Writing Maternity

Hey there, Buffy fans . . .

check out Joss Whedon's new project.

it really is shrinking

In addition to my Facebook-related small world shock some time ago, I've had two recent jabs of it (although these were less surprising):

1. A friend from Old Field got in touch after several years, having found me through google.  We exchanged blog urls (she was just relaunching hers) and, when I looked at it, I found a comment from a RL friend utterly unconnected (as I'd supposed) to that Old Field friend.
2. Reading an article this morning as background/preparation to review a book in New Field, I found that the author thanked in her acknowledgments my new department chair.

These are less surprising, in part because we're all academics.  But we're academics in largely unrelated fields, at reasonably far-flung institutions, and of different generations.  And, at least in the first instance, there was a nice loop: RL friendship to blog and back to RL.

<grin>

no child left behind

Chapin hits all the key points, but I would have liked more of the objects being snatched from the kids' hands to be science-related, given that science is a casualty of funding cuts and teaching to the test, as well, at least here in California.

Watch it through to the end; it's worth it.

discipline

I'm just back from a conference, and have surprised myself at how quickly I seem to be settling back to work.  Part of this is that -- unusually for me -- I left the conference with more momentum on certain projects than I went.  (This is one more piece in the mounting pile of evidence that I'm more on the cutting edge of New Field than Old Field; and while one of my projects involves essentially scolding New Field, it's a rant or manifesto that fits precisely into raging debates and that coincidentally builds on one of the plenaries, so ... )  We've also turned the corner on the summer, I'm sorry to have to say out loud, which means that I can feel the autumnal clock ticking louder and louder.  So: discipline.

I have a book review that I have to finish by the end of the week, and then an article I'm co-writing that we've promised one another will be finished by the start of the semester.  Both of these are manageable.  As always the big and unmanageable thing is the Book Project, and chipping away at it.  I have the current excuse that the materials I ordered copied at the BL in June haven't yet arrived (and, yes, it's time I followed up with them), but that's only an excuse -- I could start five minutes ago without those materials. 

I'll doubtless blog more late this week about my various anxieties and the rest of it around the Big and Unmanageable Book, but I'm thinking this morning more about habits.  I have to someone find a balance for the rest of the summer between writing discipline and summer itself.  I promised myself at the outset that I would take time to enjoy summer with the girls this year -- to take them swimming on weekday afternoons, and the like.  This puts pressure on my working hours, pressure that it's hard to maintain during the summer, and so it's been a mixed result thus far.  As the deadline of the semester looms, I'm finding it easier.

I always wonder how other people do it, how they balance work and life, how they find time to write without compromising on other things.  One of the plenary speakers at the conference -- one of the biggest names in my field, and at the end of her career -- was introduced as having written 106 articles, plus several books.  I wonder how she's found the time -- although, granted, a lot of her work is collaborative and she doesn't have kids.  But, still.  I know that everyone's (and anyone's) life can look disciplined and productive and happy and fulfilling and balanced and restful and just generally perfect from the outside, and I also know that, really, no one else's tricks are going to work for me.

But, still.

A quick aside to another kind of discipline: M. l'O and I watched a Nova special on "Team Nova" last night, and it's really inspiring.  Check it out.  Even if you aren't a runner, or are a runner but have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon.

from this morning's spam filter . . .

Two particularly effective subject lines:

"Dara Torres faces crippling injury."

"Queen Elizabeth abducted in Tibet."

I'm slowly

working my way up to more regularly and reflective blogging again.  In the mean time, several things came through my inbox this morning that I thought I'd pass along ...

... From CHE, news of a study done at U of Georgia that the writing section of the new SAT is more predictive of student performance in the first year than the rest of the test ...
My feelings about this are pretty intense and pretty mixed.  I'm delighted to hear that there's evidence that writing ability is fairly predictive of academic performance in college (and they controlled for parental education level and the like, it seems); not only does that ratify what folks in my field both at the higher ed. level and at the K-12 level have been saying for years, but it also suggests -- woo-hoo! -- that college students are being expected to write.  But the SAT writing test itself is pretty deeply flawed, in my view, and I worry that it's further entrenching a culture of descriptive exposition, rather than analytic, interpretive argument.

... From the College Board itself, the announcement that students can now choose which set of scores will be sent to the colleges they apply to, rather than having all the scores from every time they've taken the test sent ...
There's nothing mixed about this at all: it lets rich kids cherry pick their scores without anyone being the wiser, which gives them a further advantage with schools that look at these scores, and that's terrible.  There's a bit of control when the schools can at least see that Joey Rich Boy took the SAT eight times, whereas Charlie Ordinary only took at once; if we take that away, it becomes even harder to parse what the scores mean, and what an applicant's score owes to test-prep courses and test-taking practice.

... Over at CompPile, they're experimenting with CommentPress to launch a roundtable discussion at this week WPA conference early -- and, we hope, keep it going longer.
The topic of the roundtable is "How Can We Better Document, Preserve, Protect, and Share our Learning?" and you can currently see the original proposal for the roundtable, as well as statements from each of the participants (Glenn Blalock, Janis Haswell, Rich Haswell, Michael Palmquist, and Steve Wilhoit).

random bullets of Paris and London

It rained our first night there.  "I can see Paris in the puddle!" exclaimed Squiss when we set out in the morning.

****

Generally speaking, Parisians (like New Yorkers) get a bad rap, to my mind: they aren't nearly as rude as many people claim.  That said, the guy selling coffee at the foot of the Eiffel Tower needed a slap upside the head.  "Deux chassons aux pommes et un cafe, s'il vous plait," I said, in perfectly respectable if clearly non-native French.  He continued to look at me as though I'd said nothing.  So I repeated myself.  He then insisted (as though I had about half a brain) that I hadn't explained what kind of coffee: un expresso, un cafe creme, ou quoi.  Hmph.  Anywhere else in Paris, you order "un cafe" and they give you the bloody espresso and you're a fool if you expected something else.

Come to think of it, it's a bit like Starbucks, with their silly venti and all that.  But still.  Hmph.

****

And I have to say that Londoners were more helpful than I could have imagined.  Our time in London was split: M. l'O had two days of meetings; I had four days of research in the BL.  So there was a lot of shlepping small girls around the big city by oneself.  I don't think that I came to a single set of stairs on the Tube where, if there was anyone around AT ALL, I wasn't offered assistance with the stroller.  (Ahem, "push-chair.")  This cut across age, race, and gender; and people offered M. l'O help roughly as regularly.  Including reversing direction and cutting short a cell phone call in order to help.  (Really: I heard him say, "I'm sorry, I've got to go; there's a woman here who needs help with her push-chair" right before he offered!)

****

We planned a LOT of sight-seeing in Paris, essentially because we hoped that Squiss would be excited about it.  And while Tricksy had to tolerate a lot of, well, containment, Squiss was as happy and excited about it all as we'd hoped.  Particularly,

• climbing, unaided, to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower and then back down
• finding as many Greek gods and goddesses as possible in the British Museum and the Louvre (she preferred the former, apparently because the Elgin Marbles includes what may be Demeter and the muses, while the Louvre is really heavy on Apollo, Athena, and Artemis, without much further variety)
• moving in close to Van Goghs and Seurats to see how the picture dissolves into paint, and back again
• going through the center of the earth in the Natural History Museum in London
• saying a prayer in Notre Dame

Okay, I'm going to break up that list in order to say a bit more about the last one.  As we were walking through the cathedral, Squiss was unsurprisingly full of questions.  (In advance, she'd primarily been excited about the Rose Window.)  She was trying to understand that this was a place where people prayed to Mary and Jesus.  Then she decided that she wanted to say a prayer to Mary and Jesus.  So she ducked under a rope to stand in front of the altar and proceeded to say her prayer -- which included dancing and hand motions that strongly resembled sun salutations.  That's my girl.

****

Both cities are really well set up for kids, if you forget for a moment all those f**king stairs on the subways.  Paris is dotted with carousels, and has tiny playgrounds near many major tourist attractions, as though as relief valves.  London has two of the most impressive playgrounds I've seen in my life: the Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens and the playground at Coram's Fields.  Both had multiple play areas for a range of ages.  Coram's Fields had the added advantage of being flat and open, which meant that the sightlines were easy if you're there with a couple of kids. It also had a zip line.

****

Tricksy spent a lot of time being a good sport, but she did have a really good time spotting boats and dogs in the paintings at the d'Orsay, and she had a better time in the children's area of the London Science Museum than did Squiss.  She also LOVED the truly child-sized carousel in the Jardins de Luxembourg, where she got to ride in a carriage, facing her sister who rode one of the hourses, while her parents had to watch from the sidelines.

She also had a great time chasing pigeons pretty much all over both cities.  She and I spent a lovely 15 minutes in front of the Pompidou while M. l'O and Squiss rode the escalators up to the top and back down (after we'd spent the morning in the Galerie des Enfants), while she chased pigeons in ever-widening circles.

****

Best way to get yourself to sleep, ever?  Trying to remember all of Zeus's wives.

de Toulon a Paris

I have to say that, in addition to all their other virtues, French trains are impressively quiet – that is, rather, the people in them are.  It was something of a challenge to keep the girls quiet and happy, but we came out okay.  Squiss slept for a chunk and Tricksy really liked watching the world go by but, as always with traveling with kids, it's some of the most intense parenting time you can get.

We stayed in the 19eme because that’s where our friends live – emphatically NOT central, but the small apartment we’re renting is reasonable (ahem, for Paris) and we had possibly the Nicest Landlord Ever.  He picked us up from the train station, and apologized profusely for not being able to take us to the airport on the other end of our week here, to give you a taste.  (He also had that impossibly confident, sexy swagger that a good number of European men have.)

La famille magnifique came to our place that evening, bearing pate, wine, and bread.  Give that the last time we saw them we all had 50% fewer children, not to mention that it was in 2004, it was amazingly like picking up from the previous month.  I'm always impressed at how true that is of solid, old friendships.  After our arrival Saturday night, we spent Sunday biking along the Canal de l'Ourcq: through the Parc de la Villette, beneath the Peripherique, and into the banlieues.  At a canal-side playground, we stopped and picnicked.  It was apparently the nicest day Paris had seen in weeks, and it was certainly the sunniest day we'd had yet.  After our chicken, bread, apples, and camembert, we returned, stopping for ice cream on the way. 

It was particularly interesting to see Squiss, l'Etudiant (who's just 7), and Doux-Garcon* (who's 2 and a half) figure out how to play with one another without having many words in common.  One day, when we knew we'd see them that evening, Squiss practiced a French sentence endlessly to say to l'Etudiant, only to decide it was too complicated and difficult at the last moment.  l'Etudiant, for his part, learned quickly how to deal with her.  "I've realized that whatever Squiss says, I just say 'yes,'" he told his father at the beginning of our second evening with them.

* This is a name worth the back-story.  In an oblique homage to Squiss's dear friend Sidecar, who called her pacifier a dee-yoo, Tricksy has ended up referring to hers as "doo."  Or so we thought, until we realized, when talking about it in France, that it really must be her "doux," or sweet thing.  Doux-Garcon shares Tricksy's fondness for this particular sort of sweet, although like her he's only supposed to have it at nap and bedtime.  That rule basically went out the window for us on these travels (will it keep you quiet on plane, train, or subway, and in various museums and churches?  it's yours!), and Doux-Garcon conned his mother into giving him his one evening before we arrived by pointing out, quite reasonably, that Tricksy was going to have hers ...

update

I just updated my Facebook status: dr "has finally finished both of her &#(@!! reports."

And then I wrote to M. l'O:

Well, it's later than I'd hoped, but it's still respectable: the [accrediting agency] "essay" is finished and sent off to [Admin Building], and the Annual Report is finished, pending one set of numbers that ITS has to send me.  But I don't have to do any more writing, just plug those numbers into a table that's already set up.

Which means that tomorrow I can think about Real Stuff: my fall course, WPA, the book review that's due July 15, [my scholarly book, also called] Writing Maternity.  It's all good.  But first, I'm taking the afternoon off.

Love you,
d

I think that just about sums it up.

We interrupt these vacation musings to bring you an article about childcare ...

from Emily Yoffe's "Human Guinea Pig" column.  One moment I'd like to highlight:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 1.4 million child care workers, and is it an occupation in high demand. The BLS says child care workers must be "mature, patient, understanding, and articulate and have energy and physical stamina." In exchange, the median national salary is $17,630. (At Gap, the average worker makes about $22,000.) The advocacy group Center for the Child Care Workforce points out that only a handful of the more than 800 occupations surveyed by the BLS have lower wages—these include parking lot attendants and dishwashers.

And, a really good phrase that I'd never heard before but will now have to use, routinely: the "late-afternoon period of childhood, when it's not time for dinner, when bedtime seems an eon away, is often called the arsenic hour."

It's a good piece, hitting on many of the most important notes.  But I'm a bit sorry that it concludes as it does:

So the pay is lousy, it's exhausting, but still the job comes with satisfactions no parking lot attendant receives. A week after Malik's transfer to the Lions, I went to check and see how he was doing. When I called his name, he emerged from amidst his classmates and ran to me and gave me a hug. Then he picked up a ball and said, "Ball, ball!" (who knew he could speak?) and threw it, which caused him to fall down, which caused him to laugh hysterically. Malik was happy now, and I was happy for him.

I'd like us to get away from thinking that it's okay to pay child-care workers miserable wages because of the emotional compensation they get.  (Who is it who riffs on the impossibility of buying groceries with emotional compensation?)  While that's certainly not Yoffe's argument, this image gives us perhaps too happy a note to end on, given the state of that particular industry.

On a slightly related topic, Carolyn Steedman had a great article in Critical Inquiry recently about eighteenth-century servants being driven to violence by their responsibility for the diapers of their employers' kids.  When you think about the tremendous physical labor of laundry 200+ years ago, it makes a terrifying lot of sense.