listless intellectual

Yesterday was the first day of class. Having spent the previous two weeks frantically working to get my syllabi done in time to make copies while I was on campus for the "mandatory adjunct meeting," I've been taking it pretty easy this week. Then yesterday came the baptism by fire. I exaggerate. It was rather a grueling day, though, since I had to talk pretty much non-stop from 10am until 2pm. That's the bad thing about the first day of class—the teacher has to do it all. As I told my students, if things go the way I'd like, that's the last time I'll be doing all, or even most, of the talking during any given class period.

It's been a while since I taught on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, and I've never done it with three classes back-to-back. It will be interesting to see whether I'm able to fill up an hour and fifteen minutes twice a week. I've always found the fifty minute period too short to do much of anything. The good thing about the longer class period is that you can break each class meeting up into a couple of activities (or more)— you can do this in theory, anyway.

Last Friday was the "mandatory adjunct meeting," which serves as an orientation for new part-time instructors and, well, I'm not sure what function it serves for returning adjuncts. There were four presentations by members of the Writing Program Committee, and two of them were nearly exactly the same as presentations given last year. Yawn. The main thing I came away with was this shocking (to me) piece of information: At this "college" (soon to be "university"), the ratio of full-time to part-time teachers is 40/60. Yes, 60% of the people teaching there are part-time instructors. The prof who reported this explained that the school administration finds this ratio acceptable, even desirable. This disturbs me on so many levels.

First, for the tuition these students are paying, they deserve to have MOSTLY teachers whose primary job is to teach them—people who are not struggling to make ends meet by teaching seven classes at three different schools; people who do not try to fit their instructional duties into the time left over after their full-time jobs. College students deserve to have teachers with offices—some of my most significant educational exchanges, as an undergrad and as a grad student, came not in the classroom but in conversations I had with professors in their offices. That's the sort of interaction that part-time instructors—at least at this school and in this department—can't offer.

Second, I would venture to say that many of the part-time instructors here are barely qualified at best. I say this because I haven't seen nearly the rigorous criteria applied to instructors' educational qualifications here as I have at other schools. A woman who was teaching in the English department last year also taught a philosophy course, and she had not even a bachelor's degree in philosophy, never mind "30 hours of graduate credit" (which was, I thought, the minimum standard for teaching any subject at the college level).

It's discouraging to think that as a college degree becomes increasingly a "required" qualification, it becomes, for so many people, less and less valuable in any meaningful sense. Education has become just another commodity for which it's not quality that matters but the number of "units" that can be moved. I live in hell.

Posted by Marcia at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to figure out how to fix some meat that would be appealing to me in 100-degree weather—I mean appealing to cook and appealing to eat. You see, James is a carnivore. He could eat meat three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I am not. I prefer to eat meat not more than once every other day at most; if I cooked only for myself, I'd probably have it only once or twice a week.* Because of my own predilections, I find it difficult to dream up meals centered on meat. My culinary imagination just doesn't tend in that direction.

In attempting to come up with something appealing, I settled on the idea of a Cuban meal. Cuba is hot, so I figured Cuban-style meat would be appropriate for desert-style weather (even though Cuba's heat is tropical). My Google search directed me to TasteofCuba.com, where I found, among other things, this recipe for chicken in a black bean sauce. So I had the meat dish, which would obviously be served over rice. I needed another side.

At this point, Ben is wondering, where is the avocado love? Here it is: Further exploration of TasteofCuba.com turned up a recipe for avocado and pineapple salad. This sounded unusual to me—I love both avocado and pineapple but would never have thought to put them in a salad together. I had to try it. I think J. was a little skeptical at first, but the salad was delicious and went perfectly with the chicken. The site's recipe doesn't specify quantities for the dressing, but I used about three-four tablespoons each of apple cider vinegar and olive oil, and it seemed just right. I also used green leaf rather than iceberg lettuce. Here's the recipe:

Ensalada de Aguacate Y Piña (Avocado and Pineapple Salad Recipe)
Mix the following ingredients for a simple Cuban style salad.
Shredded iceberg lettuce
2 cups of pineapple chunks
1 large avocado, peeled and cut in slices
1 small onion, sliced thin
olive oil
red wine or cider vinegar
salt and pepper

*In fact, when I lived alone—as long ago and far away as that seems—and did cook only for myself and the occasional guest, I rarely cooked meat. Most of the time, I ate vegetarian at home and meat only at restaurants.

Posted by Marcia at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The revolution will not be televised.

Posted by Marcia at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Textbooks were expensive when I was in college, but I never paid over $100 for one book, a common occurrence now, according to commenters on this item at Metafilter (via Maud Newton). The outrageous prices and frequent new editions are bad enough, but according to this report, publishers are sticking it to U.S. students while selling the same textbooks at much lower prices overseas:

The average textbook surveyed costs 20 percent more in the United States than it does in the United Kingdom.

Some textbooks were dramatically more expensive in the United States than in the United Kingdom. For example, Pearson’s Calculus textbook, selling for about $100 in the U.S., costs only $38 on the U.K. Amazon.com website, just one third the price. Freeman’s Chemical Principles textbook, priced at $185 in the U.S., is available in the U.K. for only $88—half the price.

Some publishers display overseas prices on their websites. For example, Thomson Learning’s website lists the prices charged to students in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. According to this website, for the books included in our survey, Thomson Learning charges U.S. students 72 percent more, on average, than it does students in the U.K., Africa and Middle East. Some books are priced even higher. For example, Thomson Learning charges U.S. students $108 for its Biology textbook, but charges students in the U.K., Africa, and Middle East only $51 for the same book.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why publishers can charge twice as much for textbooks here at home: student loans. Yes, it's subsidized capitalism at its finest. Since we the people have deemed higher education to be a worthwhile investment, it's only fitting that those who supply the goods should get two or three times their fair share of the take. Without our system of government-guaranteed student loans, publishers would never get away with these prices—just like they don't in other countries.

It's funny (and sad) how some people get so up in arms over individuals (i.e., recipients of funds from social welfare programs) who "work the system," but nobody bats an eye when corporations do it.

Posted by Marcia at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night we ventured out to the free Twilight Concert Series for the first time. Even though some good acts played the series last year, we never got off our asses to see any of them. But a free show by Yo La Tengo provided the final motivational push to get us out of the house on a Thursday night. Honestly, we almost bailed even on this—only because it was 106 degrees at 6pm, which is not an encouraging temperature for an outdoor show. Luckily, the stage area at the Gallivan Center is pretty well sheltered by the surrounding tall buildings, so we did not fry.

When we got to the Gallivan Center, we made our way to the stage area and joined one of James' co-workers who had helpfully saved space for us with his family. After finding some food (Thai from one of the on-site vendors), we settled in for the opening band, The Fiery Furnaces. They had an interesting sound, but I got bored with it after just a few songs. Because I was over their sound so quickly, the set seemed to last forever. One of the songs featured some lines about Mormons and Joseph Smith, which sent a cheer up through the Salt Lake City crowd (go here and scroll down for lyrics to "Oh Sweet Woods").

Finally, after an interminable opening set and an even less terminable stage change, Yo La Tengo came on. I have seen YLT twice before, and I wasn't sure that outside would be a good place to experience them. Not to worry. There the speakers were plenty big, and the stage area is small and somewhat closed in there. Because my vocabulary/imagination for describing music is next to nil, I will say only this: they rocked. When Ira Kaplan breaks in to one of those nasty guitar solos, it makes me almost clap my hands with glee. I did bounce up and down a couple of times and say, "Yay! My favorite!" when I heard the opening drumbeats of "Autumn Sweater."

Last night while we waited in line for food, I overheard a woman tell her friend, "Yo La Tengo is an acquired taste." I have to agree (sort of ). I first saw YLT at the Cotton Club in Atlanta with a couple of friends who were already fans (along with a couple of boyfriends who weren't). I was bored out of my mind and could not for the life of me figure out why my friends were so into this band. Fast forward a couple of years: A co-worker in Nashville brings some YLT cds to work, and we listen to them in the office. Next thing I know, I MUST own the album I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. Because of what? You guessed it, the song "Autumn Sweater"— also, the album was recorded in Nashville, and the first song is called "Return to Hot Chicken." In Music City, Nashville in-jokes cannot be resisted. And it's a really good album.

Soon, Yo La Tengo was scheduled to play a show at the Belcourt Theatre with Lambchop, a favorite band of both J. and me. We had to go. Good thing, too, because it was one of the best shows I've seen. Mellow at the beginning, loud and nasty at the end. Beautiful.

From these experiences I deduced that, at least in my case, Yo La Tengo is a band whose recordings you have to know and like before you can appreciate them live. A lot of their music is fairly low key without the sort of hooks that can draw you (me) in to unfamiliar music in a live setting. But once you know the songs, even just a bit, you come to the show with a little hook inside you just waiting to be activated.

The place was packed last night, and we didn't get very close to the stage. True to form, we left before the final note had sounded—my tolerance for full body contact with drunk/high* hippie kids has reached an all-time low. James managed hold the camera up high enough to get a blurry picture, which kind of captures the mood, if not the band's appearance.

*Yes, there was just as much beer and doobage here in Zion as at just about any show I've ever been to. And the behavior it induced was just as charming.

Posted by Marcia at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my list of meals I miss, I mentioned love cakes from the Flying Biscuit in Atlanta. The Biscuit (as it's affectionately known—or was by me and my friends when I lived nearby) has graciously posted the recipe for love cakes on its site, so, having conjured them up in memory, I thought I'd try cooking some up in fact.

Because I wanted James to try the love cakes and didn't think he'd like the breakfast version, I tasked myself with contriving a way to serve them for dinner. I settled on a fairly simple meal of love cakes and tomatillo salsa with shrimp (marinated in cilantro and lime juice, then sautéed), pickled onions (from this Rick Bayless cookbook), and sliced avocado. This combination met with the approval of my sometimes finicky, bean-ambivalent spouse, though the enormous pile of dishes left in its wake illustrated once again why I prefer meals that can be cooked and served in one dish.

Love cakes dinner

Love cakes aftermath

I wouldn't be done with love cakes until I'd had them with eggs, so the next morning I fried an egg and one of the leftover cakes, set the egg on top of the cake, covered it with salsa, and sliced half an avocado to go alongside. Delicious. Since the love cake bounty was still unexhausted, this morning I had two cakes with an egg, salsa and pickled onions (see photo at top left).

Conclusion: Love cakes from the Flying Biscuit rule, even if you have to make them yourself.

Posted by Marcia at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Does there seem to be a lot of missing going on around here? I seem to be biting into madeleines frequently these days, and with my time unstrung as it is (unstructured, I mean), there's no reason not to let my mind go where it will. And having done that, why not share?

In addition to elaborating involuntary memories, I've read a couple of books. The first was a disappointing novel by Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes. I have read several of Hardy's novels and liked them all; Jude the Obscure is one of my all-time favorite novels. A Pair of Blue Eyes is not. I think this was Hardy's second novel, and it's just not very good. I didn't care about any of the characters. They all seemed shallow and uninteresting, especially Elfride, a woman with whom the two main male characters are completely smitten and obsessed for some reason that I could not fathom. She is no Tess or Eustacia Vye or Sue Bridehead, not by a long shot. Because I am stupid and have a grad school hangover, I stuck with this 400-page tome until I finished it, even though I knew after the first couple of chapters that it wasn't doing anything for me. I don't guess I will bother reading Hardy's first novel. I do still need to read The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is supposed to be good.

After finally finishing the unpleasant Hardy, I started in on my birthday books. First up was Easter Everywhere by Darcey Steinke. I've read two of Steinke's four novels and liked one of them, Jesus Saves, quite a lot (the other, Suicide Blonde, wasn't bad, just not as compelling to me). Easter Everywhere is a lovely book, although it feels a bit truncated in parts—perhaps appropriately so, given its episodic structure. While I enjoyed the first part of the book, I found the latter sections more engrossing, probably because in those sections Steinke makes her reflections on her religious life and spiritual seeking more explicit. Steinke is a very good writer, and if you enjoy reading thoughtful explorations of the religious impulse, free from orthodoxy or proselytizing, I recommend this one.

Now a dilemma: What to read next? I have a couple more birthday books, one a novel and one another memoir. I'm not sure which to choose. They're both fairly short, so neither will involve a major time commitment. I'll probably go for the novel.

Posted by Marcia at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an article recounting a week's meals, Darcey Steinke mentions smoked trout. I'm instantly transported to Atlanta, 1996-ish, Cafe Diem, smoked trout sandwich. I'm reminded of other favorite meals of various times and places, some still available if ever I chance to visit, some gone with the wind.

Starkville, Mississippi, 1986-1990
I used to say that Starkville had more good restaurants per capita than any other place I'd ever been. It was a good place to acquire "the freshman fifteen" (although, thanks to mono and strep throat, my college weight gain was delayed for a year).

• Jalapeño fried cheese, The District Cafe (RIP): I cannot describe the beauty and goodness of this fried cheese. I think they used tempura batter; it was golden, light, and crispy. The cheese was pepper jack. I can't even remember any of the entrees served at the District. When I think of this place, a favorite happy hour hang-out, "jap cheese" and 90-cent draft beer obliterate all other food memories.
• The Bulldog, Bulldog Deli: "Tender roast beef, kielbasa, spicy jalapeno pepper cheese, our own BBQ sauce with your choice of toppings." Thinking about the delicious interplay of the jalapeño cheese and BBQ sauce makes my mouth water.
• Shrimp po-boy and potato salad (with onions), Oby's: Oby's had two kinds of potato salad, with onions or without. The non-onion version was your standard Southern yellow mustard clumpy style. The onion version was something else altogether: chunks of potato and slivers of red onion suspended in a light sour cream (I think) dressing. I could easily have skipped the po-boy and eaten a plate full of the potato salad on its own.
• Pulled pork plate, The Little Dooey: The only baked beans I've ever enjoyed—probably because they come laced with stringy pieces of pork. So good. Custom mixing the variously heated sauces adds to the pleasure of the meal.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1990-1993
Everything that Starkville was, food-wise, Tuscaloosa was not, but you could get decent "greasy spoon" (and other cheap) food there, to wit:

• Starvin' Marvin with tots, Kwik-Snak (RIP): Kwik-Snak was a 24-hour joint, the late-night refuge of drinkers from "the Strip," where frat boys and freaks mixed uneasily. The Starvin' Marvin was a cheeseburger; that you could get it with tater tots is what made Kwik Snak so special. They also served a decent breakfast.
• House fried rice, Chang's (RIP): Three servings of fried rice with chicken, beef, shrimp, and a few vegetables, for $5. I was in grad school. Need I say more?
• Vegetable plate, City Cafe: Standard meat-and-three fare. I generally chose to forgo the meat. After 2pm, the vegetable plate cost under $3.

Atlanta, Georgia, 1994-1998
Salad days. I couldn't afford to eat out, but I did it anyway. Often. Fortunately, there was much good eating to be had on the cheap.

• Smoked trout sandwich, Cafe Diem (RIP): This sandwich came with some kind of aioli that was like crack to me. Cafe Diem had the best of most worlds—food, coffee, wine & beer, and all in a great room (with a nice patio to boot). Its only flaw: not cheap. I could, and often did, sit there for hours, both alone and with friends. Good times.
• Slice of pizza and a salad, Fellini's Pizza: The Candler Park location was my "local" the last two years I lived in Atlanta. That I could walk there in two minutes was perhaps unfortunate for my waistline. I loved it when they'd open up the garage door—the building was a remodeled gas station—so that you could be simultaneously inside and out (sort of).
• Paella and sangria, La Fonda Latina: The Candler Park location was just across the street from Fellini's. La Fonda was a little more expensive than Fellini's, so less of a temptation. James was hooked after eating there once, so we've eaten there on each of our too-infrequent visits to Atlanta together.
• Egg-Ceptional eggs, The Flying Biscuit: After I moved to Candler Park, I probably spent more of the money I should have saved at The Flying Biscuit than anywhere else. I just couldn't resist going there for breakfast. I most often got the more straightforward Eggstra-Ordinary breakfast (choice of grits or potatoes—I always got both); the Egg-Ceptional, with yummy black bean "love cakes" and tomatillo salsa, was a special treat.
• Blue 'shroom burger, The Vortex: Blue cheese and sautéed mushrooms on top of a giant slab of hamburger. What's not to love? Because of the cost—to health and bank account (because it took many beers to wash down one of those burgers)—the Vortex was a rare indulgence. I enjoyed the midtown location more than the "new" (ten years ago) location in Little Five Points. It amused me that the "no smoking" section was on the upper level and open to the lower, smoking, level. I'm sure it's all "no smoking" now.

Nashville, Tennessee, 1998-2003
Eating out in Nashville was kind of sad after Atlanta's bounty, but there was some good stuff there.

• Caldo de camarón, La Hacienda: Good, cheap Mexican food. Alas, the shrimp soup wasn't on the menu when I ate there in May.
• Stir-fried squid, Koto: Squid, cabbage, and red pepper, perfectly sautéed—the squid not chewy, the cabbage not mushy. Delicious.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2003-2005
Not much better the second time around, with a couple of notable exceptions.

• Ghobi manchurian, Maharaja of India: Fried cauliflower in a red-pepper gravy. Yum.
• Half price pizza and wine, Cafe Venice: Any pizza, any wine, every Wednesday.

While there are restaurants that I enjoy here in Salt Lake, so far they haven't offered up any meals that I would add to "meals I miss" were we to move tomorrow. The food here is just too bland. Even typically spicy ethnic foods are toned down to boring. We've found one exception in Chanon Thai Cafe, where the curry or tom ka will easily set your mouth aflame.

Posted by Marcia at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good quotes found in an old journal, from the profound to the profane:

Can the meaning of a precise moment appear all at once? It need hardly be pointed out: only the succession of moments can become clear. One moment has meaning only in its relation to other moments. We are at each instant only fragments deprived of meaning if we do not relate these fragments to other fragments. How can we refer to this completed whole?
Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros

Emerging from /an Abyss and /entering it again /that is life /is it not?
Emily Dickinson

Hang a guitar on any ugly, stupid bastard and someone will want to fuck him. (This from someone who would know—but not because he was ugly or stupid.)

When you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends, even though you appreciate them with new feeling.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also, but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Vast emptiness and nothing holy in it. (No attribution recorded, but I think it was Kerouac or another Beat writer.)**

Don't mistake a delay for a defeat. (From a horoscope.)

Trails are like that: You're floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and fluteboys, then suddenly you're struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak... just like life.
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

One task I've set for myself this summer is going through boxes and boxes of (what I suspect is) junk and getting rid of as much of it as possible. While I find this task daunting, even depressing, it offers a certain degree of enjoyment, since many of the boxes are filled with my life's ephemera: photos, postcards, concert tickets, letters (yes, I used to send and receive them), buttons ("I won't respect you in the morning either"), articles cut out of magazines ("In My Life: An R.E.M. Discography"), nametags from conferences, old journals. Looking through the old journals, I find the quotations I've noted far more interesting than what I wrote (about) myself. I'm glad to have the rambling, ranting, emoting—and most interesting, but most infrequent, chronicles of events—recorded there, but my own words don't speak to me now, while the words of Dickinson, Kerouac, Batailles*, even the horoscope writer, do. So I'm glad I wrote that stuff in there, too.

In spite of having found so far mostly things that I don't want to throw out, I've managed to get rid of several bags of (mostly) paper. Today's batch of boxes yielded my collection of cassette tapes. These tapes pose something of a dilemma, since I don't necessarily want to get rid of them, but I don't necessarily have any use for them, either—we don't even have the tape deck hooked up to the stereo any more. Some of them are keepers merely because they are out of print and would likely be difficult to replace (I'm talking to you The Sound of Music by The dB's). Others that I don't want to part with are mix tapes lovingly crafted by various music fanboys of my acquaintance. The tapes that can go—the ones that should probably have gone in the trash today—are tapes made of records or cds just so I could listen to them in the car (or just so I could listen to them, since the originals belonged to someone else). For some reason dumping these cassettes in the trash seems wrong—like throwing away a book. I must get over it. Hanging on to three boxes of cassettes is just ridiculous. I found a boom box in the basement (I wasn't sure that we still had one) and brought it up so I could listen to R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, which I hadn't heard in years—because I have it only on cassette! Need to rectify that.

*Especially the Bataille. There were several quotes from The Tears of Eros that make me want to read that again (since I remember nothing about the book, not even having read it—this is the reason I now keep lists of books I read).

**Addendum: Perhaps this was quoted by a Beat writer. It turns out it is a quotation from the founder of Zen Buddhism.

Posted by Marcia at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1 Suffer the little children
Yesterday morning, sitting on my sofa, doing morning things (i.e., reading things online, drinking a hot caffeinated beverage, which yesterday happened to be tea), enjoying the quiet. Suddenly, high-pitched squeals pierce my ears. The woman next door has let her two toddlers loose out front again. They run up and down the sidewalk in front of my house, pushing each other on some wheeled toy and screaming for over two hours. Sometimes the screaming stops, and the older boy yells at a neighbor or passerby, "Hi. What are you doing?" and other such four-year-old questions. This boy never seems to speak in a normal voice. All morning I resist the urge to stand at the door and yell, "Use your inside voice!" or "Why can't you let your little monsters play in the BACK YARD?!" I love kids, but these two little boys work my last nerve, and their parents seem always to put them out front to play.

2 Workers playtime
Yesterday afternoon, just back from the grocery store and glad to find that the squealing little boys are safely and quietly inside, I put away my food, ready to put on some music and make curry sauce (for me, an afternoon-long affair). Before I can get five fabulous cds from the 80s loaded in the changer, I'm assaulted by strains of Mexican oom-pah music; it appears to be issuing from the truck of the roofing workers across the street. Unlucky as I am, this music comes not from a cd but from a Mexican radio station, complete with rumbling ten-minute-long advertisements and rapid-fire Spanish announcing. Joy. The workers continue to amuse themselves in this way until they kick off sometime after five.

3 Art for the people
Today, all is quiet: No squealing little boys, no rumbling radio ads, just peace and quiet. I celebrate by listening to the latest album from The Sea and Cake. Season six of The X-Files is on hold for me at the library, so I decide to go pick it up. I make my way downtown and, as I'm about to turn into the street beside the library where I normally park, I notice barricades. There's a stage set up behind the library. There's a sign that says, "Utah Arts Festival." Fuck. The whole block around the library is closed, tents are set up, signs are displayed, there is no way to get parked and go into the library to pick up my Spooky discs. No doubt this will continue through the week and weekend, which means that my hold will expire, and Spooky Part Six will go back to the shelf before I'm able once again to gain access to the library.

With our thoughts we create the world
Cultivating good will toward strangers and humanity in general is something I struggle with—or rather, it's something I think I should struggle with but mostly don't. Mostly I just cave to my misanthropic tendencies. Much of what stokes my misanthropy has to do with unwelcome intrusions into my aural, visual or psychic space—that's right, not any particular action or wrong, just unself-conscious existence that happens to bleed into my own. So far, self-awareness is as close as I've come to a corrective in this area. I realize that is not much. Even sadder, I realize that this is among several faults (unproductive attitudes/perspectives, really) that I've been saying that about for the past decade or so. Frailty thy name is human.

*With apologies to M. Godard.

Posted by Marcia at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)