LM Montgomery

LM Montgomery was my favorite author when I was a kid. I had, and still have, every book the woman wrote. My favorite was, and still is, The Blue Castle-- which now I know is considered her "adult" novel. This year is the 100 year anniversary of Anne of Green Gables, which was her first "big" hit.

Why do I bring up this childhood remembrance? Because I'm trying to write about Anne in my dissertation. I already wrote this section, but it vanished along with everything else on my hard drive, and so now, I'm hoping that if I ramble on about Anne that I will be able to have my memory refreshed and that I will finally feel more inspired to write.

The question I ask in my dissertation is, Why is Anne still popular after 100 years? Other books that were written in much of the same style at the same time have long since been discarded, but somehow, fans still hang out to Anne? What is her appeal?

I always liked Anne because she was kind of spunky. I think I always thought I was a little spunky, but I don't think that I was. I think that I was just a little bookworm, but I could read about these spunky characters and feel like I knew them enough that they were a little bit a part of me. i think characters like Anne gave me courage. You could know what you wanted and still be likable. You could be smart and popular. But was Anne popular-- not really, she just had her close friends. She just got along well enough with her friends that as a reader you felt like she must be popular. Don't get me wrong-- she wasn't the class reject or anything, but you didn't see others following her trends-- instead, she followed others-- think puffy sleeves and black tresses.

I think Anne still has some appeal because she's a generational character. I can't wait for my daughter to be old enough for me to share Anne with her. And obviously, I am not the only one who felt that way. I was turned onto Anne by a friend of my mother's, an older Canadian lady. Thinking about her now, I realize she was probably a child when Montgomery first wrote the text.

Why do certain books stand the test of time when others just fall by the wayside?

You know you're old when

you start to appreciate silence.
When I was young I would always have music on in my bedroom, and I would want my mom to listen to music when I was in the kitchen or with her in the car, and she would say no. The conversation often went like this.

Me: Can I turn the radio on?
Mom: No
Me: But I want to try to find my favorite song of the minute.
Mom: No, I want to relax
Me: You are so boring, why don't you ever want to listen to music, it's a great way to relax
Mom: No

Then I thought my mom was trying to squelch my fun. Now, as I hear so much noise all day long, I realize she was just trying to hear herself think. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy listening to music, especially while I drive, but now I have also come to appreicate the joys of silence.

drugs are bad

I recently ran into someone that I hadn't seen in a number of years. During that time, this guy had moved away, gotten himself into trouble due to drug used, cleaned up, and moved back to the area. Now, sadly, he is notably "not right." He was always a little introverted, I'm guessing his desire to be more outgoing led to the drug problem in the first place, but now his comprehension is in the toilet. I feel bad for him, but most importantly, I view this as a once again reminder of the dangers of drug abuse.

Yes, this is a little preachy-- but it is true, and it makes me sad to see people throw away their lives because of a moment of fun.

Too busy for what

I haven't been overly academic recently. I've been too busy, too tired, too frustrated. And now, I'm finding that I have the time to get back into these activities, and I'm so out of practice I'm not sure how to do it. So I find myself procrastinating, but I don't even want to procrastinate the ways I usually do, which tells me I need to get my act together and start working.

As for excuses though...

I had a beautiful baby boy-- Nathan Jay-- he's almost 8 weeks old.
My laptop died. Not just a little inconvenient death-- a complete, un-resurrectable death, so I've lost decent amounts of research and writing. (Please do not comment on the importance of backing your stuff up-- I know- I've always known, but I just wasn't as faithful about doing it as I should have been-- I've gotten enough of those well-meaning lectures)

and last but not least...

it's beautiful outside, and who wants to be inside working when she can be outside playing?

Slow posting

I haven't been posting very often this semester-- time seems to be flying by, but I would say that's to be expected. There are only 2 1/2 weeks left of the semester-- that's crazy.

Spring Break

Well, it's spring break, and my goals for this week are not being met-- I had wanted to get so much more done than I am-- but that's always the way. I do have some newfound motivation for writing my disseration though. I'm realizing I just need to get it written. I can revise it, edit it, try to publish it later-- right now I just have to write it. It's hard-- I get writing and then I think I should read up more on this and then I read a new book -- or I read an article that makes me see 3 more books I should have read, but I need to worry about writing it now. So, we'll see if I make my goal by finishing ch 2 by the end of March.

Winter

I can't believe how hard it's snowing today and how cold it is. We haven't had this snowy of a winter for a few years. I think the snow is pretty, but it's the wind that I can do without. The other thing that stinks about it is that I'm getting to pregnant to wear my warmest winter coat-- hopefully winter will end before I outgrow my next warmest coat.

Student Blogs

I have my students write blogs, and I am glad that I do. It gives me a feel for how they feel about class, but more importantly, it helps me to understand their experiences with tutoring. This week a couple of them witnessed a bad tutoring session, and that really disappoints me. I want them to have positive experiences with tutoring--as well as I want the students who come in for tutoring to have a positive experience, so when I hear about a bad one, I get frustrated. The good thing is that if I hear about it early enough I can do my best to do something about it.

Buy Buy Baby

I said that I would post about Buy Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas when I finished reading it, and then I got busy and forgot.

This text made me realize the discrepency between my life as an academic and my life as a parent. I think the only way I can reconcile it is through age-- my work as an academic focuses on how media are affecting older children, not younger-- but I fully realize that the reason media have the influence that it does over older children is because they have been saturated with media since birth.

Thomas talks about how unnecessary television is for toddlers and how actually dangerous it is for babies. She also discusses how unnecessary video games are for children that young-- and I have to believe her. The thing that I think shocked me the most was how well pegged the marketing firms have my generation of parents-- they really know what we want for our kids and they try to market that to us-- it's a little bit scary.

I know this is really just a reference-- my true excitement over the text has worn off, but I think it's important to think about who we are letting tell us what we need.

Productive Weekend

I am happy to say I had a productive weekend. I was able to edit the first chapter of my diss-- I've had the feedback for a while, but I had put it off because I was working on Ch 4. Tomorrow I'll reread all the changes to make sure I think it's all cohesive before I do anything with it. I've also started an interesting book, Buy, Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas-- As I'm sure you can guess by the title that it deals with consumerism and children culture. I'll write more as I read more of the book.

Progress

I did it! I finished a chapter. I get to turn it in to my advisor today, and while I am sure it will need revision, now I can say 2 down just 3 to go. My goal is to write 2 this semester-- I hope that I can do it.

End of the Semester

So, it's the end of the semester--- it's always amazing how fast it goes and how much there is to do at the end. I don't have any interent at home, it's both good and bad-- it was kind of fun to just focus on unpacking yesterday, but now today as I'm realizing how much of my life is connected to online makes me very anxious for the cable guy to come tomorrow and hook up my internet-- not to mention that my daughter really misses watching Mickey Mouse.

bad grades for blogging

I would be getting bad grades for blogging in my class-- I am not living up to my standards.

We closed on our new house, though, so that's exciting. We've been working tons and tons of hours trying to make it livable-- we're moving in on Saturday-- It will be nice to be settled again and not have to think about moving. I realize it will take me some time to feel "settled" but, it will be nice to develop some sort of a routine.

Guilt

Guilt is a funny thing. I want to keep up this blog-- and I make my students write on their blogs twice a week, but I'm not as good about doing it myself. And really, it is that guilt that is making me write tonight.

This weekend we moved out of our house. That was an ordeal-- I had no idea how much stuff we had-- my husband says that it's my books that put the truck over the weight limit-- I know he was teasing me, but it's probably true. I do own a lot of books. I was looking forward to a couple of weeks of down time before we could get into the new house, but it looks like we're going to be able to close end of this week or early next week, so back to cleaning and scrubbing and disinfecting I will go.

I did finish my book review. I asked my advisor to read it before I send it to the journal. I hope I did a good job.

Book Review

I'm trying to write a book review, and I'm not doing all that well. I liked the book, mostly, but there are all these things I feel like the author should have addressed, and didn't, and I'm not sure how to really address that in a review. I know that I really need to reserve judgment and just say what the book does-- I need to remember that this isn't an analysis paper, it's a review. It doesn't help that I'm distracted by the joys of moving. I think we've found a new place to live, so that's good, but until I see signatures on a piece of paper, I'm not counting on anything.

Crazy Two Weeks

This has been the craziest 2 weeks ever. We sold the house, we surprise, surprise, actually found a different house that we want to live in, made an offer and got accepted-- so life has been a whirlwind of paperwork and phone calls between the agents and the mortgage lenders and the inspectors. Not to mention the chaos of regular life-- trying to spend a good amount of time at the Writing Center, teaching, grading papers, trying to work on my dissertation, and get my book review turned in on time. Oh, and I have 2 weeks to pack up all our stuff and get out of this house and try to keep my daughter from freaking out about all the boxes.

I love my life-- and I feel blessed beyond belief that these are the "problems" I have and not things that are oh so much more serious-- but I'm still looking forward to the non-traditional chaos settling down, some.

Olive Oil

Today I want to express my appreciation of olive oil. It is truly amazing all of the things you can do with this food product. Most people use it for cooking. I've also used it to ward off ear infections, but today I discovered the most useful at the moment use for olive oil-- removing oil based paint. One might ask why I needed to make this great discovery?

When we decided to put our house up for sale, our agent recommended that we paint the garage door-- so my husband sanded it down, primed it, and went to clean up to paint the door-- what we both learned that night was that he bought oil based primer-- and that oil based paint can quickly stain a nice white washtub-- so that night we got out the gasoline and cleaned up our big mess. 5 months go by-- we've now sold our house and we have to get rid of paint so that we can move-- You can't throw away liquid paint-- you have to dry it out-- well, we don't have that much oil paint left, so we poor it on some old cardboard in the garage with hopes that it will dry. So, this afternoon was a beautiful day and I ask my daughter if she wants to play outside-- I open the garage door and she immediately runs in, slips on the not dry paint and proceeds to get paint everywhere-- Well, unlike my husband's hands and my laundry room tub-- I am not willing to bathe my baby in gas-- so out come the holistic treatments. For the record-- olive oil and salt work amazingly well at getting oil based paint off of skin-- It gets it off of denim ok too, but cotton, not so much.

So much for getting any work done today.

Maybe a sold house

I write more mental blog posts than physical ones-- that's not a good way to keep a blog-- much harder to keep track of.

I think we might have sold our house-- which will be cool if it happens, but i'm not overly confident at the moment. We went to Ohio this weekend to visit my sister and her family-- a much needed trip-- and our realtor called us with an offer, that we accepted over the phone-- but then the buyer was having financing issues. So, now it seems like he's coughed up the cash, but we have another couple potentially interested in the house, and since we haven't signed any paperwork yet, we could in theory accept a different offer. It's weird-- I was so excited it was all going to happen, and now I realize how much work it all will be that I'm a little hesitant to believe that it might actually be sold.

Michigan Government Shut Down

The State of Michigan has its priorities out of whack. We are currently under a budget crisis, and so Governor Granholm's brilliant idea is to have a partial shut down of the government. But, she doesn't want to shut down the departments that won't affect people, she wants to make the state unsafe by laying off 85% of the Police. She wants to save $10,000 is salaries and shut down the casinos which bring in hundreds of thousands in revenue. According to the news this morning she wants to double the sales tax and raise the income tax. Is she crazy? Does she think she'll win best Governor award if she successfully chases everyone out of Michigan? Doesn't she realize the government is in this bind because people are moving out of state as fast as they can because companies are fleeing Michigan? Loyal democrats are blaming this on Engler, but Granholm is in the middle of her second term in office-- this isn't someone else's mistake. If this was her first term, maybe I'd listen, but it's not. Every time there's a budget, she cuts funding for education, especially higher education-- which not only hurts universities, it also hurts the children of factory workers who want their kids to have a better education, to have a better job, but now they can't afford it.

I'm not a politician, nor do I pretend to be. I don't' know how the state got into this mess, and I don't pretend to know how to get them out of it. What I do know is this-- you stay out of debt by not spending more money than you make. If you make less money than you think you are going to, then you have to cut some of your luxuries. Maybe Granholm and other legislatures should take a pay cut-- take a week without pay. Maybe Granholm should rent out the Governor's mansion on Mackinac Island to bring the state some revenue. Maybe like all of the universities are being required to do, the state should do some fundraising. I don't know. But I do know that no police and doubled taxes will make Michigan a scary place to live.