Turn, turn, turn

Well, let's see, if I count correctly - and I do have a math degree, mind - then it has been over six months since my last post, at which point it had been three months since my last post before that one. It's doesn't seem like six months; what can have happened that filled six months? The most recent post came on the evening when I sent off my last chapter for comments from my committee members, and I spent the rest of the term generating my introduction, and conclusion. Over a dreary New Year spent alone here, I worked on a paper for a workshop in Paris, and after teaching the first week of the new term, I made the trip, first to London and then to Paris. (If someone pays your way to Europe, do you neglect to look at a few manuscripts on the way?) When I arrived back in the middle of January, in time to teach on Monday morning, I had a nightmarish two weeks of somehow managing to turn up for my class every day but spending every other waking moment (and there were twenty hours of waking moments, every day) feverishly revising my dissertation. My gorgeous plans for a manageable amount of work and an increased amount of sleep following my submission were upset when I took on some copy-editing for a journal, but I did manage to write *most* of a draft of an article in between submitting and defending my dissertation. (Also in that interval, I met a day-old baby, got my class through highlights of Beowulf, agonized over struggling students, and even smiled occasionally.) Post-defense, I struggled to concentrate (even to get out of bed, frankly), marked many an essay, administered (and marked!) a final exam, and was deeply grateful when all the students who attempted to fulfill all of the requirements for my class did in fact manage to pass. I think the biggest compliment I've ever received on my teaching is the message sent by several students who separately said, "That was a really hard class. Are you teaching anything else next year?" The day after I handed in my final marks, it was past time to begin on the proofing for the journal - oof. Since then, I've worked up my article a bit more and started scribbling for the two projects due by the 15th of July: a paper for the NCS congress in Siena and a review article for our student journal.

Okay, so maybe that was six months' worth of activity, but it still feels a bit hazy, especially the period between mid-February (official pre-defense submission) and early May (the end of the proofing). I do have a slightly clearer recollection of the three weeks I spent with a pair of adorable cats - perhaps something to do with the positive health benefits that must have arisen from the intense pleasure of being able to run off-road along the lake and from the soporific effect of furry, warm bodies that wanted to cuddle. Oh! During those three weeks, I also read the Harry Potter books, at long last. I don't know whether or not this represents a positive health benefit, but they kept my interest more than Alice in Wonderland did.

I have clawed my way back from the four hours of sleep that was the norm over the last nine months, and my goal for the next six months is to keep that up, while finding ways to be productive in spite of it.

In which earnestness endures

I have to be on my way out the door in ten minutes, and I don't have a good record for writing quickly. Let's see if I can do it this time!

I was thinking that my last post helped this blog to maintain an undesirable level of earnestness, but when I reread the end of the post, I discovered an even more fundamental problem: I hadn't realized that I was exhausted almost to the point of incoherence, and there are definitely a few logical connections I was making in my head that did not get written down. Sorry, guys! I hope it made some kind of sense.

And perhaps I should be more careful about describing Eynsham as a backwater, in light of the fact that it was founded by Æthelmær, who had been a powerful figure until he retired from court a year before the "palace revolution" of 1006. Beyond this, there are some indications that King Æthelred and his sons may have visited the abbey from time to time and been permitted to eat in the refectory (!), but it's true that it does not appear as one of the leading houses in charters of the day and that Ælfric never appears in charters.

All right, today's business: If the so-called White Firefighters Case didn't bring this home to us, especially as it intersected with Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, then this week's hoopla over the arrest of Skip Gates certainly made it clear that we have not put race behind us. This case is also about class: not just a black man arrested by a white man, but a prominent university professor facing off with a working-class police officer. Society is a complicated beast. The President has once again showed his political savvy in recognizing that he could help to quell a storm that he had (probably inadvertently) helped to stir up, but his original comments are telling both of the ongoing problem and of a kind of change that he has brought in even addressing the issue in such blunt terms. The whole mess of race relations makes me quite sad. Within weeks of my arrival in Chicago, I was spat on for no reason I can discern other than that I was white - in a neighbourhood inhabited by a large white population, as well as a mix of minority populations. Somehow, I couldn't feel angry about it.

That was also the year that I met an older black woman (also named Emily) who, aside from her obvious failure to take a pretty hefty dose of medication, was still labouring under a crushing sense of injury and bitterness. We could be talking about a book or a piece of music, and the conversation would almost invariably turn suddenly to old insults and painful examples of discrimination. So many people can still remember terrible, terrible things, and there was nothing I could do for the older Emily but hear her out, swearing and all. I used to chat with the girls who worked the cash registers at one of the dining halls on campus - one was jealous of my long, straight hair, while I was jealous of the skull that allowed her to shave her head and look stunning; they were proud of me for having rhythm when they played music on quiet Saturday mornings - but the fact remains that white students vastly outnumbered black students and that the only white people working the cash machines were supervisors. Back to that fossilized class divide that preserves the old outlines of slavery. And for all that I deplore the slave trade, I can't wish that I'd never met the people who are descended from slaves. I can't unwish the country's first black president, and I can't wish to rewrite history.


It's tough, this learning from the past.

EDIT: And on that terribly earnest note, I am terribly late!