it as stepping into liquid. In the trailer, you see her discussing surfing in philosophical and intellectual terms. There is a moment where she descibes it more sensually. In this first trailer, you only hear her at this moment, and see her during her more serious moments. The gender balance in this trailer is also much more obvious, with cuts between male and female surfers. Women are portrayed in active poses, with the climactic scene of a woman doing a backflip off of her surfboard.

In the second trailer, there is a hyper-masculine narrator using an aggressive and superlative tone ("the Browns have done it again"). Men are the first people you hear (rather than the woman whose interview inspired the title). The same footage of Ballard shows the moment when she's discussing surfing more sensually ("it just feels good") with her scrunching up her shoulders and appearing a little more flaky. The footage of the surfers is more segregated by gender, and there is a marked difference between the ways that men are described (men are identified as parts of groups, and doing more aggressive and accomplished feats--"strapped crew," "the Maverick's crew," "the war veteran," "surf legends," "The Malloys, etc.") vs. the women (who are described individually, and as being part of a setting-- "in beautiful Tahiti").

The addition of the throbbing music to the more masculinized soundtrack merely serves to underline the gender posturing in this short piece. While the additive elements of the voiceover and the soundtrack underline the difference, the editing is really what does the heavy lifting. Segregating different gendered surfing footage and featuring the more sensual, slow motion, and closer shots of women, while featuring the more active men through the use of helicopter "God's eye" shots of men skating across the face of larger waves in real-time constructs the binaries of men as active and aggressive and women as soft and more passive. The declaration that "the Browns have done it again, and this time they're showing the simple truth about surfing" (with the images of exclusively-male images of big-wave surfing), followed immediately by spliced audio explaining "big wave riding is like an inner desire" only cements the naturalized ordering of big wave riding (done by men as "the truth" of surfing) as the top of the hierarchy.

Subtle differences to the untrained eye, but unmistakable compositions that cement associations between gender and activity through image. Splicing flickering signifiers in particular sequences creates the multiple gendered truths of surfing from the same raw material.

Running into a Blizzard

2011-01-06T17:44:00.006-06:00

When my partner and I were interviewing for our two jobs at NDSU, we asked a graduate-school friend from Minnetonka, Minnesota about the chances of us surviving up here on the northern plains; “you are moving to a cold, dark hole, but the people who live there are really nice.” Foreboding description, but we took the leap anyway. Since we moved, we have found he description apt for the most part, and have been learning to embrace life up here. We’ve picked up cross-country skiing, run through blizzards, and even built slide-distance into our driving calculations. Still, we have never been stranded in a car during a blizzard. Correction: we hadn’t been stranded in a car until December 30, 2010.

As you already know, we survived this seemingly-shocking event, and have emerged pretty much unscathed. Perhaps the weirdest part of being in a car that slides into a snow bank during the middle of a blizzard is the strange mundanity of it. What went through my head was really something more like a combination of confusion and of comfort. The bizarre juxtaposition between the almost-unimaginable slide of a 2-ton car on a dark, icy road and the almost cheerful camaraderie of three friends going into the unknown still jars my imagination. There was no question what was driving us—the chance to spend this belated birthday celebration eating incredible Korean food with an old friend (it was going to be two old friends, but one was quite sick at home) and two new friends was too much to pass up.

When the snow settled, and the requisite attempts to free the car using drive and reverse failed, my friend Dayna, my partner Miriam, and I looked at each other for answers. Luckily, both of the other people stuck in this absurd situation with me are can-do folks--within minutes, we were all out trying to push the car off of the snow berm and back onto the road. We hacked away at the snow with both hands and an ice scraper. Our gregarious driver asked a police officer to call a tow-truck (none of the 18 tow-truck services would come down as far south in Moorhead as we were), called her insurance company, and flagged down a fellow stranded motorist to help free us; Miriam and I took turns pushing, gunning the car, and digging. Ultimately, the combination of near-gale winds and ice-rink surface of the road forced us to call our dinner hosts to see if we could make a run for their apartment. After a few calls back and forth (what did we DO before cellphones?), we made a run for it, and was met by one of our hosts (a Texas native, but surprisingly adept running through the snow) about 1/4 mile from the car.

As you may suspect, we made it to the dinner (which was even better than I imagined). The food, conversation, and hospitality were amazing, especially considering the circumstances; still, I can’t help but think back about what my Lake Minnetonka friend told me. Most people think of place as something that gets characterized by its natives. Although Dayna is from here (and has been a delightful guide in discovering both basic and urbane aspects of the culture), our hosts are from South Korea and Houston. Miriam and I hail from Florida and Arizona. Despite (or maybe because of) our diversity, we were able to get to the dinner, have a great dinner, survive an impromptu sleepover, and get home. The combination of difficulties and friends to face them have only cemented my feeling that Fargo is now my home--a place where even the worst of circumstances can add to my love of place.

Deal Making/Deal Breaking: Of Hitler and Incommensurability

2010-11-28T17:22:00.000-06:00

Today, during a Master's thesis prospectus meeting, Hitler made his rounds. In discussing how an M.A. candidate might frame the rhetoric of militant Hindi fundamentalism, the committee discussed Hitler's use of rhetorical violence during the Third Reich (Burke, the rhetorician of choice, studied Hitler's rhetoric, so it was a fair invocation). Still, I notice the usefulness of inserting Hitler in academic and cultural discussions to clarify otherwise unclarifiable discussions. Hitler helps clear the air for people with strong agendas. We can all agree that Hitler was bad, so we can't be that far apart (or something like that). Although it doesn't always take this kind of Armageddon-like common ground to get academics to agree on things, it often helps.

One-on-one, I almost never need to rush to some sort of cultural extreme (like celebrity bad behavior) or historical extreme (like Hitler) to gain common ground with people. I usually can see and acknowledge a wide range of perspectives as part of my nature. I perceive things in their context, and I usually find common ground unless I see imminent danger. I accept. As a pre-teen, I was nicknamed "peacemaker" by my parents because of my role in mediating between between brothers and between the sibling/parent divide. My perspective helped me translate what was often mutually excluding frames of seeing the universe. For quite a long time, this role was a way to gaining prestige and getting the love and respect I craved from my family and friends. I could identify with others and give them both a nonjudgemental, and sometimes idealized, version of themselves. In Enneagram terms, I'm a nine (with a one wing, for those who are Enneagram geeks). Although some people were/are suspicious of this (I've been called smarmy more than once), it is a totally sincere perspective. To quote one of my favorite poems: "I know many lives worth living."

Although being a mediator may seem like a pretty comfortable place to live, it often presents with unsolvable puzzles. When I am positioned between two incommensurable people or positions, my translations can become conduits to rage and inflexibility. I discovered this as a teenager when my older brother slowly inducted me into his fundamentalist Christian Bible study. I gave my best effort to syncretically integrate my old habits/hobbies/perspectives (reading, love of a wide range of music, fantasy gaming) with the perspective of a new creation (or at least the late-20th Century American version of it). Eventually, I was forced to choose between the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Top-40 music, between loving Jesus and playing Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually, I decided to chuck my past into the garbage can (quite literally, in the case of my fantasy gaming books--Dungeon Master no more). Underneath my embrace of Christian fundamentalism, I still held a rich imaginative and intellectual life, but I did so in secretive and what felt like duplicitous ways. It took me four years, and an immersion in Southern California's much more eclectic music sub-culture to face up to my mistake. It took a lot of hurt feelings and sadness (even yelling) to remove myself from what I felt was an overly-rigid perspective,. I don't believe in Christian fundamentalism, despite my ability to understand those who embrace it. Nevertheless, I try to steer clear of strong expressions of it because I know that my understanding, and even fondness for some of its adherents, will be mistaken for a willingness to embrace it.

The problem for me was one of finding myself in-between two totally different perspectives and lacking the ability to persuade one of reconciling the other. I can hold two truths in my head, but I can't live in two worlds. My peacemaking blessing can be a curse when I get between two inflexible and incommensurable people or institutions.

Why does this matter? Well, in my new role as director of Upper-Division Writing, my job is to act as a gatekeeper between students who want nothing more than to get through their education and an institution designed to throw up challenges. My job is to become an apologist for one side (the student's) while serving the will of the other (the University). How does one deal with this? I have to look outside myself, step away from my peacemaking role and lean into my life choice. I chose to be a director, and that means some people are just going to be pissed off. There are no comfortable cultural examples to point to when I stand between a two forces and their colliding goals. There is no Hitlerian high ground, so sometimes I just have to, in the words of LBJ, take it like "a jackass in a hailstorm."

Humpbacks

2010-11-24T10:32:00.006-06:00

by Mary Oliver

There is, all around us
this country
of original fire.

You know what I mean.

The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.

Off Stellwagen
off the Cape,
the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at play.

They sing too.
And not for any reason
you can't imagine.

Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat,
then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes
tipped to the air.

We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky-
like nothing you've ever imagined-
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
out of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then
they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean

I know a captain who has seen them
playing with seaweed, tossing
the slippery lengths of it into the air.

I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever
she can, and nudge it gently along the bow
with her long flipper.

I know several lives worth living.

Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like he dreams of your body,

its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones

toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittery fire

where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs in song.

Election Hangover

2010-11-03T10:35:00.004-05:00

Today, a lot of my friends are feeling pretty blue about yesterday's election. While I sit pretty firmly on the progressive side of things, I have to say that I'm not nearly as down about what happened. Despite my militant (and often annoying) optimism, I actually think that keeping the Senate gives us a lot to be hopeful about. Things did not go as I had wished; however, I'm pretty sure that we can turn things around if we get involved.

How can I be so sure? Well, nothing is sure, but this reminds me of my despair 4 years ago when I saw George W. Bush get re-elected by my state (Ohio), despite what felt like a mountain of energy expended on fundraising, canvassing, and even election monitoring. That election, while standing in the rain as a monitor, I was repeatedly and randomly ordered by a 19-year-old police officer to cross the street. I saw developmentally-disabled people escorted into a voting booth one-at-a-time by a single Republican Party muckity-muck. I saw live newsfeeds of Ken Blackwell (George W. Bush's campaign crony and eventual Governor candidate) counting votes behind closed doors while stonewalling press access. My partner and I felt generally despondent after my country re-elected an incompetent President and my state turned out in great numbers to marginalize my LGBT friends and fellow countryfolk. We were so devastated that the first thing we did was drive to a blue state (Michigan) and buy a blue couch.

That despondency didn't last, however. When the dust settled, sport and I just doubled down and worked that much harder. We joined a local group and started talking politics with our friends in coffee-shops and offices. Every week. It was really nothing crazy, but it wasn't easy either (I still have hate mail from people who didn't like professors writing letters to the editor--the horror!). We just started caring and putting our time and money where our hearts were. We articulated a vision and worked towards it. Unsurprisingly, we found that a lot of people either agreed, or were just looking for somebody else to care. We changed minds. Long story short? By the time we left for North Dakota two years later, Ohio had elected President Obama, voted in a Democratic governor (and several new Democrats) and cleaned out much of the corruption that we saw rip apart our faith in American democracy.

Don't lose sight of the fact that we make our own hope, and that we can only win if we share that hope. Every. Day.

Chin up. We've still got a chance to change the world for the better. Let's get working!

One More Time

2010-10-12T18:11:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my 39th trip around the sun. Lots of you reading this have made many of these trips, and I'm hoping to learn a thing or two from your amazing journeys over the next few orbits. In fact, I have to say that what I feel most strongly about this impending arc across the solar system comes from what I have gotten from my interconnectedness with others. During the past 38 years, friends and family have entered and exited my life. Many have taken more than they have given in the immediate term, but I can't think of anybody who has not taught me an important lesson. I'm not a big believer in a cosmic orderer--at least not in any way that can't elude our best-formulated control schemes--but I do believe in the power of absorbing the lessons available to us.

This past year, the entrance of three young Sudanese Americans has transformed our house and our understanding of the world. At the start of the year, my partner and I faced the completion of a very long journey. When our friends opened their hearts and lives to their friend and his three young, lovely children, our dreams were transformed. By the time the year ended, we found ourselves constantly re-configuring mental models of our small community to make space for these children and everyone else in the village who wanted to help out. Even though we aren't the primary caretakers in these kids' lives (and probably not even secondary), we have found ourselves trying to become less selfish to help them and the many people taking on the extra parenting. The persistent pull of these kids helped pull me and my partner from the cascading traumas brought about by two floods, the forgotten death anniversary of my father, the end of a 17-year academic journey, the purchase of our first new house (and its subsequent remodeling), physical injury, and a cancer scare. When I was overwhelmed at times, my partner would remind me to think about these kids and the other kids in the world who live on the edges of war and colonialism. We know nothing of trouble.

It's easy to get caught up in my own goals as an academic. Sometimes, the game of success is the only game that I feel like I can win; hell, sometimes it's the only game I understand. It's only the persistent ethical draw of eleven years with my best friend and lover that pulls me out of an institutional orbit to see the larger picture of what we can mean to others, especially when the culture gives you no instructions on how to connect with the young and vulnerable when you aren't biologically connected. It's hard to love people when acts of love are interpreted as selfish at best, dangerous at worst. It helps to have a life partner who is an old pro at giving without leaving traces. Being there for friends and strangers means you have to be courageous. You can't give while looking over your shoulder. The blows will come, but love gives you strength and courage that help you ignore them.

At times, the courage that comes from love has manifests as a willingness to grab opportunities. We're walking towards spending time in Africa next year. I'm hoping to help grow the arts community during a time of scarcity. Sport is hoping to continue and expand her work with vulnerable women. We're also looking at ways of aligning our professional careers more closely with our ethical bent. I want to be a better teacher. A better researcher. A better friend. A better person. These things all require an uncomfortable amount of truth-telling; something I'm not always willing to do. As a rhetorical scholar, I'm always aware of the means of persuasion, but this does little to help me change the world in deeply ethical ways. Sometimes you have to risk looking like a jackass to fulfill your calling. It's painful, but ultimately necessary.

Being more comfortable in my own skin has meant rubbing some people the wrong way, but it has also meant making deeper friendships. You can't please everybody, but that's O.K. Everybody who I have met in my life has played some sort of important role. As I take this trip around the sun again, know that I'm taking a little piece of you with me, that I'm trying to be a little less me and little more of those kids. You have all taught me something I needed to learn. If you have read this far, I'm sure that you have somehow helped me get to where I need to go in my journey. Thank you.

Parents as Landscape

2010-09-14T04:18:00.004-05:00

Growing up, my house had a quiet spot that surrounded my parents. Despite having two noisy brothers, and the occasional blaring radio or television, my mother and father generally presented an oasis of quietude. My mother's introversion and father's near-deafness allowed my brothers and I room to express ourselves (if not always get a response proportional to the kind of sometimes horrifically inappropriate things we often expressed). My father's near-deafness came as a result of meningitis he caught in Army boot camp in Alabama when he was training to be shipped off in the Korean War. Of course, my brothers and I were told that the howitzers caused this until he revealed his true condition (yes, the cannon roar WAS always a bit easier to share as a child).

It wasn't until recently that I contemplated just how difficult my father must have had it going through college before the American with Disabilities Act was passed. Dad not only went to multiple universities in pursuit of his degrees (Highlands University, St. Edward's, Baylor, and UT Austin), he did some of this coursework while starting a family with my Mom. I cannot even imagine how difficult his education would have been as a newly-deaf man in institutions that had little sympathy for disability and delivered information via lecture. Of course, as the perma-son, I failed to even contemplate this, much less communicate my awe, until after my father passed (and, yes, this haunts me).

Of course, my Mom is still alive, and I have to say that I'm pretty amazed at her educational tenacity too. As the oldest girl of six in a family with not even a history of high school completion, she went off and got both a B.A. and a Master's in Education. Her introversion, struggles in a society that didn't value women's education, and family history did not stop her from reaching her educational goals. She also worked on her education (as so many women do) with my brothers and I in tow. The four of us spent one summer in a one-room residence hall room with a hall bathroom, and another summer in a hall with a small kitchen and a bathroom. So much slipped by in parents' silence; however, their educational examples did not. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Iron Maiden

2010-08-23T09:53:00.002-05:00

Our long runs have now reached the 15-mile mark, which means running through cycles of pain. One of the few advantages of this kind of self-torture comes in the form of justification (self?) for public complaining during the run. This Saturday, this gripe-fest during the last 4 (or so) miles became rather creative. The winner of our "Whine Slam" came in the form of a metaphor. From here on out, our long runs will be described as "puttin' on the pain-skirt."

Leaving the Electric Forest

2010-08-16T10:43:00.005-05:00

Our subjectivities are always imminent. We exist as subjects before we are aware of it. Louis Althusser and Judith Butler describe the process of ideology creating us and us responding to our own mirror image as “hailing,” or “interpellation.” Like a person that responds to a “hey you” on the street by looking (and by admitting that they could be a “you” that is yelled to on the street), any conscious choice admits to a subject’s constructedness. Technology, or the more ossified practices and materiality of ideology, hails relentlessly. Phones ring, inboxes fill, facebook pages are commented upon with breathless pace and with an almost deafening roar. We are the “To” line in every message, and we had better acknowledge that we are on the hook to do something about it, or there may be consequences.

Although this hailing can seem unyielding and unrelenting, Althusser recognized that ideologies only manifest in action: ideology matters most with “material practices governed by a material ritual.” We are already constituted by our ideologies, but only insofar as they determine what we do on a regular basis. We are who we perform.

This performance of electronic subservience is the core of why I am slowly abandoning social media. A second, related reason for abandoning social media is the way that connection gets metaphorized as a capital transaction. As a technology, social media is really a combination of attention structures that keep me thinking about the world in an acquiring and acquisitive manner. I am looking at my monitor and position myself as someone who responds to images, words, and other signification by generating my own signifiers. An endless tennis match, the beginning of which occurs when one opens an account, can keep a person on the treadmill of response, ever chained to cellphones, laptops, and tablet computers. Ringing phones, unanswered prompts, hovering IM boxes, and full inboxes all scream “Answer me…OR ELSE!!!”

What starts as a sporadic, sparse, even Spartan set of interactions can soon grow into a dense and involving back-and-forth as one’s network of “friends” and contacts becomes denser. The layers of a social media user’s life re-constitute themselves online, combining past, present, good, distant, and even pseudo friends. What was formerly more intimate, immediate, and private information becomes public; boundaries for sharing and withholding become folded into the process of interpellation. When experiment gives way to ritual, the process of interpellation seems complete and almost unchangeable, except that it is not.

I teach about New Media, and have noted that every technology, especially communication technologies, are accompanied by a period of uncertainty, celebration, and ultimately, panic. What I have not witnessed firsthand, however, is how quickly the rituals that accompany new communication technologies can tear at the fabric of hard-won bonds of trust and friendship. Turning one’s attention away from the cues and carefully-created rituals of material practice when a new technology hails leads you away from the well-worn pathways of communication and ritual that people array themselves around. Responding to new hailing moves all of the welcome mats.

Fortunately, habitus can be changed. While it initially seems painful to give up a television, a phone, email, or a facebook account, it is important to note that most of the world does not integrate many of these technologies into daily living. These commodifying media aren’t necessary for daily existence. They don’t really matter to the great majority of people who haveever lived on the planet. Stories were told, information shared, bonds formed, love expressed, and transactions…well, transacted. New communication technologies matter mostly to the wealthy and well-positioned. These instantaneous and visible connections help us frame social interactions as ones of economy. Images, words, and sounds that re-present memory are invested, traded, and exchanged for the time and attention that would be proffered living these moments with those physically proximate. Emotion is re-aligned with those who have the greatest access to the privileged signifiers of intimacy rather than those who we share the space with. Electronic networks replace other physical networks; Re-mediation doesn’t just supplement, it realigns and re-places. McLuhan is right when he declares the medium is the message and the masssage. How we say things is both what we say and who we are.

One of the things that can be re-figured by un-wiring is reconnecting with the cues that one uses to create a sense of relationship to the world. The emotional cues, physical cues, and even social cues that exceed these particular definitions emerge from the sensed landscape. Away from mediation, these cues mean particular things. With mediation, we add yet another layer of meaning and inflection that complicates how we view the world. Although this alternative gets us no closer to Plato’s notion of forms (and out of his cave), it does create a different and somewhat more direct relationship to the ancient environments and cycles that we have evolved from. While it may be tempting to see the built environment as one continuous and undifferentiated soup of adaptation, the cues and affordances of the physical, oral, and aural environments all grant us access through their own reciprocities. To acknowledge the duration of the sunlight as a defining aspect of our day (rather than, say, taking cues from the machine-gun regularity of a news feed in Facebook) aligns us with the sweep of the seasons and the adaptations that our ancestors worked into our dwellings and technologies. To pay attention to the people we share a house, street, or office with rather than the most frequent and/or clever status updater is to align ourselves with a long history of interacting with our environment.

To better honor the sacred spaces of my body, my home, and my relationships, I have begun to un-wire (and un-wireless). I don’t go to facebook or Twitter but once a week. I don’t check my email or look at the Internet on the weekends unless it is for a scheduled work session. I(we) even take Internet Sabbaths at least one day a week. This realignment grew out of the shock of recognition that I had become enslaved to the always-on hailings of my wireless-enabled laptop. While many minimalist-living gurus cite this electronic decoupling as an epideictic imperative, it is mainly an assertion of subjective choice. Just like I choose to not eat meat mostly to make room for better choices, I choose to curtail my electronic networking to make room for the people and relationships that I have worked so hard to live in.

Living with Weakness

2010-07-06T10:13:00.004-05:00

One of the lessons that I have been very slow to accept is that life is short, and that invulnerability is an illusion. People who know me well know that I have been living with chronic pain for the past year and a half. What most may not be aware of is just how scary and debilitating that was. My pain, which presented over my entire lower abdomen started to occur with regular frequency just before the great Fargo flood of 2009. During that hectic period, I not only felt pain in my abdomen, but I got minor whiplash when I slipped on the ice and cracked the back of my head on a curb. Typically, I rely on what seems like a genetic imperviousness to wait pain out. About a year into the pain (and one flood later), the pain had not only not abated, it had intensified, despite the fact that I had cut back on some of the "usual suspects" of rich food, alcohol consumption (for gallbladder pain). I had checked in with my physician to discuss gall stones, and he was willing to start me down the path to treating and maybe removing my gallbladder (there is little to do but actually remove it); however, something about this diagnosis didn't sit right. Nobody in my family had a history of gallstones, and I certainly did not fit the typical profile of someone with stones--postmenopausal women and larger, older men. What I DID have a history of was cancer, and this creeping suspicion was one that loomed larger and larger in my mind. My grandparents on my father's side both died of cancer (very painfully), and my father had sections of his gastrointestinal tract removed during the latter stages of his life. Considering that I had not really mourned my father's death, the possibility of having cancer at 38 and constant pain was enough to keep me up every night. When news came in that my partner's friend died of very fast-spreading liver and colon cancer at 46, and that he had had almost identical symptoms, I finally decided to confront my stubborn avoidance and seek help.

During the middle of May, I finally decided to go in and start testing for what was causing this pain. By this point, the leg where I had already excised a small skin cancer growth was also hurting, so I had a huge range of symptoms to sort through with my doctor. While talking with my doctor and sorting everything out was not that difficult (although finding out one has not one, but three issues, does complicate things a bit); what was so difficult about the process was admitting that I was almost absurdly afraid of facing my own inevitable decline and doing something about it. Rather that continuing to pile up obligations and distractions to avoid dealing with my potential convalescence, I had to start clearing time to deal with this physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Fortunately, I have an incredible partner who went with me to every doctor's visit and sorted through the history to uncover what was really going on. I was also lucky enough to talk to friends who had gone through cancer in their families, so that I could see how they made it through the fear. While I was relieved to find out that I don't have cancer, I did have to go through physical rehab for a shoulder injury, treat a range of strains and small tears in my ribcage, and continue dealing with noncancerous GI-tract issues. While shifting my sense of invulnerability was one of the most challenging things I had ever done (it certainly makes running a marathon look like a walk in the park), it is ultimately helping me deal with the changes that come with losing a parent, reaching a life goal, and transitioning to a different period of my life.

Father's Day

2010-06-20T16:54:00.002-05:00

I was going to write something sad and expressive for this Father's Day. Those of you who know me know that my Father's passing on February 15, 2009 was very difficult, especially because I had very little time to mourn it in the middle of a semester that saw an epic flood, a small departmental crisis, and a scarring student dispute. I forgot to mark the anniversary of his death this year, and was thrown into a tailspin once again.

Instead of embellishing these notations, I want to say that I actually think I learned from my Dad that you sometimes just have to Suck. It. Up. So instead of dragging y'all through the tears and the weepies, I just want to let you know that I did four things to mark Father's Day. 1. ) I sent something nice to my Mom. 2. ) I had a nice talk with my Mom. 3.) I sat back and watched Ella (our friends' theatrical 5 year-old) perform a wonderful improvised "Secondary Father" song and dance for me., and 4.) I hung curtains with my lifelong partner and lover.

My Father pressed upon me the importance of helping, listening to, supporting, and enjoying the gifts of the women in my life. Even though I wasn't always the best son, I can't think of a better gift to my Dad then trying to be present for them. Happy Father's Day Dad; and to all of the fathers and daughters out there--enjoy your day. I may not be a father or have a father, but I still love the celebration.

For David

2010-05-15T05:42:00.001-05:00

Otter Topography
Andrew Mara

You marked the return of the river otter
To the banks of the Red
Slipping, sinewy, beneath the surface.

Breaking my reverie
A long, cold, lifeless river
Newly dappled with sibilent splashing.

I don’t know you well,
Yet your silvery connection
Threaded with laughing shadows

Warm suspiration
Language, place, change
Cyclic re-expression recreating

Ancestral topography
Changing, moving, ebbing,
Imperceptible, but through your poetry.

Surfing as Metaphor

2010-05-09T07:42:00.004-05:00

One of the unexpected perks of being an English professor is the chance to learn about language tools to make up for communication problems that once vexed you in childhood. The mystery of complex social symbolic behavior was something that fascinated me as a child. I became proficient at drawing, music, and math at a pretty young age, but crafting strings of words together in speech and writing proved more elusive. There was no high ground that one could run to in order to certify that someone's interpretation of an utterance or inscription was "wrong." Instead, one always had to recognize that the chain of meaning depended upon each interlocutor in a conversation or reader of a text. You couldn't usefully cut out your audience. Although this intensely annoyed me as a kid used to relative mastery of symbolic skills (I thought it to be absolute at the time--not unusual for a white boy), it also fascinated me to no end. English classes became increasingly mysterious as I progressed through junior high school and into the uncertainty of high school advanced English classes. Nothing thrilled me more than having a teacher choose my essay to read to the class as an example of good writing or getting an award for a sonnet I had composed in jest, and nothing vexed me more than getting an essay back with what I felt were unfair criticisms that looked like so many diacritical marks.

This love/hate relationship with language kept me coming back to the well for ways to communicate what I thought and saw. I drew things in from my love of music and drawing. I created songs and wrote poetry to capture feelings that tended to skip over large expanses of logical scaffolding. Over time, I began to settle in on a few favorite metaphors. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, running is a favorite metaphor for approaching the quotidian, sometimes trying things. A complementary metaphor that I've been employing over the years is that of surfing.

I am not a good surfer. In fact, I used surfing as a metaphor well before I ever left the beaches of my childhood--the painted desert and the valley of the sun. For those of you who do not know Phoenix well, you should understand that although it may seem paradoxical for an Arizonan/Phoenician to think about surfing, surfing provides an important psychological and metaphoric role in desert life. Desert rats (something I definitely was) think about sand as a medium upon which one can perform feats with postmodern sprezzatura. I grew up skateboarding, wagoning, bicycling, and generally sliding down sand dunes to break the boredom and to show my balance prowess. The taller the dune, the better. I was also lucky enough to spend a summer fortnight in Carlsbad California at a music camp ("one time at band camp..."). Every afternoon, for two weeks, I had the opportunity to boogie board and bodysurf until I was sunburned and my ears rang with the gurgle of the surf bubbling in my ears. The only analogous feeling to catching a wave and riding it in for me was riding a horse at full gallop. The energy was terrifying, electrifying, and almost mystical.

Phoenicians have an especially intense love/hate relationship with surf culture. Phoenix kids often think of themselves connected with San Diego culture--the trip down Interstate 10 actually leads to Los Angeles, but the sprawling enormity of the City of Angels seems too inchoate and intimidating for Phoenix kids to emulate or fetishize. In high school, kids would wear surf t-shirts, flip-flops (Flojos were the brand of choice way back then), and put In-n-Out and 91X (a San Diego radio station broadcast our of Tijuana) stickers on their cars. Even though "Zonies" would rib San Diegan kids as "Scum Diegans," there was a definite envy and emulation of the surf and beach culture. I had little time for such nonsensical emulation, the significance on surf culture still seeped into my consciousness. As a joke, when I was put into the "Who's Who of American High Schools," I requested inclusion of my fictional presidency of "The Surf and Poetry Society" in my profile as a test of quality control. As I suspected, there was no quality control. I was president of my fraudulent ocean club in writing, if not in reality.

Despite the fact that my undergraduate career took me out to the University of Redlands, where I had the chance to get to the ocean on several occasions, it wasn't until I met my life partner that I finally got the chance to get up on a board and surf. The experiences I have had paddling, balancing, falling, and momentarily catching waves has only deepened my reliance on surfing as a counterbalancing and guiding life metaphor. Whereas running provides me with a basket of metaphors and a set of strategies to deal with enduring life's small, but consistent difficulties, surfing provides me a set of directives for dealing with life's sometimes-overwhelming conditions.

The only way you learn to read sets is to try some of the waves out.

The look of surfing and the feel of surfing are entirely different.

The same energy that can hurt or kill you is the energy that propels you.

You share an ocean with things that might hurt you. Show respect, but don't be afraid.

You aren't finished with your surfing day if you aren't hurting somewhere.

Waves are unique and temporary. Treat them as such.

There is no permanent value that you can attach to surfing beyond the immediate dance of surfer, board, and wave.

I would like to say that I discovered all of these things on my own. The truth of it is that I picked up all of these things from others. The audience that so vexed me as a child kept driving me out to the ocean of communication to try to find a better wave, to drop in more decisively, and to cut a better path across the face of a changing an ephemeral medium. The paradoxical fascinations of the people I lived among, and the shifting topography of the places I lived forced me to deal with the uncomfortable and seemingly Heraclitian flux of solid matter. Finally, my partner helped me build the courage to go out into the terrifying surf to try to improve my water dance.

This almost-insane urge to get out into an impermanent and inherently-unstable dance floor for a chance just to stand--or, with a great deal of luck, to dance--informs me deeply in my relationships with others. Not only does surfing provide me with material to evaluate whether or not I'm fighting against the energy of a situation, it provides a set of life rules for treating myself and others with the flexibility necessary for symbolic interaction.

It's necessary and healthy to take chances in unstable places.

Expressing oneself is inherently ephemeral and involves risk.

Keep your eye out for an try to respect others who might be surfing the same way--they may not return the favor, but at least you opened the door for reciprocity.

You don't create the wave. You can only interact with it.

Give in to the wave enough to become part of it, but never forget that you are a distinct part of the dance.

Trust that each ride will teach you something, even if you have to duck out or end up with a mouth full of sand.

Don't worry about a score or a record--just enjoy the moment.

Learn to read the rhythms of the medium.

Know when to bail out. There is no shame in kicking out or backing off a wave if you think you are going to wipe out or pearl.

On the other hand, there are some waves that might be worth taking the risk. Don't always kick out out of a wave that might be worth the risk.

If you don't get sore and maybe a little hurt, you are aren't doing it right.

Surfing's yin to running's yang help me balance the twin rhythms of my life--the sporadic and chaotic with the daily grind and quotidian. Just like the waves erode and refresh the beaches, so too does the chaotic wear at and recreate the accretions of the habitual. Surfing at the second break can help one make sense of the time spent running towards goals rationally and habitually. The economically and rationally fruitless time spent choking on sea water, getting slammed against a board paddling out over the waves, chafing your arms and chest while furiously attempting to catch a wave, and hitting your board and the dirt over and over when falling repays you by pulling you away from your own overwrought and gilded expectations of life. Finding joy in the moment of connection to a shapeshifting wave of liquid energy helps one see, respect, and celebrate the uniqueness of each moment in a relationship.

Of Second and Third Acts

2010-05-01T15:35:00.002-05:00

This year, I finally crossed a threshold I set out to find 18 years ago. In 1992, while I was studying abroad at the University of East Anglia, I saw Toni Morrison give a reading from her novel Jazz. To be sure, I had been building up a vocational purpose before the reading--my music major and French minor, and pre-law emphasis gave me a mix of experience in both the beautiful and the practical. This mixture of serendipity and confident exploration put me at the doorstep of a vibrant art and literary culture that thrived in an English university. Even before Toni Morrison came to UEA, I had experience the joys of cultural exploration and critique. There were opportunities for me to see local Shakespearian productions, other artists (Arthur Miller and Graham Swift, to mention just two) came to UEA to collaborate and share with students, Additionally, I was immersed in literature courses, and, of course, I was in England. Still, nothing before that reading crystallized why I would choose to not finish my Music Performance and French majors (I graduated with a minor in music and just had a lot of French courses on my transcript).

It was only the palpable excitement of an American author presenting her newest work, Jazz, to an audience who understood the value of her work that I clearly saw that I wanted to be in involved in this most difficult, hard-to-define profession of teaching and researching literature and language. In that rural English university hall I saw the purpose of my first act solidify and start to take shape. After that, I would have many moments that re-inforced a sense that I my path was good. Writing my undergraduate honors thesis on Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon the year that she got her Nobel Prize deepened my confidence, as did tutoring a fellow student during our senior trip to Laughlin, Nevada (sometimes in our swimwear between river visits) so that she could finish her degree. I continued to deepen the grooves of my vocation working in the writing lab, taking intense theory courses, taking Navajo to re-aquaint myself with a language I often heard but seldom understood during my childhood, getting published, and finally landing my first academic job at Bowling Green State University. All of these steps validated the feelings of a 20-year old boy in England.

Of course, I sometimes think back on the turns that my life might have taken if I hadn't chase this particular path. What if I had finished my music degree and tried to make a go of it in the music business? What if I had tried to go to Rome with an earlier long-term long-distance partner? What if I had taken the job with IBM near the end of my PhD instead of completing the degree? These are life-truncations I'll never get to explore, and it does make me a little wistful from time-to-time. But these wistful imaginings do not usually sway me from the notion that I have picked a good life path. One of the pillars of Navajo philosophy is a concept called "hózhó," which, when translated, means "walking in beauty." To apply this concept into my day-to-day life, I try to incorporate my a bit of mathematical calculation and lessons learned in athletic competition. Pick a goal, then survive and advance. Of course, this merely covers the "walk" part of the philosophy, and not the "in beauty" part. Beauty, at least to me, involves a bit of serendipity and appreciation of what comes to you. My sometimes overpowering analytical side demands reconciliation between the multiple trajectories that my life could take. Figuring out the answer can be tricky. Instead of trying to find the right answer, sometimes I rely on the quiet and intuitive option. Toni Morrison's talk presented me with such a beautiful and intuitive option. Ms. Morrison had seen gaps in the culture, and created new voices to speak to those gaps. I could spend the next period of my life--the first period of my productive and professional life--to do the same.

One of my friends jokes that I'm having a mid-life crisis. Although that's always a possibility for someone rapidly approaching his 40s, I'm not sure that I can agree with that accusation. After all, I pretty much never stopped spending time with college students. Hell, over the past two years, I have lived in a residence hall. I travel many times a year, meet amazing people, and have yet to seriously try for something that I don't achieve. My internal sense of a life clock, while ticking, is not any louder than it was as a child.

I could spend much more time detailing what happened over that period of 18 years, but as I sit on this point nearer to the end of what many describe as the "1st Act" in my life, I can more clearly see that those choices not taken are still with me. I still want to make music. I used to wonder about the woman who wrote all those letters, spent all that time on the phone with me, and who inspired me to smuggle her favorite burrito cross-country on dry ice, only to leave with only a quick "I'm sorry." I wonder about kids. What I don't wonder about is the bond I have formed with my partner and lover. I don't wonder about my choice to teach and share the most complex and maddeningly complex subject I know--language and art made from that language. In the end, the wistful informs the strength of my choices. I don't regret my path, and I don't regret the lessons I have learned, even if they present mysteries.

As I look forward to my next act, I can say that I'm excited about the possibilities, a little sad about some of my mistakes, and in awe of all of the mystery that comes with having to make choices. Fortunately for me, choices made do not mean a diminishment of the choices I did not make. Living hózhó means that I maintain a mindfulness of all of the relations that make my life beautiful. Mindful of the people that I have chosen to share this life with, mindful of the people who are now distant, mindful of the path I have chosen and the ones I have ventured farther away from. All of these things, near and far, are still with me. I still am learning languages. My lawyer friends still keep me on my toes. Hell, all of my friends keep me on my toes. And yes, I am going to start singing in an ensemble again. It may be tricky to weave all of these things together, but hózhó means being true to the center of your path--not forgetting where you came from--in order to get to the next place.

500 Days of Summer or 500 Error?

2010-04-26T19:26:00.011-05:00

Recently, a smart friend of mine recommended that I watch "500 Days of Summer," as it is one of her favorite movies. I'm not one to take these recommendations lightly, so naturally, I popped "500 Days" into my Netflix queue.

I can't say that I loved the movie as much as she did, but I am pretty moved by it nonetheless. It is an extremely meticulous movie, well written by people who have an eye for character and deeply-felt life experiences. It is well composed, beautifully edited, and has two wonderful acting jobs by the leads (and Zooey Deschanel just chews scenery with her quirky, but completely endearing clear gazes punctuated by off-center delivery of lines). Unfortunately, this movie doesn't quite get to where it should because of "the flaw."

I should start this analysis by saying that my main criticism really does provide a contrast against which it should be clear just how much this startling movie gets right. "The flaw" is one that Hollywood commits over and over, and is best demonstrated in one small detail--the voiceover. Like "American Beauty," voiceovers are employed to help the audience get a sense of coherence and movement through a story. In "American Beauty," the voiceover also reassures viewers that what they are seeing isn't really as weird or disturbing as what they might believe. After all, if you want people to feel O.K. about the murder of the protagonist, have him reassuringly let the audience know he is still speaking to them from beyond the grave and is feeling very enlightened, thankyouverymuch. Similar to the voiceover in "American Beauty," the "500 Days" voice near the very end of the movie reassures the audience that the protagonist, Tom Hansen, has not had his boyish sense of romantic grandeur crushed by the flighty and somewhat callously-portrayed, Summer Finn. The final scene where Tom completes his journey as both an artist/architect and comes of age (kind of making this both a bildungsroman and a künstlerroman) shows Tom waiting for an interview smartly dressed, and then meeting his main competition for a job, a young professional who he seems to share an attraction with. Tom introduces himself to his competition with a bit of sharpness and some humor. Realizing that she is similarly talented, he wishes her bad luck with a wry smile ("I hope you don't get the job"). The competition, attractive and similarly well-dressed and coiffed wishes him the same. By this point in the film, Tom has clearly changed. Gone are the days where he falls in love with the administrative assistant at a company he clearly feels beneath his talents. Instead, he is rising to the challenge, and isn't going to let a dalliance sidetrack him. As Tom responds to his call into the interview, his slow-motion walk gets a voiceover treatment that lets the audience know that Tom is no longer a romantic, and that his notions of a universe that partners off people has been replaced with an almost-nihilistic randomness. Of course, the punchline is that Tom runs back before he squanders his opportunity to connect with this young woman and asks his gladiatorial nemises out on a coffee date. His professional (and likely romantic) equal, Autumn, agrees to see him after the interview. He has not lost his romantic notions. Tom is ever young at heart.

This all sounds reasonable enough, except the voiceover contradicts what we see develop throughout the film. Despite an undercurrent of villifying the eponymous character, Summer Finn, throughout the movie and the fact that Tom is clearly the protagonist in this film, Summer is a well-developed, central, sympathetic character. We see Tom and Summer introduced in parallel manners at the beginning, understand that their conflict defines the scope of the narrative, and see them both change and grow by the end of the film. We know much more about Tom: his job, his friends, and even his philosophy on life. Moreover, we see the story from Tom's perspective--including some incredibly funny and poignant sequences. The musical number where Tom dances to work "the morning after" rates up there (and I think tops) with the "Shake it up Baby" sequence in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The sideshadowed sequence during the party where Tom unwittingly finds out about Summer's impending wedding to another man is achingly poignant. These wonderfully detailed, and completely heterodox combinations of scenes are impressively knit together in one movie. Further, I can completely identify with the protagonist, who has to learn painfully that love does not always end with a wedding, that one must create in interesting life to attract interesting people, and that seeing the world as it can be seldom overcomes the world as it is. Tom is essentially alone when trying to make these discoveries, as his friends are either hopelessly inept at relationships (McKenzie), or have been coupled with a life partner since a very young age (Paul), or lead impossibly perfect and inaccessible romantic lives (Vance). Sounds reasonable again, but there is the second problem. Tom isn't alone. He has Summer.

The fact that the movie seems to occlude Summer as a co-protagonist (cotagonist?) contradicts the central role she plays as both mentor and mentee. The climax of the film occurs right after Tom makes the discovery that Summer "never wanted to be (someone's) girlfriend. Now (she's) going to be someone else's wife." It isn't until he picks himself up out of his childish and safe assumptions about love and life that he can understand just how much Summer has taught him. During their long and torturous relationship, Tom struggles to make Summer into the person he imagines as his soul mate. He wants Summer to be little more than a mirror of his future self--a reticent beauty with luminous eyes Tom wants Summer to see him as a desirable and fully grown up man, despite his arrested development as an architect and human being. Even after the relationship with Summer has dissolved, Tom holds on to hope that he can somehow make it work. The clever anti-linear plot allows the audience to see Tom as less psychotic than they might otherwise. We don't have to see him pining incessantly, a la Groundhog Day, where the infinite return to self-pity and continual re-courting of a clearly uninterested Andie MacDowell comes off as more than a bit insane. Rather, we learn early on that this relationship has ended, and we get to see both the sympathetic Tom--with a vivid and funny way of turning small details into a grand narrative--and the dark and stormy Tom.

Tom's habit of seeing the world as it could be overwhelms clear markers placed by Summer (letting him know that she doesn't want a serious relationship, not entertaining false nostalgia when the relationship has turned stale for her) and obscures the important role she plays in Tom's life (and the important role Tom plays in her life). During the climactic scene, Summer returns to Tom's favorite spot, a small park overlooking an architecturally interesting part of Los Angeles that Tom used to frequent both before Summer and with Summer. She returns to the park to clear the air with Tom, and to let him know that he has taught her something. Summer meets the almost grown-up and more assured Tom and shares with him the way that he allowed her to see future possibilities with a partner (her introduction as a child of divorce sets up this sympathetic possibility in which her rebuffs are at least partly a product of a damaged childhood). Summer assures Tom that his vision and his eye for potential changed her, even as she admits that she was never felt sure about their relationship (a sense of assurance Tom helped Summer develop...with another man). Summer's admission that Tom helped her trust someone else releases him, and forces him to confront the grim fact that he is not, in fact, controlling his own destiny. She lets him in, but does not completely hand herself over to him. His vision of the perfect relationship is not unlike his vision of a perfectly-controlled landscape. The occasional parking lot, something necessary for the people that actually live in the buildings he fetishizes, are not really optional. Similarly, the wishes of the woman he is courting are a necessary, central part of what he should consider. Is isn't until Summer lets Tom know to his face that he was wrong about her, but not about life, that he finally understands that his journey isn't over, and that maybe he should listen a bit more openly to the wishes of the women he desires. This new and lighter touch generates the energy in the final scene, and shows that the 500 days were not a "500 error" where he could not find his desired destination. Instead, the 500 days were more like a long race, where the prize is not just won, but rather experienced as an endurance event shared with many, and closely with a select few.

Of course, the movie does a pretty good job of obscuring Summer's character, something that provides a good metonym for Hollywood's main flaw--ignoring story contours in order to fulfill what the industry sees as demands of the culture. As someone not privy to Hollywood's machinations, I can't pin blame on either studio executives, focus group testing, or the crafters of the movie (Robert Altman portrays this process of homogenization to great effect in "The Player"). Regardless of who is culpable, the flaw typically turns complicated and interesting stories into simple narratives that celebrate a white-male's triumph over an internal struggle (usually romantic). In short: "Man v. World" becomes "Nice Guy (TM) v Soul Crushing Woman." Yes, the protagonist's thwarted desires creates an achingly beautiful story (and one I can certainly relate to), but one that has been told countless times. The director and/or producers could have inflected away from his singular view with the footage they got (the split screens, handheld camera interviews, and fantasy sequences all lend themselves to questioning a singular narrative lens). Instead of including every scene that had a misogynistic epithet about women, foreground scenes that give Summer's details. Don't obscure the tender lines that Summer gives Tom with a deep-voiced narrator declaring that Summer's "walls are coming down." Why frame Summer's role as that of the dream crusher, with the narrator declaring that Tom no longer believes in fate (even though he clearly does)? I suspect it is the same kind of treatment that got focus grouped into "American Beauty." Cautious Hollywood executives may nervously believe that audiences want clear problems between Summer & Tom. Instead of two parallel characters, each with hopes and dreams for their work, love, and life, we end up with one character we root for and one caricature we sort of dislike. If they had pulled back the story frame just a bit and treated Summer with the light touch they brushed Tom with, it would have made the near-miss of these two ships all the more poignant. Connections are hard to make, even when there is chemistry and timing. Life is complicated. Hollywood should let these kinds of movies float out there with the beautiful ambiguity that emerges in the writing and the acting.

Go see this movie. It has a great soundtrack, some careful editing (despite the central flaw), solid acting, and some really fun scenes. If you have some grey in your outlook, this can also be a good date movie. Just don't expect to see this movie go as far as you hope. Like Tom, you won't really get to know Summer. You'll only see glimpses of her in-between the hamfisted pronouncements and the stylized and fun internal perceptions. Still, meeting Tom and Summer are worth it if you spend time to think about the small details.

Sabbath

2010-04-18T12:53:00.004-05:00

Today, my partner and I ran a 12-mile trip around our campus (really, it is 4 laps around the 3-mile campus perimeter). While it was a refreshing run, I wondered about the significance of running on Sunday, one of two traditional Sabbath days in this culturally Judeo-Christian America (yes, I know, America is increasingly diverse--I am only talking broadly). While I generally avoid organized religion for reasons that I have written about earlier, I remain deeply influenced by my Catholic upbringing, and Evangelical Christian high school/college awakening. One of the things that I strive to maintain in my religious exile is a continuity and honoring of choices I made in my earlier life for what I still believe were correct reasons. This continuity is why I still recognize the usefulness of the Christian calendar (after all, it is a pretty rich layering of many, many indigenous traditions within a larger cultural narrative that ultimately helps us understand and align the seasons of the year with the seasons of our lives). I also think that sacrelizing passages in our life (marriage, birth, growing into adulthood) can be a very worthwhile thing. I like the way that religions help us mark the important steps in a journey as a community. I don't think religion has a lock on this, but I do think that over the last several thousand years, the religions that sprang out of nomadic Semitic traditions developed a pretty compelling framework for remembering. After all, who would better know how to carry important things for the journey than people constantly on the move?

Unlike some of these yearly and life-stage markers, I am less sure about how one might usefully apply the lessons of religious traditions to daily and weekly rituals. Things like keeping the daily offices, while beautiful in the abstract, can quickly become dogmatic and tedious in practice. Honoring the Sabbath presents me with a similarly-difficult conundrum. While I can deduce the cultural justifications for keeping one day of seven "fallow" (as well as the parallel injunctions to do this in larger increments of time), they don't really ring as true as, say, the injunction to mark a transition of beliefs with a physical immersion in water. Honoring the Sabbath can mean almost anything if one contemplates it too long. No matter how hard one tries, work will happen (if only because your heart will keep beating and lungs keep inflating and deflating). It seems sort of dogmatic to question, or even define what "keeping something holy" means, but the second you start clearing off space for something, the mind's eye immediately whispers "I'll keep an eye on THAT free time if I ever need it to finish something REALLY important." It just feels important to have a decent idea of what "keeping holy" means and why one might consider a particular course of action important enough to consider it holy.

During the long run--an activity that I think most would not consider an avoidance of work--I wrestled with the horns of whether or not a run could count as both "holy" and "rest." After all, running is one of the most tiring things I do. On the other hand, it is also one of the most self-abnegating habits I keep. It is closer to fasting than anything else I do. To get at this a little more deeply, I considered the possible function of the step back from day-to-day work and accumulation of goals and accomplishments. It seems that the highest function that a day-long meditative pause could take is not to push one more bead to the right on the "I'm holy" abacus; rather, the pause might be an acknowledgement that one does not possess the whole answer to what makes one whole. The run around campus gave me a chance to see the grass greening and daffodils growing (which feels a bit early this year). I got to see a Peregrine falcon alight on a tree with a mouse it had just captured. The run afforded me a sight of the traveling hydraulic dinosaur stadium show setting up for a final performance at the Fargodome. I felt the pain in my knees, smelled the cattle who had recently been sent out of their barns, and heard the geese who are returning in greater numbers. In short, I got to pause from the things that normally occupy my time and connect with the larger reality that is happening right around me. If only for a brief time, my step back allowed me to contemplate my place in my journey not as a "to do" list, but as place where the animals, plants, sights, smells, metaphors, and yes, spirit sustains me.

Living in Your Metaphors

2010-04-11T21:16:00.004-05:00

Metaphors are powerful things. Even though I don't fully believe that metaphors create a seamless universe entirely out of contiguity and related qualities (or at least a universe devoid of reference to an outside, and somewhat solid reality), I do believe in the power of metaphors.

For me, metaphors gain their greatest power when they provide me with frameworks for evaluating my life in ways that allow me to step outside of my snap judgments or leanings. While some people call these metaphoric frameworks "conceits," I would differentiate these framework metaphors from the more arresting literary devices employed by Shakespeare, Pope, Donne, Joyce, etc. For one thing, these framework metaphors tend to happen by happenstance. I discover these metaphors in unexpected places.

One of my favorite framework metaphors, running, comes from an activity that I detested as a child. Running was something one tolerated to do something one loved. I ran to get in line for the basketball or Lite Brite at CCD every Wednesday. I ran to catch the football that was miraculously thrown in my direction. I ran at the "Indian Day" race to show my classmates that I wasn't quite the outcast they sometimes intimated I was. Even when I was older, I learned to tolerate running to make the college tennis team and to win respect while playing pickup basketball against high school, semipro and even professional basketball players on Phoenix, Arizona basketball courts.

It wasn't until I met my partner in graduate school that I discovered running was something I could love. I resumed my running career as a way of trying to impress her. She loved running, and I hoped that she would find me intriguing enough if I managed to at least give it another try on a date. As you may suspect, I soon fell in love both with her and with running. Everything I detested about running--the discomfort, the drudgery, the seeming pointlessness of it--became something that helped me locate deeper meaning. Pain? It became something for me to notice and then shelve. On long runs, I would call the process of cooly monitoring these pains "sitting on the Barcalounger." It became a wonderful way for me to think about the adult ritual of subjugating certain comfortable parts of your life in service to other, less concrete goals. Grading papers, writing scholarship, attending to family obligations no longer seemed something unrelated to the fabric of who I was--something to be tolerated without much thought. Instead, I would see these difficulties as part of sitting in the Barcalounger--a place where one could take pleasure in the possibility of abstract and long-term success despite short term pain. I don't think that I would have seen this relationship if I had not discovered running serendipitously. This metaphor came along for the ride.

Another quality of these framework metaphors is that they seem to expand and even shape the experiences that give rise to them. My experience of running has deepened since I have started to accumulate the injuries and aches that come with striving past one's prime. I have run a few marathons, half-marathons, and 10k races. In each, I have been neither first nor last. Instead, I tend to start at the back of the pack, get passed by a few runners, and manage to pass a few myself. While this was mostly annoying to me as a young runner, I have begun to enjoy the feeling of being in the middle of all of that connected humanity. The point isn't winning. Even if I could, I don't like the idea of only sharing an experience deeply with only a tiny subset of such a motivated and enthusiastic crowd. I also don't like the idea of luxury boxes at sporting events or concerts for this very reason. Instead, I like the idea that we are jumbled in the crowds, slower than most, faster than some, but sharing the pain and love of the race with all. The chance to get past our pettiness and pain-avoidance and just run is only heightened when we are aware that we are falling well short of our delusional desire to fly without disappointment. That chute of fans who clap for some and cheer for all heightens the in-between experience that spans starting gun to finish line BECAUSE you know that you aren't going to get definitive, metaphysical answer. We don't run because we're the fastest. We don't run because it doesn't hurt. We run because we can and because others can when it hurts and when we aren't the fastest.

The words of a doctor

2010-03-23T07:23:00.000-05:00

Written by Dr. Manoj Jain, a Memphis, Tennessee-based infectious disease physician, adjunct assistant professor at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and medical director at Tennessee's Quality Improvement Organizations:

Last week, I saw a 55-year-old truck driver who pleaded with me to discharge him from the hospital even though his face and scalp still bore clear signs of an active staph infection. For a decade he has had recurrent staph infections exacerbated by diabetes -- yet could not afford insulin or a doctor because he lacked medical insurance. Now he begs me to let him leave, so that he will not go bankrupt from his medical bills.
I turn to his wife who says, "I am lucky. I have metastatic breast cancer, and I am covered by Medicare."
One of every 10 patients I see do not have health insurance.
I see the uninsured patients, but then make up for my losses by increasing my charges to all my patients. The cycle continues: Insurers increase premiums, choking small businesses that then drop health coverage for their employees, leading more uninsured to come to my practice.
Not providing insurance is not free; the annual health care expenditure for an uninsured adult is $1,800, according to a Kaiser Foundation study in 2004.
And there is a downside to having nearly 50 million uninsured people in America. I look them in the eye, and I know this for a fact. They will die sooner. In my opinion, lack of health insurance is a chronic illness.
The burden of this disease is most apparent among people between the ages of 54 to 65. A 2004 Health Affairs study found that lack of insurance accounts for 13,000 lives lost per year, making lack of insurance the third leading cause of death for this group, after heart disease and cancer. If we do nothing to address this problem, by 2015 lack of insurance will account for 30,000 deaths annually in just this age group.
In all fairness the present health system provides some care for the uninsured. President Bush was technically accurate when he said in July 2007, "People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
But the distinction between an acute illness -- the kind that sends you to the emergency room -- and chronic disease is artificial. For example, each year, diabetes, a chronic disease, causes 20,000 Americans to go blind, 45,000 Americans to have kidney failure and 45,000 Americans to lose a limb. Lack of health insurance is the same -- a chronic illness causing recurrent acute illnesses.
I want to lean over and shake my uninsured patients and scream, "Be a Rosa Parks. Demand health care as a right -- just as others before you have marched for civil rights and human rights."
The uninsured have become second-class citizens. Nearly 30 million of them, who are the working poor, are unable to afford health insurance, and there is no one to unite them and voice their concerns.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not silent about people's right to health care. "Of all the forms of inequality," he said, "injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." He was speaking, I believe, of both acute care and chronic care.

To live and work so hard

2010-02-22T11:26:00.001-06:00

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

-from “The Blessing of the Old Woman, The Tulip, and The Dog” by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Rhetorical Ju Jitsu

2009-11-16T13:55:00.001-06:00

Interesting use of Anti-Immigration Rhetoric at a "Tea Party" to show the weakness of xenophobic invective.

15 Movies

2009-09-08T15:32:00.002-05:00

15 Movies
Rules: Don't take too long to think about it.

Fifteen movies you've seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what movies my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note - upper right hand side.)

In no particular order:

1. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
2. The Visitor
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. Dead Poets Society
5. Talladega Nights
6. Star Wars
7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
8. The Matrix
9. The Princess Bride
10. Wit
11. Empire of the Sun
12. The Abyss
13. The Fisher King
14. Brazil
15. The Sound of Music

The Scales Fall from our Eyes

2009-07-21T09:37:00.002-05:00

Distinguished Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested for shouldering his way into his own home and then being mad when the police treated him like a criminal.

Jimi Izrael has a fantastic editorial on how race still trumps class in America. Go read it here and then come back. Go ahead, take a look.

What makes me so sad isn't Izrael's particular lament (although it does make me sad, grand racial disparities never surprised me after I turned about 5 on the Navajo/Hopi joint reservation). Instead, the fact that this man is not even recognized by his own neighbors and his public police force. This man is a mainstay in the field of English studies (I used his scholarship to buttress my case for a particular interpretation of Pilate in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon--an interpretation that ultimately got me undergraduate honors in English); moreover, this man is a tremendously influential public intellectual figure. Heck, he's even a giant at Harvard. Still, he is just another threat (a.k.a. black) in his hometown. When the officers responded to the call (as well they should have), they should have had some idea of who this pillar of the community is. Perhaps they did--which would make this even worse--but even if they did not, they SHOULD have recognized him. As a kid who grew up on a dusty Reservation over 2,500 miles away I eventually grew to recognize him just by paying attention to the culture.

Officers who are responding to calls should know that people who spent a lifetime building up a place in community don't enjoy being treated like thieves in their own home. Yes, it stings when you get called on your own ignorance of context. Sure, the police shouldn't have to memorize every individual in town, but if you can't recognize a townie/gownie who has been called one the top-25 most influential people in America, then you probably should expect a little tumult. Call him a jerk when you get back to your car, but leave the cuffs in their holder and save our country the embarrassment.

42 down, 8 to go.

2009-07-18T12:28:00.003-05:00

Here's what you do:

Copy my note. Click on “notes” under tabs on your profile page. Select "write a new note" in the top right corner. Paste the copy in the body of the note. Delete my Xs and add your own. Once you've saved, don't forget to tag friends (including me) if you want to.

Just for fun, put an 0 beside the states where you have lived.

Airports don't count!

Alabama -
Alaska -
Arizona - 0
Arkansas - X
California -0
Colorado - X
Connecticut - X
Delaware -
Florida - X
Georgia - X
Hawaii -
Idaho -
Illinois - X
Indiana - X
Iowa - X
Kansas - X
Kentucky - X
Louisiana - X
Maine -
Maryland - X
Massachusetts - X
Michigan - X
Minnesota - X
Mississippi -
Missouri - X
Montana -
Nebraska - X
Nevada - X
New Hampshire - X
New Jersey - X
New Mexico - O
New York - X
North Carolina - X
North Dakota - O
Ohio - 0
Oklahoma - X
Oregon - X
Pennsylvania - 0
Rhode Island - X
South Carolina - X
South Dakota - X
Tennessee - X
Texas - X
Utah - X
Vermont -
Virginia - X
West Virginia - X
Wisconsin - X
Wyoming - X
Washington - X
Washington, DC - X

BSG Finale Scorecard

2009-03-22T19:23:00.004-05:00

If you haven't seen it (and want to), STOP.

If you have (or don't care), proceed.

The good:

1. The character vignettes from Caprica. I think that we see that characters are sometimes more complicated than expected (Baltar) and sometimes exactly who we think they are (Lee).
2. Kara Thrace's end. When she basically evaporated (and nobody really protested or acted surprised), I think the "what is she" question became essentially moot. Exposition about her character became impossible (although I think it might be best explained through "Deus Ex Singularity." Like the pigeon in Lee Adama's character vignette (see #1 good), Kara was never going to be caught--merely helped out the door using the "drunken broom of morality."
3. The hell breaking loose on the Cylon colony--the happy exchange was a bit to pat. Glad to see a bit of darkness creeping in.
4. Sam Anders character really became a joy to behold in these last few episodes. What was basically a throwaway character became much, much deeper as he lost his humanity. This, coupled with the fact that his decline helped him re-connect with Kara Thrace not only derailed the inevitable USD between Starbuck and Apollo, it also opened up a whole range of personality facets in other characters (Doc Coddle, Tory, etc.)
5. Love, love, love the attention to the Dylan song as coordinates to Earth. As a former musician, this just plugs into my sappy dream of music as universal language (I have a similar love of math).
6. Really enjoyed how they revisited the Opera house scene with the same choreography and recast the characters based on what the audience has subsequently learned.
7. Glad Helo lived and got redemption. If any character deserved a chance at redemption, it was him.

The Bad

1. The flash foward to last week--hamfisted warnings about robots have already saturated the show. Please do NOT cheapen it with Battlestar Galactica 1980 callbacks. Nobody needs our crappy robots or break dancing to "spice up" what is already a Masala-like mixture.
2. The almost-positive ending. I was actually hoping that the show might end up in a dark, dark, pitchdark place. Of course, it's easy to say that with the happy ending, but I hoped that this might be the show to end as a cautionary tale.
3. CG Galactica getting a "broken back." It was embarrassingly bad imagery seeing the Galactica doing "the wave" after the final jump. The battle scenes were just awesome, but this just about undid those.

The Ambiguous

1. The explanation of a living Earth that we already saw nuked. I really think that they might have easily explained this by jumping through a singularity (and going back in time); however, because the rest of the fleet seems to not have done this, I can only shrug my shoulders at its irrelevance. I like the fact that they are trashing their technology, and even like the implication of the eternal return; however, the improbability of finding ANOTHER Earth with humans could have been handled a bit more smoothly.
2. President Rosalin's death. I like the fact that she had a realistically long and drawn-out demise (much like my father's was). I also like her long and steady heroism, even when she was being less than heroic in intent (ditto). I also love the way that Adama only got to have that hilltop view with her after her death. Seems fitting that a workaholic would only get the ghost of a retirement. Still, I can't help but feel that she was already dead.
3. Cavil killing himself. I like the Hitler-bunker moment in theory, but I still think that this was a bit of an expediency moment. Seems like his cowardice would likely only be overcome after a bit more of an ego melt. Kind of weak, I thought.

Goodnight Eclipse

2009-03-05T19:44:00.003-06:00

It looks like they have turned out the lights at Eclipse. The sputtering economy dealt a death blow to a company that should have been crushed by a failed engine. It was nice knowing you.

Where were you when...

2009-02-08T09:54:00.003-06:00

Describe where you were and what you were doing when the following world-changing events happened.

1.) Challenger space shuttle exploded (1986): I was at Apollo High School. My friend Ben Danielson asked me if it was a joke (I assured him it was). We then went to science class (Mrs. Blankenship?) where they turned on the television to show us the explosion.

2.) Berlin Wall falls down (1989): Did this fall down at one particular time? I remember the discussion surrounding it, and the images of some of the first pieces coming down. Still, I remember the images of the wall coming down in Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now" video more than the actual events.

3.) Oklahoma City federal building bombing (1995): This is pretty darn fuzzy as well. I don't think that Americans killing Americans is very traumatizing. We're pretty jingoistic and conceited, so failure or defeat by foreign powers seems to bruise our psyche pretty easily..

4.) OJ Verdict: I was in the graduate union at Penn State. People were a little shocked, but it was mostly *meh*.

5.) Princess Diana dies (1997): I was house sitting for a couple in Albuquerque. I was "breaking up" (getting dumped, really), by a long term girlfriend (she had a chance to live in Rome--who could blame her? Hell, I would have broken up with me for that chance). It was pretty darn traumatizing all around.
6.) Columbine massacre (1999): Don't really remember. I get more worked up when I hear about massive auto or plane fatalities. This is likely because I have no children. Virginia Tech horrified me MUCH more because I assume that High School is traumatizing (with the required attendance, the bullying, etc.) and that college is pretty darn ideal (it was for me). These incidents bring me back to earth, but don't really arrest me the way that other social traumas do.

7.) JFK Jr. Plane crash (1999): No idea. It was very saddening to me, though.

8.) Bush/Gore crazy election (2000): In Albuquerque finishing grad school

9.) September 11, (2001): Driving around Albuquerque. Driving into Sandia Labs, I thought it was maybe a small plane (denial). When I couldn't get cnn.com, I knew something was terribly wrong. I hit my head against a bookshelf when it started to dawn upon me. I had a dentist appointment that morning. When I left the base, there was a line a mile long to get on base (they were sealing it off. I got the worst cleaning ever, as the dental technicians were watching the television. On the way home, I heard Tom Brokaw saying "Oh my God!" when the first tower collapsed. After that, I called my partner and told her "everything has changed.'

10.) Space ship Columbia disintegrates (2003): This was at the tail end of when I owned a television. I turned on the t.v. because I was bored. My partner and I cried when we found out. It still gets to me.

11.) Hurricane Katrina hits (2005): I was in Ohio. Because the horror built up, I mostly remember the headlines more than the place I was (hope that makes you a little bit happy, newspaper folks).

Pop Evolutionary Psychology Takes a Dive!

2008-12-27T14:14:00.004-06:00

The Scientific American has a great takedown of some of the more popular evolutionary pscyhologists (especially Stephen Pinker). It's nice to see the scientific community challenging some of the more mythopoetic assumptions of evolutionary psych ("Caveman drag meat back to cave. Cavewoman take care of children. Caveman like many hanky panky. Cavewoman no like hanky panky.") I absolutely LOVE the conclusion:

Of course, some speculations are worse than others. Those of Pop EP are deeply flawed. We are unlikely ever to learn much about our evolutionary past by slicing our Pleistocene history into discrete adaptive problems, supposing the mind to be partitioned into discrete solutions to those problems, and then supporting those suppositions with pencil-and-paper data. The field of evolutionary psychology will have to do better.

For fun, read the comments by the victims of David Buller's apt critique.

Social Interfaces

2008-12-10T15:35:00.002-06:00

It looks like car makers might (not holding breath) integrate a wider range of human desires into automobile interfaces.

Nissan has offered something along those lines in Japan, where in addition to providing tips for improving fuel efficiency, the Carwings Eco-Driving service lets you know how you stack up against people with the same car. Nass says bringing that kind of social networking to hypermiling could make make eco-driving more popular

WIRED magazine details how automakers want to help drivers manifest and track thriftiness and collective restraint.

The Kid's Got Talent

2008-11-20T08:52:00.001-06:00

*11/29/08 update: After a bit more research, I found out that the actual singing is done by the acapella group Moosebutter (they have given the video artist permission to use their soundtrack). If you like what you hear, go over to their website and buy the track for $.99.

Globalist Sweatshop Management Approaches Crushing Higher Ed Teachers

2008-11-19T14:28:00.003-06:00

Charles Mannin, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, recently pushed the humanity of the bulk of Tennessee higher ed teachers and students right out of his mind:

Charles Manning, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, acknowledged that adjuncts teach a large share of the classes at the board’s institutions. “They are critical,” he said. Asked if they were well paid, he said that they are “clearly not.”

At the same time, he defended the decision not to raise the maximum level. “That would raise expectations when we don’t have the money,” he said.

If colleges pay adjuncts more, Manning said, the institutions would have to cut sections, so that some smaller number of adjuncts would be paid, but others would be out of work, and some students wouldn’t get into classes. “We have an obligation to raise the levels of education,” he said. “The alternative for us is not to teach as many students, and we don’t think that’s right, either.”

Um, when did "raising expectations" become such a horrible thing? I guess when it coincides with any attempt to cram more students in front of the people you are crushing. I guess "being able to actually grade papers" and "freeing teachers from having to apply for food stamps" doesn't figure into any formula on how to "raise the levels of education." I'm surprised that the University of Tennessee regents aren't trying to emulate Chinese methods of melamine and lead injection as a way of "raising the levels" of food quality.

Seasons of Pain

2008-11-11T11:08:00.002-06:00

November fourth is the day when my web surfing habits shift dramatically.

Before:
Pollster/Five-thirty-eight
Real Clear Politics
Daily Kos/Red State
Drudge/Huffington Post
CNN/MSNBC/NY Times

After:
Weather Underground
Weather.com
ESPN
Apartment therapy
Dwell
CNN/MSNBC/NY times

Semiotics of Power, Part 4

2008-10-30T09:57:00.003-05:00

As this POTUS campaign comes to a close, a candidate I earlier examined made a final pitch last night. I must say that this longform commercial had "shock and awe" value for the competing campaigns, despite its personal and voter-centered focus.

Thanks from the Rez

2008-10-28T15:30:00.005-05:00

Southwestern writer, Tony Hillerman, has hung up his boots for good. I'll write a longer blog post about him later, but I just want to acknowledge the passing of this authorial force and great person.

I voted today

2008-10-20T22:18:00.001-05:00

I hope you vote soon too...

Amen

2008-10-15T12:40:00.001-05:00

I agree, Tom Friedman. Ethos is EVERYTHING.

Fall's Sentinels

2008-10-12T13:37:00.001-05:00

Few scenes strike more poetically than autumn-clad maples guarding over a cemetery.

Fugue in Autumn Minor

2008-09-29T22:27:00.001-05:00

Just a few pics from our recent Lake Itasca trip:

Twitterpation

2008-09-24T11:15:00.000-05:00

An informal, but interesting, list of why one person loves Twitter.

A Dilbert Take

2008-09-17T10:51:00.003-05:00

Scott Adams, the cartoonist for Dilbert, a McCain contributor who concedes that he leans "Libertarian, minus the crazy stuff," commissioned a detailed study on whether an Obama administration or a McCain administration would be better for the U.S. Economy. The results of the survey of 500 economists is pretty startling. He writes up the study's findings in a blog entry, which contains some pretty interesting tidbits. I was a little surprised to learn that:

there are far more Democratic economists than Republicans, and both sides strongly support their candidate. Does that tell us anything useful at all?

Economists crossed party lines on the questions of International Trade, Environmental Policy, Immigration, Reducing Waste in Government, and Reducing the Deficit. I didn't include a question about a gas tax holiday, because the idea has already expired, but economists crossed party lines on that issue too. That suggests a degree of objectivity on an issue level. The crossover issues, plus the rankings, are important no matter who gets elected. That will tell you if your president has the right priorities.

Even with that caveat, Adams is careful to note the political affiliation of who holds what opinions. The majority believe an Obama administration would be better for the economy. His final point in his CNN writeup of the study seems the most telling:

Among independents, things are less clear, with 54 percent thinking that in the long run there would either be no difference between the candidates or McCain would do better.

While "independents" can mean almost anything, this test of intellectual honesty could be re-worded as "46% of nonaffiliated economists think Obama would be better." While that puts majority of nonaffiliated economists for the other two categories, it seems likely that McCain drew even less enthusiasm. Since the orthodox economic theory SHOULD favor a deregulating, free-marketer McCain, it seems curious that these middle-ground economists are warming to at least the idea of some regulation of markets. They aren't there with international trade, but it seems like they are concluding that domestic issues may be better handled with at least some of the intervention that an Obama administration proposes.

Political Hay Season

2008-09-16T10:06:00.002-05:00

I hate to have so many political posts, BUT...

I wonder how much hay will be made of this Gore-esque claim...

Connecting the Dots

2008-09-15T13:00:00.001-05:00

I'm not a fan of Joe Klein, but if the press starts to connect these two things, McCain is likely toast. We'll see.

Want!

2008-09-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Compact, mobile, and totally cool.

Good Answers

2008-09-07T19:58:00.002-05:00

Corporate Sclerosis

2008-08-22T09:49:00.002-05:00

So, it appears that our terrorist watch "list" (it's really a database) is on the verge of collapse. It looks a lot like corporations on the government dole aren't as good at cooking up solutions as they often claim. Seems like citizens should be demanding more competition for government contracts, more transparent representation (a.k.a. less lobbyist access) and a more robust public debate over the things that affect the public.

Oops

2008-08-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

Wrong answer.

Hang in there Georgia

2008-08-12T10:42:00.001-05:00

Georgia is getting news out via blogger. New world meet the old world.

Nice

2008-08-04T13:00:00.001-05:00

“I think people generally understand the 21st-century reality that this type of public information is going to be widely available.”

Your criminal and political information is now available to anyone at the click of a mouse. Nice.

Sunsets

2008-07-22T11:54:00.003-05:00

One of the things I miss most about living in the West (Arizona and New Mexico) are the sunsets. Fortunately, we occasionally get some pretty spectacular ones (usually in July and August when the long daylight hours combine with rain clouds). Here are some shots from just a few evenings ago.

You Gotta Break it Down

2008-07-15T12:08:00.003-05:00

Here's a great story about how 4300 folks went from normal to carbon neutral in a decade. It CAN be done if we try.

The Wild Turkeys are Gone

2008-07-12T18:07:00.002-05:00

About two weeks ago, sport and I noticed a pair of young wild turkeys hanging out near our apartment complex.

They weren't particularly aggressive, but they were not very alarmed when we walked or drove by (sometimes close enough to touch). One evening we heard what sounded like mournful screeching from one of them. We imagined the other had died because we had not seen them together in two days. Of course, the next day, both were in the herb/flower garden strutting around happily.

We haven't seen these two welcome visitors in a week. Hope they made it to the river safely, or at least to a bigger garden.

"The Scarlet P"

2008-07-11T18:53:00.006-05:00

Just got the new College Composition and Communication June 2008 issue, so naturally I picked one article to tear through and deconstruct. Sean Zwagerman's article "The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity" seemed the most likely suspect, especially considering I wrote my dissertation on the history of surveillance in an array of Internet technologies. I fully expected to hate, or at least feel vastly superior to, any argument I found in his article. Foucault's study on Bentham's never-built Panopticon usually anchors poorly-written English department scholarship. In an almost quotidian way, Dr. Zwagerman's article exceeded my expectations. He does a very nice job situating the paradox of the switch to what Lanham calls an economy of attention in the plagiarism wars. What used to be a valuable commodity (or is at least claimed in our nostalgic and rhetorical constructions of the past), "voice" and "originality" has given way to something much, much different. Zwagerman situates the reader between the ethical horns of the dilemma perfectly. He uses Michel Foucault and Friere (which almost lost me, to be frank) to discuss how power is given over to proprietary places like turnitin.com, etc. The paradox lies in how the drive for integrity gets lost the second one tries to ensure trust through algorithmic checkpoints.

The only disappointment is really an opening for me to take Zwagerman's argument farther. He never says what replaces originality (or its evil twin "intellectual property"). Using his ethical framework, I think it would be interesting to imagine a set of values and competencies beyond trust and solidarity. After all, the music industry is beginning to learn that music data isn't as valuable as embodied experiences. Forget the album. Sell the concert, the backstage party. Heck, make it into a 3-D movie and convince people they need to be there to see it first. For many dyed-in-the-wool compositionists, it may be hard to imagine what students and parents might sign up for if the essay dies, but I think there are plenty of three-dimensional, 360 degree, surround-sound writing activities that can help teachers, students, and writers destroy the concept of plagiarism. Will students continue to betray our trust? Of course. So, too, will teachers betray student trust. Does that call for a system that memorializes these rather small slights with things like academic death penalties and even firings? I hope not.

You Will Go Free

2008-07-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

You Will Go Free (Tonio K)

you've been a prisoner
been a prisoner all your life
held captive in an alien world
where they hold your need for love to your throat like a knife
and they make you jump
and they make you do tricks
they take what started off as such an innocent heart
and they break it and break it and break it
until it almost can't be found

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know how long it's gonna take
i don't know how hard it will be
but i know
you will go free

you can call it the devil
call it the big lie
call it a fallen world
what ever it is it ruins almost everything we try
it's the sins of the fathers
it's the choices we make
it's people screaming without making a sound
from prison cells in paradise
where we're chained to our mistakes

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know how much it's gonna cost you
probably everything
but i know
you will go free

you can't see your jailer
you can't see the bars
you can't turn your head round fast enough
but it's everywhere you are
it's all around you
and everywhere you walk this prison yard surrounds you

but in the midst of all this darkness
in the middle of this night
i see truth cut through this curtain like a laser
like a pure and holy light
and i know i can't touch you now
and i don't want to speak too soon
but when we get sprung
from out of our cages baby
god knows what we might do

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know if you'll be leaving alone
or if you'll be leaving with me
but i know
you will go free

Nice Shout Out

2008-05-17T14:09:00.002-05:00

Looks like someone in Baltimore caught my NDSU magazine article. It's nice to see some of my hunches about the feedback speed of social media play out in the blogosphere. I'll be honest, I'm thrilled when I get ANY feedback on what I write, so it's nice to have such a rapid response (and positive!) in such a public space.

It's Out

2008-05-15T15:20:00.002-05:00

The email that turned into a mini essay is now online. I think the picture makes me look a bit psycho (there are two other, better, ones in the print magazine). Laura, thanks for giving me a chance to throw some thoughts out there.

The Problem with Normal

2008-05-05T09:56:00.003-05:00

WIRED Magazine has an interesting, and semi-provocative essay on how medical science does little to distinguish between "normal" and illness by only focusing upon the latter.

Medicine has become all about finding a problem — a tumor, a heart attack, a failing kidney — and deploying advanced treatment technologies. In the process, we seem to have given up on measuring and tracking what constitutes normal.

Thomas Goetz asserts, I think correctly, that this results in overmedicalization (something sport's research uncovers as often being hyper-gendered).

Imaging and scanning tools are now so good at peering inside our bodies, they've surpassed our capacity to interpret the results. Many findings are what doctors call "incidentalomas," smudges that look like cancer but turn out — often after surgery — to be benign.

The article goes awry in two ways. The logical leap at the end of the article ("all [NIH] grants are given a "priority score," an indication of a project's novelty, originality, and "scientific merit." Normal need not apply") is poorly teased out. The NIH may consider the massive effects of a change of perspective as nonmeritorious, but that needs to be more firmly established. More important, there are many, MANY problems with linking boundary conditions of health with "normal." I don't have time to list them all here now (although I will try to write more on this later), but I will say that a more productive line of inquiry might emerge from embodied or phenomenological examination of these things. We should let people define what is livable and help them (as well as the experts) understand what lies ahead and give them the tools to make the most informed choice.

The Powerful Stay Powerful

2008-05-04T09:36:00.002-05:00

The RIAA has stepped up its subpoena's to Midwestern universities by about 3000%, despite no reported spike in filesharing traffic. Meanwhile, Harvard hasn't received a single subpoena or letter of inquiry from the RIAA (at least according to WIRED magazine). What do YOU make of that?

Battlestar Acapella

2008-04-27T09:20:00.001-05:00

True That

2008-04-21T13:13:00.002-05:00

"Google does a great job of monetizing intent," says Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Research. "It knows what I'm searching for and it can show me relevant ads. But social networks are not about intent."

I could not have said it any better. Burke, my friends, not Aritstotle rules in the social media realm.

A Short Message

2008-04-21T09:24:00.001-05:00

I would just like to say something brief to both of the Democratic Presidential candidates. (work safe, but salty language--beware tender hearts)

The Definition of Optimism

2008-04-13T14:02:00.003-05:00

The guy at the bottom of this photo created this sortashocking ode to the guy at the top of the photo. I actually went to school with Halcyon Styn, the pink-perched and camera-bedecked compiler of the diptych (we graduated the same year, and were fellow members in the UofR Yeomen).

Here's the punchline. When I look at the guy at the top, I think "problem." When Halcyon sees the picture, he thinks "passion" and makes the diptych. Halcyon, my friends, demonstrates what we call optimism.

Information Bombing

2008-04-11T08:52:00.002-05:00

It looks like Apple and/or Radiohead might be gaming popular music algorithms. While the masters of payola may be crying foul, I say w00t yet again to the surfers of the information economy. I, for one, welcome our new overlords...

Telling the Stories that Need Telling

2008-03-31T15:36:00.003-05:00

My colleague and friend, Dr. Christina Weber does work on women soldiers' experiences in war. Her work was featured on National Public Radio story this morning. I'm really glad her work is getting wide coverage, and proud that she is one of us North Dakotans.

Fatigue

2008-03-30T20:51:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty infatuated with Twitter. Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit fatigued with the demands of my constant life-stream.

I'm catching a Twitter cramp. Perhaps that makes me a "twamp."

I'll be here all week...

The Shame of North Dakota

2008-03-29T11:08:00.001-05:00

Pathetic show of bigotry. Yes, this is my campus.

The Foolishness of Crowds

2008-03-13T10:51:00.001-05:00

Flash mobs meet crowdsourcing.

Embodied Beauty

2008-03-09T11:18:00.002-05:00

Defying gravity.

Do You Know What Today Is?

2008-03-08T13:59:00.001-06:00

International Women's Day.

Now get out there and fight for justice!

Um...good point!

2008-03-06T10:00:00.000-06:00

What he said.

Raiders of the Lost Art

2008-03-05T15:45:00.004-06:00

Last night, sport and I went to the opening event of the Fargo Film Festival, a screening of the now-legendary fan homage to filmmaking, Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. The two directors were in attendance and taking questions, which I suppose is pretty nice.

I have one problem with these events. These SoCal visitors always come off a tad...well...snooty. I'm pretty sure I spent just about as much of my life in Southern California as these guys have. I'm also pretty sure that between my New Media and Old Media experience making films, music, soundtracks, podcasts, and other assorted goodies makes me more than qualified to ask some craft questions (like about their storyboarding, production decisions, etc.) as well as more general life questions. Still, I don't like the way these events frame audience members as local rubes who MUST ask questions like "aw shucks, how do you feel being so durn inspire-ational?"

The really poor-quality fan tribute was amazingly watchable and fun. Too bad the Q&A session wasn't nearly as fun.

Hacking Democracy

2008-02-27T10:56:00.000-06:00

Apparently, Comcast understands how to crudely exercise political manipulation by blocking out dissenting views with the "sleeping dwarves" strategy. Political hacking is pretty common (we call it "forum control" in rhetoric), but this is a pretty transparent and crude form.

The Re-vision of Experience

2008-02-25T14:44:00.005-06:00

The Mississippi's mighty, but it starts in Minnesota
At a place that you could walk across with five steps down

From "Ghost," by Indigo Girls

I've recently walked across these headwaters at Lake Itasca. To be honest, I am more impressed with the concept than the experience. What impresses me even more than the almost-Zeno's-paradox of striding over the mighty Mississippi in "five steps down" is the experience of finding new meaning in familiar words and lyrics with the addition of experience. This constant destruction and re-constitution of life's details is what I always imagined infuriated a too literal Bishop Berkeley. Life seems haunted with these re-creative acts of perception.

Fun with Science!

2008-02-20T07:13:00.002-06:00

What ELSE do you do on the coldest day of the year?

You boil water and throw it in the air to see it freeze before it hits the ground.

Negative thirty degrees can be deadly AND fun!

Proper Ice Nosh

2008-02-19T19:42:00.002-06:00

What does one do when the temperature is headed for negative 35 degrees F with a 50-below windchill?

Why, make laid-back tacos for dinner, of course. You might call them "nachos," but when blue-corn tortilla chips meet refried beans, smoked cheddar, New Mexico red AND green chile, that's now what WE would call them.

Climbing Out of the Cave

2008-02-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

When I moved to Fargo, a friend of mine (who would know all about the area) called it a "cold, dark place." While I don't agree with the overall assessment, getting from solstice to happy can be a slow slog. My last few posts reflect the anticipation and ennui that accompany this trudge to the surface. Although I'm not really that sad, it has been gratifying to have friends and family reassure me with calls to ingest the magic pill.

What is this pill, you ask?

Green chile.

Well, I've been partaking of this magical substance. Yes, it must be grown in New Mexico. Yes, it should be roasted to an even char on the outside and peeled. And, yes, it is best ingested in an almost-pure form in a stew:

or as part of breakfast:

Check, check, and double check.

Much better, thanks!

econopolitical confrontation?

2008-02-08T10:47:00.000-06:00

Can anyone tell me why this doesn't fall under the heading of "terrorism"? I realize that it isn't politically correct to say that about a young white male American wannabe entrepreneur, but threats and violence to create maximum political effect is a textbook definition.

The Shame of North Dakota

2008-02-07T14:51:00.001-06:00

I have heard the sobs of soldiers who lost comrades in Iraq. We have ALL lost friends and fellow Americans in that war.

This makes me ill.

The Blahs of February

2008-02-03T20:33:00.000-06:00

Right now, things are looking a little dark.

On the surface, things should be fine. I just got an article accepted to one of the premiere journals in my field, which should help cement my growing tenure case (that is, if my other articles and chapters in the pipeline ever come out, and my special issue doesn't fall victim to some unforeseen calamity). Sport and I are getting out quite a bit as well. Yesterday, I got to shoot some hoops, do some pullups and ride the bike. Today? We did our long run.

Success and getting around doesn't seem to cut through the blahs some days. What makes it doubly difficult is that success can actually cause some of these darker moods. It's not like I live for the finish line, but it stinks when when the sight of the finish line depresses me.

Transparency

2008-01-26T16:53:00.000-06:00

One of the holy grails (yes, there are many) in startup companies is creating a sense of transparency without giving away your proprietary "secret sauce." Tesla motors--perhaps the most prominent automotive startup commercializing electric vehicles--is trying to walk this line by using a variety of blogs to personalize some of the company accomplishments.

Other startups could learn a thing or two by studying and emulating this approach.

Your New Mavericks Champion

2008-01-12T18:29:00.000-06:00

Nice job Greg Long! Twenty four seems old in the surf world, but it's not too old for big wave surfing.

January Thaw

2008-01-06T21:43:00.001-06:00

Today, Fargo made it up to 41 degrees. How did sport and I celebrate this near-record event? We went for a run, of course.
I didn't even bother to groom, the sunny joy had me so intoxicated.

I know. I'm getting dangerously close...

The best part was that our chosen detour from course prepping included the ability to wear shorts in the January weather.