You can tell, probably, that my first quarter of grad school ended recently...May was a pretty dry month here, but rest assured that lots of writing was happening elsewhere. Almost 20 pages of high-quality academic prose flew from my computer in the 2 weeks before Mother's Day.

Results? Straight A's, for the first time ever. I've always been a decent A/B student, but this was a nice surprise and good validation that I'm in the right place. Lesson learned, though: grad school is not the place to be putting off papers until the end of the quarter. Turns out that at 40, sleeping is so much more important than it used to be.

The summer quarter is underway, and I'm already looking forward to seeing the rest of my cohort in August—it's really weird to start the quarter without seeing your classmates or meeting the instructors, but that just makes for a more joyous reunion/introduction later, I figure.

Posted at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Or, what I did this weekend.

Pacifica held a conference on Myth & Politics this weekend that I was fortunate enough to attend. There's so much to think about on this topic, especially in a hot election season, but a couple of things really stood out for me so far (looking at notes):

• I need to find some way in the midst of all the reading I'm already doing for school to tutor myself on the Classics (as in the ancient Greeks). There were a lot of references in the talks to Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, et al, and while they came with enough context to understand, there's clearly a wealth of material there that would be good to know in the context of my graduate program.
• I should not be allowed anywhere near a bookstore run by Pacifica. They ported a good chunk of the campus bookstore over to this event, and as usual, I walked away with many more books than I currently have time to read.
• More seriously, Glen Slater gave a really insightful talk about fundamentalism. I keep rolling over in my mind his main thesis that fundamentalism, at its core, is not a religious enterprise. It is rather (in his formulation) an attempt to fill in the missing mythos in our culture that the rationality of the Enlightenment introduced—a turning of the mythos into logos by insisting on the factuality of the myth (as in biblical literalism).

All of the presentations were strong and they covered a lot of ground on the topic. I took a lot of notes, but am hopeful that Pacifica or the speakers will make the papers they presented available; the level of thought and references were deep, and I would love another chance to read through them.

Posted at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Or, why it's easy to find the time for creation when you don't watch TV.

That's a bit flip, but this talk by Clay Shirky does point out the amazing resources we have at our disposal (on an individual and cultural level) when we make conscious choices about how to spend time.

Money quote: "Media that is targeted at you but that doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for."

I gave up cable over 12 years ago, and with rare exceptions, have not looked back. I watch a little TV on DVD, but making things & having interactive experiences seems so much more fun that I don't miss it too much. One thing I wish Shirky had addressed a little more, though, was the extent to which other passive activities (reading blogs, watching YouTube) has taken the place of TV without increasing participation. It's my particular blind spot, and one I'm trying to address as my time becomes more compressed.

So, how would you like to spend your time?

Posted at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After a couple of hard weeks of studying & work, I went to Vega$ with some friends this weekend to blow off steam...it's amazing how much it's changed since I was last there 8 years ago. The food is a lot better, for one thing; I definitely got to fulfill my foodie jones at a couple of very nice places (Table 10, I'm talking to you!) Also got to see the Cirque du Soleil "Love" show, which features remixed Beatles tunes. It was an amazing show—very rich, full of whimsy & wonder, and the soundtrack, of course, was tops.

Beyond that, the Strip didn't hold a lot of allure, so my buddy Angus and I took a cab out to the Pinball Museum, and aside from the Cirque show, it was the highlight of the weekend, a gem hidden inside a strip mall. There were over 100 machines from the looks of it, and I played a good chunk of them in complete joy. Pinball and I go way back (~1973), and it was great to see and play some old favorites. Here are a couple of videos to give you the flavor of the place:

A walkthrough of the museum

Me attempting to play Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

Posted at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When it comes to ants, I feel like Vishnu: "I am death, destroyer of worlds." We suffer from periodic invasions of ants in the house, usually in the bathroom or kitchen, and when they decide to visit, they bring the whole family, usually thousands. So we stomp, spray, erect barriers of essential oils, until finally it's too much and we lay down huge puddles of Terro for them to take back to the colony. And then we clean up all the bodies, which is when the karmic guilt starts to set in. To these tiny, industrious creatures, I'm no less a monster than Hitler. I may kill them with remorse, but it doesn't keep the Raid can under the sink, if you know what I mean.

I've been thinking about this partly because the colony under the house has been sending up scouts again now that the rain is over, but also because I'm in an interesting quandary about compassion in general and how far I'm willing to extend it. A high school kid came to the door tonight, trying to get me to buy the newspaper or donate to help him go to college. He rattled off the kind of history I would have expected stereotypically (poor kid, mom working hard, deadbeat dad), and after a few minutes of listening to him try to talk me into it I told him "No thanks" for the third or fourth time and shut the door in his face.

So where is my sense of compassion in a moment like this? In one way of looking at it, every such occasion is an opportunity to help, and if I really believe in helping people who are trying to better themselves (and I like to think I do, something shadowy in a Jungian sense there maybe), then I should theoretically be willing to make a donation. And yet I didn't—partly from annoyance, partly from suspicion that it was a scam, and partly from a general rule of not giving out money at my front door. So is it an opportunity wasted, or a chance to exercise appropriate discretion? I think the answer is ultimately yes to both questions, so I'm left with a situation that regardless of my response leaves me feeling dissatisfied with it. A weird way to spend the night.

* Ozymandias, King of Ants

Posted at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found on MetaFilter this morning: Eclectic 2.0 [requires QuickTime]. I have a thing for time-lapse photography and reverse video (see also Sensei Studios, their "Balancing Point" video is amazing), and this piece really took my breath away.

Posted at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

©2008 Lacey Bryant

The title this week is taken from Bright River, which I can't recommend enough. After I mentioned it a few posts back I went back and listened, and the incredible act of imagination that the play represents just blew me away all over again. And then I went to my local caffeination station, where they'd just put a up a new art exhibit, including the painting to the right. To my delight, the artist was enthusiastic about sales, and so I was able to bring this raven home as inspiration for the rest of the quarter. I'm kind of hoping they start to appear in interesting and unexpected places more.

But enough about that. I want to talk about ravens in general.

Raven as a mythical figure has proved surprisingly elusive. You might expect that of a trickster figure, but they seem to enjoy being the subject of stories as a rule, or at least don't bother to cover their tracks much. Raven, on the other hand, is a much more shadowy personage, and alternately held in either high regard or contempt, depending on who you ask. It's one of the reasons I felt so drawn to the painting; the juxtaposition of the raven with a heart seems to point to both meanings at once: the carrion bird with its dinner, and the messenger of the gods, bringing a token of love to some worthy recipient. At least, that's what pops into my mind's eye—what do you see?

Podcast Notes
I was surprised at my level of resistance to doing the podcast...definitely some stuff to work out there about perfectionism. I had a lot of grand plans, and in the end, it was so hard just to get myself to record the voice that I gave in and left it at that. In retrospect, it's exactly what needed to happen. And the Code of Conduct (for those of you in the cohort) came in handy here— I held you in my thoughts, imagining you all sitting across the dining room table (where I recorded this), and somehow it became a lot easier to speak naturally.

The other thing I discovered is just how many times I say "um", breathe loudly, and smack my lips. I also have a new respect for the radio announcers who can do this live—I ended up cutting out almost 45 seconds of audio that was purely that kind of stuff, and it went from 1 long track to 112 snippets to get rid of it. So, without further ado, here is my view of Raven on a sunny Saturday morning:

Listen Up

Posted at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)