Geeky Mom

Man, what a day! It’s been absolutely insane. I’ll get into details later. Suffice it to say that people got settled into classes and then decided, “Hey, know what? I need some technical help.”

I finally took a break this evening to catch up on the news of Katrina. It breaks my heart. My difficulties and grievances seem petty. What I can’t help thinking about as I watch people waiting on the highway and rooftops without food or water, watching people die right in front of them, is Bush on vacation, saying that this tragedy will take years to clean up, somthing he would never say about Iraq (there, we’re making progress). And I can’t help thinking that if we weren’t in Iraq and Afganistan, that help would be there more quickly. I mean, some of the reporters tonight were saying water was days away. I can’t believe it! And Iraq itself was hit by tragedy as a result of the fear of a bomb going off. I feel like we’re in a downward spiral here.

I’m trying to be optimistic about my own little world, but right now, I just feel like this is all going to come home to roost, at the very least, in the form of higher gas prices. I’m walking or riding a bike. I think a bike would be a good investment right now. For now, I’m donating to the Red Cross. I’m sure the campus will be doing something as well. I’m going to gather up clothes, blankets, whatever I can do. As always, I feel like it’s never enough.

That’s what we’re discussing in class right now. Ironically, right now, I’ve never felt so much a part of a virtual community as I do now. I am feeling sad for Badger, but heartened by everyone’s expressions of sympathy. I’m with Scrivener that sometimes I wish we weren’t all so far flung. I’d be over at Badger’s with a casserole in a heartbeat. I don’t know how to explain this whole thing to people. I feel just as at home here, among the blog people, as I do when I set foot on campus. It’s a nice feeling and I’m grateful for it.

Our class blog is up. And there are posts already! Check it out.

goes out to Badger and her family.

Today was the first day of classes. Other than slight increase in phone calls and e-mails, it was pretty uneventful. Tomorrow I teach my first class. I haven’t been in the classroom in over two years. I’m not really nervous, though, because I’ve been “teaching” in one form or another for the last 2.5 years.

It’s an odd class we’re teaching. It is both a writing class and also a way to introduce freshman to the kind of reading and writing skills they will need in college. Grading is not terribly strict. In fact, grades on individual assignments are discouraged while a portfolio or culminating collection of assignments that will figure prominently into the final grade is recommended. I’m not opposed to these kinds of guidelines. It just feels odd to someone who’s spent most of her time in classes with fairly strict sequencing of assignments or at the very least, grading of individual assignments. Frankly, I’d like to not give grades at all and simply give to each person an evalution of how I think they did–where their strengths and weaknesses lie–without a grade attached. I’m a little worried that the students will be clamoring for grades. They will want to know, for example, what counts as an “A” blog post. It’s hard to say, of course. Just as it’s sometimes hard to say for any piece of writing.

I’ve come to think of my blog as a whole, not a series of individual posts. There are good posts and bad. There are filler posts. There are narrative posts; there are rants and rhetorical arguments. It’s not really a cohesive whole if read from start to finish (though that might be an interesting thing to do), but it does give somewhat of an impression of who I am and the kinds of things I think about. And, I’m also aware of my blog as part of a community of other blogs. As an example, over the last week, I’ve been reading many, many posts about the start of school, from all different perspectives and disciplines. Some people have their first jobs; some are in the second or third year. Some are just post tenure. Others are staff members or administrators. Still others are in that limbo state of being a student and a teacher at the same time. Reading all of these gives me some kind of comfort, a shared experience.

And then there are others in connected but slightly peripheral communities. Many of us are joined by our politics, by parenthood, and even by location. And this, I think, is the question I want my students to wrestle with? How does one write within all these varied communities? When you write, are you aware of the community or do you write only for yourself? What’s the difference? When you read, do you situate the writer within a community? How do you piece together a whole identity out of disparate parts? If they wrestle with these questions well–among many other questions that will come up–they will do well in the class.

A side note. I was thinking about this whole community thing, both because that is the first assignment for the class to write about, but also in response, oddly enough, to AiE’s post about running, a beautiful post and one I could relate to even though I’m not a runner myself. As far as I can tell, about the only thing AiE have in common is that we were both once academics and quit, and probably our politics. I bumped into her blog through this little web of blogs I call a community and have read it every day for at least a year. If not for the blog, I would probably never have met someone like her. Our interests seem too disparate for us to have met in real life. She’s a runner, athletic, likes to watch lots of sports. I am not and I don’t. For many of the other blogs I read, I can see that our interests don’t necessarily overlap. Unlike my real-life friends with whom I have a great deal in common (especially since many of us work at the same institution), my blog friends are at least slightly more diverse. And I make a continued effort to expand this little web, trying to find blogs that I like by people that may not be like me at all.

It’s a complex little virtual world out here and I’m about to plunge my students into it. I hope they come out of it okay.

You may have noticed, I was Atriosed yesterday. Later, I’ll show you the little sitemeter graph. It’s quite impressive. Thanks, atrios.

First, the weather. I’m checking in on the hurricaine blog, but I can’t get it to load, which means that either the hurricaine is really bad, or my internets are wonky again. Okay, loaded. It doesn’t look good. Stay safe everyone!

The sponsor for today is Dove. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. A while back, Dove introduced an ad with “regular size” women. When I saw it, I thought, yippee! I’m the last person to be excited about this. For years, my only defect was my short height. People are still pissed at me when I can down a whole chocolate cake and not gain an ounce. But still, most people I know come in all shapes and sizes and not the stick figures we usually see in all the ads for anything–cars, makeup, clothes, snack products. Apparently, only skinny people are allowed to purchase these things.

A few weeks ago, CBS did a little segment on the new ad. In it, they interviewed one of the women from the ad, who was strikingly beautiful, but short, and a size 6. That’s right, a size 6! And she’d been told by one model agency that she was too fat. All the women in the ad are attractive, but their bodies are not the stick figures of other ads. So they interviewed a director of a model agency, a quite unattractive woman (why is it that the people who run model agencies are unattractive?). She said she didn’t like the ad. Why?

Because people don’t want the reality. They want the fantasy.

Okay, now I get it. I think I’m seeing how things are now. This explains a lot of things. It explains why we don’t get the hard truth from our fearless leaders. “They want the fantasy.” As Anbruch used to write all the time, “Everything is beautiful in Bushworld.”

You know, I’m not opposed to a little fantasy. I like indulging in movies, books, video games. But eventually, we all have to come back and deal with reality. And I think the stick figure ads are dangerous because they’re so prevalent, you start to think they are reality, that everyone but you is a size 0. Especially dangerous for young girls.

And indulging in fantasy is bad foreign policy too. Too bad Bush can’t get some good stick figure models to help him out with the Iraq thing. But he’s got some slogans: Freedom is on the march; Stay the course; We’re making progress. Too bad most of us have been trained on slick ads so we can see through it all.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.

The quote, of course, comes from Henry V, but W. is no Henry the fifth. His wasteful and wild youth did not culminate in the rising to great leadership that was the path of young Henry. I am reminded of the moment when young Henry takes up the crown and realizes it is more than a crown; it is a heavy burden of responsibility. And that is the burden which Bush has not taken up. He has not taken responsibility for this war, instead letting the wall close up with our American dead. But we are quickly running out of bodies. Recruitment is down. The goal for Iraq is no longer so much about freedom or the war on terror as maintaining some sense of stability. And I don’t even want to think about the bodies of Iraqis that are piling up. You can say that Saddam was a bad person and killed many of his own, but what are we doing, but the same–killing our own and theirs–and for what?

Watching Jon Stewart spar with Christopher Hitchens, I was struck by something that Stewart said. He said, “Not once has Bush or anyone in the administration come out and talked to us like adults. Instead he falls back on these platitudes that don’t mean anything.” And I thought, yes, that’s it. We know it’s a complex situation, even if we thought it was wrong in the first place, we’re in it now. We deserve a discussion, a debate. We don’t need “Mission Accomplished” or “We’re making progress.”

No fewer than three recent op-ed articles in the NY Times basically plead with the administration to figure this thing out or get out. And what’s worse, most of the Democrats are rolling over like scared puppies. Get some backbone, people! Cindy Sheehan has been braving the heat in Crawford for weeks while Bush bicycles by her and ignores her. Well, our own Senaors and Congressman are ignoring us the same way. When are they going to stop worrying about ruffling feathers and whether what they say will poll well and stand up for something? Will someone please just take responsibility here? Will someone just say, “Okay, this was a bad idea and now we’re going to figure out how to get out of it.”

I’ve been pushing politics to the back burner because I’ve felt helpless. I live in a blue state with red senators and congressmen. My local politics are also red. There are so many things I’m concerned about, I don’t know where to start. Energy policy, women’s rights, health care, education. All complex issues without easy answers, and I’d like for somebody to get the courage to start working on them. I’m holding my representatives to task when they get back to work in a few weeks.

My wireless ethernet bridge is wonky and for some reason, it’s only affecting Blogger sites–ack. So I came up to the other office where there’s a wired connection. Voila, everything is fine. I hate being cut off, though. Bleh.

Today we have to make a little more progress on our syllabus. I’d like to finish it completely but I’m not sure that’s possible. I’m also doing a little more shopping for household stuff. Mr. Geeky and Geeky Boy are off to a movie this afternoon. I’m also hoping to get in some writing. I must admit I’m looking forward to the beginning of school for the kids, which is a week after we begin, so that we’re all on a fixed schedule again.

. . . of this.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Today is our anniversary–11 years. It goes to 11! We usually don’t celebrate our anniversary in a big way since it’s almost always right before or right in the middle of the first week of classes. Our wedding was on the Saturday before classes began, and although neither of us was teaching/taking classes that semester, the small college town we lived in was insane that weekend. Mr. Geeky broke down and cried in Kinko’s because they said it would be two weeks before they could copy our programs. Needless to say, the programs got copied.

Mr. Geeky is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me, really and truly. Every year, I think of all the things he’s done for me. When we first moved here, I was a bit resentful because he kept dragging me places and away from friends and I had to start all over and the cost of living here was outrageous compared to other places we’d been. And I was just downright mad. But he’s made a real effort to help me when I needed it, supporting me in everything I do. Every time I hem and haw about whether I should take a trip, buy something expensive, or something I view as selfish, he always says, “Go ahead. You deserve it.” He’s always pointing out where my strengths are when I’m focusing on my weaknesses. He’s my best friend and I can tell he always will be.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. Geeky! I love you.