Maria Taylor Part II (Good Start)

Here's the other one that won't go away.

Maria Taylor -Song Beneath the Song

This is my new "can't get ya outta my head" song:

The lessons of excess

So what I said was beautiful: XXX

is not so beautiful today.

As of 9:00 pm central time, I can eat again without losing the food.

On the other hand,
WAR EAGLE!

For Nat Turner

Read this

Even though I feel a little bit guilty, I think, "Rock on. The Spirit of Nat Turner Lives."

Then, there is another article from the following day here.

When I read what this Godwin woman says, I think that it is no wonder people are defacing statues.

On top of this, I went to an author's reading tonight where an audience member told the author that there was no "Civil War." That it was a war of Northern aggression. I kid you not.

On what planet have I landed? Is this really 2007?

depression

It has been a really long time since I have been depressed. But I remember what it feels like, even if it is not as real to me as it once was. One of the things I do remember is a feeling of isolation -- of a deeper isolation than aloneness or even loneliness. Even when I was with loved ones or friends, I was always isolated in my own head.

As a "survivor" of such experiences (and worse), I think sometimes it is more difficult for me to reach across those barriers when I see someone who is depressed. It is almost as though I think it is still impossible to break the line. I find that I don't know what to do or to say.

In fact, because my own depression was so fierce, I tend to overlook other people's depression, and explain it away as "having a bad day" or at least just temporary. But, life throws a mean curve ball, and even the best of us sometimes strikes out.

If you've been down and I haven't tried to lift you back up, it is not because I don't care. It is because I don't know how to do that. I don't know how people (or even I) pulled out of my own. What I know is that everything passes, the world does keep going, and sooner or later, depression lifts.

If I am talking to you (even if I don't know that I am talking to you), hang on.

today's poem

Wrote a terrible poem in fulfillment of my own assignment. The assignment was: write a poem that scares you. The students did a wonderful job. Teaching at the prison has been another wonderful experience this semester. Wish I could find my muse again.


silence

in a hammock between two metaphorical trees,
air rushes from pine needle to pine cone
whistling in cool bursts through hairs of my ears,
and i watch fear tremble in my fingertips.

they will not abate. when i shut my eyes
visions of emptiness plague memory
and hopes. i cannot resurrect the calm
words interlocking to form nets
that might catch a mighty fall.

ropes twist together and whine as they rub
fiber to string. my entrails squirm
with guilt i have eaten, with hatred i have
hoarded, with fermentation i boil.
the hammock swings gently stirring
the cauldron of life’s potion, now inescapable.

cocoon wraps me; choices of my present
hangs like chimpanzees: each arm a rope
connecting poison to antidote, both ever
possible. i hear the wind whisper a message:

silence

yet chatter coalesces in fingers, intestines
in the whites of my eyes, red creeps like rodents
i am taken over
i was i am no longer

two beautiful things

Patron Anejo

Conor Oberst

More on women academics

In the Dec. 15th, 2000 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Joan Williams makes the following observation in her article "What Stymies Women's Academic Careers? It's personal":

There are two ways for an academic to reach a top institution. One is to start out there. The other is to start elsewhere and work one's way up. For the second path (and sometimes even for the first), relocation is extraordinarily important. Academics may have to move not once but several times, because in many fields, only a few jobs open up in any given year--and those jobs are likely to be spread out across the country. Even academic stars may start out in Topeka. But to reach Cambridge or Palo Alto, they have to move.

Since the 1970's, many studies have reported that a lack of geographical mobility seriously limits the careers of many women. Probably the most recent re search is an as-yet-unpublished study conducted by Phyllis Moen and her colleagues at Cornell University (with financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation), based on interviews in 1998 and 1999 with faculty and staff members at two major research universities in New York State. The study found that 44 percent of the men and 49 percent of the women said the husband's career took priority, while only 17 percent of the men and 19 percent of the women said the wife's career did.

When the researchers asked whether the subjects had ever had a career or educational opportunity that would have required their partner to make significant changes (like moving to a different city or taking another job), 49 percent of the women but only 24 percent of the men said they had. One-third of the men, and half of the women, had turned down such an opportunity.

You have to have a subscription or a library card to an academic library to read the whole thing, you get the point.

Another day, another statistic. I know. Still makes me think.

How much I love Jon Stewart

How much? Well, I have my DVR (and yes, having one of these has changed my life) set to automatically record The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but even though I'm tired and a little cranky, I'm staying up to watch.

That, my friends, is love.