I had trouble sleeping again; slept 1:30 to 6:00. I went to bed at 10:30, had an idea and got up. Went to bed again at 11:00, had an idea and got up. Finally I just wrote down my thoughts and the references I had chased down, sent it to myself as an email, and tried as hard as I could to unwind and relax.
Finally, after reading other blogs, I got to bed around 1:00 and fell asleep half an hour later. I had been tired earlier, I guess I got my second wind or something.
We had a busy day today: walked through the new house, closed, went over the house to start making more detailed "to do" lists, had lunch, came back to the house, went home, called my folks, went shopping for plaster repair tools and paint chips to match colors with, and now here we are. J is heading to the gym. I should go to the gym, but I am tired and a little clumsy. I should also fill out the hand-written application for a full time job at a nearby CC. I hate filling in things by hand, but I do not have Acrobat so I can not fill it in online and I do not feel like digging out the typewriter and hoping that I will not need to use the letter z (which is broken).
And so to do something useful, even if just walk the dawg.
J sez:
"We close on the new house tomorrow. EEEP!"
We did not make it to the bank to get the certified check on Saturday, we both forgot about it after stressing all Friday about not being told the closing costs. So, tomorrow morning we dash out of the house, drop off the baby at daycare, walk-through the house, get the check from the bank, and close.
We are still unclear about the status of the shared driveway. We would also like to know where on the property the right of way for the utilities runs.
We spent part of this afternoon shopping: we want a new couch, and a dehumidifier, and we will be doing a lot of things to the house once we get our hands on it.
Other than that, it was an errands and housework day. I commented half a dozen papers, went to the grocery store, went to the farm stand, had a nap, and relaxed. J did vast quantities of laundry, barbecued chicken to feed us half of next week, and did some filing. The baby had been constipated; he was cranky today. He also decided he does not like to be fed with spoons - he wants to feed himself with his hands. This made meals frustrating until we figured out what was going on.
Tired and sleepy, and we have an early morning. Heading to bed before I get my second wind.
And so to bed.
Slept from 9:50 to about 7:00, about 9 hours of broken sleep. Was a little cold until 1:30 or 2:00 when I added pajama pants. Then I was too warm for the rest of the night. Go figure. But, the baby slept through except when he lost his binkie. Turning the AC up to 78 seems to have helped the little man sleep, and indirectly that helps us sleep.
Things to do today
Laundry
Comment the papers
Couch shopping?
Babysit while J works
Grocery shopping
Re-read chapter 4, especially the first 22 pages.
And so to walk the hound and the baby
Slept 2:00 to 7:30, about 5 and a half hours. After having an afternoon nap yesterday I got some more grading done. J cooked dinner, after dinner we went looking at couches. Around 9:00 I went back to grading. I worked some, but I was working and looking over to the computer, and grading, and looking aside. And the later it got, the more looking aside I did. I was having trouble keeping myself on task, in part because the papers are not so wonderful. Finished first pass on the papers, graded the homework.
By midnight I had fallen into my late night fugue, where I was tired but not sleepy, reading stray fiction from the net, and trying to decide what to do next. The only good news is that I read Lois McMaster Brujold's very good short story "The Mountains of Mourning". I think I have found a new author. The Baen program of giving away short stories and backlist novels is a really effective marketing device.
For today:
Markup the papers
Revise my think piece on the writing process
vacuum
laundry
Read and comment the first 22 pages of the revised chapter 4
Look at the crucial middle sections of chapter 4 and think about how to better recast my arguments about Temperance, anti-Catholicism, and ecclesiology.
and a morning nap!
And so to work.
That was a very good and a very needed nap. I slept on the couch from 10:00 to 12:30. I had my head back and my neck was compressed, so I had the strange dreams about waking from a dream within a dream, and much of the time that was all happining within another dream. I call it paralytic napping; the body lies there and I think about getting up and moving around but then, somehow, I am back on my back and nothing has happened. The frame for these dreams was a large family get together, somewhere rural, with my extended family and J and some of our friends and family friends. I was taking a nap before walking down the dirt road to the lake and the marsh, and I kept starting that walk and wondering why I was looking up, then waking and realizing that I was still in the spare bedroom of the smaller of the two houses everyone was staying in at the time. (At the same time, of course, I was still on our couch.)
I heard from my second reader about chapter 3. He loves the conclusion, thinks the whole thing is too long, things I need to cut back the blockquotes and thicken much of the narrative with more embedded evidence, and finally that I do not do a good enough job laying out the argument and the upcoming material at the start. Oh, and the historiography is thin.
My current thought is to take the rest of the day off. I have been grinding at constantly lower and lower efficiencies all week. I think if I take a day off it will actually help me for the rest of the week.
And off I go.
Sometimes I think about getting a tattoo. If I did, I would want something big, something like a male equivalent to this backpiece (r-rated photo). It would be some sort of a large dragon coiling around my back, perhaps running down. The coiling and wrapping beast is a female look: men tend to wear something more X-shaped and wrapping sideways to emphasize their width while women go vertical to emphasize their length. But, it would be lots of money to get a good one, and we could spend the money better elsewhere. And, I would have to shave my back. I don't like to shave my neck, I do not shave my beard. I have no desire to shave below the neck and would not keep it up.
And back to grading. (I mostly wanted to save a link to that dragon)
I had trouble settling down to grade. I do not like to grade while cranky, it is not fair to the kids. And today I was tired and cranky. So, I re-read Joe's comments on chapter 4 yet again. Then I cranked out 1800 words on how I write and why I write that way. I think I will edit it a bit and then send it to Joe. Right now it is discursive and stream-of-consciousness (only with grammar).
However, writing down my current angst about the writing process seems to have cleared my head enough to grade. So, off I go to read about Caning Sumner and the election of 1856.
And so to grade
In bed 2:40 to about 6:30. Had trouble getting to sleep even after staying up and drinking milk until I was tired. After going to bed I lay there for a while fashing myself about my advisor's comments. Was so tired I forgot to check the time when I got up, except that I know it was after the second alarm. Call it a scant 4 hours of sleep.
I got my advisor's comments on chapter 4 last night, by email. He thinks the ending is solid, but there is "a lot of muck" before we get there. He got cranky about my grammer, I checked, it was a sentence I had missed when proof-reading. I feel less incompetant to know that I did not misunderstand the grammar, I just missed the proofread. I would rather be sloppy than get the principles wrong - I am not sure what that says about my personality or my choice of career fields.
He thinks there might be some there there, but I NEED to: sharpen my arguments, get rid of the dreck, write in a less rhetorical prose style, add some substance to my ending point, and rethink the crucial 3 sections that lead up to my conclusion. Basically, it needs a complete rewrite.
Class last night went fairly well. We did Reconstruction and then we did exam review. I made it through 1872 and the start of Redemption, halted before we got to the actual end of the class. It was still closer to the end than any of their previous classes, but I still felt a couple of hours scant of complete coverage.
We went over the exam, I had 5 possible questions for the long and for the short essay. I planned to go down to 4 of each, let them talk me into 3 of each. Alas, we voted, and my favorite short essay question got nixed. It was one they could have handled well, but a plurality felt that they had had too much political history.
Compare and contrast the "First Party System" of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans with the "Second Party System" of Whigs and Democrats. How did each begin? How did each function? How did each end?
After class I asked a couple of the extroverts what I could do better next time. Once they realized I was serious they gave some good advice. Let me see if I remember it all.
And so to work.
I have not been very effective today. Finally I lay down and napped. I think it was 45 minutes, but it could have been more. Lets see if I can grade a little more now.
While procrastinating I was surfing Glen Reynold's Instapundit, who I like even when I disagree with him, and followed one of his links to the National Review Online. I read but a few words and closed the page. Why? Because from the tone, which was highly contentious, and from the other things I have read on the NRO and the current version of the National Review, I realized that I was working from the basic assumption that nothing on that web page would be reliable. It was a political rant about Vermont politics, and censorship, and I just did not believe a word of it - even before I read it. The National Review, like many other political sites, is closer to talk radio than it is to a 20th-century newspaper. It has become more ideological since I last read it regularly in the 1980s, and that in turn was more partisan than it was when the magazine was first founded in the 1950s. I feel a little like Indie Rock Pete from Diesel Sweeties when I say that.
Talk radio, like many 19th-century newspapers, is expressly ideological. The function is not to inform but to convince. Advocacy journalism has absolutely no hesitation about spinning facts, leaving information out, giving an intentionally misleading presentation, and so skewing our understanding by selectively limiting and spinning what it presents. Even when I agree with the advocate, this bothers me. In the case of the NR, or George Will, it bothers me so much that I just tune them out. I like to think of myself as a critical moderate, over the last few years I have become more left-leaning while the national Republican Party has become more aggressive and more radical.
I won't call them conservative, because they are no longer conservative. For me, Conservative is an essentially Burkean position. It focuses on the tie between the generations that came before, the generation alive today, and the generation not yet born. It focuses on preserving order, and liberty, and life across generations and across time. Conservativism resists change. It can be good or bad, you can be conservative and emphasize human needs and human caring, or you can be conservative and emphasize the maintenance of ancient privileges. It is easy to use an appeal to the time-honored customs of the past as a way to privilege and continue present inequalities.
Radicals, then, try to change past precedents. Like Jefferson or Paine, they emphasize that the earth belongs to the living. For TJ, this meant that every generation must decide its own political arrangements and decide what its fundamental laws should be. For Paine this meant that we should not let the dead hand of past privilege limit what people today want to do.
In the modern context, oddly enough, the environmental movement is more Burkean, and more conservative, than the Bush administration. Teddy Roosevelt had it right when he tried to preserve some portions of the national heritage for future generations; If we look at the world, its resources and its options, as something that we hold in trust and that, as good stewards, we must care for and then pass on to the next generation, then we make very different decisions. The earth may belong to the living, but the living do not have the right to take it all for themselves and leave nothing for the future.
In the case of the environment, the current debates on everything from global warming to trace pollutants look very different when we change the question from "we must be clean now" against "we need jobs now" to "what is the best balance of development and preservation to make sure that we have both people and environment for the future." In more partisan terms, it means that the recent spate of Bush tax cuts are a situation where th present generation is having its cake, and taking that cake from the future.
How did I get to this from the National Review? Ah yes. There is a remarkably short-sighted and presentist approach to many of the current right-wing folks. They want to get their tax cut now, and (perhaps intentionally) cripple the future tax system. They want to win this debate, right here and right now, and do not seem to care about future arguments. In the process, as advocates spin the truth and abuse their evidence, they begin to chip away at our faith in the debating process. Lying might win you one argument, but repeated lies destroy our trust in all speakers. I find that I do not believe the National Review, even when they are right. I do not trust and do not believe John Ashcroft, in part because I just plain do not like the policies he proposes. I do not trust George W. Bush: His rhetoric and his policies are fundamentally disconnected.
I need to do real work, more on this later. Note to self, talk about Ashcroft, and the WMD dilemma - they were once there, we have no records of where they went, yet the Bush administration claimed more specificity than it had while making the case for war. They won their case, but lost credibility because they over-stated their argument. It is like what Tanenbaum calls "stupid cop tricks." Delete this paragraph after write more.
Finished prepping class. I am going to do my usual Reconstruction, only in more depth. The document for the day is the 14th amendment.
I forgot to turn up the air conditioning, and the apartment got hot. I do not focus well when I am hot, I have to be a little chilly to work. In contrast, I have to be warm to sleep. So, while warm, I went and surfed blogs for a little while. The internet is vastly distracting, but it is also chock full of resources - documents, library catalogs, etc - that I use while working. I am ok as long as I concentrate.
My current light reading is the first volume of Anais Nin's unexpurgated diaries. They are still abridged, mostly removing repetitive things like her formal greeting to the diary at the start of each entry. While on the can I finished reading the fall of 1914. She is a remarkable writer for an 11-year old, pensive, caring, and most amazingly eloquent. I must remember that even these diaries have been returned to and polished, nothing that she wrote is the first rough draft of her life. In contrast I almost never revise these, other than perhaps fixing the grammar later that same day.
Random thoughts from mid morning.
J pointed out that I goofed when I filled the jam jars. I had just assumed that I would have more jam than I did last time, and I filled 6 at once so that the fruit would be evenly distributed. Now I have 6 small jars of jam, in large mason jars. They look like closer to 11 oz than the 16 that the jars hold. So, not tonight but soon, I get to make another water bath, dump the jam into a pot, bring it warm enough to pour, and then re-can the jam into 5 jars and a little leftover on the side.
Today's newspaper had a recipe for a variation on jam made by weight: equal weights berries and sugar, combine, heat till clear (5 minutes) and let sit overnight. Next day, bring a small quantity to the boil and can as soon as it jells. It should make a softer pack than what I have been doing, with more fruit flavor. The sitting, I guess, is so that the natural pectin from the fruit can do its thing without waiting for the jam to boil and boil and boil. I am intrigued, and will make a batch of it.
I pasted the beginning of chapter 4 together and printed it out. This is longer, 22 pages, and I think there is some fluff in it. Started working on class for tonight, will get class in order then edit what I printed out. Sleepy and having trouble concentrating, just made a pot of coffee and am blogging while it drips. It was that or put away dishes and finish scrubbing pots from late-night jamming. I HATE doing dishes, I like to blog. It was an easy choice.
And back to work, for I hear the pot, the pot a calling.
Slept 11:00 to 6:30, call it 7 and a half hours. Baby was fairly quiet during the night. I am tired, will take a nap before driving out to teach, but I had enough sleep in the bank that one night of bad sleep seems not to have crippled me.
Things to do today
splice together the new parts of chapter 4
swing by the lawyer's, pick up documents and drop off a check
library run
dry cleaning run?
prep class
prep final exam
drop off book on tape at CC library, pick up blue books for the exam.
teach Reconstruction
Blog before bed, June 25, 2003
Blogger is down, and I wanted to write up my day. So, I am writing in WP and will paste this in later.
It was a tired, ineffective day. The best things I got done today were housework. I went to the bank, did some food shopping, made a turkey Moussaka for dinner, made strawberry jam after dinner, ran 3 loads of laundry, and registered my blog on a couple of blog finders.
I also wrote one sentence, count it. That is nowhere near enough. I was tired and distractable and did not trust my own abilities. I still should have ground out a page or two. I did read and comment on a student draft paper, but that was not enough.
The only good news is that while I had a lot of coffee this morning, perhaps contributing to my distractable day, I went without a nap. I should be able to get to sleep tonight, even after licking the pot from making jam.
This is the third batch of strawberry jam. I bought the berries Sunday and they sat in the fridge for three days. One of the quart containers froze at the back of the fridge, neither was as tasty as fresh berries. This jam is not as good as jam number two - a little thin and tasteless; it is still better than jam number one. Note to self, try some different brands of pectin. The Sure-Gell has been taking a long time to get to the boil and the jam always smells much better when it is at the scald than when it has gotten all the way to a rolling boil. I got 6 12 oz jars of jam that is good enough to give away. I now have enough strawberry jam. I might make a fourth batch, but I want to get the Seville oranges out of the freezer before we move. I intend to make a marmalade this weekend. I am thinking about making a pectin marmalade and trying to get more fresh, aggressive fruit taste.
We have a new loaf of bread in 20 minutes or so. Once it dings I will pull the bread, take the hound out, and so to bed.
Off to try to grind a few more words.
Back.
Looking over the changes to the section on Controversies, it appears to be blurring into the following section on Doctrines. I am arguing that repeated controversies had the effect of forming religious groups into four doctrinal blocks. Then I talk about the Methodists and the Christian Spectator and will argue (still writing this para) that the Christian Spectator and the New Haven theologians were betwixt and between and provoked so many controversies because they were between religious blocks. They were neither fish nor flesh, and people refused to let them act like beef while calling themselves salmon.
But, the doctrines section, argues that there was a two-tiered divide about doctrine. On the macro level, some people cared about doctrines and others consciously dropped them. On the micro level, people held doctrinal disagreements. That point should really come before I get into the argument between the Methodist Mag and the Christian Spectator. So, by re-writing my discussion about Controversies it appears that I will have to rewrite my section on doctrines as well. More work, more revision, more rewriting, and I just WANT TO BE DONE.
I am getting frustrated with the amount of work left, and frustrated with my lack of ability to keep myself at productive work.
OK, an hour later, I finished controversies, NOW I can go to sleep. 10:40 pm.
Final random thought. I went and double checked something that I told the kids last night. Yes, the Civil War was mostly fought with muzzle-loading weapons. I told them that most used muzzle-loading rifles firing minie balls, it looks like there were a fair number of muzzle loading smoothbores as well. Repeating rifles did not come into play until the last years of the war.
Due to the low level of training and minimal live-fire practice, most Civil War soldiers were slow shots and not very accurate. They were lucky to get 3 shots a minute, and while the rifles were accurate to 300 yards the men were generally only accurate to 100 yards. Men had a normal load-out of 40 cartridges, sometimes 60 or even 80, and at the end of one all-day battle one regiment averaged 24 shots fired per man; unless you were receiving a charge you did not fire at maximum rate.
In contrast, Bernard Cornwell who does some research suggests that the British regulars practiced with live ammunition and got 4 or 5 shots a minute with Brown Bess muskets in the 1810s. These were accurate to 50 yards, dangerous to 300.
As a final note, I remember reading something about mid 20th-century weapon designers looking into ww1 experience and some ww2 experience and deciding that most weapons were fired at ranges of less than 300 yards. This meant that the 1000 yard effective range of a 30-06 was more power than was necessary, and they could reduce the cartridge, cut weight, and add shots per pound by making a weapon that could only fire as far as it was useful. So the Civil War rifled muskets were accurate at battlefield ranges, although the troops themselves had little practice at firing by volleys and by the numbers.
This is not my dissertation.
The radio station in my head is playing "As I Roved out". I know the version by Boiled in Lead best, but I am having trouble finding those words.
Here are one set but not what I remember. This is closer to the words I know. This one is a melding of the two above, the one I know and the rude lines about the horsie. This source suggests that it is an Irish variant of the ballad of the trooper and the maid. The Glasgow Guide does not have this ballad but it has many many more.
Ah, here we go. Here is the album by Boiled in Lead and here is a Real-audio version of the first minute of the version I know.
It is a simple tune, and it sticks in my head, and I make up nonsense lyrics and sing them to the baby.
And back to work.
Slept 4:30 to 7:30, a scant 3 hours.
The last few times I drove out to the CC I scared myself by getting very sleepy on the drive out. So, yesterday I resolved to take a nap before I went. I napped for about 45 minutes, perhaps a little longer, from 2 to 3. Then, while driving out, I drank a mug of hot tea.
Class went well, we finished the sectional crisis and talked about the Civil War. The students were interested, they asked questions, they were involved. It was a pretty good class despite having a disorganized and topical approach the the war.
After class two students wanted me to look over rough drafts, I did not get out until 9:15 or later. Got home after 10:00 and had a mushroom omelette and some toast.
Then I could not sleep. I read for a while, thought about sleep, read some more, thought about sleep, finally got to bed very late. I finished David Weber & John Ringo March to the Sea, a not very good military science fiction novel. Read a couple of chapters of Weber's Honor Harrington novels online from the Baen website. Weber writes good space opera. He has most definitely moved onto my list of things to scour the used bookstores for.
I am glad that I was not sleepy while driving, that really did scare me. I am also glad that I only have two more of these night classes to go.
Things to do today:
finish controversies section
splice together new front of chapter 4.
Laundry
dishes
bread
bank
And so to have a day
I am having trouble concentrating on my writing. Went and read Liz speaks. Why do I tend to read political blogs written by men and personal blogs written by women?
The good news is that I prepped for this afternoon's class while procrastinating, all but pulling acetates. I will review it one more time before I go.
We are doing the Civil War today. I decided to use the Gettysburg Address as my in-class document. I did a little digging and found the Library of Congress website on the address. I am not giving that to the kids, just the plain text. I decided that the Gettysburg Address, like the Declaration of Independence and Winthrop's Model of Christian Charity, is one of those fundamental documents that everyone should read in high school. Many people have not read them, or did not read them carefully, so I am going to continue to use them in the survey. Take the survey from me and you WILL increase your cultural literacy.
I am teaching at a military base, I am very curious how this will hit a group of active duty soldiers, sailors and airmen. (Air folks? Airpeople? Remind me to ask what is the best gender-neutral term for Air Force personell).
I find that the GA is still a remarkably powerful document. It hit me as I was reading it, and I was reading it to myself. It was written to be read aloud. I am going to start the document by asking one of the students to read it aloud to the class. Then we will talk about what Lincoln meant by it, how he was changing the meaning of the war, how the sentiments in the GA differ from "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..." and "We, the people ... in order to form a more perfect union ...." and, if I feel snarky, "We are gathered together in this work as one man ..."
Bonus points to any commentator who can name all three things I quoted. (Easy quiz)
And back to work.
Slept 10:15 to 6:30. Call it 8 hours. It was broken sleep: I was up a couple of times to pee, the baby was up a couple of times to cry. J discovered that the air conditioning was set on 72, 74 or 75 is better for everyone and especially better for little men who flop around like fish and lose their blankets during the night.
Things to do today:
prep class
teach
phone calls: power company, sump pump, two air conditioner guys
library run (optional)
write, should be able to finish the revised controversies section today.
And so to breakfast and to walk the hound, not sure in which order.
David Walder Short Victorious War
Over lunch and then while digesting lunch I finished reading David Walder's Short Victorious War. This is a general history of the Russo-Japanese war, written in the 1960s, with good bibliography and no historiography. Walder is telling the story of the war, and as he says in his afterwards, he has no patience for footnotes. So, he made sure that every reference and every quotation gave the reader enough information to find the materials in the bibliography or through a brief application of common sense.
I picked it up, in part, because I was looking in the library catalog for David Weber's Sci-Fi novel of the same title. I read a lot of military science fiction, it makes good brain candy. I picked up Weber's Honor Harrington books a couple of weeks ago and have added him to my "I want it, but will only pay used prices" list.
A lot of military science fiction is bloody, unrealistically so in many cases. The modal narrative is generally drawn from European expeditions into Africa in the 19th century, with hordes of poorly armed native troops charging the Europeans in their square with rifles and machine guns. Some authors make explicit reference - I have seen the battle of Rourke's Drift refought a hundred times in fiction. Others simply draw on the era, Jerry Pournelle's Mote in God's Eye had a fictional technology explicitly chosen to recreate they conditions of coal-fired, short-range naval ships at the turn of the 20th century. In many ways the Victorian era is the model for most of the military science fiction: nobles, loyal retainers, great powers playing the game of kings, powerful fleets with significant support requirements - it has all the background elements and it is always easier to modify a known set of relations than to make it all up from scratch.
So, I checked out and then read a real history of conflict in the era, because I was tired of reading about the fiction. Walder wrote a good, solid, readable book. I now know more than I did; I might refer to Walder when I next teach world history or Western Civilization. I felt bad for the Russian soldiers, poorly led, poorly inspired, well enough fed but otherwise poorly served by their officers and by the regime itself. Walder argues, with merit, that the Russians were incompetant, disorganized, and inexperienced for their ranks and tasks. The generals were all old men, command structures were divided and confused, and their communications and control mechanisms were non-existant. The japanese were equally brave, perhaps braver in the attack while Russians were braver in the defence, but were better led at all levels. That is the sort of thing that makes a big difference.
And now back to work, will cut out a little early and hit the library on my way to go teach. I have 8 to return including some music cds and 6 to pick up.
Had a fairly productive morning, sleepy afternoon. I did finish planning the controversies section, I now know what to do with it. Had a nap this afternoon, hope I don't stay up too late tonight. No caffeine today.
Went to the gym, first time in 2 weeks. Before that it had been 2 weeks, and again 2 more weeks before then. I have been busy, and working, and earlier was a little sick.
Gym weight 177.6 before workout, 174 1/4 after shower and without clothes. That is a couple of pounds above 2 weeks ago, about the same as a month ago. But, since 6 weeks ago I have gotten soft and weak. My right front deltoid is sore and weak again. My knees are sore and fragile.
Was a light workout, but I need light workouts. I think it is time for me to stop lifting heavy - it is too demanding on my concentration. I am also starting to get old enough that the high blood pressures that go with heavy lifts are becoming dangerous. I had originally planned to lift heavy until I was 40, competing in one masters powerlifting event before dropping the weights back down again. Based on my recent training pattern, I think I need to cut back the effort earlier.
Made diablo sauce for dinner. Note to self, even when J is not cranky after a hard day of work she can not eat my diablo sauce any more. I need to drop that from the repertory of family dinners. It was actually a little mild; only the first half-bowl was hard to eat. My usual pattern is 1 hot pepper for spicy, 3 for diablo, 4 is just right. This was 3 and a half peppers, less some of the ribs. I liked it, J had a small bowl and then cried uncle.
Did some housework, talked with bro-in-law, and now to work. Sometime in the future remind me to blog my interpretation of Hollywood movies and American history.
Slept 9:15 to 6:15, just under 9 hours. I feel pretty good. No naps today, and minimal caffeine, and lets hope I can get to bed at a reasonable time tonight.
To do today:
bank run
farm stand
coffee run
dry cleaning
exercise
and write write write
I am once again revising the beginning to chapter 4. I really don't want to be doing this again so soon, I wanted to work on something else. But, the beginning is terrible and needs revision.
I had a good reminder last night while falling asleep. The key to controversies is process; controversies continue over an extended period of time, and while individual controversies have consequences the extended process of controversy does ... something.
Now I need to get a better handle on what that "something" is. Perhaps: Controversies formed an extended discourse about religious groups and civil society; they indicated what was possible and what was expected of any religious group. Beyond these civil questions, controversies also handled doctrines and practices. Again, there was unity in diversity, for while religious groups differed on salvation, and free will, and the nature of Christ, they agreed on the nature of knowledge, on how we make sense of the world, and that there were meaningful and permanant definitions.
That last is both trite and repeats the point that whats-his-name made about the Owen-Campbell debates about the Bible. I like the notion of controversies as a process, I need to think more about what that process means.
And so to work.
Up late reading. Slept 4:20 to 8:30, call it 4 hours. Too much sleep two nights ago, and a lot of coffee during the day.
Finished a pass through historiography yesterday afternoon, started looking into the doctrines section again. The problem with it is that I 1, did not really know what I was trying to argue and 2, messed up my chronology while making a timing argument. Try again, from scratch.
And so to walk a very patient hound
Spent a sleepy day thinking about the dissertation and brainstorming in a yellow pad. I think I have an angle to take on controversies, but it is still a little incomplete. I am dropping the timing argument, sticking to the two points that controversies continue while the subject matter changes and that evangelical does not equal friendly.
I had more decadence today. I ordered pizza from Santinos for a late lunch/early dinner and pigged out. I got two mediums, one a classic neapolitan with anchovies and the other one a neapolitan with ricotta cheese and fresh tomatoes. It is tomato season, that one was better than the evil fishes was.
Spent part of my downtime shopping. Now that the summer loan has come in I get to make my summer book order. I spent too much money on Saturday, buying books from the Liberty Fund. I have about $200 left in the summer budget.
So, I went to Amazon, I checked the things I used to have in my wish list and saved shopping cart, I asked Amazon for recommendations and added a few, I added a few authors I want more of, and I flipped through the last year's JAH and JER to look at the reviews. Now I get to trim down $700 in book orders. It would have been even more, but the county library has about 9 of the books I was half-wanting to buy. I am down to $500, will trim it more tomorrow.
I like book, I like to read, I am getting excited about reading history even though only about a third of these are related to the dissertation. Many of the things related to the dissertation have come out since after I first hoped to be done done done - I almost need to do another round of reading just to catch up on my own specialty.
For fun reading this week I knocked off some more Baen books, either electronically or on the library, started a history of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, and finished Franklin's Writings in the LOA edition. None of the fiction was good enough to write about.
And so to controversies
Ed was wondering "I think it is important that the government not set it's own puritanical values as the law. Why exactly is it the role of the government to say that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman?"
Is it appropriate for the government to prevent incestuous marriages? Forced marriages? Child marriages?
If so, then you have set the precedent for government (i.e. the force-using institution that represents the will of the people, however imperfectly) to restrict what one person can do to another using the legal institutions originally designed to control the intergenerational transfer of property.
Many of these laws were set up to protect people. Consider the case of a girl who is the heir to property. In the absense of these laws, and during the era of coverture in which a women lost all independent legal identity once married, it would be trivial for someone to kidnap the girl, run her in front of a bribed priest, and then take her property and legally rape her. That would be bad, so government got into the business of regulating marriage.
The early national marriage laws I have read, (I read the laws of Virginia and Pennsylvania for a research project) all try to balance three imperatives: they want to protect the property of minors, they want to prevent incestuous or forced marriages, and they want to make the institution widely available in a land without enough celebrants.
The whole business about one man and one woman is yet another case of someone taking one particular set of customs and asserting that they are natural law.
For example: Polygamy is a bad deal for most men, but many societies use it. (The rich get wives, the poor go single) You can argue against polygamy for many reasons, but not from the notion that no society uses it and all societies that are not mongamous couples always fall apart.
As a public policy question, we have a large portion of the polity who are in heterosexual mogamous marriages and like it. We have an extensive body of law and regulation that knows how to deal with questions of property, identity, inheritance, and mutual care for these people.
We have a meaningful portion of the polity who are in heterosexual monogamous relationships - boyfriend and girlfriend who are together for years, own property together, and even have children. They are domestic partners, and they are a tricky bit in the law. Some people argue that their honeys should get medical benefits, hospital visitation privileges, and the like. Others say "NO" - if you want the benefits of marriage then go get married.
We have a small portion of the overall polity but a meaningful portion of the non-heterosexual population who are in long-term monogamous relationships. Some of these people want the benefits that come with committment. They have been having some success at getting recognition for domestic partners since they have not had a chance to marry.
The stiicking point in much of the reasoned opposition to benefits for domestic partners is how to distinguish a same-sex partnership that is marriage in all but license from an intermediate term heterosexual partnership where they want the benefits of marriage without the label or committment.
Opening the institution of marriage to any two people who want to make that commitment is the best way to resolve it. And, contrary to Santorum and his buddies, there are ways to ground this outside of privacy laws. We can argue that we want to support two-person couples and continue to deny the legitimacy of polygamous marriages, incestuous marriages, or child marriages.
Slept 9:30 to 8:30, eleven whole hours! I needed the sleep.
Today is a writing frenzy day, with short breaks for
Local library
philadelphia library
groceries
farm stand
And so to walk a very patient hound
I hate historiography. I don't like to do it, I defer doing it as long as possible, I have to drive myself to get it done.
The revised historiography for chapter 4 is moving along.
Lunch was decadence - I just made a loaf of sourdough honey white. Half the loaf, with slime and honey, then slime and strawberry jam, was my lunch. YUM.
The second batch of Jersey strawberry jam is also a light bright jam, but it is a little more complex and more strawberry than the first batch. I doubt that I will make a third batch this weekend.
And back to work.
I was tired, but I did not want to go to bed. When I finally did go to bed, it only took about 15 minutes to fall asleep; if I had gone down earlier it would probably not have taken more than 25 minutes to go to sleep. Now I am tired and semi-functional.
So why do I stay up so late? Part of it is that I do dreadfully dislike going to bed and not sleeping. But I seem to be more likely to stay up late when I am unhappy or upset. Am I afraid that my mind will get into a negative feedback loop and replay my bad feelings as I am trying to sleep? That has happened once or twice and it was not fun. Or might it be that when I am feeling depressed and not-so-capable something in me wants to go self-indulgent and sabatoge my tomorrow, thus giving me an excuse for being not-so-capable? If that is the case then I will have trouble breaking that cycle. I don't want to think of myself as that mentally fragile.
Sam has a fever, he is home this morning. I slept in, walked baby and dawg, and fed breakfast to the menagerie. Baby was looking sleepy so he is taking a nap, I checked email and am off to shower.
Doctor wants us to observe him this morning and call back after lunch. If all is well, J and baby will go to the shore this weekend.
To do today:
return university library books
hit county library, return some pick up others
WRITE - I want to get a revised intro of chapter 4 to Joe so I can spend the weekend working on chapter 2.
The cleaners come at 2:30 this afternoon
If I go to the doctor, I will buy coffe as long as I will be near our roaster.
And so for my shower.
Class went pretty well. It was strange - the guys did not show up but five of the six women did.
We finally got to talk about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, which reminds me that I want a copy of that conference volume on Jefferson and the Hemings. We spent the rest of the class going through the sectional crisis and giving the Mike Holt interpretation of party practices and sectional tensions. I prepped well, and quickly, and class went well as a result.
I had prepped a lecture, I wanted to cover a lot of material and explain it. It was FUNNY lecturing to a group of 5 people, and I did stop several times to do the q&d role-play thang. We covered almost everything I wanted to, even giving a long discussion to Sally Hemings. We started in 1842 with John Tyler, and got through Texas, the M-A war, the workings of the 2nd party system, the role of sectionalism in party politics, schisms in the national denominations, Mormons and mormonism,the compromise of 1850, and Winfield Scott and the Whig decision to appeal to Catholic voters in 1852. I was able to give a brief identification of the Know-Nothings right at the end. Tuesday I go from Know-Nothings to War before the break, and fight the civil war in the last hour.
Home, a big snack. Baby got sick today - he had to come home from daycare with a fever. He is due for more Tylenol at midnight, or when he cries, whichever comes first. J finished packing - she is due to go to the Shore this weekend and leave me home to write.
I drank a soda before teaching. I think I get sleepy on the drive out because it is in the middle of nap time.
I think I get hungry on the way home because I am listening to Tolkein and he writes about food quite a lot. I certainly can not be because normally have lunch at 1:30, granola bars while driving, and then come home at 9:00 at night if things go well.
Read some more in John Keegan's Five Armies in Normandy over dinner. It is a good light history read. I have been reading random chapters from David Weber's Oath of Swords and The War God's Own. I like Weber, I have put him onto my "get out from library, buy used" list.
I got my summer student loan today. I get to repay the household account for the cost of my new computer, and do a book order. I know I have been marking things in the JAH and JER as I read the reviews. Now I get to go back and decide which, if any, I want to own. I will not be buying fiction this run, other than a remaindered hardback copy of 1633 if Amazon still has it for less than the paperback.
J wants me to summon some books from the county library. And so to books!
I am an email junkie. I check my email accounts regularly. I have been checking my account at the nearby university and wondering why I never see any new mail - I thought it was because it was summer.
Nope, it is because the webmail interface ALWAYS brings you back to the last set of messages you looked at. I had to click a barely visible "forward" button, no bigger than ">>" in 8 point type, in order to see my new mail.
I discovered just now that my textbook review was received properly, and that I do indeed have 9 overdue library books - so overdue that I can no longer renew them. I get to drive into the city to return them. That will be a fun use of my time, but not today.
If I knew who to send comments to, about the email interface, I would complain about the default page-opening setting.
And back to work
To bed around 11:30, fell asleep fairly easily. Woke at 5:45 to pee, 6:15 when the alarm went off, 6:45 after going back to bed, out of bed at 7:00. Call it a bit over 7 hours of sleep. It is a grey drizzling sort of a day, I could easily curl up with a book and read and sleep and read and sleep all the day long.
To do today:
bank
laundry
prep class
prep a study sheet for the final
finish revising the intro to chapter 4
find the scribbled printout of chapter 2.
teach
I have had that odd feeling all morning, where you were thinking of something, and wanted to remember it, but do not remember what it is that you wanted to remember - only that it was vaguely important. What is worse, I am not sure if this is a memory of a dream, or if it is something I was mulling over while tired last night.
The lawyer called yesterday. He has not seen the title review documents. I checked with J, and we have not seen them either. Supposedly the mortgage company and the realtor have seen them, and they are ok. I would like to see for myself. We told the lawyer we won't need him at closing, and he implied that that was when problems arose and lawyers were most useful, but he will send his bill. The lawyer and the closing might be the thought percolating in the back of my head.
Let me look over what I wrote last night and see if it is any good. I am once again doubting my ability to write good history.
And so to work.
Well, I had a decent second wind. I decided that since I have committed myself to a Kuhnian paradigm I might as well foreground my theory. Normally I like to hide my theory, the way it structures the argument is visible and I put in some footnotes to it, but I do not normally refer to theory in my body text. For now, I am talking about Thomas Kuhn and paradigms and Anthony Wallace and mazeways and the republican historians and ideology.
My basic argument in this chapter is that people lost their mazeway when benevolent organizations implode in the 1830s. They struggled for new ways of making sense of the world until, by the mid 1840s, all the old patterns were falling apart. Then people combined Charles Hodge's notion of unity in the spirit with the old word "evangelical" and created a new way to make sense of the world.
The argument requires a crisis before the new paradigm can come. I start the crisis with the breakdown of benevolent organizations. I strengthen the crisis with the other changes. What I have to make clear, I now realize, in the first 30 pages, is that the collapse of benevolence is like the start of a snowball. It opens some mental space for new paradigms, the new paradigms then follow on their internal logic and their internal narratives until they create the full-blown crisis. So rather than a breakdown in 1835, ten years of mental chaos, and a new paradigm in 1845 it is a ball that starts rolling in 1835, rolls for 10 years getting bigger and bigger, and finally in 1845 it goes off the cliff. Hmm, I need to work on that metaphor.
Tired and rammie. I want to go to bed; I am afraid that I could not sleep. I have pretty much shut down - that paragraph of random thoughts above was my last good idea of the night. I need my sleep.
And so to bed.
I checked the job listings before heading out. There were two that caught my eye and that I am, on paper, qualified for. They represent opposite ends of the academic world and I fear that neither would suit me.
A very Christian liberal arts college, affiliated with a missionary denomination, is hiring a historian to teach US history from colonial to the recent past, both as the 2-part survey and as a 4-part upper-level sequence. Their mission statement has two proof texts and talks about saving the city.
"Seek the peace and prosperity of the city where I have called you...because if it prospers, you too will prosper." Jeremiah 29:7-8"Should I not love that great city?"
Jonah 4:11Nyack College/ATS NYC, an accredited branch campus of Nyack College, has been called by the love of God to provide a Christian college education in New York City. NCMC endeavors to educate students biblically to pursue God's truth found in the greatness of the city and the diversity of its people, and to prepare students to serve God by seeking the peace and prosperity of the city and by transforming the city into the image of His kingdom.
That is not where my religion has taken me. I am pious, I have been unable to shake the emotional ties of Roman Catholicism. And yet, at a RC service I feel this close to idolotry. They keep talking about Jesus, and I want to hear about God. Intellectually I am a monophysite, emotionally I am a monophysite, but I can't shake the ties of some of the rituals and some of the prayers. These folks are evangelical and Jesus-centered. They appear to be a denomination that emphasizes heart religion over creeds and doctrines, but my heart religion is not that of most evangelicals.
In my personal religious practice I attend Jewish services and follow the prayerbook. The praise and devotion in most Conservative Jewish tikkun's is closer to my idea of proper worship than is reciting creeds and praising a set of miracles. In one person's phrase, I am comfortable in the courtyard of the temple, following the service without joining the tribe. And, just as I edit out much of the Christ stuff when following a Catholic missal, I also edit out much of the tribal stuff when I read the Jewish prayerbooks.
I will think on it, right now I am leaning against applying. I think I can do better than a liberal arts college where I would be teaching 4 and 4, there are only 3 historians, and I would be the token iconoclast.
The other job opening is on the far end of the spectrum. Stanford is hiring a historian in my time period. That is one of the top jobs in the country: I would be teaching 2 and 2, there would be graduate students to run discussion sections and take up some of the grading load, and I would be expected to maintain a LOT of publishing. I write slowly, I rewrite again and again, I have trouble articulating my own ideas even though I am pretty darn good at critiquing and articulating other people's ideas for them. It would be a hard job for exactly the opposite reasons as the small teaching schools.
I will apply, I would be a fool not to, and I will add to their flood of incoming resumes. But I will not apply until after I have defended. That one closes in November so I will have plenty of time later on.
Speaking of which, writing this down has helped me figure out what I want to do about the Christian college job. It has not helped me edit up the beginning of chapter 4.
This time I really am going to write.
I applied by email. This might be a mistake, it might also indicate that I have the strong electronic communication skills they desire. I do not have the typewriter set up and I had no desire to print out their PDF form and fill in, by hand, the same information that is on my Vita.
I have noticed a couple of Community Colleges that use a special form for their applications. It makes sense for the adjunct positions - they get a lot of applications, they have a lot of people coming through their pipeline, and it is convenient to have standard forms where you can easily look up people's professional qualifications.
Oh bother! I just realized that I forgot to include the sentance about letters of recommendation available through my document service. That had been one of the forms on the standardized application that I did not fill in. If they are interested in me, they will ask. I have had a couple of colleges call back when they had questions about materials or when the document center (or I) had missed a mailing. Then again, these were real colleges.
What is done is done. Now to look at chapter 4's beginnings.
And back to work.
I am struggling with my prose again today. Part of it is that I am tired; up too late last night and only one little nap this afternoon while thinking on the couch. Part of it is that I have a lot of trouble writing complicated ideas in clear prose. This blog is easy, it is what I write between writing the real stuff. The think piece a few hours ago was helpful - after writing that I went and laid on the couch and finished revising my new introduction to chapter 4.
But my discussion of the historiography, and of controversies, and my attempt to set the stage for the categorization crisis, are all muddy and internally contradictory. And the worst part is, when I reviewed the chapter before sending it off I did NOT see any of these problems. It is not so bad to have problems in your writing if you can notice them and fix them, it just means more drafts. But if I can't see my own inconsistencies that means I should not be going into a writing profession.
Why yes, I am a little depressed about my abilities at the moment.
[/End Whine]
And back to work.
Slept 1:30 to 6:30, call it 5 hours.
After blogging last night I could probably have gone to sleep. I was tired. But I did not want to get out of my chair. I ended up surfing around the web for almost 2 hours, doing nothing, getting nothing done, but somehow unable to muster the energy to get out of my chair.
I don't mind the occasional insomnia if I am not tired, or if I am doing something interesting. I don't know why I find myself doing nothing rather than going to bed. I have a strange mental block on going to sleep, I am afraid of missing something, or afraid of not being able to sleep; I avoid going to bed even when I know I need to, unless I am very sleepy indeed.
Cleaners had to reschedule for Friday.
Things to do today:
Get job application out to the nearby CC
Revise first 6 pages of chapter 4
Prepare a study sheet for the final exam, one student will need an early copy
Find my missing printout of chapter 2
Start figuring out what to do to improve chapter 2.
And so to work.
I find that it helps me figure out what I think if I write a casual discussion of my points.
For the revised beginning of chapter 4, I wrote a new intro paragraph yesterday. I did some brainstorming today. Let me use this weblog as a first, rough pass of what it is I am trying to do with the introduction. Then I will move to wordperfect and write it for real.
The narrative of chapter 4 hinges on the notion that religious Americans experienced an identity crisis in the 1840s. They had discussed a common Christianity in the 1820s with Joseph Story, that was the point of chapter 2. They had tried to build organizations and thought patterns that actually used this common christianity, and the whole thing had collapsed under internal tensions among the members. That is the story of chapter 3. Chapter 4 then picks up with a gaping hole: there was a loose alliance of calvinists and, surrounding them, a penumbra of other trinitarian revival protestants.
The loose alliance of calvinists and revival trinitarians had a rough sense of who they were. And, each member of that group, if asked, could have listed other religious groups that they approved of, in the order in which they approved of them. Some people would have ranked by doctrines, others by practices, others by manners and social presentation, but all could have made a list. And, while the orders would have differed, the various lists would have shown a high level of overlap. Religious groups, like nation states, acquire legitimacy when their peer institutions offer it. Nations exchange diplomats; religious groups accept sacraments, exchange pulplits, or exchange delegates to governance meetings, invite one another to their revival meetings, or participate in interdenominational rituals and organizations. Both exist in a social environment where status is conferred by your peers (much like what Wyatt-Brown calls an honor society in his Southern Honor
I want to argue that, at the start of this identity crisis, they knew who they were but they did not know how to describe who they were. They had a de-facto mainstream but they did not have a shared ideology and definition of what that mainstream consisted of. They used to have a good working definition, some people tried to maintain the idea of common christianity and interdenominational institutions, but the scisms of the 1830s meant that simple commonalities no longer worked. Baptists printed their own Bibles, everyone exchanged their own tracts, even the Sunday School Union shifted from working directly with volunteer and local Sunday schools to providing materials for denominational classes.
Once I can establish that crisis, then I can go ahead and describe the various ways that people tried to resolve the crisis and the unexpected way that anti-catholicism ended up spreading an understanding of multiple churches that the Evangelical Alliance would use as the basis for a new collective religious identity.
But first, I need to 1, establish the crisis and 2, explain why I think that the concept evangelical came to matter a great deal in 1845 while most historians use it as a simple synonym for "protestant" until the 20th century.
That helped, now to switch over to wordperfect.
We talked about political partisanship in the Jacksonian era, marches and songs and such. We talked about North and South and how the two sections differed. We watched Uncle Tom's Cabin, from where Augustine St. Clair says he intends to free Tom through where Simon Legree gives his talk about working slaves to death in 2 years and then buying more.
The students were hit hard by Tom, harder than I expected. I am perhaps a little cold towards evidence of racism in the historical past. Felicia Rashad and company did a good job of re-creating the powerful emotional appeals of a 19th-century Tom show, and if you did not know what was coming it could well be very effective and very very shocking.
None of them had read UTC before. If, feh, what is her name? 's critique of the texts used in American educational systems is accurate none of them would expect to encounter UTC in high school. UTC is the great 19th-century novel, it is a powerful piece of melodrama. It is not a comfortable novel for a 21st-century sensibility even though many of the plot decisions were made to make the novel more comfortable for a 19th-century audience.
Speaking of novels, I had some junk reading today. I read David Weber's Honor of the Queen to celebrate sending in chapter 3. It is a good, solid space opera. Weber set out to write Horatio Hornblower in space, and he did a good job with it. I noticed that between the first book and the second he cut back on some of the more ridiculous homages to the Napoleonic navy - the 13 year old midshipmen on the interstellar space ship was taking things a bit too far.
After teaching I read Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Gold. It was more homage to the Napoleonic era. This was the second Sharpe novel that Cornwell wrote, although it is about a third of the way through the chronology. Sharpe is a more interesting character here than he is in the books Cornwell wrote later - I can tell that Cornwell is still figuring out the man, his voice, and his style. By the later books Corwnwell is practically writing by numbers; Sharpe is set, Sharpe is painted in broader, simpler strokes, Sharpe has more interior monologues and yet fewer interesting choices.
I might be overstating that, but it is what my tired mind wants to say. I was sleepy on the drive to the military base - WHY does that drive make me dangerously tired? No nap today, but coffee in the morning and a soda while I graded in the CC library lounge. I think I can sleep now. I will take the hound out and try.
And so to bed.
And chapter 3 goes off to my advisor and my second reader: 81 pages plus another 11 pages of endnotes, just under 31,000 words. It is a long chapter.
The middle is still a little weak but at least the earlier parts indicate why the middle is there and what it is doing. I got to the point where I could no longer make sense of what I was doing and if it was good or not, which means either put it away for 2 weeks or mail it off. This was already clean enough that I went ahead and mailed it.
Now to finish watching Uncle Tom's Cabin, prep class, get a job application out, and then start thinking about what to do with the mess that is chapter 2.
Fun fun fun !
Slept 10:30 to 6:00, call it seven and a half hours of sleep. Was tired, went to bed, went right to sleep. Why can I not do that every night?
Today:
Finish getting chapter 3 out the door
get job application out the door
prep class
pick up and grade a midterm at the testing center
teach
I would like to exercise, but doubt that I will have the time. I am eating less but exercising very little; my weight is going down but my waistline is going up. I don't like this. Left achilles tendon is sore again, I think the cheap sneakers wore out. Will order a new pair from roadrunner later today.
Baby was going to town on chunks of fresh peach today at breakfast. The little man likes his fruit - he loves peaches!
And so to work
Class is prepped, the video section is chosen, I still need to cue it up and get dressed.
I am afraid that I am pushing the kids too hard, there has been VERY low turnout in class ever since the midterm. We are down to 13 on the official roll, and one of them dropped without doing the paperwork.
I forgot to grade the farking homework! Head in early and do it there.
Off I go !
Got the first comments on chapter 4. This just in, I am better at spotting a change than I am at describing what has changed. My players and concepts are muddy and confusing. I need to get better at specifying the problem and then explaining why it mattered to people at the time.
I can not find my notes on chapter 2 and what changes that will require. It looks like I get to mess with the beginning of 4 for a little while until I can find my advisor's comments on 2. It was only a year ago, I SHOULD not have lost anything.
And so to second lunch and thence to teach.
Finished the edit pass. Now to type it up and wrestle again with the "sag" in the middle of chapter 3. But first, my shower. I feel sticky.
Am playing Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic's version of Beethoven's 9th. It is both a better interpretation than Ormandy's and not as much to my taste. I need to carry the CD over to the big stereo and crank the second movement to be sure, but that is how the preliminary indications are pointing.
Feh, it looks like I will not be able to use my favorite metaphor: "The sculpture of benevolence was shaped on an armature of Calvinism." It just does not fit the flow of the chapter. Ah well.
Finished typing in changes, going over things for smoothness now. It won't get out tonight, but it will get out tomorrow morning.
I wonder what I am scheduled to do in class tomorrow afternoon?
ps, We decided the California strawberries were not worth making into jam and we threw them away. I wasted $6 on bad berries. And so I learn.
Very tired, taking the hound and going to bed.
Poor sleep. Was tired but not sleepy last night. Got to bed around 3:30, slept about 4:00 to 7:00; call it three hours.
To do today:
finish edit pass on chapter 3, start typing in changes
2 loads of laundry
cook chicken curry
make more jam - quickly before the California berries go more moldy than they are. Cheap berries from the discount club may well have been a false savings.
Exercise
Get some junk out of the front hall
Call furnace people, set up an estimating visit for July 1
I am having coffee, I do not know if I will let myself have a nap.
And so to work.
Well, I know what I will be eating for the rest of the week.
We bought a lot of chicken on Sunday. We barbecued some of it yesterday, some was to go into a curry today, and we were to save some boneless breasts to make a stir-fry on Wednesday. Well, the chicken smelled on the edge of being off when I went to cook. So, we now have a lot of curry. It is a pretty good curry, in my own non-traditional manner. (Onions, ginger, hot pepper, carrots, chicken, canned chicken broth, cumin, turmeric, fenugreek, coriander, salt, chick peas). I will wait for J to get home, should be soon now, and then put away the leftovers.
I got my father's day present to myself - the Ball Blue Book of home canning. I read through it over dinner and already have some ideas.
Well, more typing in the edits. I should have finished today and here it is only page 34. I was tired and not as productive as I should have been; easily distractable and slow moving is a terrible thing to be.
And back to work.
TomPaine.com has a lot of rants and as much specious logic as many of the comparably polemical Republican sites. It also has some interesting pieces, like this one by Rhoades Alderson. Alderson argues that Democrats do not suffer from a lack of values, they just are trying to figure out how to articulate their common values.
He does list four points where Democrats differ from Republicans. What he does not address is "availability" - are these issues that will win enough state elections to deliver a national majority?
Ted K., being political and NOT wanting to go back to editing and footnotes.
Sometimes I just get mad. I took a study break and stumbled across this story on the online New York times. Before I could go back to work I had to write this:
Tom DeLay
242 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515-4322
June 16, 2003
Dear Representative DeLay,
I have been reading about what the House leadership has been doing with the unearned income tax credit and the Senate conference committee. You, sir, should be ashamed of yourself. You are systematically giving up common decency and compassion for your fellow citizens. A politician is, in the end, a steward of the nation. We elect you and your peers because we trust you to provide services for us all and make decisions that are in the good of the people. The people is ALL of the people, not just campaign contributors and not just your ideological fellow travelers. I understand that you are a professing Christian. I must ask you, when you one day stand at that great Judgement seat, how will you respond when you are asked what you have done for "the least of my brothers?" What will you say?
I have not yet decided if I will put a stamp on it and mail it. Never send anything while you are angry.
And back to work.
Footnotes are most incredibly tedious -- Especially when the first time you wrote them you used one form and then you have to rewrite all 110 notes into proper dissertation format.
I just wanted to share that.
Oh, Karajan did not do well on the big stereo. To my ear the overall sound was flat, as in it lacked depth and vibrancy. In addition the horns sounded flat, as in they pitched some of their notes in an unexpectedly low manner. So I dug out Maddy Prior and June Tabor and cranked up Cakes and Ale and the Agincourt Carol. When we got the various bits of the stereo we optimized for acapella sopranos. Sure enough, it sounded like I had two beautiful voices standing 10 feet from me ... although something in either the recording or the right speaker squawked on the high note on the first "deo gratias" in the final chorus. It is a very high note.
And back to work
Did some more editing. I am still having trouble with the flow and foreshadowing in the central section of the chapter. I made some changes, made some notes for more changes, but I do not know if it will be enough.
The prose is better here than it was earlier on, but the structure and transitions are weaker. Will work a little longer and then go to bed - I had a couple of naps today and am well into my second wind.
And back to work
Solved the sticking point. It was a problem that the kids face in their papers - something made no sense at the current length. That means you need to either expand it or cut it back. Cutting it back, in this case, would have meant cutting it out. Instead I expanded it, was ready to go to 3 sentences but managed to fit it into two clauses. They will get another re-write when I type in this edit pass, but it is less confusing.
The sag in the middle is still a little saggish. I tried to hold it up by spackling a discussion of Providence over the transitions. At least at the early part, this did not work so well. I might want to put a little road map or miniature table of contents in at the start of the sag. The current edit pass is too micro for that, although I am double-checking my section heads.
Got through about 8 pages, while watching the baby and having a nap. Now for a bite of lunch and then an afternoon of shopping with the baby. Should be fun.
And so to lunch.
The baby and I went shopping at the farm stand and at the discount club. We got 3 quarts of Jersey strawberries at the farm stand, and a thing of California strawberries at the discount club. Tonight it was the Jersey berries.
J hulled and edited the berries while I watched the baby. I then sterilized my jars and started chopping berries. This was the recipe off the sure-gel pectin package, same as last time I made strawberry jam. "Learning by doing", also known as "practice makes perfect" does indeed work for jam. I was much faster, much smoother, and the jam is MUCH better.
Differences between this jam and the last jam.
We made 5 pints of jam from 2 quarts of strawberries - we are still getting more jam than the recipe expects. I tasted the stuff left in the bowl - it was absolutely spectacular. I am very happy with my jam.
Tomorrow I will jam up the California berries. They are a little woody and not as tasty as the local berries. I intend to hull them, chop them, and then smell/taste them. I may very well add something to the California jam to cover the mediocre berries. The leading contender is the seeds from a vanilla pod, which is what Jamie Oliver uses on his Food TV recipe, or a bit of nutmeg, which is what goes in a strawberry-rhubarb pie.
And so to go put things away. I want to do some more editing before I go to sleep.
In bed 10:15 to 6:15, slept about 12:30 to 6:10. Could not get to sleep, was a little hot. Lost the pajama leggings and that helped a little. I still woke up before the 6:15 alarm. I forgot to turn that off last night, and it woke the baby. So, now everyone is awake.
I had strange dreams. The dream before waking was an anxiety dream involving going out to lunch. I was having lunch at one fancy restaurant with my mom, and at another fancy restaurant with Joe, Tim, and either Chuck or Bob from my high school gaming group. Somehow I was hopping from one to the other, ordering over-priced but tasty food at both, and having to cover two $50 to $75 lunch tabs. There was another side-thing involving shoes, a table photographer, and Joe's sister Anne. What I remember of it involves anxiety about having the right shoes, leaving the right shoes. There was also a sub section where I was talking about doing part-time work while waiting for my security clearance to come through.
What does it mean? I am nervous about the job search, I am worried that I spend too much time and energy on not-dissertation. That is my bet. I do have some complicated dreams, and this was the first time in a while that I dreamed taste. The little triangles of salmon, flavored and broiled, were a taste I actually remember on waking. I might even be able to make a recipe for them.
And so to have a day. After baby has his first breakfast I will take him and the hound for a walk, then I will get bagels. J has work to do at home today, and I want to finish the editing pass today so I can get the chapter out tomorrow. Next weekend J is going to the shore and leaving me here, I want to be able to use that gift of time to revise chapter two.
I will work on that sticking point I blogged yesterday until baby is ready for his nap.
And so to work.
Random thought, typed in while I wait for a library search to finish. (I am pulling Jerry Falwell's autobiography to get a page number for a footnote.)
I am listening to Beethoven's 9th on the turntable, in the Ormandy-Philadelphia Orchestra-Mormon Tabernacle Choir version. I am used to Ormandy's interpretations of Beethoven, it is what sounds normal to me while Karajan and the Berlin orchestra, or Bernstein, or the other famous recordings all sound off-tempo and imbalanced.
While playing it, I cranked up the second movement, which is my favorite part of the whole piece. The first 5 minutes of that are just, well, sublime. I turned up the volume all the way to 5 (which is LOUD). I closed my eyes, I listened to the strings and the horns tossing the melody back and forth, and the BOOM of the timpanis, and it was so wonderful and strong that I cried a little.
The third movement, which is playing at the moment, is boring. The fourth movement, the choral, is both very good and over-rated. It is good, but the start of the second movement is, IMO, the best music Ludwig ever wrote.
And back to work. I love punctuation. (spent 5 minutes deciding if I wanted a colon, semi-colon, or comma in a sentance)
Random thought that came up as I was getting up to go work. I like Eric Flint's novels in part because he was trained as an academic historian. Both Mother of Demons and his 1632 and 1633 take history seriously. That is to say that he expects change over time - no static societies like so many other sci-fi authors create. And he sees path-dependency. In fact, the core dilemna of Mother of Demons and 1633 involves path dependency - lead characters are terrified of the precedents they are creating and the societies that might follow on their actions. In the case of Mother of Demons she is paralyzed by the possible consequences of sharing her knowledge. And Flint understands contingency, something that many science-fiction and fantasy authors also understand even if only in the context of the hero doing a heroic deed with lasting consequences.
Those are all things that I am interested in and that I try to get across to my students. I don't think I would assign one of his books to a lower level history class, but I might very well assign one to an upper-level or graduate class on writing history. Flint understands time, and that is something that is hard for people to grasp.
Why yes, I do spend a lot of my mental energy analyzing the world around me and trying to figure out why I like the things that I like.
Shutting down for the night. I decided I was not being productive when I realized that I did not have a good collective noun for "BLANK, including New England Congregationalists and broad Churchmen from the middle states, did not understand why people persisted in maintaining denominational boundaries."
For BLANK I need a collective noun that indicates the members of mainstream churches; retaining the parochial assumptions of state churches, i.e. that everyone belonged and the religious organization was responsible for the moral well being (note moral, not religious or physical) of everyone in their geographic area; believing in benevolent organizations; and focusing on Christian union or at least on the shared aspects of the "Christianity in General" that they all believed in but could never define.
I tried "The Spokesmen for Christian union", and "Spokesmen for benevolence" and various combinations of those, but it is not quite right. I am talking this out on the blog in the hope that, even if I don't come up with the right phrase now, hashing it out in type will help me come up with the right phrase later.
This is the sort of a writing problem that I keep running into, finding just the right phrase to make my desired point. It is part of why I take so very darn long to write - I spent 20 minutes or more wrestling with the construction problem and I have taken under 5 minutes to dash out this blog entry.
I need to get this just right because I am moving from a discussion of the several modes of Christian union (Baptist, amalgamating, reconstructionist) to a discussion of Tocqueville and unity in diversity. It will finish with a look at Winthrop Hudson's argument about 19th-century Americans revising the arguments made by 16th century Protestants. I need to indicate that this is many people, that they are at the center of the benevolent movement, and that they are influential but are not as normative as they think they are.
I feel tired and stupid. I am going to go read some easy fiction and try this writing problem again in the morning.
And so to read.
In bed a little after 10:00, slept about 10:30 to 7:30, or 9 hours. I still wanted more, but this helps me cut down on that sleep debt.
I woke in the middle of a very strange dream. I remember that it was set near my undergraduate college, but there were woods and rolling hills, and some of my high school teachers there. The last part, before I woke, J and I were in a red sports car with right hand drive. The baby was in the back seat. J was driving along a rolling green path through the woods - like the clearcut under a power line. She had at one point rolled the car onto two side wheels - like a boat heeling into the wind - and I was trying to convince her to flatten it out. Meanwhile I was hiked out over the car door. It was a very strange dream.
Breakfast and played with the baby. J made thin coffee. I threw out the rest of the pot and made some bitter strong coffee. The older the beans get, the harder it is to make good coffee. Mine is too strong for her, hers is too weak for me, and it gets more and more stale and more and more bitter as we go along.
Note, I got very dizzy after getting out of bed, a little dizzy after getting up from the floor. In both cases it was the physical dizzy that comes from standing up too quickly, and in both cases I had swung my legs and gone directly from prone to vertical. Keep an eye on this, back when I was fighting that cold I was also getting dizzy when I stood up quickly.
I have cued up the vinyl lp with Ormandy's version of Beethoven's 9th on the turntable. I will be working on the kitchen table while I listen to it. I have been on a major music kick the last few days, ever since I started copying CDs to the computer hard drive. Last night I was playing albums - I had the urge to hear Maddy Prior and June Tabor sing the Agincourt Carol - and here I am doing it again this morning. We have a LOT of old albums.
To do today: Continue the edit pass on chapter 3. Do both a micro-edit, making sure that the sentences and paragraphs say what they ought to say, and a macro-edit, making sure that the argument is clear and can be followed. Also marking footnotes that will need to be extended or completed.
This afternoon J's office has its picnic. There is a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. It is good to know that the weather will maintain its streak of rainy days. Never bet against a streak.
We lined up the floor guy for the first full week in July. That gives us the 4th of July weekend to pull carpets and repaint the baby's bedroom. I am terrified that the house will become a time sink, and yet I want it to be a nice place to live in.
And so to work.
Addendum. Jim Jeffords recently gave a speech at the National Press club where he made many of the same points that I make to my classes when I talk about Bush 43. Bush, like Clinton before him, is a good short-term maneuverer who will say whatever he needs to say to get people to agree with his policy of the moment. There is no consistency, or rather his momentary promises have no relationship to his long term goals.
No more distractions ! Turning off the web browser now.
We are back from J's office picnic. It was fun, baby had a good time, and everyone is tired.
I think it is the sun-sugar-barbecue tired. J was wondering how much of my time I spend tired - I think my dizzies have her worried.
Among other things, we went to the little lake at the JCC campground where the party was held, and we messed around in boats. Baby went in a life jacket, and J and I and one of her co-workers and his honey all took a paddle boat out. The paddles were hard to work so we went back and got a canoe. These were short and tippy canoes, and J decided she was not comfortable being out in one with the baby. I went out again on my own and after about 5 minutes I had a better feel for how to drive them. I could not get my J-stroke to work properly. The canoe was beamy, I was near the middle, there was no rudder, and I am sadly out of practice at driving a canoe. I do like them though.
Had lunch and dinner at the barbecue, baby is having his second dinner now. I do not know what we are doing tonight - I am going to try to stay awake long enough to edit a few more pages.
I mentioned this on the Sunsword forums, that might be part of why I am getting more hits. Use the feedback and say Hi !
And so to proof-reading.
I am working on job applications. Finished one to a community college, now I do one for a 1-year job. My basic job letter is pretty impressive. I surprised myself with it. Now to go fine-tune it yet again.
And so to work.
Stanley Fish has an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the way that people confuse First Amendment rights with the irresponsible decision to publish distasteful views in a private forum. He argues that you have no right to be heard in any particular forum, you simply have the right to NOT have your speech restricted by government or law.
I like his stuff, even when I disagree with him. In this case I think he neglects the difference between publications that are intended as open forums and publications that are serving a specific community or purpose. He would argue that many of the publications whose editors claim to be open forums are actually serving specific communites and purposes and that the editors have lost track of what it is they are supposed to be doing.
Ted K.
Spent the afternoon doing housework, running to the library and the bank, and starting on the final edit pass on chapter 3. Parts of the chapter are very smooth, parts make my head hurt. And this is after making, what, a dozen, two dozen, edit passes over this material over the last 6 years. I am a slow writer not just because I am distractable and not just because I have trouble formulating my ideas, but also because my prose often sucks. I have trouble seeing problems in my own prose, practice should improve it a little.
I checked out the video of Uncle Tom's Cabin from the library. Started watching it to see if there was a 5-minute section I could use as an in-class document to spark discussion. It is true to the Tom plays of the nineteenth century - that is to say that it hits the famous highlights of the story, is over acted and emotional, and it approaches the stylized presentation and dialogue of a kabuki play. I had to turn it off about the time that Topsy showed up.
Also checked out a new novel, well new to me - Niven and Pournelle and Barnes Legacy of Heorot. I have resisted spending money on it several times in the past few years, library checkout is the right price. Also got John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy. Went to the hold desk and ordered the next two Cornwell Sharpe novels, will not pick those up until this chapter is out the door. I also held the first volume of Anais Nin's diaries and a set of her essays. I am enjoying this blogging thing, I am enjoying reading Pepys diary each day, my current light non-fiction is Franklin's letters. I think I should read Nin and see another approach to diary writing, introspection, and editing.
I still have not finished Franklin, and I bogged down in the first volume of Robert Caro's biography sequence on Lyndon Johnson. Caro's Johnson is just not all that attractive of a person; I have absolutely no compelling reason to continue to read about the slimeball. I will keep renewing it, and plugging away in it, but I doubt that I will finish all three current volumes of the biography in my spare time over the summer.
And so to bed, very tired. J sez I get to take the hound out for a pee first.
Slept 3:00 to about 7:30. Slept in and did not want to move, asked J to take the baby this morning because I was unsure of my ability to drive.
Last night after the last blogging I read Eric Flint's Mother of Demons as an e book. Was still not sleepy so surfed around for a while, then got the laundry out of the dryer and went to bed. I probably could have gone to sleep at 10:30, but stayed for the laundry and got a second wind. I HAVE to be productive today.
TTD:
more laundry
cook dinner
job applications
library returns
review chapter 3, am tired so might do footnotes before argument.
My subscription to Earth and Beyond lapsed yesterday. I have not played in a week, I will wait until I really want a game before I renew that. I might renew something else to be a background game and web-browsing replacement.
And so to walk the dawg.
Took baby to see J and her choir sing. Was fun, although baby and I spent a lot of the time out in the lobby. Baby is remarkably cute, he was a big hit as usual.
The room is acoustically dead, J sez. This would explain why most of the choirs sounded a little flat and a little muddy from in back where baby and I were hanging out.
Home, got distracted reading elf only inn - another fun webcomic. Stayed up too late.
Now to bed
Was tired most of the day. Had a half-pot of coffee (20 oz, brewed half-caff) prepared as cafe au lait. This current crop of French Roast does that nicely, and now that the coffee is a little stale the milk helps cover up the stale taste.
Graded papers, planned class, did not get around to working on job applications.
While grading I was copying our cd collection to my hard drive. I got about 40 cds copied as a background task. I made a long post on the Sunword forums about the differences between digital music on the hard drive and cd music on the stereo. The gist of it was that it is convenient to have music available at 3 clicks of a mouse, but for serious listening the stereo sounds better, as it should since it cost about as much and is a dedicated device with MUCH bigger speakers.
I also put in my musings about the differences between digital music and digital books. Basically, several small publishers like Baen and National Book Press have been putting full copies of books online as free electronic downloads. What they have found is that having the full text of part of their catalog online has markedly increased sales of their full catalog, including the items that are on line. People are reading books or excerpts online and then recommending or buying to read for real, or buying the backlist of those authors. It is a low-cost way for the press to share its work and keep the in-print backlist in the public eye.
Eric Flint argues in his column on the Baen books web page that this is because a printed book offers a meaningful added value over an electronic edition. You read more easily, retain more information, and conceptually a book is a brick you hold in your hand and view all at once while a document is a string that extends above or below you and you view in small chunks.
John Dvorack, in this weeks column in PC Magazine argues that the music industry has already lost the battle over electronic file sharing of CD music and that their only bet is to copy the movie people and create high cost, large size, DVDs with extensive added values. Just as CDs were not shared over dialup lines or stored on old hard drives, Dvorack thinks that DVDs will not be shared over the current broadband internet or saved on current hard drives. He is assuming that the internet will not have any dramatic increases in bandwidth in the next 10 years, I do not know how good of an assumption that is.
I was wondering what added values a hardcopy CD actually offers. Janis Ian argues that it is more convenient to buy the CD than it is to download it from Napster/Kazaa, and she has a point. She also points out that the first thing she does with a new cd is drop it in the computer and make 2 copies, one for her honey and one for the car. It used to take 45 minutes to tape an album, it takes what, 3 minutes, to duplicate an audio CD.
For me, the hardcopy CD has liner notes, unless it is a cheap re-issue without any liner notes. It has the music in a single discrete quantity - I tend to play whole cds rather than burn a cd with the mix I think I want to play. Folks who use multi-disk players and a shuffle program would see less benefit to having a discrete group of tunes. A hardcopy CD was easier to copy, it is only now that I have a new computer that I have enough disk space to bother copying music to the hard drive.
Back to the diary.
Taught tonight. I was tired, almost fell asleep in the car while driving over. Stopped at the library and finally (I hope) got the readings put on reserve. It never happened last week. Checked out Tolkein's The Hobbit as a book on tape for my commute. I appear to be on a Tolkein binge at the moment.
I left my lecture notes on the printer, so I had to wing it. I spent too long on transportation revolution, commercial revolution, made it through Jackson but did not get into Jacksonian politics. Had a soda while teaching so I could drive home safely.
Home, J wanted a snuggle. Had some sandwiches then went and snuggled. There is laundry in the dryer so I am blogging this and copying a couple more CDs.
Finished a James Jones novel earlier today, A Touch of Danger, and I am now out of fiction to read on the can. That means I go back to the local library tomorrow. Even a good writer like Jones fall prey to the conventions of his genre. The cute young lady who charms the old cynical hero and is getting ready to re-start her life - as expected - was murdered by the villain 2/3 of the way through the novel. What I want to read next is to re-read Robert Frezza's novels. They are in a box at the back of the storage area, I will not see them for a while yet.
And so to check the laundry
Slept 12:30 to 7:00. I really wanted more sleep - stayed in bed from the 6:15 alarm and the 6:30 baby-waking all the way till 7:00, and even then moved slowly and had racoon eyes.
Today I grade, I work on job applications, and I prep classes and readings. I want to hit the local library to return things and the CC library to get a new book on tape.
I am copying a few cds to my music folder on the PC. So far, after listening to a couple, it is very clear that the real stereo has much better sound quality. It should. I think I might like the convenience of having a mediocre boombox with a large library of music already loaded. For example, I have had Boiled in Lead's version of "As I Roved Out" running through my head for a while, now it is a few clicks away.
I am putting a new sound card and perhaps new speakers on my wish list. It will be a while, though, before I set up the computer by the stereo and start digitizing our vinyl collection.
And so to work (soundtrack at the moment, Bill Morrisey Inside
Slept 12:40 to 6:30, about 6 hours. I do have trouble sleeping after I teach. Perhaps I could have gone to sleep earlier though.
Dropped baby off at day-care, had breakfast, now to work.
Things to do today:
write
grade homework
start job applications
pick up baby at 4:30
a little housework
exercise
YAY, finished this edit pass and printing out Chapter 3. From here it looks like I have a day or so of work on the footnotes and to make sure things flow, then I can kick it to my advisor and my second reader.
After I finished thickening Johnson there was not much else to do other than add footnotes. The last 20 pages were most remarkably clean.
I emailed my second reader to warn him that a chapter is coming next week.
Off for a bowl of ice cream.
A so so day. Bad sleep is killing me.
Had a nap for about an hour this morning, that gave me enough energy to be unproductive. I should be working with Richard Mentor Johnson and the Sabbath mails controversy of 1828-30. All I have done so far is some biographical work on Johnson, my advisor somehow convinced himself that Johnson was Postmaster General. He was not.
Spent some time doing background work on John Newland Maffit. I do sort of want to do my next project on Maffit. But, that was not the best use of my time. I need to dig into the files and find the Post Office Papers, which are on old photocopy paper and smell bad.
Had some tea after lunch, that should help a little. The really annoying thing is that I am sure I would get my second wind around late afternoon, exactly when I am due to go fetch the baby.
I have had a lot of hits today. Either I have readers, or J is surfing my web page, or I should not have mentioned the word n a k e d on a earlier post.
And back to work
Not my best day. I was tired from yesterday. Did some work on chapter 3, mostly thinking about Ely and Johnson. I made it up to Sunday Mails then stopped.
Prepped class, did not make the time to finish grading - in part because I forgot that I had left it undone. I need to grade tomorrow.
We heard from the seller. He wants to move the closing up from July 31 to June 30. Our offer letter said we were willing to go earlier, and we are. J is lining up the mortgage people, I am talking to the contracters. So far it looks like June 30 will be no trouble to do.
We have not yet decided if we will continue to keep this apartment through August and give me a separate working space for as long as possible, or if we will try to get out. Right now I am leaning towards the extra month - we would move my desk to the new house July 1, move in early August, and I would move my desk back to the apartment until the lease expires at the end of August. But, that only makes sense if I am in a writing frenzy and finishing up. I can be, but only if I concentrate more.
Class went OK. It was too much lecture and I tired them out. A lot of the weaker students have not shown up in 2 classes - am I being to hard? going to fast?
I almost caught up, am only about 40 minutes behind schedule. Thursday is Andrew Jackson and the 2nd party system. That is always a good one.
Home, changed to pajamas, had a sandwich, now I am hoping that I really am sleepy.
And so to bed
Up too late last night. In bed 4:15 to 7:30, slept about 4:30 to 7:15, call it 3 hours.
Yesterday I got a lot of work done early, a little work done in the middle, and a surprising amount of work during my second wind. It was a writing day; I have been revising the sag in the middle of chapter 3. I spent the morning thinking about the sag, coming up with a new approach, and patching the early sections.
Later on I got into the relationships between Christian Union and Civil Religion, tying them together with the notion that while folks shared a belief in Providence they differed on how to implement it. I am distinguishing between high and broad again, this time with Providence and the national covenant.
I made it to the gym, finally. It has been over a month since my last real workout, although I had one crappy workout in between. I am soft, weak and out of shape. I also lost 3 pounds, probably because I cut back on my food and lost some muscle mass. Gym weight 175.0, after shower was 172 even (weight without clothes.)
Was a little workout, I got out of the house late but made myself go exercise rather than slacking off AGAIN and just making dinner.
Home, dinner was leftover chicken fingers on hot dog buns. J made a GOOD spice rub the other day. I was not home till a little after 8:00 - the dry cleaner closed while I was at the gym. J washed the baby while I ate.
I then wrote for a while and then got a second wind. I almost went to bed with J at 11:00, but decided to look at Ezra Stiles Ely one more time.
I got a mess done, and every time I thought I was at a stopping point and could go to bed I was either not sleepy or thought of something more. I also read a chunk of an online novel between writing passes, that kept me awake while I came up with more things to say about E.S. Ely.
Slept in this morning, breakfast (wheaties with fresh strawberries, english muffin with my strawberry jam) and so to work. Taking Niacin in the morning again - I need to call Dr. L and see if I am messing up the effectiveness of the medicine by taking it in the morning and not at bedtime. This time I am giving 30 minutes for the aspirin to kick in before taking the niacin pill.
We are low enough on strawberries that I might get another half-flat and make more jam.
And so to work.
To bed around 11:00. Slept 11:30 to 6:30, wanted to stay in bed. About 7 hours of sleep.
Yesterday, Sunday, was a day of errands and baby and rest. I did not write, I did not try to write, I did not read, I did not do work. It has been a long time since I took a day completely off. I did snuggle with J, run errands, go grocery shopping, and make more jam.
Last night's jam was strawberry: 2 quarts berries --> 5 cups mashed berries, 1 packet pectin, 7 cups sugar, the grated zest of about half a lemon. I heated it too hard after adding the sugar and it boiled over. It was slow to set, but seems to have set OK in all jars but one. The refrigerator jam set nicely - I got about 2 cups more jam than the recipe called for. I suspect that my 5 cups of mashed berries were closer to 5 1/2 cups of mashed berries - those were very large quarts. J helped by hulling the berries - she will help with jam when she thinks she will like the results.
This morning, I had some more of the refrigerator jam. It is a very good "light fresh" strawberry. It is not the complex front of the mouth flavor of the best Breedens berries, but it is tasty. Last night, when the jam was frothy on top and appeared not to be setting, I resolved to buy a flat of fresh California berries today and make more jam. I feel less driven towards doing that today, although lets see how I feel when I go out to deal with dry cleaning.
Things to do today:
Write
Prep class for Tuesday
Dry cleaning
Laundry
Exercise - I mean it this time.
buy berries and make more strawberry jam (maybe)
And so to work.
Diary entry,
June 7, 2003, 9:07 am.
Slept 11:40 to 6:30 or so, call it 7 hours. I read a Cornwell novel last night after coming home, I have found the formula in them but they are still entertaining and compelling mind candy. J gave me quite the evil tone of voice as she went to bed around 10:30, it looked like I was going to follow a night of no sleep with a night of staying up reading. Almost went to bed after chapter 8, but went ahead and finished it.
I had been feeling the lack of fiction; I do not know if it was a cause or a symptom of my lack of ability to concentrate the second half of this week, I do hope that I will be able to get a lot more done over the weekend and at the start of next week.
Yesterday was pretty much a lost day. I decided on no naps and no caffeine in order to get my system back on track, and that meant that I was slow, distractable, and largely incompetent for most of the day. I spent yesterday morning grading, and took hours to do 40 minutes of work. I got distracted at lunchtime and read blogs instead of going to feed myself. Finally in the afternoon I got out of the house, hit the library and the barber, and got the baby.
Last night we went out for dinner. Neither of us wanted to cook, neither of us wanted to eat what we had. We went to the local seafood joint. I broke my diet. Had a bowl of crab bisque (tasty, tomato-cream sauce), and a broiled swordfish that had been browned with a pat of butter. There were double-fried potato wedges on the side - much fat content for Ted. J had grouper, it was mediocre. Baby was a big hit. Afterwards we went shopping for baby clothes, a fun Friday night on the town yep.
This morning woke up, took the hound, had a bite of breakfast. I am trying something new. Instead of taking my niacin at bedtime I waited and took it as I brushed my teeth this morning. I figured that instead of having the pills keep me awake all night, why not have them keep me awake in the day and then I might sleep well at night. So far, taking it on an empty stomach, I have had a little bit of flushing. Most of that went away after I ate breakfast. If I am going to take morning pills I will need to get one of those 7-day pillboxes and take pills AFTER I eat.
Showered - I still had prickly hair on my shoulders, and then to work. Still wrestling with civil religion. I fear I see Tevye in this section, I will need to pick one thing and say it clearly. Blogger is down, wrote this on Wordperfect for later insertion.
9:15am
Had an ok day. Got through one sticking point, started work on clarifying my discussion of Christian union. Partway through the afternoon stopped being productive, moved to housework.
Fixed the broken drawer
repotted basil
made blueberry jam (after dinner)
called the seller, he might want to move closing up. We said we could do that.
talked with one of the ac guys, he will come by after we take posession and see if the ducts will handle return air volumes. Ground floor should, second floor probably won't. Is it worth putting in central air that will barely cool the upstairs?
J did a mess of house cleaning, boxing things, vacuuming floor.
J cooked dinner, we had a tasty chile.
Now to read a little and then to bed.
Sleepy already. I did not sleep well last night.
After blogging I thought about a snack but was not hungry, or so I thought. Spent a few minutes, ok, an hour, doing a vanity search because I was curious. It turns out I found a dozen links to a FAQ I wrote 5 years ago and have not touched since, and I found half a dozen links to the conference paper I gave 3 years ago. I need to publish more.
finally decided that I needed a snack if I was to sleep, had 2 bowls of not-cheerios, then read Sports Consecrated until sleepy. To bed at 2:20, was finally falling asleep at 2:40 when the baby woke. He had been sleeping sideways and then got himself tangled in the bed bumper and his larger bear. I straightened him, he was cranking, so I changed the diaper and walked him for a little while, then put him back in bed and rocked the crib. I then to bed, and J took over crib-rocking as baby grumped his way to sleep. I probably fell asleep a little after 3:00, woke at 7:05 after J let me sleep in.
Just dropped of baby at daycare, I have broken my fast, now to start my day.
Busy day, errands and writings. TTD:
Call seller, arrange for contracter visit on Monday
Call handyman, reserve some of his time in early August.
Haircut
Re-pot seedlings
go to the gym, exercycle and maybe some light lifting.
grade homework and one paper
decide what grade to give the oral exam
get through the conceptual block on page 18 and get back to editing. I have NOT gotten enough done this week.
But, I am once again allowed coffee. I will make a half-pot when I want one.
And so to my day
Writing this down so I remember it.
I asked bad questions on the midterm.
I asked: "Ever since the first settlers arrived in the new world, all the American colonies ever wanted was freedom and independence" Agree or disagree with this statement. Explain what the colonists wanted.
I should have asked: "Ever since the first settlers arrived in the new world, all the American colonies ever wanted was freedom and independence" Explain why this statement is wrong. What did the first settlers want and how did they come to the point of declaring independence.
I asked: Compare and Contrast Bacon's Rebellion and Shays's Rebellion. Were the two movements fundamentally similar or fundamentally different?
I should have added: Be sure to discuss the causes, conduct, and consequences of each rebellion.
For some reason when I write a question I have trouble proof-reading it and I have trouble reading it as a student would. I only really know what I should have asked until I go to explain the question to the class or, sometimes, until I start grading the question. Practice Practice Practice, and perhaps work harder at writing them early and having J proof-read them for clarity.
And so to lunch.
oh, had a cup of coffee late morning. So far no reflux. YAY. I missed coffee, even though our coffee has gone stale from not being used.
Was a little late out the door.
Stopped at the CC to sign papers for classes next fall, had forgotton to mail back their form and then misplaced it. It turns out they had another opening for me. I will be teaching US part 2 on Mondays and Fridays at 8:30 in the morning, US part 1 on Monday afternoon at one site and on Wednesday afternoon at another location. Tuesdays and Thursdays are clear.
I also decided to apply for a 1-year position at a place about 150 minutes away (132 miles). If I get it I will just make sure to have no Monday morning or Friday afternoon classes, get a cheap apartment there, and come home for the weekends. J sez she can live with that for a year, especially if I take the hound with me during the week. It is worth spending the time to apply, especially since I have to update my materials to apply for the coastal community college job.
Class went OK.
I spent an hour before class giving an oral exam to a student who choked on the midterm. She did ok on the identifications, not so well on explaining the essay - I just asked her the same questions she had studied but let her talk her way through the answers rather than having to put it in writing. She garbled half the essay, I need to decide between a C and a D for the whole thing. But, considering that her blue book would have been an F, we are not so bad. I spent some time after class talking about study tricks. She wants to do well, but work is crazy and she is a single mom. It is frustrating watching someone with a strong drive, little recent academic experience, and very little free time. I suggested that she try taping the lectures, and that she double up notes with someone.
For class, we spent the first 90 minutes watching the PBS video of A Midwife's Tale. It is a dramatization of the Laura Ulrich history that won the Bannister a few years ago. I keep forgetting just how sad it is - I had to pull out the hankie once or twice. It is also marvelously rich.
After a break we then talked about the 1790s. I made it through Hamilton's financial program, then tried to do the French Revolution in 10 minutes. Too much detail and I bogged down on the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies. Should have skipped ahead to Gironde and Jacobins.
After class talked for 40 minutes with another of the students. She wanted to go over her midterm and see why it was a C (fuzzy prose, and she left out half the essay, good ideas). Then we went over today's homework. It was a darn good question: "Who do you admire more, Hamilton or Jefferson?" and she had done a mess of research to write it. She found herself admiring Jefferson and wanting to know more - I ended up suggesting Kolchin on Slavery, Merrill Peterson's old 1-volume biography and the LOA edition of Jefferson's Writings. She is a very smart lady who has been out of school for many years.
We talked about precision in language. I had been correcting her language all the way through, and we had been laughing and joking about my giving her a hard time. I then gave her the mini-lecture about thoughts and speech. We think, at least for complicated things, in words . Our thought is only as precise and nuanced as our language. If you want to think well and think precisely, then you have to use words precisely and make sure that your words say no more and no less than exactly what you mean. This is something that lasts, if my students take away nothing but an interest in history, an awareness of change over time, and more precise habits of writing and speech, then I will have succeeded in teaching the survey. The stuff, the dates and names and stories, is actually secondary. Interest, change, and precision all last for years after formal education ends. She got quiet at that. I don't know if I was preaching and condescending, or if I hit a nerve. Perhaps both.
Then home, listening to more Lord of the Rings on tape. The Fellowship is heading home. The more I listen to this, the more I think that Tolkein is much better when read out loud. In print, I go too quickly and move on past the language when in fact the language, stiff and archaic and stilted at times, is the whole point of the books. The more I listen to this, the less I am looking forward to the new movie. I suspect that I will see it, but Peter Jackson's decision to garble the plot, mis-read Theoden, and totally destroy the personality and narrative of the triangle between Eowyn, Aragorn, and Arwen was just a bad decision. It left a bad taste in my mouth then, it makes me not want to see what other damage he will have done to the story.
Now to have a quick snack, not too large, and then to bed. I think a bowl of generic cheerios and a bit of Sports Consecrated will make a good calm-down.
Oh, and no problems with reflux after drinking coffee earlier today. J thinks it was stress-induced followed by the turmoil that lingers after anything that upsets a stomach. Perhaps.
ps, this was a good long blogging.
I just took a nap. I was not focusing, it was not going well, I said to heck with it and went back to bed at 9:30. The odd thing is that I did not sleep, I just lay there and rested and thought about Civil Religion and the changes I am making on chapter 3.
I had talked about Providence, and I had talked about the way that, for some Presbyterians, Providence required a very narrow set of theology and doctrine. now I need to broaden the idea, I think the way to do that is to return to a discussion of the state church roots of American denominations, Paul Conkin stuff, and talk about the links between religion and civil behavior. I still have a tricky transition to get out of narrow-minded bigotry, I might have written that the other day and forgotten about it.
Now that I am up, taking a shower and, I think, I AM going to make some coffee. I am tired of not getting things done. If there were a pill that I could take to make myself more focused, I would take it. If coffee might do the trick, I will risk my tummy. I may regret these words.
And so to shower.
Slept 12:30 to 6:30. I think I get a nap mid-morning.
Yesterday was distractable. I did not get a lot of my work done, even though I got a bit of housework done. I graded some, looked at the dissertation, but wasted several hours not writing, not able to concentrate. Finally got a few essays graded after J went to bed, I seem to get a second wind around 9:30 or 10:00 at night.
Today I get to finish grading, finish prep for class, nap, shower, perhaps get a haircut but I doubt it. I need to head out at 2:30 at the latest, so start heading out at 2:00 so I will have time to walk the hound.
Oh, and we have another grey rainy day although the weather report calls for a little sun this afternoon. Still, I have the blahs.
I find myself wondering if yesterday would have been more productive with some caffeine, it probably would have. I have not had reflux in several days, I am looking forward to going back to coffee. Doctor L won't like to hear that, like many doctors she is anti-caffeine, anti-coffee.
My cold is much better, my sore throat is much better. I need to get back to the gym again, I have just stopped going between overwork, sick baby, and sick Ted.
Well, lets get a little work done.
Slept 10:45 to 6:15, call it 7 and a half hours. That was the first night of uninterrupted sleep I have had in a long time. I still wanted more, but made myself get up.
For a change it is a grey, rainy day. Just like 18 of the last 20 days or so it seems. It is a good day to drink coffee and read novels and pet the cat. I will drink water and write and ignore the cat other than going to buy her more cat food.
I have the baby today, dropped him off at daycare then came back to start my day. TTD today: cleaners, call about cat food, calls for house, write, grade, cook dinner, perhaps do a quick groceries run. I will be babysitting tonight also as J is going for a choir rehearsal.
And so to work
FEH, Blogger does not render properly in Mozilla and I can't find the publish button.
Spent the mid-day wrestling with class prep and writing. I know I did things, I just forget what they were. I am very tired now.
I had a nap around 2:00, walked the dog, headed out.
Dropped things off at the print shop, went to drop of an exam for the student who is out of town this week, found out I had left the printed-off exams back home, bother. Went to the library, arranged my reserve readings, then off to the computer lab to pull the study sheet off my email and write the exam again. Dropped that off and discovered that I had forgotten to mention to the kids that I would be providing the blue books. One of them panic'd and has been running around like a headless chicken trying to get a book to write her exam in.
Made it to class a few minutes early. As often happens, only 5 folks were there at starting time. They decided that exam first, class time second would be easier on their minds. So, that is what we did. Slowest writer was 80 minutes, fastest writer was 60 minutes, they had the questions in advance and there were not that many of them. I expect it was an easy exam except for the person who had a brain freeze. She talked to me, and we are doing an oral exam on Thursday afternoon.
Then talked about the paper. I spent so much time on everything else, I forgot to clean up the question itself. I HAVE to get better about that. They talked me out of another week to write it, 3 weeks instead of 2. I was late getting the topic to them, and agreed.
Started in on the early republic. Just did the Northwest territory and then talked about Jefferson and Hamilton. I am not doing my 80 minute Jefferson lecture this time, but I am plugging bits and pieces of TJ and Ham and Mad and GW into the classes.
My throat is bothering me, I got very tired while giving the exam, and I am tired now. The left side of my throat is sore, so sore that my upper left teeth hurt. After getting home I had some Wheaties and milk, and that helped. Going to go lie in bed, if I wake up or can't sleep then I will have had a nap and should feel shart enough to grade.
Oh, the baby is painfully cute as I write this. He has turned in his sleep and is now crossways across the crib with one foot up a little on the crib bumber. If we did not think that the flash would wake him, we would take a picture.
And so to bed.
Slept from about 1:00 to about 7:00, with a break around 2:00 when the baby had a coughing fit in his sleep. Went to bed around 12:40 after staying up prepping class and trying to punch my new acetates for their binder. Our 3-ring punch is broken, will either get a new one or give the acetates to J and ask her to use her office's big punch.
Woke up tired, we all slept in. Baby started coughing about 2:00, J gave him cough medicine in his sleep, but he was still grumping and coughing. She could not sleep either - her eye is itching - so she got up and sat in the rocking chair for a while. Baby went vertical, stopped coughing, and fell asleep in her arms. She is afraid she has conjunctivitis, caught from the baby.
Had a slow moving morning, did not get to work till after 9:00. Burned a CD for J, she had been unable to use VPN to get the things she had been working on last night to get uploaded again. Graded papers, prepped folders for class. Still need to print things out, decide how to copy the first half of the packet, and get to campus early enough to drop off the second half of the packet for copying and put materials on reserve at the library. At least the exam is ready.
Working on page 17 again, right now I have too much stuff in there. I will cut it back once I know where I am going.
And back to work (my scalp itches)
I can not sleep. I itch, not all over, but almost all over, spot to spot to spot. Why? I have been scratchey for a couple of days and it has gotten worse. First my back, now my knees, and my sides, and my scalp. Did I shower too hot? Am I getting allergic to our detergent? Is it just stress-related, perhaps a change of pace from the reflux? Oh, the reflux has not bothered me for a couple of days. This is good.
Woke up scratchey, no, got out of bed scratchey - never fell asleep - when the baby cried. Re-binkied him, wrote another couple of sentences that I had been thinking about.
Now to try to go back to bed.
Got some things done on the revised page 17, just plugging quotes in but it is something.
Found a job offer, spent half an hour looking at it, decided it was not a good place to try to move to in September of this year. In fact, if I see other jobs for this fall I should only bother researching things that are close enough that we won't have to move or wonderful enough that we won't mind living apart for a few months as we sell the house we just agreed to buy.
Tired, and so to bed. I still need to prep for the class part of tomorrow (more on First Congress, making the Early Republic work.)
While thinking about commonwealth ideals I found another interesting blog. I tried to add it to my template but it is not publishing. Perhaps if I put something in.
Oh, I did decide to turn commonwealth ideals into Christian republicanism and civil religion. I will need to define civil religion.
Also, remember to include the grading rubric in the packet for the kids tomorrow.
and back to work (took a break to bathe the baby)
Yesterday I worked some, I watched the baby a lot, I worked some, I cooked dinner, I did dishes, I watched the baby, I worked a little. I got sleepy.
I slept poorly last night, should have gone to bed at 9:45 with J, instead I stayed up to get a little more done. Did get a little more done, but when I got unproductive and went to bed around 10:30 I found that I could not sleep. J was snoring, and I did not want to mess with her sleep after her hard week. So I grabbed a book and a glass of milk and moved to the couch. Finished Franklin's Autobiography, drank milk, tried to fall asleep there. I could hear the neighbor's stero and the couch was too soft. Around 11:30 went back to bed, no dice, up again by midnight. Played some E&B till 1:00, then read 19th century political cartoons from Harper's Weekly's web site, was thinking about going back to bed but baby started to cough. Gave him cough medicine around 2:00, a little before, finally got to bed at 3:00am. Had trouble falling asleep.
So, this morning, J is up bright and early, pokes me at 6:15, and wonders why I did not want to wake up. Slept in until 7:05, after getting up to change the baby. Walked the dog, played with dog and baby, read the news online, now heading to start my day. I think I get caffeine today, I have not decided on tea or cocoa.
To do today:
Finish planning the second paper for US1. Current thought is to look at Bleeding Sumner and the 1856 Presidential election.
Drop off rent at the office.
Go to the bank
Drop off book review at Fed-Ex pickup.
Prep class for tomorrow
Figure out how to handle the commonwealth ideal on page 17 of chapter 3.
Either naps or caffeine, but not both and not a lot of either.
And so to break my fast.
I just checked schedules. If I want to graduate in the Summer semester, I have to turn in a completed, SIGNED dissertation on August 1. That gives me 2 months to revise 4 chapters, get them to readers, make changes, and organize a defense. It is not going to happen, but I do want to drive to get to the defense by the end of August.
And here I spent all today being tired and stupid from poor sleep habits, and working on the second paper topic for BCC. That thing has eaten too many hours of my time this weekend. I hope I will be sharp enough tonight to start working through commonwealth ideals.
I should cook, but I am not hungry. I never did go to the gym. I did have a powerful 40 minute nap with following 20 minutes of maziness - I just got pole-axed around 3:20. I had been listening to Return of the King in the car, and orcs were arguing in nasty voices. I dreamed of, of all things, Charlie Brown and Linus working in a sweatshop driven by the Orcs from the guard tower at the start of book 6. Charlie Brown was hopeless, while Linus could fold garments perfectly. I have no idea what this meant. I also have no idea why I can nap just fine on that couch but I could not fall asleep on it last night. Perhaps it is that I was being poleaxed this afternoon and restless last night.
And so to commonwealth ideals.