I'm not a big celebrity hound, but I do appreciate a few traditional California events, such as the Movie Premier.
This week, the independent film Expecting Mary premiered in Palm Springs. Produced locally by Kim Waltrip and Jim Casey, the movie tells the story of a teen-aged pregnant runaway who finds an unlikely family in a trailer park in New Mexico. It's totally heartwarming, and not in a syrupy kind of way. Linda Gray stars as a faded Vegas show girl who takes the young Mary in on Thanksgiving. There's also a totally fabulous appearance by Della Reese as the owner of the trailer park.
In addition to Gray and Reese, the film includes several veteran actors over the age of sixty, such as Eliot Gould, Lainie Kazan, and Cloris Leachman. After the screening in Palm Springs, several cast members stuck around for a Q&A session with local TV host, Gloria Greer.
Producer Kim Waltrip, Lainie Kazan, Della Reese, Linda Gray, and Gloria Greer after the premier of "Expecting Mary."
The Q&A was very lively. Lainie Kazan was asked about her role as the owner of a small-town casino. She talked about her career playing interesting and weird characters: "I've played everybody's mother except Whoopie's."
Asked if she shared her character's love of cooking, Della Reese replied, "I didn't get this big by going hungry."
The best thing about seeing a premier isn't proximity to stars but, especially in the case of an independent film, hearing the artists talk about a project they really believed in and how they made it happen.
Sometimes reading a book is like spending a long sunny Sunday afternoon with an old friend, catching up and talking about Big Issues. When you come across that kind of book, especially when it's written by an old friend, you don't write a review of it, you write an appreciation.
I looked forward to reading Amie Klepnauer Miller'sShe Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood. The sub-title says a lot about what the book covers, and a lot about what I am not. I will never be a lesbian or a mother, biological or "other." But I know the couple and the child in the book. I remember some of the events and conversations in the book. And I genuinely like Amie, her partner Jane and their daughter Hanna. From the beginning, Klempnauer Miller hits the right note, sounding like a woman having a friendly, funny and meaningful discussion with an old friend. The occasional dialogue with Jane catches Jane's voice as surely as it does Amie's.
People read memoirs for different reasons, I suppose. We read some to live experiences that we will never have. I'll never be a chef in a New York restaurant (I rarely have even eaten in one), so Kitchen Confidential was an educational as well as entertaining read. We also read memoirs to relive the familiar through someone else's eyes. I read the first of William Mann's Jeff-and-Lloyd trilogy, The Men from the Boys, in about a day and a half. It was so like my life. It's a novel, officially, not a memoir. But it's autobiographical fiction, so I'm thinking of it in the same terms. The author is my contemporary, almost exactly, and he treats the eighties very nearly the way I lived it. (I had less sex and did fewer drugs probably.)
She Looks Just Like You pays off in more ways than one. Amie is a fan of the Big Issues discussions, best held when on long car trips in the midwest. There are plenty of Big Issues in this book: religion and faith, the legal status of glbt families, and the changes that adult relationship go through. These and more are discussed while Amie and Jane make the decision to have a baby, try to get pregnant, have Hanna, and endure the first year of her life.
A writer of grant proposals and articles for free newspapers Amie's writing is smooth and readable. She has a talent for boiling Big Issues down to their essentials and seeing them from multiple perspectives.
It's an odd thing, in the gay community, that family is both devalued and hypervalued. Because so many people have relationships with their biological families that are remote even on good days, there is a tendency to write off family as a loss, part of the price of coming out of the closet. ... When the family is not accepting, it is relatively easy to conclude that family doesn't really matter. Family becomes something to leave behind in Fargo or Trenton or Louisville.
Klempnauer Miller is also achingly honest in her portrait of how the arrival of baby Hanna changed the relationship between Hanna's two Mommies.
Here is the truth: when Jane was pregnant, I found her irresistible. I loved her scent, her roundness, her exuberant possibility. I don't find postpartum Jane irresistible. I don't even find her attractive.
Eighteen months seems to be the adjustment time needed for a relationship to absorb a new baby. Amie thinks they can make it to eighteen months but wonders what's next. The book ends just after Hanna's first birthday, with Mama and Mommy not sure they are going to make it. Luckily, she includes an epilogue that assures the reader that Amie and Jane are still a Committed Couple. Not that I was worried.
I really owe Dr. Freeman a lot. He's my good friend and frequent writing partner. What a great birthday present he gave me. A book. (Surprise.)
A Great Unrecorded History, the new biography of E. M. Forster by Wendy Moffat, has gotten some good reviews. Some have said that she focuses too much on Forster's belated sex life. Quite wrong, I say. She does a great job with issues others have skated around. (P. N. Firbank, writing the official biography soon after Forster's death, left out a lot.) Moffat had the benefit of working with material not before available, namely, Forster's Sex Diary. What a lot we learn.
I won't recount details here, it's a lot of fun and you should read it yourself. Forster kept the diary mostly because he had few people to confide in about his feelings and his relationships. Unlike today, when we talk about everything to everyone.
However, this isn't so much a review as it is an appreciation. Moffat has shown through a great example how to approach material that others have gone over before you. How to plow a new row in an already planted field. She's given me a look into a new project of my own. One I thought I wouldn't be able to tackle for a while. So, hat's off to you Wendy Moffat.
And Dr. Freeman, I'm trying to think of something significant to give you for your birthday very soon...
Okay, so I haven't been writing. Put it down to romance, or business, or the effect of daily sunshine on the already-indolent. Sloth, plain and simple.
The goal of the blog was to get me writing more regularly, and, in that sense, it's been somewhat successful. Dr. Freeman and I published that little ode to Christopher Isherwood in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. We then finished off the Dead Poet Project in the spring. (An article on W. H. Auden's relationship with Isherwood for a forthcoming British anthology.) With all that writing, who needs a blog?
Also, in the meantime, to update you on previous posts: I sold that rat-trap in Duluth I used to own. At a loss. After 36 months on the market. I feel lucky given These Tough Economic Times. Also, I was forced to relinquish the Writing Porch, both because I loaned the laptop to a friend and because I had to vacate the apartment when the owner decided he wanted to live in it. The nerve.
Then the plans for writing in these long, summer nights in Palm Springs. Who can write with a love-interest around? But I won't tell tales out of school. Plus he's away for the summer, so what's stopping me from a few weekly stream-of-consciousness ramblings fueled by a spot of vodka? (Or gin and Dubonnet, as the fake Queen_UK spouts on Twitter.)
I mentioned the sloth.
But wait, a new project is cooking. Nothing like a new project to get your writing juices flowing. It looks so good, and so long (it'll take five years, I'm thinking), that the blog will cry out! as a diversion from the real work.
And PS? My friend and model blogger Jocelyn has packed her family up and taken them to TURKEY for a year. She's blogging about it, with drawings by her multi-talented husband, Byron, over at layingfallow.com. Stop by.
My sister and I said the same thing when I finally received an offer on my house, which has been for sale since I left Duluth in July 2007.
I truly can't think of the last time I used that phrase.
The following week, a friend was approved for tenure at her college. It had been rough going. After the committee and the administration had passed it, she still had to wait for the board to approve. They did. Neverthless, she didn't trumpet her success.
"I don't want to jinx it!" she said, in hushed tones. After all, she's not really "tenured" until next fall when she comes back for her fifth year. I think she told her dad.
It's funny how major life experiences can send us back to childhood, to superstition. I'm not really superstitious at all, but this house thing has gotten me nervous. I never did bury a statue of St. Joseph in the back yard, but I wouldn't be surprised if my agent did.
So after living in southern California for two-and-a-half years, I am close to selling my house in Minnesota. For far less than I bought it. For just a wee bit more than I owe on it. Which means I'll still have to bring my checkbook to the closing (metaphorically speaking, as I won't actually be attending the closing in person) mostly to pay the agent fees.
Considering the whole It's the End of the World as We Know It nature of the housing crisis, I still consider myself lucky and will not bemoan my lost thousands too much. Folks I know have lost tens of thousands, and other folks I know have lost their homes while they were still living in them. I was not a victim of a scam, or a sub-prime mortgage, or balloon payments, or a bad romance (well, not this time). I just got a job in a different part of the country and couldn't sell my house.
Since it's nearly done, and I may never see the inside of it again, I'll post a couple of memories of the house and the times it had. Enjoy. I did.
My good friend Jean at my Elizabeth Taylor party.
Another good friend, Tami, at ET party (note the purple cocktail).
The big dig, to fix a broken water main and repair the driveway, cost nearly $10,000 and took six months.
Looking at these I remember painting the living room and dining room. Dark red dining room and mustardy yellow living room, so warm in the morning light. I decorated them to look like a southern California bungalow. "If you can't live there, you might as well pretend," said the X-BF. Prescient.
There are other photos of living in Duluth that involve winter and sports and winter sports. But those will have to wait for another time.
Every ten years or so I eat beets just to see if I still hate them. Sure enough, no matter how you slice, cook, steam, or candy them, beets are the most disgusting food in the world to me. The only time I have ever enjoyed them was shredded for a sweetener in a chocolate cake. Even Oprah can recommend that one, see here.
Some things can be gotten over, some not. I don't even want to get over my hatred of beets, but every now and then I test it out.
Yeah, I'm going up there.
Fear is another thing entirely. Fear has often ruled my life, in big ways and small. Generally timid as a kid, I carry into my adulthood specific areas of anxiety. (See, I've learned a bigger vocabulary now, but the feelings are the same.) I tend not to rush into things, take new experiences cautiously, and don't go where I "have no business" going.
At the age of about four, my sister and I went on the Ferris wheel at the fair. The rocking of the seats scared me a little right away. The wheel went up one stage: I was very frightened. By the time the wheel went up two more stages, I was screaming so much the operator, protesting that he never does this, put the wheel into reverse and let me get off. I couldn't have been more than 20 feet off the ground. It was the Ferris wheel equivalent of the kiddy pool. But I felt totally disconnected from anything solid. I was floating in the air, bound to fall and get hurt.
That fear, not exactly a fear of heights, but it's hard to pinpoint otherwise, has always been with me.
I tested out a ropes course once. Also known as a challenge course, these are the wires strung between poles that you climb and do a tightrope walk while your team mates hold onto the harnesses and cheer you on. Somehow it's meant to teach team work and, yes, make you face and overcome your fear. (I did the Husky Challenge at St. Cloud State University, see it here.)
Well, I did that: I managed (fully tethered and safe) to walk from the pole out to the center of the wire. Yea! faced that fear. Getting back to the pole wasn't as easy.
Once out onto the wire, fear and panic had me. Gentle, calm encouragement from the trainer got me back to the pole. Once hanging on to the pole, however, I could not climb down. This is what is known as being "petrified." For once, mind and body were in total unison: don't move, don't let go.
I told Sean, My Tormentor this story the other day, after bouldering in Joshua Tree National Park. He tried empathy, "Yeah, when I was a kid..."
"I was 35," I said.
Gene, showing no fear.
The common notion that you can do something to "overcome" your fears is crap, Dear Reader. Face your fears, conquer them once and for all. Crap.
I read that TV's Craig Ferguson had become a pilot to overcome his fear of flying. To that I say, Bullshit, Cheeky Monkey. Some fears are not overcome. They may be temporarily bested, but they are still there and there is no predicting when they will come back.
Bouldering seems a mix of hiking and rock climbing. In Joshua Tree, there are rock outcroppings that go quite high. Not shear cliff rock here, but big boulders arranged in artful compositions.
Think of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen is fighting the Rock Monster.
In fact, I could structure an argument that Galaxy Quest is all about facing your fears and becoming a team. That would be very easy, so Reader, I leave it to you to do for yourself.
At Joshua Tree, I had two warning signals. I heeded them and pressed on. Climbing up some of these rocks was difficult, but I first felt really anxious at the very top of one. There did not seem to be enough room for everyone at the top, and the other side was a very quick drop off into oblivion. Cheryl and I held onto each other until we could make the climb down.
There we are huddled at the top (thanks Maria for the photo).
It was the final descent that did me in. We had scaled to the highest peak, a climb that was precarious, but not particularly difficult. I declined to make the final jump across a crevasse as two of our group did. The view was spectacular, and we were all very pleased with ourselves. I was the last in the line to head down, and right away I felt the second warning go off. I watched the others go back the way we came, and a gap that had seemed small on the way over was now practically a gorge going back. Cheryl and Franco talked me through it. Feeling fine, I continued down the rocks.
The next and last challenge was a nearly vertical descent. Here Cheryl and Franco approach it, with Gene below:
From where Gene is standing, it's another drop of about 100 feet.
It probably didn't help that I was the last in the group to make this descent. Or that I couldn't actually see how the others were doing it.
Geologists can explain how the boulders are cut through with harder rock seams (called "dikes" according to the Park Service). One of these seams formed a small shelf just below the rim of the rock. It looked a little like a horizontal staircase. Somehow, I was supposed to use this to get down.
My mind and body were once again working in perfect unison and telling me again: don't move, don't let go of the rock. Cheryl and Franco tried to talk me through it but I could not will my hands to move to the next safe spot nor my feet to lower to the next ledge. I was stuck. It seemed like forever and was probably three minutes.
Sean (who, I suppose, I should stop calling my "tormentor" and call my "teacher") was the first to go down the rock this way, and he bounded back up to help. He not only talked me through the moves, he managed to balance himself and use his own body to steady mine. I rested on him in order to move away from the boulder and down the shelf to the next solid spot.
Sean, My Teacher, who has no fear.
On the ride home, someone said, "you made it down, though, you conquered your fear."
Not really. I met my fear, recognized it, and yielded to it. I am, and remain, powerless when gripped by this enormous anxiety. In all three of these instances, I got through it with the help of others. I have not "conquered" my fear. It is still there and will, at some time, come back.
I don't know what I would have done if I had been alone on that rock. But then, I would never be there alone.
I will, however, still try new experiences that take me out of my "comfort zone." I will do so knowing that I could be faced with a similar situation. The support of friends, and certified professionals, will get me through.
Sit at computer for about five minutes. Type some stuff.
Check the mail--outside at the mailbox.
Check email.
Mess around on Facebook and Twitter.
Look again at what I've written.
Brush the cat.
Eat some cashews.
Have a drink of water.
Check Facebook.
Write a sentence. Erase it.
Text Will.
Think about dinner.
Re-write the sentence I just erased.
Sigh forlornly.
Walk out to courtyard. Sit on deck chair. Fall asleep.
Wake up and repeat many of the steps above in any order.
I have written nearly 1000 words on the Dead Poet Project. None of them are good.
It's a rare thing. To be a scholar of some (small) repute on a minor English writer is reward enough itself. The joy is in the work.
Nevertheless, when that minor writer has his best book adapted into a film, there are many other pleasures, small though they may be. I've been very pleased to watch Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, climb up the Amazon.com best-sellers list since the release in December of a recent adaptation, starring Colin Firth. The novel's publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, came out with a movie-tie in version of the book in early December. My very casual eye has seen it break the top 500 on Amazon. Not bad for a book 45 years old.
As I said, the joy is in the work. So, with the help of the UMP, I pitched an article about the novel to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most-read national publication dealing with college and university issues. I enlisted my sometime collaborator, Chris Freeman, to write about the genesis of Isherwood's novel in his own experience teaching in southern California universities. The article, called "Isherwood the Multiculturalist," can now be seen online at The Chronicle Review. It's password protected (ooh, we're "premium content") for now.
Oh yeah, you can also watch the trailer for the film online.
I have set myself the totally artificial task of writing a blog about the ten words I used most often in my Facebook status updates. Perhaps if this goes well, I could turn the challenge into some kind of meme for bloggers. For that to work, I think I would have to have more readers than I currently do. Also, maybe someone has already mined that meme and I’m coming late to this. Who knows?
Using the Top Words application in Facebook, these are the words that appear most often in my status updates in 2009: today, run, thinks, good, work, week, off, tonight, new last.
A bit about the words themselves. “Today” is not a surprise, since most of my status updates have to do with the contemporary. What are your plans today, and how are you feeling now tend to be the common status update themes. Same could be said for “tonight” and “week.” Only two verbs occur: “run” and “thinks.” (I would bet that “work” appears more as a noun than a verb for me, as a synonym for “job” more than something I or the toilet do or don’t do. I could be wrong.) I ran a lot in 2009, and I guess I thought a lot too. “Off” might be related to work or not work, and “new” probably relates to things I bought. “Last” is curious, unless it’s related to “week” and it relates to the past tense. (I can’t think of anything I stopped doing, as in “that was the last time I’m going to eat sardines.”) “Good” is puzzling—I don’t think of myself as a really positive person, but things in 2009 were pretty good, I guess, which is as good a segue into a year in review as any…
Today. There were fifty occurrences of this word in my Facebook updates in 2009. I was surprised it wasn’t more, given that I update my status frequently, usually more than once a day. There are times when I am an absolute fanatic about FB, checking it, refreshing the page, trolling friends for new friends. Facebook has become for me a regular part of how I keep in touch with people. I used to check email obsessively, but now my hotmail account sees less activity than my Facebook. Still, at fifty, that’s nearly one “today” a week. “Tomorrow” and “yesterday” aren’t even in the top ten.
Run. In a way, 2009 was my most serious year of running. I completed four half-marathons: Palm Springs in February, Duluth in June, Disneyland in September, and Malibu in November. For the last several years, since I started running really, I considered organized runs (not “races” please, I don’t race) as the motivation for me to run: if I am signed up for an event, my theory went, I would stay in training. I did a lot of training in 2009, most of it informal. I run sometimes with a small group of guys in Palm Springs, and it makes the training almost fun. Toward the end of the year, however, after a dismal run in Malibu, I started thinking that long-distance running may not be what I need to achieve my fitness goals. Moderate exercise and a new diet may achieve what I set out to do when I turned forty. I’m not sure where my running will go this year, but I am reassessing my priorities.
The boys before the Palm Springs Half Marathon, February 2009.
Thinks. I don’t remember if it was in 2009 or earlier when Facebook dropped the word “is” from the pre-programmed status updater. But when “is” disappeared so did the generic update, “Jim Berg is.” It may have been funny the first time but not as profound as the teenagers thought. “Thinks” turns out to be, for me, a good generic intro for some rant or rave that I want to share. “Jim Berg thinks that cod liver oil just may be the thing to keep his joints lubricated.” “Jim Berg thinks that Up! was his favorite movie of 2009.” Plus, as an academic, having the word “thinks” be the third most common makes me seem seriously smart. I should just have “Jim Berg thinks” as my default status update. Therefore, he is?
Good. I’m taking a cue from my friend Jocelyn and calling 2009 a good year. Sure it sucked in a lot of ways: economic collapse (but that is soo 2008), two wars (soo Bush-Cheney), California going down the tubes (blaming Arnold for convenience here). But for me personally, and this is ALL about me personally, I think I did okay. Not 7/10 okay, but maybe 6/10. But still, even 5/10 would be “good.” After a lot of initial to-ing and fro-ing, I made some progress on the Dead Poet Project, I lost 15 pounds on an easy-to-follow diet, and I look and feel better than I have in years. Went on a few dates. So, yeah, let’s go with 7/10.
Work. I try to keep complaints or ruminations about my job to a minimum on the FB. A lot of my co-workers are there, and they see stuff. Anyway, in the larger sense, my “work” is my scholarship. And much of this year was given over to the Dead Poet Project. Toward the end of the year, however, a little movie came out called A Single Man. Now this movie just happens to be based on a book that I am something of an expert on. So, Dr. Freeman and I have penned (typed? keyboarded?) a piece for a national publication about the novel, its author (Christopher Isherwood), and what it all means for the classroom. Not a bad ending for a year that was sometimes frustrating in the library and at the computer. Come back next week for a link to the essay.
Week. This unit of time measurement is clearly as old as the B-I-B-L-E. If it weren’t for that little creation myth, it would be hard to see why we humans are so tied to the seven-day week. How, really, is Saturday different from Tuesday? Or, why do I have to go to the office on Tuesday and (usually) not on Saturday? Can’t every day be Saturday? Wouldn’t THAT be fun?! Sigh.
Off. Status updates must have as much to do with not going to work as going to work. “Jim Berg can’t believe he had the last 11 days off and didn’t do his laundry.”
Tonight. The feel-good club hit of the year has to be “I Got a Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. Club songs are often of the “I’m going out to get hammered and laid” variety, and nothing said that better than this song, with its refrain: “tonight’s gonna be a good good night.” Even Oprah used it to kick off her 2009-10 season, complete with a “flash mob.” Watch the video and then tell me I’m wrong. Try.
New. I’m nothing if not optimistic, cutting edge, and short of attention span. So I’m always on the hunt for the next new thing. Yeah, no. The word “new” was used twenty-two times: could that correspond to the number of times I bought a new article of clothing? The number of times I saw a new movie, play, or concert. All very doubtful. I’m still wearing those jeans that made my “ass look dangerous” back in 2005. New is not me. Really.
Last. Is the last word on the subject, except for my final challenge, the thing that will perhaps make this silly task meme-worthy. Use all of your top ten words in a single sentence:
Jim Berg thinks that after a runtoday the new work week will get off to a good start, especially if he is able to see Avatar, at last, tonight.
This week, believe it or not, is the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in Philadelphia. That august professional group for college teachers has been meeting the week between Christmas and New Year’s since the dawn of recorded literary criticism.
The popular story is that the men who taught Literature needed to get away from the wife and kiddies after Christmas and meet in some cosmopolitan area to exchange ideas with each other (and body fluids with local tarts). I’m just saying it’s the popular notion of the timing. In recognizing today’s more “family friendly” university and the more diverse nature of the modern professoriate, the convention is being moved by about a week.
Next year’s convention will be in January. In Los Angeles. Callooh! Callay!
I’m not in Philly this year. But earlier today, I started following it on twitter (#mla09). This was after being alerted by my publisher that my book was on display next to Isherwood’s A Single Man.
Mine's the little white one on the left.
The twitter feed has been kind of fun: especially a guy called “samplereality,” who is there, and a woman called, “amandafrench,” who is not. (I think that’s probably her real name, not some Bart Simpson phone prank: “I need a man to french!”) She’s been “tweckling” from Brooklyn. These are the geeks, man.
My last MLA conference was in 2006—the last time the association met in Philadelphia. It was one of those times I went thinking I might have a job interview then didn’t get an interview but went anyway. I hung out a lot with my friend, Laurie, a scientist from Philly. She liked mingling with the literary types, who at least dress better than her scientist friends.
The best part of the convention for me was the Gay and Lesbian Caucus party, held at the gay bookstore in Philly, Giovanni’s Room. I ran into an old friend from graduate school days, Bob, who had just had his first book published. By Routledge. (Book envy.) There it was in a nice stack in the bookstore. He had also achieved tenure at a private university on the east coast—the place he had taken a lowly one-year appointment about nine years earlier. So: book, tenure, prestige.
Meanwhile, I also had a book coming out, although it wasn’t ready for that MLA. And it was my third. But I hadn’t achieved the kind of job he had, the kind we all think we’re going for when we work on the Ph. D. Along the way, we teach composition, the occasional literary survey course, and eat beans and rice.
Along my path, I also wound up working in the TA Development office at the University of Minnesota for my last two years as a graduate student. That turned into something of a specialty for me, and since then I’ve found myself more “marketable” as an administrator than as a teacher. I’ve held a series of administrative appointments since then, including my current job as Dean of This and That at a community college in the California desert.
Bob and I chatted while I watched a very Handsome Fellow browse books. I’d seen Handsome Fellow the previous day at an MLA session.
At this point, readers, I had been single for about six months. The relationship ended after 13 years, and the ex-bf and I were still friendly. But my dating, nay, my meeting-people skills, never very strong, had severely atrophied. So when I saw Handsome Fellow at the MLA session I made a split-second decision that went contrary to all previous similar situations: I sat near HF and well within eyesight. Yes, I ogled him. I think he noticed. (No, I didn’t TALK to him!)
Back at Giovanni’s Room: as Bob and I are chatting with our lit crit and lambrusco, I actually took HF by the arm and brought him into the conversation. I learned his real name. I learned he was working on a dissertation, although he was already an attorney. I learned he would start a guest teaching stint at a college in Bob’s city. I learned a lot, dear reader.
Bob, HF, and I continued the conversation at a nearby swanky restaurant. For HF and me, the conversation continued the next morning. But that’s another story.
This was meant as a tale of my career, as seen through the lens of the MLA.
I don’t remember the first time I went. I do remember my dissertation advisor telling me later, “Oh, MLA’s a bore.” I wish I had said to him what I had thought: “It depends on whose cash bar you go to.” For I had discovered, as he had plainly not, the GLBT Caucus and it’s frabjous cash bar.
Through the GLBT Caucus, I got on my first MLA panel. Except it was cancelled. The panel was going to get me an interview. Also through the caucus, I got my first chapter in a published anthology. Except that they cut my chapter at the last minute. The chapter was going to get me a job.
And so it went, the promise of MLA interviews (I had one for seven at-bats) leading to the drowning of sorrows at the cash bar in anonymous hotel ballrooms in great, and not so great, cities.
However, however...
MLA 1996 (Washington, DC) proved to be all it was supposed to be. Dr. Freeman and I proposed a panel that was accepted and was not cancelled. The panel led to our first edited collection, which was actually published (in 1999) and won a prize. That book led to the next, which led to the one after that.
The first book by Berg and Freeman.
All this publishing—academic work, most of it—did not lead to the dream job that I had envisioned for myself. It did not even lead to the dreary job I half expected: teaching writing to lunkheads at some fourth rate college in some conservative state.
Instead, I have a difficult, unexpected, academic and well-paying job in a place I like, and might actually grow to like more (can’t say “love” yet). The literary scholarship continues as a non-paying activity. Like blogging.
I expect to attend the MLA2010 in Los Angeles next year. Dr. Freeman and I are pitching two ideas, and we expect one of them at least will catch hold.
I was writing a longish Christmas blog, one like the Christmas letters y'all used to send out. But writing about mushy holiday stuff has never been my thing, so I ditched it.
Instead, I offer you the only kind of Christmas carol I ever really liked: the classical choir stuff.
Although there is no good visual to go along with this music, it's the best recording I could find on YouTube of the Coventry Carol.
By the way, YouTube doesn't know the difference between "classical" and "classic." So when you search for "classical christmas music" you're likely to get the Taylor Dane Taylor Swift new country kind or Bing and Bowie doing "Little Drummer Boy," which some people consider a "classic."
My closest brushes with the hard sciences in the last few years have been sitting next to a physics teacher in meetings. The social scientists I see and talk to all the time. That stuff rubs off, man, and I can talk about sociology until the cows come home in groups and organize themselves into social networks.
Previous to my current job as Dean of This and That, I was Dean of Nearly Everything at College on the Lake, Duluth. There I palled around with the geologist and the gym teacher (exercise science, if you will). Before I worked at COLD, I had many conversations with college teachers of all disciplines about their work. (Nothing gets an academic going better than the generic, “and what do you do?”)
So, to put my science knowledge into song (and who wouldn’t want to?), I’d have to say, “I know a little bit about a lot of things.” I give you Miss Diana Krall, or Mrs. Elvis Costello, depending. (Play the vid while you read the rest of this post.)
She's lovely but don't we all wish she would do something with that hair?
So when I say that I’m convinced that my new diet has a sound scientific basis, I’m going on my humanities-based knowledge of science. You say “physiology,” I say “wha??”
However, I am stubbornly persistent in asking people why they want me to do something. Not just in the “what’s in it for me” sense. But I have a trained academic’s insistence on some kind of logical connection between the solution you’re proposing and the problem at hand.
Ask Sean, My Tormentor how often I say to him, “and this will do what for me?” before I actually do the crazy thing he’s asking me to do. (My second most frequent question to SMT is, “What now?”) He gets all bio-mechanical, my eyes glaze again, and I do it. It often hurts later, so it must be working.
Thus my logic tells me Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution makes sense. The science, I’m a little sketchy on.
Really, who does know the intricacies of how enzymes turn on our hormones and react in our brain to trigger or turn off our hunger pangs? Do we really know that much about the brain? My eyes glaze a bit when I get to those parts. It seems to make a certain sense to me, though, so I’ve been following this diet for about six weeks.
With or without fully understanding the science, I do believe processed foods are killing us. Such things at Triscuits—not to mention McDonalds—did not exist one hundred years ago, and neither did childhood obesity. W. K. Kellogg invented the Corn Flake because he was a corn flake. To our everlasting regret, breakfast cereal is now a staple in most American kitchens. Over-processed, “enriched” with vitamins we should be getting elsewhere, conveniently boxed and overpriced, who needs it?
Good movie about that nut job, Kellogg.
(When I had braces five years ago—my family couldn’t afford orthodonture in my youth—I stopped eating breakfast cereal. Shredded Wheat and granola got caught in those tracks. I lost ten pounds in a month.)
So this diet has turned my world a little askew. For years I read and used recipes from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book, which stressed a high carbohydrate (and whole grains) approach. In fact, when I moved to California, hers was one of three cookbooks I kept. Jane has been a hard habit to break. I’m sad to say goodbye to bread, pasta, beer, bread, pancakes, and bread.
But I’m very pleased to have a set of guidelines to help me in the grocery store. Formerly a what-am-I-in-the-mood-for shopper, I now know how to choose greens, vegetables, and proteins, and I use them up before they go bad.
And, oh, yes, I lost weight.
Like electricity, I don’t have to understand how it works, it just does.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to talk a little bit about the process of writing. Specifically, the fracking difficulty of it.
Seriously, I’ve been stymied by some aspects of my Dead Poet Project, as seen in a previous post.
Having called in reinforcements in the person of sometime collaborator, Dr. Freeman, I am happy to report that progress is being made. In fact, the good doctor and I have taken the next step in the research process by going to The Source.
(Now you Buffy fans might be thinking of The Source of All Evil, but really, is this a Buffy Blog? No. Thank you. Back to our regular programming.)
In this case, I mean one of the only primary sources left to ask questions about the relationship between Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden. Yes, it’s true. We interviewed The Widow, also know as Don Bachardy, an accomplished visual artist and writer.
Considering Dr. Freeman and I have known Bachardy for about ten years, this is not in itself a great feat. We’ve each interviewed him on numerous occasions. He’s provided help and support for our previous Isherwood projects.
And we’ve each been painted by him. A portrait of yours truly was even on display in an exhibit of Bachardy paintings in the fall of 2007, shortly after I moved to California.
The author, the painter, and the painting, October 2007.
Scholars of recently deceased writers will warn you about Reliance on the Widow. One famous poet, now also sadly deceased, even wrote as much to us about our first Isherwood project. We thought him catty.
Literary widows can have their own agenda, and sometimes this is hard to manage. Often, however, they see themselves as Keepers of the Flame. For some, that takes a lot of energy and time. And fanning.
So what makes this most recent conversation significant?
Mr. Bachardy was very forthcoming about the relationship between the DP and Isherwood. He was also informative about his own relationship with the DP and the DP’s longtime lover, Chester Kallman.
In the fifteen years or so since Isherwood died, Bachardy has done extraordinary work to keep Isherwood’s work available and to encourage scholarship on that work. He has made Isherwood’s papers available at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Through the creation of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, he has established a fund for scholars to visit the Huntington to view the archive.
The Japanese garden at the Huntington.
So, given all the caveats about Reliance on the Widow, without the good intentions and deeds of this particular widow, we would know much less about Isherwood than we do now. And that would be a shame.
The X-BF once told me, “Shopping is an activity that may or may not end in a purchase.” Finally I began to understand the endless trips looking for the perfect drapes for the living room. Those windows were bare for years, even after he’d found the perfect curtain rods.
My own world was so different from his, but I found comfort and wisdom in this idea. Applying this saying to academic work leads me to consider research as an activity that may or may not end up in any findings.
Sometimes finding nothing is an answer, e.g., My Dead Poet did not keep any letters. Ever. From anybody. (Cursing the Dead Poet, optional.)
Sometimes finding nothing means you keep looking, which can seem futile, but can also lead to narrowing your search. Or it may lead you to look somewhere else. For example, Nope, nothing about this issue in the WHOLE Huntington Archive. Maybe I should go to New York and look at the public library. (This is either an exciting opportunity or a chore, depending on the status of your travel funds.)
So what’s all this about a Dead Poet? I’m glad you asked.
Last spring I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book about W. H. Auden, hereafter referred to as My Dead Poet (oh, let’s just go with the acronym, MDP, this is a blog). The book, called “Auden in Context,” is slated for the Cambridge University Press. My chapter is to be on Auden in the context of his lifelong friend and sometime collaborator, Christopher Isherwood. My deadline is sometime in Spring 2010.
A literary Hope and Crosby, Isherwood and Auden head to China to write about the Sino-Japanese War.
Toot Your Own Horn Department, All False Modesty Aside Unit: I am something of an authority on Isherwood and have published three books on him and his work. (See here.) Two with my own Sometime Collaborator, Chris Freeman, about whom more in a minute.
I spent several weekends at the Huntington Library and Gardens last summer reading letters from My Dead Poet to Isherwood. MDP wrote a lot of letters to CI, who really must have written back, because many of MDP’s letters begin “thank you for the letter.” But, as we know, MDP never kept anything that was useful. On the other hand his personal life and living quarters were always a messy mess mess.
My research agenda was to find in the Isherwood papers some new, undiscovered vein of raw material that would show this relationship in a new light. Trouble is, while this material is newly available in the archive, every every scholar who has written about MDP seems to have had access to these papers before. There are several biographies of MDP and CI, and their relationship has been written about ad nauseum. (Seriously, after shopping, er, researching, for a few months on this you do get a little sick of them both.)
Auden in later years.
So there it sat, this little Dead Poet Project. Sad and dejected, the project languished. I let leads go unfollowed. I consulted with an Eminent Scholar in England (via email) and dropped that inquiry.
Until once again, on the cusp of admitting defeat, I consult with Sometime Collaborator. Over coffee the morning before Thanksgiving and cocktails later on, we’re on a roll again. Co-authoring will be the way out of this morass! We’ll consult Eminent Scholar again! We’ll interview The Widow again!
Recently I completed the “inaugural, first-ever” Malibu half marathon. I say completed, but I walked a lot during the second half. I have not trained on hills in more than a year, and boy, are there hills on the Pacific Coast Highway! I’ve decided my main problem that day was (Insert smarty-pants physiological sounding rationale here).
After the Malibu half, standing in the ocean.
After the Malibu run was over and the leg cramps subsided, I realized that I have done four half marathons in 2009. This is a guy who wouldn’t run for the bus five years ago.
Malibu was the worst run of the year, and I posted a very bad time. I wondered what the heck I was doing it for. So I dug up a piece I wrote for my first running coach to remind myself of …
How I Became an (un)Competitive Runner, or Why I Have Four Pair of the Same Sneakers in My Closet and Will Soon Buy a Fifth
I started running in February 2006. My goals were to lose weight and see if there was some sort of activity I could stand doing for the next ten years. (I had recently turned 40—and even more recently, 42.) I was living in Minnesota—Minneapolis on the weekends and Duluth during the week.
I thought I might be able to jog a quarter of a mile. It took me three tries to run that far without walking. I ran for about six weeks, then life intervened, and I took about six weeks off.
My log starts up again in June 2006, and by that time I was up to 3 miles in 45 minutes. I was pissed that I didn’t lose any weight. I swear someone promised me that running would make me taller! But I could see and feel that my body was changing. On the other hand, I wasn’t getting any faster.
In July, my relationship ended after thirteen years—without much rancor or many recriminations. I started spending more of my time in Duluth, which has a great running community, some killer hills, and a world-class event, Grandma’s marathon.
I ran my first 5K in September of that year. The Duluth Gay Pride fun run. It wasn’t fun. It took me about 31 minutes, so my time had improved over the summer. In early September I was at the same weight as in May. I didn’t start losing weight until October, and in the following six months lost about 10 pounds. I was feeling better, healthier, and better about myself.
Trail running is a big deal Duluth, with all the young outdoorsy hipsters doing it. I was no longer young, had never been hip, and sure wasn’t outdoorsy, but I wanted to hang out with them. So I signed up for a race called “Bangin’ in the Brush.” It marks the end of the season for organized outdoor runs. At 6.6K it still seemed like a long distance. It wasn’t fun. I walked much of it. It was raining. It was not fun. I did it in 83 minutes. At the end met Katie, an experienced Duluth runner who would become my coach.
Soon after that I developed plantars faciaitis. That was not fun. (Sensing the theme yet?) It hurt. For about six weeks every morning when I got up the pain would shoot from my right sole up my leg. I missed some running in late October, when the Duluth weather can be alternately nasty and wonderful. I found that I actually missed the running.
Sometime in there I ran a full marathon. Dumb.
People often say that your body starts changing around age forty. You’ll need bifocals soon, your hair is thinning. For me, cholesterol tests have shown that I could be “pre-diabetic.” My blood pressure increased seemingly overnight to the higher end of normal. High blood pressure and diabetes run in my family, so I take the warning signs seriously. I have what I consider to be a stressful job—maybe it’s just annoying.
So, the point is, I’m running to try to get healthier and stay healthy. I don’t consider myself competitive. I have always disliked competitive sports. I don’t run distances to prove anything to anyone or myself. I do it so that I keep up with the training. I think of running as something I can do alone or with a group, indoors or out. I have met a lot of great people through running: many in Duluth, some in Palm Springs. Sometimes I enjoy it, and sometimes when I don’t do it, I miss it.
The Fool on the Hill. Nice legs though, eh?
Oh, and before I left my last job, I got a couple of faculty members to start a little event. The Lake Superior College Thrill on the Hill Fund Run: it’s a 10K half-road half-trail event in May, about six weeks before Grandma’s Marathon. The first year, we had around 100 runners. I was one of them. It was kind of fun.
It’s now in it’s fourth year. That makes me happy.
Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, will be released as a film by Tom Ford in December. Get a jump start on your friends by (re)reading the novel, published by the University of Minnesota Press.
The publisher has also set up a readers' guide and discussion forum for fans of the book. Join the conversation at http://www.asingleman-book.com.
You were seeing this guy and it was fun but now, really, a) there’s someone slightly hotter, b) your ex is back, or c) what was that all about?
So you want to move on. How to tell him? There are several ways to do this. Now that we’re so much more advanced as a society, we talk openly about relationship issues without fear of hurting each other.
Oh, wait, is this the real world, or Jim’s fantasy of it?
The weird truth is when guys say, “What do you like?” as a conversation starter, he’s not talking about Whitney’s comeback or which boy is hotter on “Glee.”
Men will tell you what they like in bed the first time they talk, text, or meet you online, but they still won’t discuss their feelings.
So we end up with the dysfunction wagging that dawg.
Extensive research has shown (okay, my three years of experience being single) that the following break-up patterns common among your modern homosexuals. (Extra points if you can identify the musical allusions. Number three is a gimme.)
No phone, no call, no text. He ain’t got no damned regrets.
Roger: we met on Match.com and talked or saw each other everyday for a week. Then—radio silence. He didn’t return my phone calls, he didn’t respond to my emails. Really? You can’t say, “one of my other Matches has better hips than you”? Coward. We know each other for a week, you think I’m going to cut myself because you don’t want to marry me? A clue, perhaps the one Roger was looking for: Man up, King of the Road—make a call or send an email.
Take me to a bar with half price imports. Tell me on a Friday, please.
Andrew: Six weeks of dating and spending the night. I actually stayed in your crummy apartment on your mattress on the floor when I have a perfectly cosy, heated home around the corner. Still, after being out of town for a week and not returning my calls (cell phones work in Michigan, right?), you meet me out for a drink. Once the martinis are delivered, you deliver the news. What would Carrie Bradshaw do actually comes to my mind. Put down ten dollars and walk away. You say, “I can pay for the drinks.” Damned right you can. Clue to Andrew: You’re not being kind here. I thought this was a date.
Living in an ethereal world: boys may come and boys may go and that’s all right with me.
Carlos: we’ve taken up all of the modern conveniences. Yea us! We met online and had a couple of dates. But really, we knew it wasn’t working out. NBD. If Carrie was indignant to be dumped on a Post-it, can we really use email? It’s not just Brittany getting divorced by text these days. So if we started off online and didn’t spend a lot of time together, it may be appropriate to write a brief, thoughtful note. Clue to Carlos: let’s not blame each other if I’m not Mr. Right.
I’ve been on both sides of all of the above, and I prefer option number three. So civilized, so modern. And you can hit “reply” or “delete” at will.
