BiddiesInMyBrain

So many things happening!

Yes, I have been AWOL for two months.

But I have good reason.

I was in Michigan for a month at the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research working on Quantitative Historical Analysis under Dr. Margo Anderson - simply one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had. The program is amazing - very rigorous and challenging, but very fun, too. Ann Arbor itself is also charming ... and I took tons of pictures... 

Came home in late July and have been very, very busy, first with getting reacclimated to Memphis and, well, putting things away... Crash discovered all the books in the house and I had to shuffle everything around and figure out how to shoehorn everything in. It finally worked... and I got a lovely new antique desk in the bargain. Again with the pictures. 

In the midst of all that, I found out I am going to Belgium in April! Back in May I put in a paper proposal to the European Social Science History Conference for 2010... and it was accepted!! I could not be more excited! It means lots of work ahead polishing the paper... but dang. It was accepted. :::smile:::

Meanwhile, I am still working on comps for November, and am putting together the classes I am teaching in the Fall - they start in three weeks. I'll be teaching first half American history (pre-1877), which is an all-new prep for me, so it's a bit of a scramble, but it's good for me to stretch a little. Well, a lot. New syllabi, new lesson plans, new lectures, new power points. New everything. But it will be *mine*.

There's really not much else... it's just been... busy!! I'm tired, but satisfied. Things are good.

Will catch up again later.

Laura

Happy Fourth!

In honor of the Fourth of July, I am dedicating my blog entry to Mercy Otis Warren, a long-forgotten, but recently resurrected Founding Mother of our nation. We hear a lot about the men who "put it together" but rarely, if ever, hear about the truly amazing women who answered the call of freedom in ways that transcended the bounds of gender - and often propriety - to help found our country.

In Warren's Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions cited in the article below, she has some tart observations. Particularly of note is item thirteen: "A Senate chosen for six years will, in most instances, be an appointment for life, as the influence of such a body over the minds of the people will be coequal to the extensive powers with which they are vested, and they will not only forget, but be forgotten by their constituents — a branch of the Supreme Legislature thus set beyond all responsibility is totally repugnant to every principle of a free government." Did she get it right, or what?

See the WONDERFUL review of a book about her on the most recent Beacon Broadside. The book appears to be truly worth checking out, and is going on my wish list now!

OH BOY! I've been BUSY!

Let's see... where to begin.

Well, Saturday we went to a wedding down at the Ornamental Metal Museum at the River - it was at sundown and it was simply... gorgeous. Got a bunch of pics of Crash as well as a couple lovely ones of the river... and a bunch of great ones of the family (though I don't have permissions to repost *those* here, so you won't see them here) The river pic I like the most will be below.

Then, I actually made it to church on Sunday. Yeah, ring the bells, mark the date - I made it to church!! LOL I was so glad I went, too - it was a nice day to go, and I got to see oodles of people I hadn't seen in ages. ::smile:: It was wonderful.

Monday, the HVAC folks came and started in on the cutting for the regsters and all for the heating and a/c - and the computers and tv and all other electronic equipment as well as all the glassware and all had to be put up and covered - until last night. We will have to recover the TV later today or tomorrow when they cut the return in the back of the house, but that's ok - I don't mind.

Anyway, I had to be out of the house all day Monday and Tuesday - my asthma doesn't tolerate much in the way of allergens and dust in the air - so I sat outside and read books and tended to the garden (yes, there are oodles more pics in the May 08 photo album).

Today I am reorienting to what needs doing (lots) and how much I can get done while working around the contractors (lots) so things are really going quite well. I'm in a great mood, though tired, and just plugging along. Crash is playing a show tonight, so it's going to be a late night for him, but he'll be home when he gets here... and I can't wait to see him.

Hope y'all are well. ::smooches::

Random Update

OK, so I'm a little jot and tiddle late with the news and wanderings:

Men's basketball at the U of M advanced to the finals last night!!! We're playing Kansas on Monday night. Oh my! GO TIGERS! RAWR! The neighborhood burst into absolute lunacy when the final buzzer went off, and there was a strong police presence around the University District, including MOUNTED POLICE! They were so cool! AND, I am not certain about this, but at least I haven't heard of any reports of outbreaks of violence in the area following either Final Four game. Now it's wait-and-see until Monday. ::biting nails:: I just never expected to turn into a hoops fan. ADDENDUM: The undergrad class for which I am grading has just been canceled for tomorrow - the prof is wise, knowing that NOBODY will be there - at all - and we are scheduled to be covering the run up to the Civil War - crucial material. YAY, though!!! Means I only have two commitments tomorrow - spread out by one at 8:45 in the morning and one at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Charlton Heston has died. All I am wondering is: can we pry his guns from his cold, dead hands and turn them in to the police for destruction now?? And, as one of my dearest friends said, his best ever line was "MOSES! There's a man among the sheep!"

Another friend and lovely, sweet, dear person (all our friends are that way! Love it!) M stopped by midway through the game yesterday and watched the second half of the game with us. She may be moving into the n-hood - we are so excited and hopeful. It would be a WONDERFUL thing. Anyway, we went out to dinner (yeah, we found someplace quiet, with minimal tv and lunatic fan interruption - a favorite Chinese/Japanese restaurant), and had a terrific time. I had the best egg drop soup *evah* - this is the kind of chicken-broth-egg-drop-and-corn-soup that I crave when I am sick... it's even better than my own homemade chicken noodle stuff, and I am blatantly and hopelessly and egotistically biased toward my homemade soups. Too bad we didn't have much of a cold winter - I would have made so many more.

See GI doc in the morning. Maybe we can move forward with all this nuisance tummy stuff. I have written a LONG one-page single-spaced summary of the past two weeks in 11-point font for them - something I hope will help more than just the usual Q&A. (Heh. It just dawned on me that as a historian I can't manage to write something in less than a two-page double spaced paper. LOL) We've also been cutting out all lactose-bearing products we can think of, too, so Crash is buying me soy milk - the Costco brand - and it actually tastes great on my cereal... yay!

Reading a wonderful book right now - expressively written and extremely well researched - called No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith written by dear mentor and friend, Dr. Janann Sherman. I never expected to love an academic book so much - but I do, and if you ever want to know more about the first woman to run for president on a major party ticket, you simply must read this (not to mention that she was the person who stood down McCarthy in the Senate, and she was the primary force lobbying for women's rights in the military in the 1940s-1970s, etc, etc, etc... really remarkable person). The book is academic, yes, but it reads like a really good novel... just carries you. I keep forgetting to take notes, I am THAT engrossed in the reading. Serious thumbs up, y'all. I think it's in its third printing now.

Don't know much else. There is plenty on Google News and Beacon Broadside to rant about, but I have too much to do today to sit here and rant at the moment... though I promise to get back to that in the next month or so - school's out at the end of this month. I love school, but *cannot wait* to breathe a little more.

Windows are wide open and I am enjoying the cool breeze while still in my sexy white cotton jammies. Yeah... sexy white cotton - those words *can* go together. ::giggle:: At least Crash thinks so!! Speaking of white cotton jammies: I slept like a log last night - 1:00 a.m. to 1:00 pm today and was *very* confused when Crash woke me up after church - I thought he had not yet left and was gobsmacked when he told me it was 1 pm. LOL I don't think I moved once from about 4 in the morning until I got up this afternoon... I needed the sleep, I guess!

Back to this book. I may finish it in my second sitting today - I read in bed until - literally - I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. You can only fight a sleeping pill so long when you're snuggled in comfortably. ::looking forward to THIS!::

Have a great afternoon! I may see you again after Crash's choir performance tonight (I'm expecting good stuff!) but if not, I'll catch you sometime tomorrow... quite likely after the game if not before as well.

ADDENDUM!: I FORGOT!!! I judged the finals for TN State History Day yesterday, and MY were they terrific!!! So proud of all the participants, and it was really hard judging first round - and the runoff judges really struggled over their choices. That's a *good* thing, y'all. GO, YOU BUDDING YOUNG HISTORIANS! YOU JUST GO!!!

Found a Terrific Article

About guess who!

WILLIE THE WONDER WART, the blight on our city.

Mayor Seeks Job Switch, But Response is Lukewarm It's in the New York Times, so you have to go through a short signup process to get to it. However, if you let me know you can't get it (and actually want to read it!! LOL), I will make sure you get a copy. A rather interesting synopsis. Huffy, huffy Hizzoner.

_______

I'm too tired to study anymore tonight - such a good book (about women's experiences running for public office in the last century, with an emphasis on the late part of the 20th), but I just read the last paragraph three times and it makes no sense at all to me at this point. It's almost three a.m., and Crash is getting me up at 6:45, so I had best be getting to bed... like... three hours ago. ::thud::

The appraiser may come tomorrow morning or Tuesday afternoon - waiting on an e-mail or call from the credit union about that, so I have to be up and ready for whenever he or she might possible get here. Oy. Not to mention finishing my homework and writing a paper about the reading. Before 11 a.m. tomorrow. Then I will only have four books to read between now and Friday, and about 20 more of those godforsaken term papers to grade by Wednesday morning. Yes, it's possible, but not fun when it comes in a clump like that.

Alright... I am headed to bed NOW. I can squeeze out nearly four hours of sleep if I am really, really lucky... and since I have already had to call 911 tonight for stupidity at my neighbor's house (the one who died in the tornadoes on Feb. 5 - the house is vacant and there were just a few too many college-age men running around her yard and around the house) so I'm a little edgy. May take a lortab to ease the ache in my belly so I can really sleep.

Nite All!

Today's Choices

Choices, choices, choices...

Somehow our choices have been dredged down to this.

I think the picture itself is a total giggle - I've been laughing all night since P sent it to me - but what does it really mean when it comes to the political process and the choices we have?

It's a three-ring circus out there and nobody's leading anybody except in circles. Well, Hillary and Obama seem to have McCain by the ears, but that's not saying much for the next move in the skit...

We're being led by the nose though a political performance - a gag routine - by three otherwise intelligent, articulate, and mostly sane people. I disagree with some aspect of each of their policies and positions, but I have come to respect (as much as one can respect a politician) one of them more than the others. Still, I feel as though Busby Berkeley (or Moe Howard - take your pick) is still somehow running the whole show from behind the scenes.

Every day we are bombarded by some new stupidity. My own husband was born in a foreign country but has been a citizen of the US since the moment of his birth. There should be no question as to his right to run for the office of the President - same with McCain, much as I despise him. This is a straw man argument, put out there to rile folks... and to distract us from the real problems out there - poverty, racism, environmental degredation, economic disaster.

Instead of this, I would like to see one of these characters help out the Joads (the main characters in The Grapes of Wrath) and do something substantive to solve the Steinbeck-esque problems facing us today. We don't need another Herbert Hoover being served 6-course meals by butlers and keeping up appearances while the nation struggles to get by.

Sorry to end on a gloomy note when the doctored photo is so hilarious, but it really bothers me that politics *is* a three ring circus - at the expense of a populace which is laughing all the way to the bread line. Is this *really* what we want in a presidential race?

Sucky Weekend With Great Highlights

Overwhelmingly, this has not been a good tummy weekend - was just miserable most of the day yesterday, and part of the day today... wish my upcoming endoscopy/colonoscopy were this week instead of the first week in March. Yeah. I've been feeling THAT ill. Thank goodness for Crash - he has babied me all weekend and been terribly solicitous. Such a kind man. :::::smiling hugs::::: Crash rocks.

BUT, we started watching Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet on DVD last night and it was tremendous - what we saw of it, anyway (we only got through Act I, Scene iv). Can't wait to finish it - probably next weekend at this point. Maybe Tuesday night. We'll see. It's a four hour movie, so it may need to be finished over multiple nights.

I went to church this morning for the first time since ... good grief... Christmas Eve services! Crash said he was worried about me - my color was off and I really didn't feel great - but I enjoyed myself immensely even so. And Rev. Bill gave the most incredible sermon to a packed house. The sermon was on unbelief and disbelief - right up my alley - and it garnered him a round of enthusaistic applause at the end. I'll spend some time with it in a couple days when I get a chance... and when I can download it from him. It really and truly was terrific. A perfect way to go back to attending church!

Went out to lunch with ten other adults and the most adorable baby today - all from church. Such a joyous group!

Am reading the *best* book on gay rights - it's a Greenhaven Press 'American Social Movements' series book called The Gay Rights Movement that was in a YA section of a library somewhere - I got it from Amazon Marketplace for super cheap. Anyway, it is full of primary sources and analysis and I *love* it so far. Have to finish it tonight and write a short paper reviewing it. It's very hard to find at the moment - I think my class bought up all the remaindered copies and available used copies out there - but my... if you get a chance, it really is quite good. Last week we read Out of the Past by Neil Miller, and I loved that, too. This topic really is out of my field of study, but I am enjoying the heck out of these books - I'll take them while I can get them!

Don't know much else. Still pondering the other item. We're having a conversation now, and it's... interesting. I am tentatively hopeful, though there is a long way to go before I can say anything. At least we're talking about this whereas before this we never took this option seriously. It's a fascinating discussion.

Project Implicit

Thanks to Lizard Eater's urging, I went to Harvard's Project Implicit website and had a ball. I did the sexuality test and to my little surprise and great delight I came out as moderately preferring gay people over straight. ::grin:: I can't wait to try some more of these tests - they are fascinating and very revealing.

But first? Some more reading. There is a ton of it to be done... and I am now on Sara Evans' book Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End. A book a day keeps the PhDs at bay? ::chuckle::

Update, On a More Personal Level

Well, I have read four books in the past four days, and I need to keep up the pace for the next four, too. But, I am loving the reading and I am very interested in the topics I am following. The first two books are on early colonial America (I REALLY loved Bernard Bailyn's essays in The Peopling of British North America), and the other books are all on the women's liberation movement in America from 1945-2000. Really, really interesting! I will need to buckle down and write two papers this week, too, but that shouldn't be to onerous.

Next week I only have to read four books total, so I feel a lot better about that - two from each area.

The grading job isn't too bad, either... I am enjoying the subject matter and am looking forward to office hours tomorrow so I can catch up on the reading; all three of my books are over in the office. I really enjoy the lectures... and everything else about it is going well. ::grin::

I fell in love with the song that graces one of the diamond commercials on the satellite feed... and I finally discovered the name and composer - Landon Pigg, Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop. It's a great little song, full of hope and yearning and first love. Check it out sometime.

Wish I had time to read some of the fiction I have on hand - there's some great stuff sitting on my bedside table which is almost ready to tower over top of my reading lamp. I'm looking forward to a little more time... sometime.

Tomorrow I'm back to school... GIS class in the morning... and then home again, to work, to work.

Not much else to report. I know, I lead a boring life. Things are much better when I am ranting and raving about the world. LOL

70 Degrees? In January?

At 6 pm, no less?

What on earth is going on with the weather? And tomorrow they have forecast anywhere between 68-78 as the high for the day. Yikes!

Tomorrow is filled with a well-woman appointment and a little bit of running around... and lots of catching up on miscellaneous reading. I hope to motor through the book on the South that is in my sidebar (thanks, K!), and start on House of Leaves - I really want to read that before break ends. House of Leaves was a recommendation from Burke's Book Store and I am anxious to let them know what I think of it - they seemed to be interested in my opinion. Corey and all recommended it based on an eclectic group of fiction I have really enjoyed over the past couple years, so this should be a whole lot of fun. I love a new direction. Plus, I am intrigued by the reviews (and the text itself looks fascinating).

I also want to do a little more in the way of household repairs - caulking and sundry things that just need doing. You know. The little things.

Crash heads back to school tomorrow after a lovely two week break and is already in school mode tonight, working on lesson planning and such. We've done a couple loads of wash, Crash has done a load of dishes, and there's just an air of playtime being over and done with; there is a sense of purpose to our evening, not a feeling of dalliance. I miss that... and I'll miss having him home.

Time to stir the stew. I have no clue why I am making stew right now except that it is January and it is *supposed* to be time for stew. The temps make no sense and it's t-shirt weather, but I have stew in the crock pot. Go figure. At least Crash will have something to take for lunch tomorrow.