The name game - an impasse

Although I'm pretty crappy at coming up with pseudonyms on this blog, I generally like coming up with names and do so as a mental game every now and then. I know I'm not the only one out there, since I have a number friends with long lists of names of imagined broods of children. And some friends and I have an annoying habit of stopping each other in mid-sentence to say, "That would make a great band name!" (Silliest one ever: The Damned Coconuts. Yes, I once uttered that phrase in conversation. Long story.)

Now Bullock is pretty indulgent in this practice of mine. I can say to him, out loud, "Can we name our imaginary first born son Miles?" and he'll say, "Sure." He'll even ask why and how I came up with the name. And he's even accepted the fact that our imaginary daughter is named Ada, an even more old-fashioned name than Miles.

Perhaps Bullock's easy-going attitude about this is because these kids are imaginary and likely to stay that way. I can name them any damn thing I want to.

But he's put his foot down on my choice of name for the dog we will eventually get. And it's a really cool name!!!

I want to name a dog Havoc. It's all because while I was at K'zoo I was quoting Julius Caesar for some reason -- "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!"* -- and then I interrupted myself for once and cried, "Ooh! Havoc would make an excellent name for a dog!"

But nooooooo, not so, thinks Bullock. He thinks it sounds like a goth metal band. OK, so it would make a good band name, too. But don't you think it would be a cool dog name? His/her full name could be Havoc, the Dog of War, and the puns on "wreaking havoc" and "Havoc reeks" would be nearly endless. What's not to like??

What do you think, oh wisdom of the internets?




*Except, after too much cheap wine at K'zoo, I think I kept misquoting it as "...and let loose the dogs of war" or worse, "...release the dogs of war" (shades of Mr. Burns' "Release the hounds!" I think).

I-ruh-nee: tv addiction edition

So tonight, while watching a DVR'd version of this week's BBC Robin Hood (what? you're not watching that? wait...I'll get back to that...where was I?...), I got all excited when they showed a preview of a Life on Mars marathon in anticipation of the airing of the second season. And by excited, I mean I actually, literally jumped and down on the couch. (Wait, huh? You're not watching that either? What am I going to do with you people?)

*Anyway*, after calming me down, here's what Bullock said: "You know what's ironic?"

"Um, no, what?"

"That by the time they start showing the new season here, you'll be in England..."

"...where they'll be finished with season 2!!! Waaaahhhhh!"

All I can say is thank god for DVRs. Now, when on earth are they going to release this show on an American DVD, dammit?! Do you hear me BBC! Give North America a DVD of Life on Mars, because believe me, the David E. Kelley version is going to *suck*!

******

OK, now for you people not watching these shows. Fine, so you don't have BBC America. But Robin Hood will be out on DVD soon, so at least you can Netflix it. But a warning for the medievalists: it's Errol Flynn style Robin Hood updated for the faux-hawk generation (Alan actually has one), so take off your medievalist hats and be prepared to giggle with it, not at it. Here's a few warnings: Marion frequently wears pajama-style pants and a tunic and does tai chi in them; the miners go on strike (and use that turn of phrase); in this week's episode, either Alan or Will (I can't remember) used the phrase "severance pay"; and Guy wears head-to-toe black leather in a style the Pastry Pirate described as "Loverboy reject." I think you're supposed to giggle at that sort of anachronism, and I know you're supposed to giggle at the wonderfully campy sheriff and Much's low-budget version of Sam Gamgee's "no-we're-just-homosocial" devotion to Frodo in his own devotion to Robin. (He cooks, too.) Once I just let go and let the camp wash over me, I loved it.

As for Life on Mars, the time-traveling 70s cop show, well Entertainment Weekly put it best:

"Leave it to those wily Brits to solve one of TV's most pressing mysteries: How do you keep the crime procedural fresh? Simm easily navigates the gritty cop plotlines and the mystical sci-fi elements, thanks to his distinctly British regular-bloke appeal. And his crackling chemistry with gruff boss Gene Hunt only adds to the series' charm. It's Quantum Leap meets The Streets of San Francisco - with nary a C, S, or I in sight. Grade: A-" (Entertainment Weekly, 07/28/06)

And if you do have BBCAmerica, they're replaying episodes 1, 4, 5, and 8 on this Saturday (May 26) starting at 12:00 p.m. EST, and then all over again for you nightowls on Sunday starting at 2 a.m. Set your DVRs and VCRs people!

Woo hoo! Public speaking is fun!

OK, so I'm back from the general audience talk I mentioned in the last post. First of all, thanks to everyone for suggestions and well-wishes. I stayed with that 50/50 frame-to-scholarly-stuff ratio; I made a handout with some pictures thrown in just for fun; and I also gave the draft to Bullock to read since he's a political scientist and would be able to catch the "only an academic lit. crit. would get that" parts.

And I think it went really well. Some of my audience consisted of my colleagues, so there were academics there, but in various disciplines (though three colleagues from English). But the rest were area professionals and also some high school seniors who'd been given scholarships for college, plus their parents. I guess I might as well say the occasion was the annual meeting of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, so obviously that crowd is going to be a friendly and interested crowd. And since PBK is dedicated to the importance and value of the liberal arts, I hit the "speaking for the dead"/"why it matters" points pretty hard. And I got really good questions -- the first from a colleague, but the rest from the non-academic audience members. Afterwards, my senior colleague said "that was really smart" and the organizer (also an academic) said I did a great job balancing the frame and content, and always bringing the more abstract ideas back to the concrete examples, and the past to the present. But the best comment came from a woman who got her M.D. in the 1950s (wow. just wow.) who came up to me afterwards and said, "Thank you for giving a scholarly talk -- it's been awhile since we've had one of those." She's also one of the people who asked a smart question.

So it was really gratifying for me, personally, but also gratifying to be reminded that there are people who care, who are interested, who want to know -- sometimes just for the sake of knowing. Of course, witha PBK audience, I'm preaching to the choir to some extent, but there were scientists there, and my talk was a humanities talk, and sometimes they need to be reminded that what we do matters, too.

Anyway, when I started my talk, people were still eating dessert and drinking coffee (it was a luncheon), so there was a lot of clinking going on. But about half way through, when I got to the difficult scholarly bit, the room got very, very quiet. At first I thought, "Oh god, I've lost them," but actually I think they were just listening very carefully because they realized my material was getting a little more complex. Bullock says that he kept an eye on the audience and they seemed attentive throughout -- all except the really, really old guy (he was about 90, I think), who fell asleep. But then he'd probably fall asleep in the middle of the Super Bowl!

So it was a positive experience, and like I said in my last post, it was good for me to "translate" my work this way -- good for teaching, good for "public intellectual" work, good for being an ambassador of the humanities and literary study and medieval studies. It was a lot of work this week, and I was very, very nervous about it, but now that I've done it once, and I know what to except, I'd do it again. As JJ Cohen and Bardiac and others said in the comments in the post below, this kind of thing is probably some of the most important work we do as academics.

Public speaking, speaking public

I'm in the process of trying to write something for a talk to a general-but-educated audience on Sunday. The audience will be non-academic, but the kind of people who go to hear academics talk. It's the first time I've done such a thing and I'm having a difficult time 'translating' parts of my work. But it's a good and important difficult, I think. It's good for my writing process -- getting me out of knee-jerk habits, finding new turns of phrase -- and it's good in the sense that my obscure work on sometimes obscure texts and manuscripts (not the book project, for those who know me -- new stuff) is getting a hearing before a non-academic audience, because it gives me a chance to talk about why it matters.

I'm lifting part of my talk from my "Speaking for the Dead" post, but since the substance of my talk is about the meaning (and meaningfulness) of an ownership inscription in a manuscript of literary texts (and not really about the texts themselves, though it's a little bit about them in relation to their readers) I'm starting the whole thing with a couple of childhood books with inscriptions from my mother in them and talking about what book historians and literary/cultural critics of the future might say about them. It's a little corny, but I think it will cement the connection between the here and now, and the then and there, and the importance of speaking for the dead.

I'm worried both about the general framing move taking over the substance of the talk (it's about 1/2 frame and 1/2 substance!) and also about the substantive part going over the audience's head. But as Bullock just said to me, "Won't they expect you to go over their heads a little bit?" Otherwise, he suggested, they might think I'm a "fraud" of an academic. Hmm. But I don't want them to walk away saying "Typical academics -- don't know how to talk to 'normal' people." I want them to feel that there's something at stake in the humanities, even in the work done on long dead people, writers, and their texts. I want them to walk away saying, "That was fascinating -- more people should care about this." And then I want them to go read the texts I'm talking about (some of which are available in student friendly editions) and assign them to their book clubs, and then think about why they read what they read. And I want them to write to their representatives and senators and say, "It's really important to fund the humanities, because this is what it means to be human -- to read and to remember and to memorialize the dead and the past." Are my goals too lofty? Yeah, probably. I'll be happy if I don't hear crickets chirping after my talk.

Argh. This is hard.

Zoo, zoo, zoo!

UPDATE: OMG!!!! Baby animals!!!! So cute!!! (Yes I am a Ph.D. and a grown up. Why do you ask?)

No, not Kalamazoo. Not this time (though I have one more post to write about the conference). Rather, my post title refers to what was once known as a zoological garden. (Side note for the language history geeks: look around at the web sites for all the zoos you can think of and you'll see that "zoo" has become the standard. When did that happen, I wonder? And I don't just mean in common parlance -- in which "zoo" has been the standard all my life, at least -- but in the official titles of the zoos, too. It's like Federal Express changing to FedEx and Kentucky Fried Chicken changing to KFC.)

Anywho, I'm all excited because this afternoon Bullock and I are going to the Zoo to see the special new babies who've just come on display. They're rare, they're cute, and there are three of them, all born as some suprise to the keepers. Two are twins and the third was born to another mother at about the same time as the twins. It's quite a rare treat and I'm sooooo excited! (I'd tell you what kind of animal, but that would make it way, way, WAY too easy to pinpoint exactly who I am. If you want to spend your day figuring out which midwestern zoo has had a boom in rare-in-captivity babies to the count of three, well, you've got too much time on your hands.)

Also at the zoo currently are an abundance of baby and toddler-age primates and some other very special young ones spread around the zoo. Yay baby animals!

K'zoo report #2: Breakfast of champions

While the dance sometimes makes me uncomfortable, blogger meet-ups RAWK! This year's event was almost twice as large as last year's, and I have a feeling that the breakfast time is what made that so. Sadly, that might mean that this non-morning person will have to drag her ass out of bed and be groggily social again in future years. (Side note: if anyone else wants to take over organizing it next year, feel free. It's not onerous at all, but it shouldn't always be me or else it will become my thing instead of a group thing.) It also might mean, sadly, that Eileen Joy will never come, because she told me later that she is simply not able to get up that early (I think she's definitely someone who works as well as plays into the wee hours). So perhaps it should be a movable feast.

Anyway, there were so many people there that I didn't even quite figure out who was who -- in real life or in the blogosphere. Among those I could identify with their blogs were J. J. Cohen, Karl Steel, The Cranky Professor, Another Damn Medievalist (Blogenspiel), Scott Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard, Michael Drout of Wormtalk and Slugspeak, Medieval Woman, Mary Kate Hurley of Old English in New York, New Kid on the Hallway, Dr. Moonbeam, Tiruncula, History Geek, Holly of Hollyism, S. Worthen of Owlfish, Lisa Spangenberg, aka Digital Medievalist, Elisabeth Carnell, Eulistes, and bloggers and friends associated with Making Light. If I forgot anyone or didn't quite meet you because you were at the other end of our trio of tables (grouped in an appropriately medieval trefoil/clover leaf/trinitarian kind of way), let me know. My apologies!

I was really pleased that this year there was a real mix of people in different stages of their careers, and also a better gender mix. I think it says something about the status of blogging that we had such a mix, and that bloggers from all those stages of career were willing to come and meet other bloggers. In other words, blogging is becoming less of a sub-culture and more of a mainstream culture. It also says something that there was also a mix of pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous bloggers, and that if asked, people generally revealed their pseudonymous blogs. Somewhere someone noted that when rounds of introductions were made, we didn't identify our blogs, but I think in my case it was more a worry about our voices carrying to tables of non-bloggers. I still worry about non-bloggers' attitudes towards blogs. Who knows if we have an Ivan Tribble among the medieval crowd. But one-on-one I don't think people cared that much.

On that note, Karl mentioned that when he was still "Karl the Grouchy Medievalist," he was more prone to live up to that moniker than he is under his own name. Likewise, I often think that since I'm easily identifiable if you already know me (if you're my friend, colleague, or student), I try not to write things that I wouldn't want associated with me. That may explain, too, why everyone seemed so darn nice in person (on which, see more below).

I met a number of these people last year, and at least one of these bloggers is someone I knew in real life before I started blogging (though it was amusing to both of us that we only just figured this out because of this breakfast!). And many of them have been blogging or real life friends with some of the others for many years. So in many ways the breakfast was a reunion for many people. (I hope that didn't put off too many of the bloggers who were completely new to each other. There are some tight and deep friendships in that group, but it's also a really friendly and welcoming group.) But there were still delightful new real life acquaintances to make all around. I hope this can be an annual, informal event.

There were some conspicuous absences. As mentioned, Eileen Joy is not a morning person. And though Sir John Mandeville was at the conference, he wasn't at our breakfast as far as I know. And LLCoolCarlIII of Got Medieval reserved a copy of Christine Chism's Alliterative Revivals before I could (damn!) so I know he was at the conference, but apparently he's too cool for breakfast. :) Or also not a morning person. And if Geoffrey Chaucer was at the conference, I wouldn't have expected him to come to the meet-up, since he's a shy man who generally "lookest as [he] woldest fynde an hare," and who "evere upon the ground...stare[s]. "

Speaking of staring, JJC does indeed stare intently at you when you speak (see Liza's comment here). It's a neat trick because it gets people to babble things they wouldn't otherwise say. I recall at one point Jeffrey asked me something about whether or not as a graduate student I was super-anxious in my presentations about being potentially revealed as a fraud, and I replied, at first, that I wasn't all that anxious as a grad student (and though I didn't say it, I thought that maybe I'm more anxious as a prof, actually). And then he stared and I felt compelled to say more. And I did, but not anything of substance. And then I worried that I must sound like an idiot. And then I started to get anxious, at which point I thought, "yup, definitely more anxious as a prof." It's like he's my therapist or something! How do you do that, Jeffrey?! But other than that moment, I wasn't the least bit anxious or intimidated by Jeffrey or any one else at the table. As people have been commenting around the medieval blog world, people you might expect to be cranky or prickly or intimidating in real life, because they construct themselves as such in their writing, or because their writing is just so damn smart and authoritative, even on their blogs, all turned out to be...well, for lack of a better word...nice. Really, really nice. Smiley and friendly and kind and easy to talk to. Take The Cranky Professor, for example: in real life he's not in the least bit cranky, but rather cheerful, especially for 7:30 am! We were two of the first people there and had a funny moment of suspicious eyeing of each other until I saw his name tag and recognized his real-life name, at which point we both said, "Are you a blogger?" It was hilariously cloak-and-daggerish.

Other things I learned either at or because of this breakfast:

• Apparently I look like Scott Nokes's grandmother circa 1930. Since I also get told I look like my mother in the '40s and '50s, that didn't suprise me. Faces have fashion, too, and certain people have looks that evoke other eras. It may also explain why I get hit on by older men a lot (not just at K'zoo). Scott -- any Swains or Gaylords in your family tree? Maybe we're distantly related.
• Rumor has it that Ivan Tribble is a woman!
• The French Revolution was fought against the Germans, and England invaded the Free Colonies of America, thus starting the American Revolution. (This was from a delightfully so-bad-it-was good final exam someone had just graded.)
• Medieval Woman looks very modern in real life and not at all like a grumpy kitty, Karl Steel doesn't look anything like a breakfast food (which I already knew, but that picture cracks me up), Mary Kate Hurley is not a landscape, and Jeffrey Cohen's hand is not permanently placed in front of his face.
• We might need a bigger place next year! I do like the convenience of Mug Shots, however, especially for those without cars.
• Next year I really should get up and mingle instead of sitting in one place the whole time, so I can meet and talk to people at the other end of the tables.

Well, that's about it. A fun time was had by all, I think, and I hope this becomes a K'zoo tradition.

K'zoo report #1: Love the dance, hate the dance

Bullock thinks it's really weird that we have a dance at the International Medieval Congress. (For those of you who don't know this, it's true, we have a dance. Really.) Frankly, I think it's a little weird, too, but it's also fun. I didn't dance much this year -- mainly because I didn't really want to get all sweaty in my good clothes -- but I had great fun chatting with people and doing people watching. And it's always fun to see some of the, uh, creative styles of dancing some people have. And seeing scholars you respect and even fear do the white-man's overbite helps to humanize them.

BUT...

There's the ever-present problem of inappropriateness and trying to figure out where the boundaries lies. Last year one of my friends was absolutely horrified by the number of very old men who wanted to dance with her. And I've spent more than one year trying to stay out of sight of certain senior medievalists with other than professional interest in me. There's one in particular who has been hitting on me routinely every year we're both there. One good thing, at least, is that if I use the phrase "my boyfriend," he backs off. So as uneasy as he makes me, at least I know he has some boundaries he won't cross, which makes it easy to get him to back off. He's a good guy at heart and I think his interest in me is actually sincere, if misguided; in other words, he's not going to turn into an ass-grabber.

But the dance makes boundaries a little blurry. I have no doubt that the medievalist above would ask me to dance if he saw me there. Certainly dancing can be a completely platonic activity, especially the way most of use who've grown up dancing to rock do it. There's little touching involved in dancing to rock and pop. But the person discussed above might be asking me to dance for other than platonic reasons. So when he comes to the dance, I avoid him.

He wasn't there this year, so that wasn't a problem. But his case makes me wonder about others. For instance, this year a senior scholar I don't know very well asked me to do the "Time Warp" with him (no, that's not a euphemism -- I mean the song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show). I believe he really was just inviting me to join the fun, and wasn't doing anything untoward, but I said no for all sorts of reasons, one of which was simply because I had my purse with me and I was far away from my table where I might have been able to leave it. But another reason was comfort level. I don't know this scholar well, having only been introduced to him that day, and so my inability to read the situation -- and my knowledge that some requests are less innocent than others -- made me err on the side of caution. But then I worried I shouldn't have turned his request down, that dancing at K'zoo is a form of being collegial.

So, I told this all to Bullock and he said, "That's exactly why there shouldn't be a dance at a conference." Or maybe those of us who like our professional/personal lines to stay intact shouldn't go. But then I do enjoy dancing with my friends with whom I have clear relationships. And I think many of the graduate students really get a kick seeing their profs let their hair down. But then the creeps who horrified my friend last year certainly shouldn't be the ones to ruin it for the rest of us, shouldn't make us (women, that is) feel like we can't go or have to watch how we dress or have to hide from them or whatever. But it's not really the creeps that unnerve me so much as those not-quite-inappropriate-but-not-exactly-professional cases such as what I described above. (I should note, too, that in the case of Mr. Flirty above, not only do I think his interest was sincere, but he also never flirted with me until I was tenure-track professor.) It's always awkward when someone likes you and you don't return the interest, but it's especially awkward when you have a professional relationship. And when there's a status difference, there's obviously still a power difference. And I doubt very much that the male grad students and assistant professors feel quite as conflicted about all of this as I do.

And the dance is not just an opportunity for leering old men to see pretty young things shake their booties (although it certainly can foster that). It really is part of what makes K'zoo a more relaxed atmosphere. It also allows for much easier mingling than a banquet would, and on some level breaks down categories of position, status, and power. Seriously, how can you be intimidated any more by someone you've seen act like a fool on the dance floor? It's awesome!

But then, if I'm still wondering about whether I should have danced the Time Warp with that senior scholar, then there's a problem. Of course, it's a problem that's bigger than the dance itself. It's a problem of gender inequity and sexism that isn't going to go away by getting rid of the dance or by me absenting myself from it. Sigh.

[Btw, future K'zoo posts -- including the one about the Blogger Breakfast -- will be much more cheery and positive, I swear!]

K'zoo blogger meet-up update

Moving this to the top and keeping it here until I leave for K'zoo so everyone sees it. Tonight (Tuesday) I'll send an e-mail to everyone who said they hope to show up and I will include a picture of me in it. (I'm too lazy to sort out the people who know what I look like, so everyone will get one.) If you don't have an e-mail address on your blog somewhere, drop me a gmail: drvirago2 (you know the rest).

Updated Post:

OK, by my count 18 people have said that they could make a breakfast meeting on Friday morning of the conference (May 11). That *might* be a little big for this place, but since not everyone will show up at once, and some people might duck out early, and some people might oversleep, it could still work. (Follow the link to that place; for some weird reason I don't want to spell it out to make a text search easy.) Plus, it has the virtues of being accessible to those without cars and not so overwhelming to negotiate as the cafeteria would be. Oh, and there's better coffee. (And for those of you who already bought breakfast tickets, you could always eat some real food there first and then join us for coffee.)

I thought maybe we could meet officially from 7:30 to 9:30, so that those who want to come early and still make the plenary could do so, and those who want to come a little later and get a little more sleep can also do so.

If you don't already know me in real life (or haven't figured it out), drop me an e-mail (see sidebar) and I'll send you a picture so you'll know which group has the bloggers in it.

To review: 7:30-9:30, Friday, May 11, at this place (the one with the picture at the top).

Comment here or send me an e-mail to let me know who definitely to expect. If it starts to get even bigger, we may have to go to a plan B.

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Original Post:

Just wanted to let youse guys know I haven't forgotten you. I'm going to tally up how many people (so far) have said they hope to be there and figure out what the best option is. I'll replace this post with a substantive one tonight. It's been a hectic last week of school, followed by a piratical visit and a tearful goodbye to Wiley. Sniff. He just left with the Pirate 20 minutes ago and already I miss him. His hair, on the other hand, is still here.

Anyway, more meet-up news later, probably tonight.

Notes to self re: teaching (OR: grading brings pedagogical enlightenment)

• Tell students in medieval literature courses that "lord," whether capitalized or not, does not necessarily refer to God (Christian or otherwise).
• Tell students in medieval and early modern classes over and over and over again that punctuation and capitalization are editorial, not authorial, and that they should not use these elements as the basis of their own interpretative arguments. Consider devoting a whole class to this.
  
• Explain to all students what "editorial" and "authorial" mean in the above context.
• Give detail in research paper instructions that the primary text which the student is writing about does NOT count as one of the works cited. Neither does the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
• Talk in class about appropriate dictionaries for use in essays on Old, Middle, and Early Modern English.
• Remind students that all that close reading and careful use of text to support arguments that I made them do in short assignment after short assignment also applies in the research paper.
  
• And above all: remember to be patient.
  

Boston Marathon Post #3: Sports star for a day

I know it's been weeks since I ran the Boston Marathon, but I promised a post on the atmosphere and experience of the race without all the nerdy, technical, runner-oriented stats and details. And I have wanted to write about this, too, because for those of you who aren't runners, or aren't marathoners, I want to evangelize a bit about Boston and marathons in general.

I got into road running about eight years ago, when I was approaching 30 and realized that I could no longer rely on simply walking everywhere to keep from having to buy a new set of clothes in a bigger size every year or two (important for a graduate student's budget and not just for vanity). And I wanted to be healthier. And I lived in a sunny climate without outdoor activity potential year round, which I wanted to make more use of. I also had a friend who ran and wanted a female running partner (her boyfriend, also my friend, was too fast for her), and who had a sorority-sister tendency towards enthusiastic cheerleading, which comes in handy when you're trying to go from couch potato to runner. (The irony of this story, in brief, is that once I was in shape, I realized I was a more appropriate running partner for the boyfriend than for her, and that when they broke up, he got me in the divorce.) Anyway, she also encouraged me to join a local running club that trained for the city's marathon. Once I built up to running 30 minutes at a time, over the course of a couple of months, and then started running 4-5 times a week, I joined this club. It was set up for beginnners and had a training program of about 6 months -- two for building up a "base" and for those who still had to work up to running an hour or more at a time, and four for the real training. These days I do 16 week marathon training programs.

I tell you all this because I want you to know that I didn't always run marathons. And it wasn't long after I started running at all that I started making marathons my goal. There was only about a year between being a complete couch potato to completing my first marathon (and coming in the top 400 women out of thousands and getting my name on the sports page of a major city paper -- how cool is that?!). I point this all out because anyone who is physically able can take up running and can train for long-distance running. It takes time and perseverance, but no special talent. If you can walk, you can run.

What's more, running is a great exercise activity for grad students and academics because it's relatively cheap. A pair of real running shoes will cost $80-120 (and there are discount outlets available, but everyone should initially be fit by an expert in a specialty running store), and you need socks, clothing that wicks sweat (though I spent my first few years in cotton and didn't really suffer all that much) and, if you're a woman, the right sports bra. (I don't know if the men need special support for their manly parts, but I imagine they might. Fizzy?) There are no gym fees, no expensive equipment -- though the clothing can add up, especially in the winter -- and if you do local races where you don't need a hotel room, the race fees are generally not very much (plus you get free stuff, and a lot of races are now doing t-shirts in wicking material, so you get new running gear for the price of entry).

And running is a great way to be a tourist. I've run all sorts of footpaths and trails all over the UK and Ireland, along waterfronts and through scenic neighborhoods in cities in North America and Europe, and in parks and preserves everywhere I've lived and a lot of places I've traveled. Even when I travel, I pack at least one set of running clothes to take a break from a conference or a family visit or whatever. And when I'm in my own city, I often use running as a way to explore neighborhoods, get landscaping ideas, enjoy seasonal decorations, and gawk at houses for sale.

And then there are the health benefits -- cardiovascular health, weight control, strength and general fitness. But note I put those last. Honestly, these days I think of them as a side-effect. If I made them my main reason for running, I'd think of running in the way one thinks of dieting -- as onerous and hard to maintain.

So, back to Boston and marathons in general. I've given you all this background, because when I joined the marathon training group back in 1999, I did so because I wanted to meet new people and learn how to train for a marathon. Having running buddies for the long runs each week was essential to me then. Over time, though, I started training by myself for various marathons, and once I knew what to expect of a 20-mile training run, I was perfectly happy to do it on my own, especially back in grad school city, where I ran a route frequented by other runners. And I think one of the reasons why I finally hit that qualifying time at the Columbus Marathon is because I ran with a pace group, instead of by myself, and chatted with them the whole way, until I fell behind a bit around mile 22. Forget what you've heard about the loneliness of the long-distance runner -- running can be really social.

That's where big races can actually help, if you're not concerned about losing time running in a large, tight pack for the first few miles. My best experiences have been in races that felt social in some way, where I was running with someone -- even someone met in the process of running, as in my hometown race that gave me my second best time and made me realize I could qualify for Boston -- or, in the case of Boston, where the crowds were so mighty you never felt alone.

I think the crowds of spectators are what set Boston apart. Sure, most runners there had to qualify, so you're in an elite crowd of serious runners, and there's an instant comaraderie among the runners because of that. And it's a big field -- 20,0000+ runners -- so unless you're way out front, you spend the entire race surrounded by people to observe and eavesdrop on, which is always entertaining. (My favorite oddballs were the three women who ran with tails attached to their shorts and signs on their backs that said "Chasing Tail?") But the specators are what make Boston better than any race I've been in despite its difficulties (though granted, I haven't run NY or Chicago, so I don't know if those mega-races compare). The specators are what make it so much fun, even if, like me, you're running your worst time ever.

When I'm well trained, a marathon usually doesn't get hard for me until about mile 22. I tend not to run at speeds that are hard work -- even when I was gunning for that qualifying time -- so the only hard part is the endurance in those last few miles, since the longest training run I ever do is 22 miles. For me, the hardest part is the training, especially speedwork (I loathe speedwork the way I hated practicing the piano when I was a kid). I run the race at a convesational pace -- which varies between 8:25 and 9:00 minutes per mile, depending on the intensity of my training -- and don't really want to work any harder. Then it's not fun for me, because I'm really not that competitive. But no matter what, the race will get hard at some point, and then I have to rely on will power. That's when the spectators matter. But for some stupid reason, so many races I've run go through less inhabited areas just when it starts to get tough, and thus have sparse crowds. Race directors really need to think more about this.

But Boston gets it right. The first half of the race has fewer spectators, but that's the easy part -- it's early in the race and there are lots of downhills, plus it's often pretty scenery and you're surrounded by other excited runners. The crowds start to pick up just when you need them and get bigger and louder and more intense the closer you get to Boston.

The first really huge crowd consists of the women of Wellesley just before the half-way point. (Although there are few other big gatherings of people before that.) I swear to god you really can hear them a mile away -- that's not just a cliched turn of phrase. We hit mile 12 and in the distance I heard something that sounded like an orchestra playing a continuously held high C. And then when you pass them, it's not just their screaming that makes them a high point -- half of them are holding signs that say "Kiss a Wellesley Girl." I was so grateful for their spirit and enthusiasm, *I* almost kissed one (and I'm sure there were some of them who would've been happy for my kiss rather than a guy's kiss, but my guess is that it was mostly the het women holding the signs).

And between Wellesley and Boston, there are all sorts of people along the route, since most of it is accessible by commuter train. For the most part it's people cheering on their friends and family, but they cheer everyone else as well. (Thanks again, Kate, for the sign. I'm sorry I missed it, but the thought of it alone buoyed me.) My favorite was a recurring sign for a runner named Polly (she must have had a lot of friends and family, or else they moved along the route) which quoted A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Though she be but little, she is fierce." As you reach the hardest parts in Newton -- the hills leading up to and including Heartbreak Hill -- there are all sorts of people offering you treats, cheers, support, and encouragement. And they seemed to be practiced at it: no one said "You're looking great!" as I walked up Heartbreak Hill. Instead they said things like "Look, you can still do this. Just get over this hill and you'll make it" -- a sentiment that's realistic and pretty much true. Boston Marathon spectators are veteran marathon spectators.

And after that, as you start getting closer and closer to Boston, the crowds get freaking crazy. I think it starts in Brookline, maybe a bit before. By then you're in an urban space, and bars and pubs are walking distance from the route. Since the race is run on Patriot's Day -- a holiday for most people -- lots of people make it a holiday event to have a few beers (or not -- but since many of them have beers in hand, and sometimes offer them to the runners, it's easy to tell that drinking is involved) and cheer on the runners, all of them, whether they know you or not. And my god, are they loud. The last few miles are absolutely deafening. Part of the reason I picked up the pace in the last two miles was joining up with Jody, a runner I'd met at the pasta dinner the night before, who buoyed my spirits and kept me going, even when it was hard. But the other part were the crowds. How can you not run hard when thousands upon thousands of people are screaming joyfully at you? I can only imagine what the crowds might have been like in good weather! Rain and wind like that chased most of the crowds away in my first marathon (wussy sun worshippers!) but not in Boston, where neither rain nor wind nor snow can keep a Boston sports fan from cheering on a bunch of strangers in a long-running (ha!) local sports tradition.

I've always known that Boston is a big sports town with intense attachments to their hometown teams (and the equivalent hatred for longtime rivals), but I had no idea that they're so enthusiastic for any local sports tradition. After all, here I was running really slowly relative to the other runners in this race (I came in the bottom quartile of the women runners, for god's sake) and yet when I and all the other people running at my pace came through, the screams were just as loud as I imagine they'd been for the elite runners, and would continue to go on for the runners behind me. (Indeed, when I got back to my hotel at mile 24, and there were still people running and mostly walking, there were still crowds cheering them on.) They're the reason the Boston Marathon is so much fun. I worked for my qualifying time because of the prestige and eliteness of that achievement, but if I ever try again, it will be because of those incredible crowds.

And that is what's so amazing about marathon running in general. All races have some eager spectators -- Boston just has more of them, and they're exponentially louder -- and they're as happy to cheer on strangers as they are their friends. Many spectators make a day of it, bringing camp chairs, coolers, music, etc. And if you write your name on your shirt, they'll call it out. If you don't sometimes they'll call out your bib number (as in, "Go number 2435! You can do it!"). What the heck other sport is there where an ordinary, unexceptional, non-gifted, non-celebrity athlete gets to have people cheering for them? What other sport could I possibly take up at age 29 and have fans, however temporary?

Running marathons -- and epsecially running the Boston Marathon -- gives an ordinary person a chance to feel like a sports idol for the day. And that's the real reason why it's worth the time and effort and training, because adulation is addictive.

Belated Friday dog blogging: farewell to Wiley

[Updated to add a picture of a Portuguese Water Dog at Squadratomagico's request.]

I meant to post this yesterday, but for some strange reason my computer wouldn't connect to our wireless network. Poor Bullock had to redo the network from scratch -- new name, new channel, new key, etc. -- for my computer to connect. This is the second time this has happened and neither of us knows why. It's annoying as hell, too.

Anyway, Wiley left with the Pastry Pirate on Monday morning and we've missed him terribly since. If we get our own dog, it won't be until I get back from my London trip (word to the folks also in London this summer, I'll be there June 24 to July 21). I still don't know what kind of dog we'll get, though I have to say I met my first Portuguese Water Dog the other day and I'm still enamored, though the breed may be a little too energetic for our household. Bullock and I were in the living room and watching the neighbors across the street load tons of large size trash onto the curb -- we were trying to guess what was going on: remodelling? cleaning out the parents' house for a move to a retirement home? getting ready to sell? -- when a dog walker came down the street and Bullock said, "Hey, isnt't that a Portuguese Water Dog?" At which point I raced out the front door and asked to be introduced. The dog was a 2 1/2 year old male named Ghost, and still acted very puppy-like in his excitement to meet me (though he didn't jump on me -- good boy!). He was so sweet and eager to please, and once I stopped loving him up (what soft fur! what a sweet lovey-dovey personality!) and started asking his human about the breed, Ghost happily sat in the grass and waited for the humans to be done -- though he was clearly excited and eager to be on his way on his adventurous walk, since he was panting with anticipation.

If you've never seen a Portie, here's a picture of a young brown one named Dakota, copied from this site. Dakota was bred by Timber Oaks Portuguese Water Dogs of Traverse City, MI. Since the picture's not mine, if the Timber Oaks folks come by and ask me to take it down, I will, but I wanted to use it for illustrative purposes, since the Portie I met, Ghost, looked like a black version of Dakota.


*Anyway* since a Portie is a non-shedding breed, that would solve the thing we liked least about having a large shedding dog -- the hair, my god, the hair (which, as New Kid points out, will ALWAYS be with us). Here it is nearly a week later and though Wiley is gone, his hair reminds us of his 4+ months with us, and makes us all the more sad that he's not there. After all, it's depressing to still have some of the bad things about dog ownership -- the hair, the smelly vacuum cleaner (I have to change the bag and filter) -- and yet no soft and fuzzy and funny and fascinating creature to show for it. Wah!

So here are some final pictures of Wiley as a tribute, taken by the Pirate during her visit (I haven't uploaded mine yet). First, here's Mister Sister (one of Bullock's many names for Wiley other than, well, Wiley) hoping instensely that Bullock will give him some of that leftover chicken he's got (at least, I assume Wiley doesn't want a martini -- note glass):


And now here's Deputy Dog (another of Bullock's nicknames for him) on the family room floor, guarding one Bullock's favorite non-human-food treats to get for him, a jerky-coverd, marrow-filled bone:



I like this picture of Wiley. If you take out the week and a half of dizziness and hospital stays from the ear infection, this picture pretty much sums up his stay with us: contented and spoiled rotten. I think of it as having been our only chance to be grandparents of sorts, or the cool aunt and uncle. Sorry, Pirate!

And so long, Wiley! We'll miss you! I hope we see you again soon!

Love,
Aunt Virago and Uncle Bullock

PS -- I just noticed that the Pirate also has put up both of these pictures on her blog, plus the other one I thought about putting up, of Kittenheads (one of her many nicknames for him -- why does no one call him by his actuall name???) back at her place. Wiley's a star of the blogosphere!

Because I'm grading...

... a Bloglines survey/quiz is in order.

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (100%) You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (88%) You Are Well Traveled in Scandinavia (60%) You Are Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (57%) You Are Well Traveled in the Western United States (47%) You Are Well Traveled in the Southern United States (46%) You Are Well Traveled in Western Europe (43%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Canada (40%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Southern Europe (40%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Asia (13%) You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%) You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%) You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%) You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%) You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%) You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

Yup, that looks about right (although I have to say I'm *mostly* untraveled in Latin America, since I've been to the Baja peninsula). But the rest makes sense to my life: grew up in the midwest; went to college in the northeast US; studied abroad in England, where I have friends in cities tourists don't often go to; traveled all over western Europe with family and on my own; went to grad school in the western US; went to China once with Mom; did a Scandinavia tour with Mom when a friend got married in Sweden; occasionally make it to Canada, but usually for things academic. Weird how sometimes these silly things seem so accurate!

Looking forward to student research papers

On Friday I will get a stack of research papers from my medieval literature students, and I'm actually looking forward to reading them.

[Dramatic pause as my readers take that sentence in.]

Yes, that's right: I'm actually looking forward to reading them. Say what??? Am I delusional? Overly optimistic? Idealistic? Will my dreams be crushed?

No, I don't think so. You see, a month before the papers were due, students turned in a proposal with an annotated bibliography of at least five secondary sources. And before that, I took three class periods to talk about how and why we do research, what a literary research paper looks like and how to write it, and how to use things like the MLA International Bibliography and other databases and library search engines. And because of all that, I got really good proposals. I'm sure the papers will have some of the usual problems, but if the proposals are any indication, they'll actually have theses and make arguments, and many of them will have fresh and interesting things to say about the texts.

I'm offering this here and now as a kind of preview and also a test. Maybe my dreams will be crushed and the promise held by the proposals will be left unfulfilled. I certainly hope not. At any rate, I want to write more about this project, in more detail and with more about my pedagogical methods and justifications, when I finally see the fruit of it. And then I can look back on the class as whole, in which I really pushed my students and they rose to the challenge, turning in the best work as a group that I've seen since coming to Rust Belt U. I think that may have as much to do with the pushing as with the luck of the draw of who was in the class, and the research project is part of that. We'll see.

More K'zoo blogger meet-up business

UPDATE: Moving this to the top AGAIN so everyone sees it. The operative question is still where? -- though some good suggestions have been made in the comments. Also, some people are rallying have rallied for a dorm breakfast, and I think I have a plan that might make that work for those folks who don't know what any of the rest of us folks look like. BUT, some people who are protective of their anonymity might be uncomfortable in that setting. (Don't let me speak for you -- I'm just guessing here.) And again, see the new suggestion at the end of the comments (made by Deeni and seconded by Tiruncula) and let me know if that works for you. So other proposals/ideas are still welcome. Also, some of the usual suspects haven't said anything -- perhaps you're not going this year?

OK, in the last post, the vast majority of you said you could make a Friday breakfast. (Apologies to The Swain, but it seems there's never a good time for everyone. And since my maternal grandmother was a Swain, I feel especially bad.) Some of you have 10 am sessions to chair, speak at, and attend (silly people!), but no one seems to mind missing out on the plenary. (Side note: I usually go for a run during the plenaries, but the one time I went to one I fell asleep!)

Last year, having a longish, drop in when you want meet-up seemed to work, so we could do something from 8:00 to 9:30, giving enough time for everyone to get where they need to be by 10. Or if you crazy people are *really* morning people, we could start at 7:30.

What say you all?

Next issue on the agenda: where????? Does anyone know if the University Roadhouse opens for breakfast? And if not, is there any other breakfast place within walking distance for those on campus without cars? If that's not the case, we may have to arrange caravans. I'll have my car.

I briefly thought that if we started at 7:30 we could meet at the dorm breakfast, but then I thought, "How on earth would we find each other in that crowd???" I can see it now: "Excuse me, are you a blogger? No? What about you folks? No?..."

So, any ideas?

Marathon Post #2 1/2: All praise Fast Fizzy

In response to the comments to marathon post #1, below, my brother, aka Fast Fizzy, wrote in to assert that he is not hyper-competitive, as I said in my response to Heo Cwaeth's question, "What's chasing the Virago family?" No, he insists, he's just damn good.

And then he e-mailed me the following evidence that others are able to recognize just how good he is:


OK, I take it back. Fast Fizzy is not hyper-competitive.

He's hyper-competitive AND damn good.

And he has weird running buddies.

Marathon Post #2: The numbers and technical stuff

This post is for the runners out there and for those who are really dedicated to reading my blog. The rest of you might fall asleep. If you have insomnia, read on; if not, consider yourself warned.

So people keep asking "How was Boston?" There are a couple of ways of answering that, and in the next post, I'll get to the more colorful and atmospheric and experiential answers. But some people actually want to know the hardcore statistics and technical stuff. Not most people, but some. This post is for you. I've also divided it up into sub-topics for easy reference, in case there's something in particular you want to know.

The basics
I qualified for Boston with a 3:43:13 (also my PR - an 8:30/mile pace), but I finished Boston in 4:18:57, my slowest time ever (in 6 marathons total, run between 2000 and the present).

My training and condition on race day
Even if we'd had perfect weather conditions for the race, I wouldn't have had a stellar race or finishing time. At the beginning of my 16-week training, I started out doing a three-day-a-week training plan called "FIRST" that promised to increase speed and finish times if you stuck to it. (If you want to know more about it, go here.) It was an intense plan with hard speed workouts, tempo runs, and race-pace+ long runs. As it turns out, I just didn't have the base miles or the cardio-vascular fitness to keep up with it. I hadn't really run much in the previous year, since finishing the 2005 Columbus Marathon in 3:43 to get my Boston qualifying time. So my inability to do what was asked (either in terms of speed or length) in the FIRST program got me down. I switched to the Runner's World 3-day/week Beginner Plan (see a four-day/week version here), modified with longer long runs, based on the FIRST program. In other words, I trained to finish, not for speed.

I did all runs, including the long runs, at a 8:45-9:00 minute pace, because I was still hoping to finish under 4 hours, at least. But I didn't get many hill workouts into my runs, other than a few gently sloping ones here and there, because Rust Belt is a flat place. So I knew that a sub-4-hour marathon on the very hilly Boston course might still be wishful thinking.

And then, on top of being undertrained, I came down with a bad head cold a week before the race. Usually when I get sick -- and I rarely do -- it goes by quickly. But I'm *still* getting over this one. On the Friday before race day, I thought I was going to show up at the race expo on Sunday and ask for a deferral to 2008, which you can get for injuries and I was hoping you could get for illness, too. But on Sunday I was feeling a lot better and the energy of tens of thousands of runners at the expo, in my hotel, and around town, was infectious in a different kind of way. So I said the hell with the cold and planned to run.

The night before the race my cold entered the nagging cough stage and I barely slept. During the race, I suffered from an almost unbearable dry-mouth from the decongestants, and a constant thirst. The coughing ceased as long as I was running, but I think a lot of the aches and pains in my back (see more below) might have been from the night and morning of coughing prior to the race. Plus, any time I tried to eat my Gu energy gels, my nose would run and I'd be unable to breathe. I had 6 Gu packets with me, and meant to eat at least 3 during the race and one at the end, but ended up using only 2. Drinking water was also hard, and sometimes I had to stop to do, which brought the coughing back on. Argh!

My gear and its problems
A couple of days before my last long training run, I tried to get new shoes to replace my worn out old ones. I hadn't kept track of their mileage, but I was starting to feel sore in my shins and knees, which only happens when I have old shoes. But my local running store -- and there's only one in Rust Belt -- didn't have my shoe in my size. And it was too late to switch to a new brand to get it thoroughly broken in and make sure it was right for me. Had I been able to get the exact same shoe, that wouldn't have been a problem to break in, but a new style or brand would have.

I wear a Saucony Trigon in the "Ride" version and I'm loyal to Saucony (I've been through various versions of this shoe) because they work for my narrow heels, wide fore-foot, and need for room for my blister and callous prone toes. I'm a heavy heel-striker with as perfectly neutral a gait as you can get, which means I land on my heel and roll forward straight down the center. Other people roll out or in and need a different kind of shoe. (If you're a runner or want to start running and have never been fitted by a professional at a specialty running store, do so. Running in the wrong shoe for your bio-mechanics can cause injury.) Those of us with neutral gaits, and especially those of us who are heel strikers, need cushioning to help absorb the impact. My worn down shoes were definitely not doing that.

So, as a result, by mile 14, my entire back was screaming in pain. My legs were fine, and in fact, I don't think I felt the build-up of lactic acid in them at all this race (in part because I slowed down so much in the second half -- see below) but it felt like I could barely carry myself upright in the last miles. (Plus, my cardio-vascular fitness was relatively low given the undertraining.) At mile 14 I made the command decision to slow down in order to guarantee that I would finish, especially since I've had recurring lower-back problems in the last few years. And as you'll see below, I really slowed down.

The weather
It turned out not to be quite as bad as predicted. The winds got up to a mere 20 mph, and by the time the second wave runners started (and that included me), the rain cleared up. I think it rained again on us, gently, once on the course, but by that time I was feeling a little hot in my thermal outer layer and Coolmax base layer, so it was actually welcome. It got colder as we approached Boston, though, so I was ultimately grateful for the layers, the full-length running tights, and the gloves.

The worst part was standing around before the race, getting my shoes wet from the rain and muddy from the fields where the porta-potties stood. I kept mostly warm and dry with a disposable clear parka (which I continued to wear for the first three miles of the race, ultimately ripping in off Superman style) and a mylar blanket. But the wind kept blowing the hood off, so my hat soaked through and my pony tail and neck got wet, which couldn't have been good for me. As you'll see below, I did feel the winds at many points -- annoying, mostly while going uphill! -- but in such a big race, when you're a "pack" runner like me, there are lots of bodies around you to block it.

Amazing -- no blisters!
I don't get this. Most runners worried about wet feet causing blisters, and so many of them had plastic bags wrapped around their shoes, at least until the start of the race, and others wore get-ups that kept the top dry but kept the sole free so that they could run in them. I didn't have either and so my feet got wet, mostly in the hours before the race. And never once in the race did my feet hurt, and when I took my shoes off at the end of the day there wasn't a single blister or black toe. Compare that to my Columbus experience in *perfect* weather, where my right little toe turned into a giant blood blister and I lost the nail. Back in 2000 I ran a rainy marathon and also had blister-free feet. What gives?

The split times
For those of you who've already done the math, I ended up with about a 9:53 pace, I think. But really, I ran two half-marathons, the first in 1:57:38, or just under 9 minutes/mile (my over-ambitious goal pace), and the second in 2:21:19, or about 10:50/mile, the slowest I've ever run anything. Like I said above, I decided to slow down at mile 14, and boy did I slow down in some of those subsequent miles! I meant to keep it under or around 10, but it just wasn't happening. (If you want a course map, complete with elevation info, go here. Warning: opens a PDF.) Here's the breakdown:

Mile 1: 9:07
(Letting the crowds hold me back for an easy start -- I'm actually proud of this, as it's the first time I didn't start too fast.)

Mile 2: 8:43
Mile 3: 8:45
Mile 4: 8:44
(Look how evenly paced I am for these three miles -- this is also a minor achievement, as pacing is still something I'm working on. This also makes me cocky. Running is easy and I'm having fun.)

Mile 5: 8:55 (a gently uphill mile)
Mile 6: 8:49
Mile 7: 8:52
Mile 8: 9:11 (We're spreading out and the winds are more noticeable.)

Mile 9: 9:04
(Getting back closer to pace in the next two miles, despite the winds across Lake Cochituate)

Mile 10: 9:09
Mile 11: 9:14
(The last mile and half have been gently uphill, and the effects are starting to show in my time.)

Mile12: 8:55 (Ah, back on track at last with the help of some downhill running)
Mile13: 9:05
(Nice -- might have been slower if I'd stopped to "Kiss a Wellesley Girl" as their sign demanded -- wouldn't she have been surprised!)

Mile 14: 9:18
(As we enter Wellesley's main drag, we start to turn NE and the wind really hits us. Plus my back is killing me, so I decide to slow it down, take it easy. I wouldn't realize how slow I'd really get until after this.)

Mile 15: 9:47 (Well, at least it's under 10.)
Mile 16: 9:47 (OK, I could stay here, I think...)
Mile 17: 10:46
(Really? Crap! But wait, it get worse as we start to climb up the hills of Newton. They tell you about Heartbreak Hill at Mile 21. Somehow, though, I wasn't prepared for the three miles of hills *before* that.)

Mile 18: 11:15
Mile 19: 11:04
Mile 20: 11:39
Mile 21: 13:11 (OK, so I walked up Heartbreak Hill. Sue me.)
Mile 22: 11:13
Mile 23: 11:55
Mile 24: 10:54
(My hotel is right across the street. Sooooooo tempting. But at least I nudged myself back under 11 minutes/mile.)

Mile 25: 10:10
(By this point, my new friend Jody, whom I met at the pasta party, has caught up with me and rallies my spirits back to a less embarrassing pace. She is also a 3:43 qualifier and running under bad physical conditions -- a sore tendon -- but she smartly maintained a 10 minute pace the whole way instead of being unrealistic like I was in the first half.)

Mile 26.2: 11:16
(Just over 9 minutes/mile from the "1 mile to go" point marked on the road -- hooray!)

I nearly throw up in the post-race melee for the crappy amount of food the BAA supplies (boo! worst. post-race food. EVER) but I did it! And now I can get on the T back to the hotel at mile 24 and take a shower. When I got back, I noticed that I certainly wasn't the last to finish, as the course is still full of runners, some of them now walking.

Next time -- the spirit and atmosphere and characters that made Boston actually the most fun I've ever had in a marathon, despite my crap time.

Take that, Ivan Tribble! Or Marathon Post #1: My Colleagues' Responses

The academic bloggers out there remember Ivan Tribble, the pseudonymous scribe of two essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education Careers section, back in aught-five, who argued in the first that "Bloggers Need Not Apply" for tenure-track jobs in academe, and in the second that the bloggers who responded critically to his article were all just shooting the messenger ("They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?"). But as I argued back then (god, that seems ages ago), it seemed that the trouble with Tribble wasn't only that he had a thing against bloggers specifically, but that he also didn't like or didn't want to know about academics who -- the horror! -- found time to do things other than the teaching, research, and service for which they were being hired. So what does this have to do with my recent run in the Boston Marathon? This juicy passage from Tribble's second article is where the connection lies:

A number of respondents worried they could be mistaken [in a Google search] for an unhirable doppelganger on the Web. I can't speak for every committee, but ours had no trouble distinguishing our candidates from the semi-pro hockey players, quilt-store owners, marathon runners, and grade schoolers that Google turned up.

Uh, hello? Why on earth would you assume marathon runners and academics are mutually exclusive categories? Or that a marathoning academic was unhirable? Witness not only me but ProfGrrrrl (link goes to her training blog). (And as for semi-pro hockey players, cf. Michael Berube.)

All of which brings me back to my experience running Boston and the responses of my colleagues, including those who will be voting on my tenure. All my colleagues know I run marathons, and as far as I can tell they don't have a problem with this. Witness their responses to my Boston experience (which, by the way, required training almost entirely during the school year):

• Awesome Supportive Chair said, "You're my hero!" and asked for pictures for the department newsletter.
• One senior colleague asked if I had run a local marathon that was close to Boston's date, and when I said no, because I ran Boston instead, he said, "Wow! Congratulations! That's impressive!"
• Fellow junior colleague Milton looked me up on the official marathon site during the race, tracked my performance, and sent me a congratulatory note -- all without my knowing until I got home. (I don't know why, but I thought that was really sweet.)
• Senior Rhet/Comp scholar e-mailed me after hearing the weather report that day and sent her sympathy (she runs and does triathalons).
  
• Another senior colleague routinely asked how my training was going, and his spouse saw me in the local park in the midst of one of my 20-mile runs and cheered me on. I told her I was thinking of calling it quits at 15 because I was aching, but she rallied my spirits and I completed the 20.

I could go on. But the point is, every department has a different atmosphere, and one of the ways I was wooed to this one was with the promise (by the senior colleague in the last bullet point) that people have lives here. And frankly, I think that's a good thing not only for faculty retention, but for the students, too. We can then model for them full, well-rounded, and healthy (physically or mentally) lives. (Besides, when my students know that I ran the Boston and graded their papers in the same weekend, there's less whining about deadlines and hard work. :) Te-hee!)

Of course, if I were doing poorly in publishing or meeting teaching and service expectations, my marathon running might then be a point against me. I think then my colleagues would have every right to be worried that I'm unnecessarily distracted and would be justified in saying in my annual reviews that I'm not meeting job expectations. But since I am meeting those expectations (at least at my university -- I don't know that I could do this at an R1) what I do with my free time is up to me.

That said, it was really hard fitting in even the most basic easy-level, three-day-a-week training this semester. And the training is starting to be a burden rather than something fun. I don't know if marathons are in my future or not. I may just run for fun and fitness for awhile and then maybe think about half-marathons and shorter races for the time being. The distance of the race doesn't scare me -- I'd still like to learn how to and train to keep my pace in those last four miles -- but fitting in those really long runs is hard. They just eat up so much of my weekend.

OK, future posts will detail the race itself, I promise. But I wanted to start with something that was more closely related to the character of this 'academic life' blog.

What I'll be saying to my classes tomorrow

As my regular readers know, I was very much away from news sources on Monday, April 16, until the early evening because I was running the Boston Marathon. I do intend to blog about that, but I really didn't want to come back to the blog with a triumphant post about the potential of the human spirit and body, as if nothing else happened in the world while I was away.

And I particularly wanted to write something about the horrifying shooting at Virginia Tech first, not because I think I have something terribly enlightening or wise to say about it, but because this tragedy is directly related to my world and to the subject and purpose of this blog, academic life in the fullest sense of that phrase, and I feel some sense of duty to say something. So I'll tell you what I'll say to my students tomorrow, whom I haven't seen since last Thursday. The following is more "writerly" and more lecture-like than what I'll actually say, but the substance is the same.

I want to start class by talking about Cho Seung-Hui and the death of 33 people at Virginia Tech University on Monday, because it matters to us. Cho Seung-Hui was an English major, but that's not the only reason this tragedy matters to us; had he been a business major I'd still be talking to you. He was a student, and his victims were students and faculty members, and so are we, but that's still not the only reason his acts and their consequences matter to us. Cho Seung-Hui and his victims were human beings, and for that reason, this matters to all of us, as does any act of violence, injustice, deprivation, and degredation, even the ones the news media doesn't cover.

Many people in Cho Seung-Hui's world saw the signs of his mental instability and illness, and they tried to do something to see that he was cared for. According to what I've read in the NY Times and heard on NPR -- generally reliable sources -- he was referred to and even escorted to professional mental health facilities; the police were alerted; his roommates and classmates were aware that something was wrong; his teachers alerted various authorities and people who could help. He even had a prescription for anti-depressants. So why didn't he get the help he needed? What went wrong? Was Cho Seung-Hui too far gone to look after himself?

I have no idea, really. What follows is pure speculation. I wonder if the stigma attached to regular pscyhological and psychiatric treatment, especially for Americans, especially for men, had something to do with Cho Seung-Hui's not getting the thorough treatment he needed. Americans, and American men especially, live in a "boot strap" culture that values individualism, will power, toughness, self-reliance, and emotional stoicism, and reacts negatively to anything that is perceived as showing weakness, "unmanliness," or a need for others. I think college students -- women as well as men -- are susceptible to buying into this culture. You know you are. You don't seek help when you need it because you fear looking idiotic, or wussy, or, god forbid, needy. You tell yourself "I can handle this," when this is a 35-hour work week and a full course load, or a terrible break-up, or even grief at the loss of a loved-one. You convince yourself that you don't have time to grieve or deal with your problems, because graduation is around the corner and you have to, must, will, and shall graduate on time with the GPA of your dreams, and if not, you're convinced your life is over.

Listen to me. I am the poster child of misguided detemination and will power. I got a PhD and tenure track job; I run marathons; on Monday I ran the Boston marathon in 20mph winds and rain, with this damn cold. All good and admirable, right? But when my sister died, I took one freakin day off from my classes. Heck, it runs in the family: two weeks before that she was deeply apologetic that she couldn't after all make it to watch me run my hometown marathon, but she wanted me to know that she tried -- while she was dying of cancer.

But see, eventually I realized that for all the planning and training and determination, there are things that are out of my control, as well as out of yours. Loss is one of them. It's inevitable. Death's another. We all die. And certain conditions of mental and physical health are also out of your control. When my mother died and I couldn't sleep, no matter how "hard" I "tried," and when I was tormented by nightmares, I saw a mental health professional. And I kept seeing her until she decided, as a mental health expert, with my input, that I was functioning more normally.

If people ever tell you you need to seek help for depression or something more serious, get it and stick with it. A depressed or addicted or otherwise ill person is in little or no position to decide for themselves that they're OK, that they can simple "deal with it." There is no shame for seeking help for mental illness, any more than there's shame for getting treatment for a broken leg or bronchitis. These things are out of your control and your expertise, and that's OK. Tell this to the people in your life, too, so that they get it. Say it over and over again until they do.

I'm saying this especially for those of you -- men and women -- really taken in by the idea that you have to "handle" things on your own, that extreme stress is "just a phase" or "natural" for college students. But I'm especially saying this for the men, especially you midwestern men, because, in general, you're the least likely to get the help you need. It's not a weakness to seek help; spin it differently. In a culture that expects men to be stoic superheroes, overcoming that stereotype and seeking help actually takes a lot of strength.

Sorry to go on and on, but it matters. Is there anything you would like to say?

Oh spite! Oh hell!

UPDATE: Make that wind gusts up to 50 mph and a wind-chill that makes it feel like 25-30 degrees. Oh, and did I mention I'm still getting over a bad cold?

So some of you may recall that I'm running the Boston Marathon for the first time on Monday. You may also know that I've had a busy semester and have only managed to squeeze in a beginner-level training plan and won't be setting any personal records (PRs) there. And many of you may know that Boston is a difficult marathon in the best of circumstances, so even if I were super-duper trained with speed and hill work as well as extra long runs, I might not come out with a PR.

As if all that weren't bad enough...have you checked the weather forecast for Boston on Monday? High temperature: 43 degrees. 70% chance of heavy rain. And winds -- my god, the winds -- from the East with predicted speeds up to 23 mph. And guess what general direction the point-to-point course runs? Yup, that's right -- East. (Well, OK, mostly NE, but still.)

Fuck. I'll be lucky to freakin' finish. My PR, the one that got me in this race, is 3:43. I'll be happy with 4:30 in this one, I swear.

Watch this space

To those of you who have added comments and preferences to the K'zoo blogger meet-up post below, I haven't forgotten about you. I just have to go back through all the comments, make some executive decisions, and then make a follow-up post, all of which I hope to do some time tomorrow night.

In the meantime, for your amusement: I just got an advertisement for online head shops posted in the comments to this ancient post (about my pot-smoking neighbors in my old apartment). It cracks me up, so for the first time I'm not going to delete the spam. But also, re-reading that post and its comments made me realize how much can change in a short while: Flavia was still La Lecturess, Bullock was still just the plain old "boyfriend" (and he commented on my blog! he never does that any more!), and I could refer to my parents in the plural and present tense (that one really made me sad). But one thing that never seems to change: my brother teasing me (in the comments or real life).

Learning a literary lesson for Good Friday

Yesterday I taught the York "Crucifixion" play from the York Corpus Christi play cycle, and one of my students (the one who came to office hours on Ash Wednesday with ashes on her forehead) asked me if I purposely assigned it during Holy Week. Nope, I didn't. In fact, two weeks ago I was looking up when Easter was this year, and until I saw a guy dressed as Jesus (and wearing an iPod!) walking across campus when I was on my way to class, I'd completely forgotten it was Easter week at all. And another student, in the midst of writing her paper for another of my clases, asked if I'd realized I'd appropriately assigned King Lear during Lent, given its bleak, penetential mood. No, again, I was unaware of the liturgical orientation of my syllabus. Apparently 12 years of Catholic school and over a decade of being a medievalist have not drilled the liturgical calendar into my head.

Part of my lack of awareness has to do with the simple fact that I'm not a practicing or believing Catholic (or Christian of any kind) anymore, and that the rhythms of my year are attuned to the academic calendar more than the liturgical one. (Though the historical correspondence between those two calendars has something to do with the coincidence of my fitting syllabus design.) But it also has to do with the rather narrowly focused, workaholic life I've had for the last month and a half. Today is the first day, including weekends, since late February that I didn't have to be up and working at 7:30 a.m., and that I got to sleep more than six hours. (That's a very good thing since I'm trying to fight off the cold that Bullock has so that I won't have it when I run the Boston Marathon a week from Monday.) In fact, I think last night's bedtime -- 11:30 -- was the earliest I'd had since late February as well. All I've been doing in that time is work, work, work, in that barely-keeping-on-top-of-things kind of way, where everything is getting done just in time, and some things that aren't absolutely necessary or deadline-oriented are slipping through the cracks (especially any of my research work not related to finishing the book production stuff). My only breaks from work have been my runs, and they've taken on the aspect of work, as well. (This is a subject for another post -- how to find running fun again.) It's not a lifestyle I want or recommend or receive my joy from. Though there is a kind of adrenaline rush from it, so much that's important and that matters -- or that's simply desirable -- gets sacraficed: a healthy diet, a social life, a clean house, even attention to my beloved Bullock and our dear Wiley. (Indeed I worry that I missed signs of his ear infection, though Bullock swears he also saw no scratching or shaking of his head or anything like that.)

So it's incredibly ironic that I taught the York "Crucifixion" the way I did yesterday. Because I know medieval drama so well I often go in to classes on any play without a detailed plan, just some ideas and activities rattling around my brain. With the "Crucifixion" there are two things that I always do, and I did them yesterday: 1) have students perform the section where the soldiers "struggle" to do their job nailing Jesus to the cross, lifting the cross up calvary (i.e., onto the pageant wagon stage), and raising and setting the cross into the mortice; and 2) draw students attention to the diction of "work" throughout the play (which also occurs throughout the cycle as a whole). In both cases, we discuss the meaning of what is seen and heard, as well as what is not seen and not heard. In the performance part I make the rest of the class get up and gather tightly around the performing space, as if on a narrow York street, and ask them to think about why it matters -- how it might be meaningful -- that most of the crowd can't see Jesus until the cross is raised, and that the soldiers describe their actions and assume what pain Jesus must feel, as opposed to having "Jesus" enact that pain and suffering visibly. And I usually draw a connection from this discussion of the visual elements to the discussion of the vocabulary of work by asking students to think of the people playing and producing this play and the rest of the cycle -- i.e., occupational guilds.

Almost always, through our discussion, students point out that the soldiers -- who speak and behave like craftsmen themselves -- are so focused on their "work" that they don't realize the consequences of their work. And they point out that the audience, because they can hear and see only the soldiers, and not Jesus, are in a similar position. And usually I move from there to the traditional V. A. Kolve reading of the dark humor of the play and its conjunction with the visual effects, how it potentially lulls the audience into identifying with the solider-craftsmen because they are men like them and their neighbors, and laugh with them as well as at them, only to be shocked into realization of their complicity in the Crucifixion at the moment of the raising of the cross. And then usually I talk about the meaning of that moment in theological terms, especially the idea that every sin atemporally participates in Christ's crucifixion, that although he is risen, he is also always being crucified, suffering for the sinners he redeems. Thus that complicity in the play's structure enacts a complicity in the historical crucifixion and in the theology of the necessity of penance and redemption.

But I didn't go that route this time. Instead, spontaneously, I turned away from the historically and theologically oriented reading of how a 14-16th century Christian audience might participate in this play and asked students to think about if there were any lessons here that might be more broadly applicable to someone who might not share the religious beliefs the original audience did. It took some leading -- and really, this was my reading more than theirs -- but ultimately I suggested that the play offers a lesson about work itself, one potentially as applicable to the original audiences of the play as to us. The solider-craftsmen are bumbling workers who do a terrible job in all senses of terrible: they do a poor job of things, they cause an extraordinary, almost ineffable pain that potentially provokes terror, and yet they also work part of God's plan, which is also terror-inducing in its awesomeness and ineffability. They do not know what they "wirke" in the York play's language.

But they are also intensely focused on the task at hand, at getting it done, to the extent that they can describe the pain it must cause without pausing to understand their role in that pain. (They are ironically well aware of their own "suffering" in the hard labor of lifting the cross, however.) They are blind to what the consequences -- both bad and good -- of their actions are, of what an obsessive attention to work, barring all else, might produce. And that's the meaning I thought this play might hold for readers and viewers who were themselves not Christians or not otherwise invested in the Christian penetential meaning of the play (or potentially a social meaning of the play for its original audience, in addition to its religious lessons). That's what I wrapped up class with, and I especially directed it to those students who felt otherwise alienated from such a religious play.

But it's not until later that I realized it was a lesson I still needed to consciously learn myself, that my lack of awareness of the fittingness of this play to the liturgical calendar is part of my own obsessive attention to the tasks at hand. The point is not that I should always be aware of the liturgical calendar, since, as I said, I'm not a practicing Christian, but rather that I really need to be more aware of the world around me, of major events that might be important to a lot of my students, colleagues, and neighbors (which also includes knowing when the big college football rivalry match-up is and avoiding wearing the wrong color on that day, and things like that). Heck, just remembering what day of the week it is and where we are on the academic calendar might be nice, too. And being able to deal with more than the task at hand, understanding what the consequences are of such hyper-focus, might also be nice. There are times when the work must be done and it's a little overwhelming, and March was definitely one of those times, but I can't let "when this is done..." become my mantra, or else I'll always be putting off the things that are just as or more important than work.

A wooly week

Please god, no more animal-related traumas and stress this week.

Beginning this past Friday (OK, so it hasn't been quite a week yet), the Virago-Bullock household has been struck with one hairy trauma after another, the first and the worst involving dear Wiley. As a result I've now been to the emergency vet four times and really never want to go back there again (no offense to the wonderful people there).

On early Friday morning, while I was in the bathroom, I heard Wiley follow me, excited to be let out for his morning pee, and then all of a sudden I heard what sounded like him falling, and when I came out, I found the poor thing collapsed on the floor in his own pee, unable to rise steadily. I thought it was a bad case of an arthritis flare-up and gave Wiley a peanut-butter coated aspirin. But as the morning progressed, and as Bullock and I tried to coax him to his feet to work the kinks out, Wiley didn't seem to get any more confident or better. At best, he stumbled, legs spread wide, to get from room to room or across the large bedroom. He wouldn't even attempt the stairs, which meant we had an 85-pound dog trapped on the second floor of our home, who was having multiple bathroom accidents from fear and an inability to control himself any longer, but who couldn't make it down the stairs on his own, and also wouldn't consent to being lifted. For some reason Bullock and I persisted in thinking it was arthritis, so we took turns staying with Wiley while the other saw to work-related obligations. But by the afternoon, I realized It was something else when I noticed Wiley's eyebrow twitching rapidly and his eyes darting back and forth from something more involuntary than fear. We had to get him downstairs and to the emergency vet.

By that time Wiley was freaked out enough -- and perhaps desperate enough to go out and pee and poop where he knew he was supposed to -- that he let Bullock carry him down the stairs, while I held Wiley's head steady and kept him calm. As soon as we got him downstairs, he stumbled wildly towards the backdoor, and once out, he peed and pooped immediately, but also walked in circles and arcs. Clearly this was no arthritis. But the good news was Wiley's brain function was fine, because as soon as I said, "Wiley, wanna go on a car trip?" he staggered over to the car and jumped right in, tail wagging. Later, when things were calmer, Bullock and I laughed at this.

To make a long story short, it turned out Wiley had an ear infection that had caused a sudden onset of vertigo. Hence the inability to walk and the staggering in circles. He's been on antibiotics since Friday night, and now he's much better. He still lists to one side a little bit, and when he shakes his head or looks up, he loses his balance a bit, but he's eating, playing, going for walkies, and barking at other dogs, so things are pretty much back to normal. It took a day to convince him he could walk normally again, however, and at first he'd only do it on the leash. I don't know if he'll ever again come up here on the second floor, though.

The second trauma in this wooly almost-week was far less dire, but still not exactly what we needed. Wiley was still in the vet hospital (they kept him for 24 hours) and Bullock and I were eating breakfast, when all of sudden Bullock exclaimed, "Oh god, a mouse!" I turned around and there in our kitchen, perched on the edge of a drawer like he didn't have a care in the world, was a fat -- and rather cute -- brown mouse with a white belly. As cute as it was, however, it was in our utensil drawer! Ew! So traps were purchased, drawers cleaned out, items washed and disinfected, and the very next day there was a dead mouse in the same drawer where we'd first seen it. We got the old-fashioned snap traps and it seems to have done its duty breaking the little creature's neck and, we hope, ending its life quickly and humanely. I felt bad though, because it was pretty cute for a home invader.

But I felt much, much worse tonight on my last trip to the emergency vet. The first three were for Wiley -- Friday and Saturday nights, then a follow-up visit on Monday -- but tonight's trip was for another poor creature. Wiley and I were out in the back yard when suddenly Wiley started off on a run towards the front (a run! see -- he *is* getting better!). I called for him to Stop! and Stay! because he's not supposed to leave the backyard and I had no idea what trouble he was headed for. He's a very good dog and did as he was told and that's when I saw the most heart-wrenching sight I'd ever seen of an animal in distress. Moving across our driveway was a buff-colored cat dragging himself by his front paws. I took Wiley inside, got a spare towel we use for Wiley-related things, and went after the cat. When I approached him, he stopped and looked pathetically and weakly up at me and then put his head down on the ground. Picking him up and wrapping him in the towel was no trouble. He didn't cry, hiss, or fuss, and when I had him wrapped up and cradled in my arms, he seemed, in a word, grateful. I've never met a sweeter, more compliant cat.

I pretty much knew the outcome of this story the minute I saw the creature up close, and the vet confirmed it. The poor little thing, a grown male cat weighing only 6.4 pounds, had a broken pelvis, massive dehydration, the signs of long-term neglect, and possibly also one of the three fatal but common feline diseases. He was already near death; I just saved him from a slower one in tonight's snow and cold and gave him a little human contact, compassion, and affection in the end. Poor thing.

When we took Wiley to the vet on Friday night I was terrified that it was something life-threatening and that I'd have to make a decision for him and his mama. But Bullock, Wiley, and I were lucky that night. Instead, tonight, I had to make a decision for a poor stray who might have once belonged to someone, although he wasn't one of the neighborhood cats, all of whom I know well. Or maybe he was always a stray and just happened to be unafraid of humans. I just hope someone isn't out there looking for their lost pet.

Yes, I'm still here

Sorry for the silence, folks. It's been a helluva a weekend/early week here in our crib in Rust Belt, involving a very sick Wiley (he's doing much better) and also a mouse in the house, on top of the usual work and stuff. I've got stories to tell and will get to them when I can.

In the meantime, for those of you going to K'zoo this year, keep weighing in on the K'zoo meet-up post below, if you haven't already. I'm reading the comments and will post on the subject again soon. Spread the word and link to that post so that everyone who's going gets to chime in.