Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Many, many websites that I visit now have little “tests” that they put you through before you are allowed to comment on or forward an article.  You know the kind: you’re asked to type in the “word” that you see on the screen.  My problem is that, when told to look for a word, my mind makes sure I find a word–a real one!  I don’t care if the letters on the screen spell “smark”; I’m going to substitute “snark.”  I used to do this when I was a legal secretary, too.  My attorneys would say what sounded like gibberish and I, listening dutifully to the dictaphone, would fill in similar-sounding English words that made sense.  Turns out their “gibberish” was actually Latin, but how was I supposed to know?

Erin

When Sydney and I visited Philadelphia a couple of months ago, I was really excited to see the public library.  I love libraries, which is part of the reason I enjoy tagging along when he goes on conference trips.  College libraries are always interesting, and public libraries can be magnificent.  But when a friend and I walked into the Philadelphia Free Library, I was distinctly disappointed.  Not only were there not a lot of books, there were no chairs.  Yup, you heard me.  My friend and I had brought our own reading, but there was nowhere to sit down.

And I soon figured out why: the three or four chairs I did see were occupied by homeless people who were obviously camped out for good, attempting to escape the cold day outside.  And I saw a few more who obviously wanted to sit down, but had to wander the aisles until one of those half-dozen chairs opened up.  Sad.  Sad for them, sad for my visions of libraries as a refuge for all who visited.

Erin

1) Sydney’s back.  Still getting over a cold, but back.

2) I’m much happier now (see #1).

3) Now that #1 and #2 are taken care of, I must write a paper.  More like, a dissertation chapter.  Before next week.  Yikes!

Erin

Deep and wide

Deep and wide

I’m a woman pregnant deep and wide

Deep and wide

Deep and wide

I’m a woman pregnant deep and wide

* * *

At church yesterday I saw a bottleneck near the door, sighed, and sat down to wait out the crush.  Though I’m not yet to the gigantic stage, I do have a belly that prevents me from doing any of that slip-sideways-and-suck-in crowd maneuvering that has gotten me through much of life.  And there’s nothing more embarrassing than finding yourself stuck between people when your belly refuses to cooperate.

Erin

Maybe we can take advantage of the widespread recession unease to change a few things about how our society works.  Hey, after all, with so many out of work, it’s not like we have anything better to do!

But it’s precisely the “so many out of work” bit I hope we will learn to rethink.  In a country where we’re used to introducing ourselves as “Hi, I’m Jane.  I’m a schoolteacher,” a lot of people are having to rethink their introductions.  “Hi, I’m Jim.  I’m unemployed” just doesn’t have the same ring.  Rather than replace it with “Hi, I’m Jim and until recently I was a loan officer,” maybe we could rethink this whole system.  As one woman recently put it in an article I was reading, with so many in the finance industry out of work or soon to be, you no longer date Banker, because tomorrow he may be something else.  Instead, you start to look at character before profession.

Does it really take a recession to bring that home?  Maybe it does.  I as much as anyone else have trouble separating my identity from my line of work.  I mean, I was signed up as an English major before I even arrived at college.  But several rejection letters into the graduate application season Sydney very nicely reminded me that I was a person, grad school or no grad school, and that he wasn’t dating English Grad Student.  And, though I think it is funny how very easily Sydney the Philosophy Professor seems appropriate to his way of thinking (I mean, have you tried having a conversation with him?), I’ve also gotten glimpses of Sydney the Farmer, Sydney the Photographer, Sydney the Dry Wit, etc.  And I’ll admit that, when thinking about what I understand is a nasty job application process (coming up next year!), I am reassured to think that I will walk into those interview rooms having more of an identity than the interviewers could approve or deny (Erin the Mom, anyone?).

Although having a couple of extra identities around when the job market goes sour probably isn’t quite as far as we need to go with this, I am glad that social circumstances are undercutting our death-grip on the synonymity of who we are and what we do for a living.

Erin

[For those who may wonder whether pregnancy is affecting my mental activity: in one of my many, many bad-sleep pregnancy dreams I found myself at an academic party with a lot of snobs, saying “This is my husband, Sydney.  He’s a lumberjack.”  I then began to hum “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay . . .”  — at which point I woke up, since the addition of Monty Python signaled to me that I had lost my grip on reality.]

A few pictures from Leiden, none of which are of great intrinsic merit. Here’s the hotel I’m staying at. It was built in 1638:

I thought I should at least look at one of the old churches in town while I was here, so I strolled over to the Pieterskerk. Unfortunately, scaffolding around old churches is no more aesthetically pleasing than scaffolding around any other building:

Some things have improved in the world. I, despite being Mennonite, now get to spend a few days in Leiden talking about obscure philosophers thanks in part to Dutch money. But part of the reason that I didn’t grow up in the Netherlands is that several centuries ago, the state wasn’t as welcoming to Mennonites. One of the squares in which they were executed is only a couple of blocks from where I am staying. The Gravensteen square:

As you presumably do not recall from the post I had a while back about my academic parentage, Justus Lipsius is my academic  great(x13) grandparent. He taught at Leiden for a while. Some of our conference sessions are in the Lipsius building:

Sydney

I’m about to take Sydney to the airport, from which he’ll leave for the Netherlands.  He’s scheduled to give a talk there on Friday morning and spend the rest of the weekend milling about with other people interested in Early Modern philosophy.  I know, I know, it surprises me, too, that there are enough people with those interests to fill a conference! 🙂  He’ll then get to check out Amsterdam for a day, attend a concert that night, and come home on Monday.  He assures me that he shares none of the usual reasons for heading to Amsterdam, and I’m either too long-married or too foolish to doubt him.  I’m just envious about the concert!  Meanwhile, I’ll be at home getting a paper off the ground, in the hopes that I’ll spare Sydney some of my (inevitable) paper-angst by the time he gets back.

Erin

Streamlined laptops.  Ultra-slim cell-phones.  Thin-as-licorice iPods.  And now the ultra-sleek Kindle.  Is it just me, or is it freaky how much all of these things (admittedly, some of which I like) resemble credit cards?  So much power in such a thin case?  Perhaps their makers hope we will think more warmly of credit cards than we might otherwise if, say, we associate credit-card-style toys with the Skype that keeps us in contact with our long-distance loved ones and in touch with the best modern fiction and music?  Something seems a little eerie about the rise of cred-card-looking toys and credit card use in America.  Freaky.

Erin

I was out running errands this morning when I ran into a mom from church.  She is one who had quite a bit of back pain and trouble carrying her own kids, so she’s expressed concern anytime she caught me carrying anything, bending over, breathing, etc.  I now have quite a roster of women in Ithaca whom I avoid picking things up around, just because it seems to make them intensely uncomfortable.  It’s an interesting game: getting to know the pregnancy stories of every woman you might ever see and then tailoring (ever so slightly) your actions to those experiences when you’re around them.  And then, of course, very quickly making off with your grocery bags when they turn the corner . . .

I need kids.  They would appreciate this hide-and-seek game!

Erin

This morning I had a couple of pine siskins feeding out of my hand. Okay, so I thought this was exciting — you don’t even see pine siskins that often around here, let alone on your hand. They’re also more fun to feed than the chickadees, since they stay on the hand to eat whereas the chickadees always fly away to crack open their sunflower seeds.

Sydney