Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

I have a divided academic brain. Not like Sydney, who wants to study 30 different fields at once, but I do have more than one literary love. When I start working on dissertation stuff this summer and fall, I am going to be focusing on British Modernism (i.e., British literature from 1890-1950). But I also really love Southern fiction: Faulkner, Steinbeck, you name it. Mom got me started on it and I’ve been on that Southern kick ever since, even though I thought I might burn out by writing my undergrad thesis on Faulkner. My poor roommates – they heard more about that man than anyone could possibly want to hear! Very sorry, Lisa and Sarah!

It’s an area that I don’t see taught very often in the Northern schools I’ve attended, but it’s one I want to continue pursuing. So I thought I would pitch a Southern literature class to my department, and they seemed to find this acceptable. I just learned a couple of days ago that my proposal for “Women of the South” was picked up. I’m really excited! What a great excuse to read in an area that I don’t often get to explore!

Speaking of reading (a constant fixture in our house), I saved up my pennies and bought 8 Virginia Woolf books that just arrived in the mail today. Of course, I now want to sit down and start reading, but I think I’ll have to hold them out as a carrot for getting me through my term papers!

Off to enjoy my reading giddiness.

Erin

might just kill us off. Unfortunately we’re more tired than when the break began! Too much computer time and moving sluggishly around the house. When I imagined us in grad school together, I think I was hoping we’d be a bit livelier than this!

But we did sneak out (don’t tell our advisors) on a bird-watching expedition today. Yup, I took a break from papering to sit on the slope of a road ditch, binoculars glued to my face, to peer at . . . Canada geese. You heard me. Okay, so we were actually hoping to look at the ducks that were much farther away, but the big geese loomed large in my binoculars, and were a lot more interesting than the blurry dark dots in the distance that Sydney told me were ducks. How does he know?

Erin

For those of you who have your own blogs (and who know I regularly check those blogs):

I have been writing a short paper, the first paper I’ve written in awhile (yeah, I’m rusty), so I have allowed myself a bit of obsessive checking of blogs for some minor distraction.  New York Times: no.  Blogs of friends: yes.  So if you’ve noticed a spike in your viewership . . .

Erin

For a delightful skewering of the ever more ubiquitous narcissistic yoga twaddle, see here. I especially like the part about Zen leading to instant relaxation. Right.

Eastern thought looks a whole lot more intelligent to me than its Western perversions. So if Westerners are so keen on yoga, how about we start expanding our understanding of it a little bit? A good starting place, methinks, would be with brahmacarya (this would be one of the five yamas, the yamas being one of the eight basic limbs of yoga practice). “Thinking of it, praising it, playing at it, looking at it, secretly speaking of it, intending it, pursuing it, and delighting in its activities – these are the eight aspects of copulation according to the prudent. Any of these eight indicates the opposite of brahmacarya” (Vair?gya-mart?nda 12.144-145). For an interesting discussion of the virtue of brahmacarya and on its importance for everyone (not just a few extraordinary ascetics), see here. Oh wait, maybe this is not quite what descendants of the sexual revolution have in mind when they find Eastern thought attractive.

Sydney

We slept with the window cracked open last night, the snow is almost completely melted, and the cardinal serenaded us for hours this morning. Spring is really here!

Of course, spring for me means cleaning time. Normally this is where Sydney gets worried: I get energetic and full of cleaning ideas, and start peppering him with questions about his stacks of papers. He adopts a pained expression, makes a quiet comment about the amount of work he needs to do, and I back off and lose my spring bounce.

But not today! I actually had a good project on which to focus my cleaning urges, and it worked out quite well. Sydney had noticed that there was some mice activity up in the attic and (with alarming thoughts of mice nests in my wedding dress) we decided to house all of our things in big boxes. So, after a trip to Target for lots of clear plastic bins, I spent the afternoon sorting and cleaning. It’s so nice to have garden stuff in bins, rather than spread out all over the attic floor! I don’t think I can convey the deep satisfaction this brought to me. I realize I may be, shall we say, odd in my preoccupation with organizing everything. But I had to share the event, even if I couldn’t convey either my contentedness or my sense of vindication.

(Yeah, this is where you start pitying Sydney for having an attitude like this one walking around the house.)

Erin

I have actually gotten around to trying some of those new recipes, and here’s the reaction:

Butternut Squash and Onion Pizza: Sydney really liked the pizza, though both he and I thought the squash needed to cook a bit longer. I thought it was an interesting idea, but am not sure that I like the starch-on-starch effect. I think I’m going to fix the other half of the squash just as the recipe says (onion slices, thyme, squash, baked in the oven) for a side dish tomorrow and forget about the whole pizza crust element.

Falafel Pita: I’ve never tried falafel before because I’m not a big fan of deep-fat frying. Period. The only things fried in our house are eggs, and even that’s pretty rare. But frying falafel patties on a skillet (or, better yet, broiling them in the oven), sticking them in whole-wheat pitas with cucumber, tomato, and onion slices with a bit of lettuce and a spicy yogurt dressing actually turned out to be a really good idea.

Eggplant Tagine: Basically, it’s chunks of baked eggplant in a tomato sauce with chickpeas, poured over basmati rice. I liked everything about it except the eggplant. Oops. Both eggplant and tofu have a consistency I’m not quite up for. But if I replace the eggplant with more chickpeas and perhaps some cauliflower, it’s definitely worth doing again. Easy, filling, and good!

Sydney graded papers, I muddled around with reading, writing, and cleaning, and we both felt like microwaved pizza. Sorry, that’s about as close as I can come to accuracy today. Filling my spring break with (surprise!) work has given me a seed of determination to go on a real vacation someday. Somehow this summer’s travel time is already filled, but I am seriously considering hauling him off to a foreign place the following summer. It’s sad that that place must be far from here (Ithaca is really lovely, especially in the summer), but there’s no way I want to be within 1000 miles of work!

Erin

I suppose there won’t be too many Foucault disciples reading this blog, but, in case anyone is tempted in such a direction, Foucault gets a well-deserved castigation for shoddy scholarship here.

Sydney

A note on hiking in our household:

When I think of hiking, I think sneakers, Ithaca hills (as much vertical as horizontal), and enough forward motion to get pink cheeks, sweaty, and pleasantly exhausted.

When Sydney thinks of hiking, he thinks of walking slowly with binoculars in hand until he hears something (something, anything), at which time he freezes, and looks furtively up into the trees through his binoculars. He remains poised for approximately five minutes, after which time he slowly moves forward until he hears another sound (approximately five minutes later).

Hiking does not equal birdwatching, but try telling Sydney that!

Erin

I think I’m done with taxes. I guess I’ll just wait to see if the government decides to ring me up in the next couple of weeks . . . Anyway, filing those things made me grateful that we don’t yet have 1) a house 2) children 3) other investments 4) a lot of money coming in. Way to bring out the silver lining in my life!

Now it’s time to start on my real work. We’re halfway through spring break (ack!) and I have yet to start on the paper I had in mind, but maybe the rush of polishing off taxes will help me along! Only one slight problem: I have a whole pile of recipes I want to try out this week . . .

Oh yes, and I hoped to be able to look up from work and note, “Oh cool, I have a husband. Maybe I should go and introduce myself to him.” Of course, when I do that, I only see the top of his curly head, as he’s nose-deep in work of his own. It’ s a good thing he has a pretty head of hair to look at! But I think we’re both trying to get a lot of work done before spring really comes in singing. Right now it’s cold and there’s a pile of snow on the ground, but once the weather warms up and the birds start making a melodious racket, Sydney will be hauling me off to the garden and I’ll be persuading him to go for a hike. Ooh, hiking, okay, spring needs to hurry up!

Erin