Practicality Rules

So as much as I love the Prius, I've decided to buy an Impreza.

At my salary, my very new salary, my very young salary, my "lowest paid assistant professor in the state salary," it makes more sense to buy the cheaper car that gets better highway mileage. That way I can drive up to the big fancy research institutions more easily, and probably pay off this car in 3 years.

I do still want a Prius. But I think it would be better for me to wait and get one when I have more money.

But the good part of it is that I think a Prius will join my family-- after the test drive my father was really impressed! So although there may not be a Prius in muse's future, there may be a Prius in muse's family, which muse would get to drive now and then.

Thanks for all your suggestions and recommendations. The Mazda 3 was also a great car, but the Subaru has four wheel drive.

A Banquet of Words

In which your writer, who had the last word in the comments section of her last post, is spoon fed her words on a silver plate.

Make that a battery-powered, digitalized 60 mpg-in-the-city plate.

Yes, I test-drove a Prius yesterday. And it was FABULOUS. You just press a button and it goes. You press another button to put it in park. It has a little LCD screen that runs the whole thing. When you stop it is entirely silent. Whenever you drive under 15 mph, you can't feel it moving at all. It's the battery. And the digital positioning instead of gear shifting.

Yes, it is about $5000 more than I really wanted to spend, but a large part of it is tax deductible. And broken down, it would only cost me about $50 more per month for an extra year (5 instead of 4) to do it.

And I'd easily make that up in money I saved at the gas station. 51-59 mpg in the city! Imagine going to the gas station half as often. I can't.

I also tried the Subaru Impreza, which was a bit more Imprezzive than the Mazda 3, I found, and only about $2000 more. It has four wheel drive where the Mazda 3 doesn't (and the Mazda 3 doesn't even have Electronic Stability Control, I think). Not that I need to worry about that here in the South, but what if I wanted to drive up north to see my family in the midwest? Or further north just for the fun of it?

Tomorrow I shall test drive the Mazda 3, but I do think I've narrowed it down to the Imprezzive and the Priapus.

Car Fancy

I'm in the market for a new car.

Having bashed up the old vehicle (I'll call her Ingrid) rather too much, my insurance guys are telling me to take the check and not look back. Ingrid was old and perhaps not that trustworthy. She had a nice life but needs too many repairs for it to be worth either my while or the insurance company's while. They've bought her from me and will fix her up and sell her on their own.

Yes, this is what we call "totalling" the car.

No, I wasn't hurt nor was there much damage. Ingrid just happens to be very old, very Swedish, and very expensive to fix.

So I'm buying a new car. And suddenly I'm taking an interest in cars, seeing as I thoroughly depend upon one now to get me really anywhere in this town. I'm looking for a small hatchback with good gas mileage. Hatchback so's I can fill it with all the cheap, "previously owned" vintage and antique furniture I want.

I've pretty much narrowed the search down to the Mazda 3 and the Subaru Impreza, but if anyone has any suggestions or opinions, please do post here and let me know.

I had originally wanted a Honda Civic, a nice, dependable little sedan with the highest mpg and safety ratings on the market. My friend Nick calls it "The Assistant Professor Car." But the Civic doesn't have a 4 door hatchback, only a 2 door one. Which wouldn't be able to carry precious antiques. Then I thought about the Toyota Matrix. My parents have one. My dad calls it "The Mattress." But he complains about its lack of horsepower. And it's a bit too expensive. So I don't think I'll get a mattress. I'd rather have a car.

I have this amazing senior colleague who knows everything there is to know about cars. She's a little obsessed. It's kind of cute. She's obsessed with Renaissance drama and cars. Anyway, she thinks Subarus might be a bit pricey to repair. She seems to be rooting for the Mazda 3.

My cousin here in the South seems to think I should get the Impreza. Both his daughters drive them, and apparently his neighborhood is "The Subaru Capital of the World" so I might be able to get a good deal there.

I'm going to test drive both models and maybe a couple of others next week (the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving). I've never done this before. Anything I should look out for? What should I do on the test drive? Where should I take it? Will there be a salesperson with me pitching the car the length of the ride? I loathe salespeople. I don't want to "give poor Gil a break." I just want a car.

Bare Quires

Last time I checked, it was still fall here. How bizarre! It's 71 degrees outside, the trees are flaming like drag queens, and students are trudging across the quad in tee-shirts and flip-flops. And the only "bare, ruined quier" I behold is the blank document on my laptop screen. (Check out Flavia's excellent post on "that time of year thou mayst in me behold").

I'm getting a little antsy at all this pleasant weather. Somehow it doesn't feel at all close to the end of the semester to me, because I'm not chilled to the bone. It's disconcerting. It's making it hard for me to write.

More importantly, how can I wear my new lofty merino wool funnel neck and my duffel coat with the red beret if it's 71 degrees outside? How can I feel remotely academic without a turtleneck and a steaming mug of tea? I need the cold to make me stay inside and write for hours on end. As it is, I can't sit still for more than 40 minutes at a time. I keep jumping up and running outside into the sunshine.

Anyone can take this Quiz

(Thanks to Jonathan on Superbon!).

How Canadian are you?

Like Jonathan, I scored a whopping 91%. Which means that all true Canadians must score something like 400% (it's a really easy quiz).

I think I lost the 9% because I refused to order pizza from Tim Horton's. There are just some things one does not do.

http://www.gotoquiz.com/how_canadian_are_you_1

Time Keeping

There are only 5 more teaching days left in my semester.

I can't believe it.

It happened so fast.

And today, for some strange reason, it's 81/30 degrees outside. Some of the trees have lost their leaves. Others are golden, rust, and pale celery. A lot of them will stay green year round.

It's kind of shocking to think that in 3 and a half weeks I'll be done with the semester.

Then I've got December and half of January to work on sending out essay number three and an anthology proposal, as well as writing and editing my ever-changing book manuscript.


December also witnesses my trimuphal return to the Midwest, to see my totally amazing and wonderful parents and their totally amazing and rather excitable dog. And I shall catch up with all my family friends and maybe even my very oldest friend.

I'm excited about New Years' too, which I get to spend in one of my favourite cities, with clever and delightful people and the Second Most Clever and Delightful Cat (aka "Trouble"). It will be 20 Below but I Won't Care. I seem to be into capitalization At the Moment.

I just have to get through the next three and a half weeks. Teach my classes, mark my essays, buy a new car, pay my bills, and drive safely.

Fall Color

Today I did some exploring.











And a mysterious package arrived.
It was from Tashkent.











It was a lovely day for a walk.
We went all the way up to the top.

We were very careful.

The colors were beautiful for November.

There was even a waterfall.


And inside the package were more colorful things.

Commonplace Blog

I can't think of anything original to say. My brain is exhausted. I have too much work to do between now and Thanksgiving and the end of the semester.

Instead I've decided to make this into an online commonplace book until I can think of something more interesting to write about.

Last weekend I found myself leafing through a poetry anthology. It was fun.

Here are two old favorites, both of which do much with the traditional 14-line sonnet, not only formally but also in their use of light/dark imagery. Though different in subject, I still like to think they're talking to one another.

Milton, Sonnet IXX

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask; But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

Millay, Sonnet VII, from Second April

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause; and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.

On Eating

How far would you travel to taste the food of the gods?

It wasn't just the warm interior of the little restaurant nestled on a dark anonymous corner. Not the shiny tin ceiling, the full, animated room, the twinkly lights or the mirrored walls. It wasn't the wooden tables and chairs, and it wasn't the no-nonsense dinner ware, the flushed faces of the servers. It wasn't the open kitchen or the blackboard. Or the cold outside. It wasn't smiles on faces, or the excitement of dressing up.

It was the cloud-like foie gras and the sharp sweet wine-cassis reduction on the (almost raw) venison and the crispy tendrils of shaved leeks everywhere and the simplicity of the brasied lamb which was humbly named after a mouse and the bitter darkness of chocolate and sorbets too intense to describe in terms other than platonic because they captured something essential about fruit, something that made all other fruits seem like so many shadows.

I remember little of the conversation. I do remember that we nearly forgot our coats.

The Paradise Lost Teaching Chronicles, Part II

Is this more likely to happen in the South? I wonder if any one else has had a similar reaction:

Today we began with Satan out of Hell and approaching Eden, the beginning of Book IV.

A lot of students were really moved by his opening speech, where he seems to have come to some pretty profound self knowledge and is aware of his mistake and his eternal burden. It's the one where Hell is redefined as something Satan carries with him, as well as his distance from God (similar to Mephistophelis' definition of Hell in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus).

We began to talk about how Satan becomes more human, more sympathetic in this book, and how we begin to appreciate the view from his perspective.

I had one student who resisted sympathizing with Satan.

This student contended that, as pure evil, Satan is just deceiving us, getting us on his side so that he can win; his remorse is false. An interesting perspective, I acknowledged, and since Milton's text loves reversals, this seems like a possibility. But when I asked her to support this idea with textual evidence from the passage, she faltered, even though she's an excellent reader, very good at using the text to back her claims.

And yet she refused to see it any other way. So in response I stressed that perhaps as PL is a prequel to both Genesis and Christianity, it's also a prequel to the creation of Good and Evil, and that it might be a narrative about how Satan becomes the Prince of Lies, rather than assumes that he's always embodied some essential evil quality. The student seemed unwilling to accept this interpretation too.

I can't quite figure out why this student kept insisting that Satan's grief and remorse were false, but I could tell that she was struggling to resist the urge to sympathize with him, and I liked that she wanted to try to see things a different way. And then I wondered if maybe it had something to do with fundamentalist or evangelical christian belief. In other words, I wondered whether my student was afraid to weep with Satan, that the devil might make an entrance if she did.

And and then I became afraid-- that I'm stereotyping my devout Christian students too much.

Maybe she was just trying to get on top of the reading which is already full of reversals. Maybe she was just trying to play "devil's advocate" with the devil's advocate. And in this sense, she was probably thinking more like Milton than anyone else.

Just Procrastinating

I still have about 16 more papers to mark, another course to prep, and a gazillion meetings this week before I can relax. I've insanely offered my house as the spot of the next Renaissance Reading Group meeting, which will happen over dinner tomorrow night. The Renaissance Reading group here is made up of MA students and talented undergrads and it was basically created because the students in my senior colleague's class just didn't want it to end.

So I'm opening my house up to students, before I've even opened it up to friends. Crazy, I know. Then there are departmental meetings, a trip to the Rare Books Room with my Renaissance poetry students, and more papers to hand back on Thursday.

I should be doing all of this without a break, but I can't, so instead I took off half an hour to blog and read the new york times.

In the yesterday's times, I found this expose of Montreal. It was pretty much on the mark for what to do as a rich, boring tourist in the city (shopping and eating), though it recommended cylcling in the wrong direction on the Lachine canal and named a lot of the big cliche places to eat like L'Express when everyone knows the smaller "m'as tu vu" places on the side streets are better. But I'm not telling which ones are best. Go find your own.

However, it also said this, which made me snort and almost spill my tea: "With the city’s debilitating 1990’s recession behind it—and the specter of Québécois secession all but forgotten — a lively patchwork of gleaming skyscrapers, bohemian enclaves and high-gloss hideaways now outshines the city’s gritty industrial past." I think a whole lot of people would disagree with that statement about "the specter of Quebecois secession all but forgotten." And what's wrong with a "gritty industrial past" anyway?

For some reason I'm glad it got a lot of Montreal wrong. I'd rather the best things about Montreal remain the purlieux of the cognoscenti. And that's why I'm Not Telling.

This made me laugh, then sigh

One of my newest bourgeois indulgences on the weekends is looking at catalogues. It's a luxury in which we truly middle class citizens have the right to indulge, and I intend to make the most of it, especially whilst I still have a house to furnish. One of my favorites is the Sundance Catalogue. Yes, it's that Sundance, Robert Redford's estate, company, independent film institute, and the location of the annual film festival. The goods are overpriced but the aesthetic is wabi-sabi, weather beaten, environmentally sound, water washed antique. My kind of thing, if I could afford it.

Yet paging through their catalogue today I noticed something strange and oddly nauseating. The rhetoric has changed. Suddenly it seems they're courting conservatives. It's obviously a marketing decision. But it annoys me because it sounds like even Sundance, the most liberal of wealthy liberal outfits, previously prone to wearing its green, ecologically sound, fair trade heart on its sleeve, suddenly buys in to this bogus notion that we're all becoming more conservative. This is mostly bullshit and continuing to pander to the ignorant like this will only make it worse.

Here's what made me laugh. The description of the Hemp Rug. Just so you don't start freaking out about Hemp and marijuana, you patriotic conservative:

"When the Founding Fathers encouraged colonial Americans to grow hemp, they were on to something. Strong but soft, thick yet pliant, naturally long-wearing and environmentally sound, hemp meets or beats competing fibers any day of the week, year after year after year. Ours is organically grown and woven by hand, like George Washington's. Natural materials and handcrafting make each piece unique, and sizes may vary slightly. Imported. 2' x 3', 2 1/2' x 8', 3' x 5', 4' x 6', 6' x 9', and 8 1/2' x 11'. Additional shipping $10.

hemp rug #40273 $40.00 - $500.00"

That's right. For only $500 you too can have a dining room rug similar to the one that George Washington had! And I bet you didn't know that the Founding Fathers encouraged early Americans to grow hemp. And to be organic farmers too! Well, if the Founding Fathers did so, it can't be all about crazy hippie liberals now can it?

But the best part comes at the end of the description: "Imported."

Incidentally, you may not have known that George Washington was actually all that and more.

Freudian Slip of the Day, Week, Month, Year

Scene: My British Literature survey class. I'm having the class go around the room reading Satan's elegaic speech to the fallen angels on the lake ("Fairwell happy fields / Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail / Infernal world").

One of my students, perhaps going a bit too fast reads this:

"And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy New Professor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time!"

The poor kid was pretty embarassed. But after I assured him that as a New Professor I wasn't the least offended, was really quite flattered, he seemed to relax.

It was hard to keep a straight face. It's nice to know I'm on their minds, even if it is in connection with hell.

I kept comparing Charles I to George W. Bush in class today, though not in so many words. I said "Here is a ruler who wants to make his own rules, who ignores the views of Parliament when they disagree with him. Here is someone whose power is out of control." I couldn't tell if more than two of them noticed.

Où est Charlie?

When I lived in Montreal not so long ago, I kept seeing these odd Where's Waldo posters in the Métro, only in French they bore a large silhouette of Waldo and the subtitle Où est Charlie? Which is very funny because without the aliteration and the busy scene hiding the tiny guy in the striped shirt, Where's Waldo completely loses what weak appeal it may have held. (As a toddler I much preferred Anno's Counting Book: Yes even at 2 I was a literary snob).

Nevertheless, I've been having several Où est Charlie moments over the past few days. I wake up and I can't find the cat. Or else I'll be sitting on the couch marking papers and the cat has disappeared. I call for her in every room, check at the bottom of the stairwell, peek in all the closets, search behind the plants, prod the plexiglass in the fireplace. And while I'm doing this she wanders silently and sleepily into the living room so I can't really tell where she's come from.

This evening I figured it out. Here's proof. Où est Saffron? You can hide, but you can't hide.

Damn you, A.O. Scott

I really didn't want this movie to be any good. And I certainly didn't want you to like it. There are so many things wrong with turning Marie Antoinette into a teenage rockstar, especially in this day and age. And I can't figure out which is more incongruous: Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI or Rip Torn as his father.

And although I liked Lost in Translation well enough, it seems like Sofia Coppola's films are always over-hyped, which can only lead to disappointment ("so this is this great film everyone was raving about?) or an intense scrutiny on the part of the viewer, to the detriment of his or her pleasure ("Is this really all that great? What makes this great and not just sort of interesting? Is it great because it's a little boring? Are we supposed to be listless like the characters?)

But . . .

But . . .

The pointy satin shoes, the Laduree macarons, the the the . . . petticoats.

I have to see this film. So Sophia Coppola's no Max Ophuls. We've established that. Is it possible she's actually done something right this time, and made a film that it is a pleasure to watch? I'll have to let you know.

A.O. Scott reviews Marie Antoinette

Oh, the Innocence of Youth

I seem to have been gushing perhaps a bit too much about the intellectual maturity of the students in my upper level Renaissance poetry seminar. Let me rephrase that . . .

They may be able to think and articulate fairly complex ideas. They may be comfortable talking about sex and religious turmoil in the same sentence.

But when it comes time to turn in papers (their first batch this semester, only 8-10 pages), they don't seem to understand that a due date means that the paper is due on that day.

The night before the due date I received two e-mails. In the first, a student complained that her computer had been failing all week and finally crashed late at night, she was unable to access the paper she'd been writing and thus unable to complete it until she could talk to the computer repair service and get her information off her computer. She asked for an extension.

In the second, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper arrived home at 3am and was too exhausted to write his paper so he sent me an e-mail then asking for an extension.

Both of these requests came less than 8 hours before the paper was due.

I know college students typically write their papers the night before they're due. I did that too.

Call me mean, call me unsympathetic but to blatantly ask for extensions this late in the game and acknowledge you haven't started writing until after 9pm isn't just immature: it's wimpy! Don't beg for an extension, chug back some espresso and pull an all-nighter! That's what college is all about.

For the record, the freshmen in my Brit-Lit survey class all had papers due yesterday too. Every single student arrived in class on time, toting his or her paper.

Ah, the innocence of the young. I wonder how long it will take them to get corrupted.

So what did I do? I gave Mlle Ordinateur Brise an extention until midnight of that day, and I told M. Journal that for every 24 hours he didn't turn in his paper he would lose a letter grade (from A to B, from B to C, etc). So if his paper is 2 days late (it's already one and a half), whatever mark I give the paper will have to fall by 2 full letter grades.

Am I being too harsh? It's my first time at teaching an upper level seminar, so maybe I'm holding them to higher standards than I should be.

Philip Glass, Eat Your Heart Out

Cutting through the Fog

I spent most of this week rather out-of-it. Staying up too late trying to get to sleep, rushing about preparing for class jolted to attention by several cups of coffee or extra-strong powdered green tea. I marked and handed back my first batch of papers in what seemed a daze. I did finally manage to see a doctor about this cold my students gave me along with their essays on Death, the medieval Church, and regurgitation. Which resulted in my being even more mentally unmoored in the latter end of the week due to the side effects of the drugs he prescribed, some of which I refused to take.

But through all the fog, I must have done something right because what I think was a tremendous thing happened in my upper level Renaissance class.

I've been calling it "Reading, Writing, and Poetry in Renaissance England." It's a (insert adj, noun here: "delicious romp"? "satisfying schlep"?) through Elizabethan poetry paying special attention to the materiality of the text. This means not only looking at facsimiles and copies of original editions, but paying attention to the way poets write about writing. (It's very meta). And printing. And book-making. And reading. And how their poems will be read in years to come. And whether or not they will survive, due to the instability of all the aforementioned practices.

Anyway, I've tried to get my students to really look at these Renaissance texts, to understand the many hands that shaped them, and to try to conceive of what Renaissance readers might have experienced.

And I think maybe I am actually getting through to them. Because one of them sliced through my foggy stupor on Thursday.

Every student has to do a short presentation on the reading for class. On Thursday we had one presentation on Spenser's Faerie Queene.

And my student, my undergraduate student, all on her own, prepared for her presentation in the following way: She decided to wander up to the Rare Books Room in the library, talk to the librarian, and convince her to come to class with the 1609 Folio edition of the text, so that the class could look through the books and more fully comprehend the factors at play in this particular material text (which is heavily ornamented and lavishly portrayed). As the books were passed around, students began to notice more and more. They asked intelligent questions. They handled the books with reverence. They each had something to say, something entirely original based on their individual experiences with this particular printing of this particular edition.

I keep telling them to check out the Rare Books Room, to use the Early English Books database. I keep bringing in facsimiles to class. But our visit to the Special Collections is slated for later in the year, when we look at emblem books (though the library is small, they do have some nice old books including 16th century editions of Alciato and Horapollo).

My student did this all on her own.

It totally made my day.

TGIF

Nothing of substance to say today except thank god it's Fall. The weather has cooled down, the windows are open and somewhere down the street grass is being cut and the smell is blowing around in here. The sun is out, the sky is blue, the leaves are just beginning to turn. It's only 64/17 degrees outside and the week is finally over.


There is at least one good thing about this place: it's gorgeous this time of year. There are so many hills and trees and wildflowers, and it often amazes me how lush everything looks poking up through the red clay soil. Some of my colleagues and I are planning to drive up to the mountains (no more than an hour away) towards the end of October when the fall color fully emerges. We'll hike along some of the trails, and wander around the hippie-artist-bluegrass city nearby buying used books. I'll be sure to take some photographs and post them here.

But for now, before I travel anywhere, it's nice to sit in my sun-filled dining room listening to the trees rustle in the breeze.


I took these photos today, looking out the bedroom window and standing in front of the bookcases in the living room.

Notice the very grown up looking sofa. The color turned out darker than I expected, more golden. But I like it better that way.

Vintage Cuban Movie Posters

I've just acquired some lovely vintage Cuban Movie posters. They are large and colorful. They are somewhat witty. I can't wait to frame them and put them on my walls. My favorite one is "Vampiros en la Habana" (Juan Padron, 1986). Look at that Cuban vampire. He's relaxed. He's even a little sleepy. He's happy. He's smoking a Cuban cigar. Not a care in the world. Oh, to be a vampire in Havana!