Midterm Elections

At last, incredulity has shaken me from blogging apathy. I'm teaching at 9 a.m. this term, so each morning I drive to work as the main national and local news plays on NPR I've learned more about U.S. politics in recent weeks than in the rest of my six years here, and I find it all pretty alarming. But to beat all else, yesterday I heard the following clip of one of our candidates for State Governor, Tom Tancredo, speaking at the Tea Party convention a few months ago:



(Found on e on mediamatters.org)

There's a lot of talk of an "enthusiasm gap" - the (often extreme) right are vociferously fired up just now, while those who were so energized by Obama two years ago are apparently somewhat disillusioned and thus less likely to vote at all. Goodness knows, Obama is a little disappointing - he was almost bound to be so, arriving as he did on the wave of so much hope for change. I think the same happened with Blair after a couple of years, although unlike Blair with his strange messianic convictions, Obama instead reveals too much of the face of a negotiator, as he has proved lately in his statements on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I saw him on TV basically saying, "Yes, we will change it, but it has to be done at the right time and with due process." Too much honesty! It would surely be better to make a forceful statement in public, and carry out the negotiations in private.

In any case, it seems to me that a lack of enthusiasm for Obama shouldn't stop people in the center and on the left (left for here, that is, where people can really accuse Obama of being a "committed socialist ideologue" and get cheered instead of laughed off stage) from getting fired up. These Tea Party candidates, Palin and her followers, seem to me to be dangerous people who revel in ignorance and bigotry. Shouldn't that be enough to get anyone to the polling station? If I had a vote, I'd be there.

Airport experiences

I've been in Philadelphia for a conference for the last few days. I came back yesterday afternoon. There are a few things to say about it, but for Monday morning I'll limit myself to the current U.S. airport experience, which seems to get worse every time I go.

When I got to the security line in Philadelphia yesterday, as usual I took off my coat and scarf and put them in a plastic tray to put through the machine; and my shoes; and my laptop; and then my small bag; and then I put my carry-on case through. I began to go through the metal detector, and the man sent me back to take my cardigan off and put it through the machine as well. I remarked to the woman putting herself back together next to me that soon we'd be undressing completely - and she said, "If only I believed it made us any safer...". I think this is how most of us feel about it.

When I walked away I realized that I'd forgotten completely to remove the little plastic bag of "liquids and gels" from my case and put them through separately, as I was supposed to (and I had a good number of items in there for a few days away), but no-one called me on it. I see the Moscow subway bombings in the news this morning, and think about riding around on the underground trains in Philadelphia yesterday, and wonder where this is going to go. It seems likely that we'll end up in police states being patted down at every move, but that at the same time we'll end up not a bit safer for it. I had my bags checked twice in Old Philadelphia yesterday morning, once to see Liberty Bell and once to see Independence Hall, oh, and I got called off for a random check at the gate in the airport too, so I was feeling a bit sensitive to it all by the end of the day.

To add to the pleasures of the airport experience, airlines here have recently started charging for checked luggage - a matter of about $25 per bag each way. I've always preferred to check my luggage and got irritated at all of those people bringing mini suitcases onto the plane and taking up all of the overhead locker space; but once the airline starts penalizing me for what I thought was responsible behaviour, then obviously I'm going to buy a carry-on case and behave like everyone else. But here's the thing: on the smaller planes in particular, such as the ones I got to Philadelphia by (it should have been a direct flight, but we had a spring snowstorm in Denver that resulted in the cancellation of my flight, and I was rerouted by Detroit), only two such bags can fit in for every four people, and since all members of the flight crew have their own bags that are in the lockers before the customers even begin boarding, you end up with the people who are allowed to board in the first two waves with their luggage spread down the plane (though they're seated at the front, so that when you land the orderly exiting from the front turns instead into a confused peristalsis); and then the later waves suddenly get stopped and told they have to have their luggage gate-checked, and then there is further hold-up as the harried gate staff are called back in to label it all.

Belated New Year entry

Happy New Year! I meant to write something last weekend, but of course got caught up instead in last minute preparations for the start of a new term - it started on Monday January 4th, which I suppose is still vastly better than two years ago when it started on January 2nd.

I wasted a few weeks at the end of the year fretting and trying not to fret over whether I might have lymphoma, after a CT scan that showed enlarged lymph glands through my chest. I'm relieved to say I don't. Between Christmas and New Year, I had a lymph node removed from just above my clavicle (the swelling that had made me visit the doctor in the first place) for biopsy, and was told on New Year's Eve that it wasn't anything cancerous. It made for much better celebrations that evening. I'd contemplated the possible need to change my blog over the next few months into a lengthy account of cancer care in the U.S. health care system. I'm sure it would have been a good topic, but I'll be quite happy not to have to discover for myself how good that care is, or whether my insurance would save me from being one of the alarming number of people in this country who end up declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills.

We went on a week's trip to Asheville, North Carolina, in the first half of December. It's the second time I've been to the "South," and as on my brief trip to Atlanta, I was delighted by how lovely it all was. Before I came to the States, my imaginary South was like Texas in the movies - dry and dusty, with sinister white police officers in reflective sunglasses cruising around the deserted roads and passing long and searching looks over strangers in town. In fact, the south-eastern states are (at least in my brief acquaintance with them) lush and green, with woodlands and rolling hills and fields or yards with black and white cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens - somewhat like lowland Scotland, but less miserable. They feel familiar and well-worn, like the big green bath robe I wrap myself in every morning and evening.


Of course, my experiences are entirely superficial, and people who know better than me tell me of the problems with racism and narrow mindedness that lie just under this beautiful exterior, so maybe it's not so different from Scotland after all; but for the moment I will cling to my first impressions. Colorado is so dry and brown most of the time, and the mountains are impressive but they're definitely not conducive to life; to go from here to somewhere that drips green from every branch makes me feel mentally like a shrivelled old sponge suddenly plunged back into water. And they had good food there too, which is more than can be said for Denver.

Word of the week.

While I'm here, let me add my word of the week, which was:

amorphous

I picked myself up using the same word multiple times in classes and in comments on student papers - from describing the work of the "Misty" poets to commenting on the state of the papers themselves.

When you spend your weeks continually grasping for words in front of an audience, you notice yourself forming new speech habits all the time. Some of them you can't get rid of too quickly - like my repeated use of "if you will" to end my off-the-top-of-my-head descriptions of poetic or historical tendencies in lectures this term - a habit that has irritated me but been difficult to shake off. Do the students notice? I doubt most are listening anyway.

Yes, some of my lectures this term have been quite amorphous. But just one more week to go.

Tree monkeys

The wildlife in my garden this summer...


Now the trees are bare, and my lawn is covered in leaves.

Sqnowcat

Squid in the snow.

Snow day!

We're having a large snowfall here that has closed the university again today (woo hoo!). Yesterday morning we all stared at our mobile phones hoping for that automated message, but it didn't come and we all dutifully trecked to work. When I came out of my first class and was gearing up for the always last minute rush for the second, longer one, I opened my email and discovered they'd decided to close after all from 2 p.m., the start time of that class. And there was great rejoicing.