Where did September go?

Unlike summer when there's time for vacationing on Spanish islands and visiting European cities, life during the school year is much more mundane. Aviva and I have been busy teaching our respective classes (hers on love, mine on madness), planning and/or writing our respective dissertations, and trying to keep the house in order. The Friday before last, we aborted a plan to go out for dinner and instead spent the better part of the evening mopping up water from our basement. The after-effects of Hurricane Katrina produced heavy rains that caused flash flooding and, unfortunately, water tends to seep through the basement floors of our 1920s house. This past weekend, I tried to regain control of our garden, pulling up foot-tall weeds and dead annuals, while Aviva tried, for what seems like the hundredth time, to convince this contractor to finish fixing our garage gutter. About a month ago, he removed the gutter, which was resting precariously on our cable line, promising to return within a week to finish the job. Unfortunately, it's still sitting in the yard where he left it. I wish all contractors were as reliable as my father, who would never forget to show up at a client's house even once, let alone put her off for weeks on end.

Today's household drama involved the stove, which has been slowly losing its ability to heat up to the specified temperature. We'd temporarily solved the problem by buying a thermometer and over-setting the stove's temperature. In other words, if a recipe called for the oven to be at 350 F, we set it for 500 F and checked the thermometer to determine whether it was hot enough. Not exactly fool-proof but all our food seemed to turn out ok. Well, this evening, I came home from the gym to find Aviva looking very forlorn, trying to cook pizza in an electric frying pan. Apparently, the oven finally gave up the ghost, refusing to heat up at all and emitting this loud beeping noise. Although the pizza turned out surprisingly well, I think we'll finally have to break down and buy a new stove. Once Aviva returns from NYC, where she'll be attending the first annual television festival, we'll head off to the department store and look for a stove that fits within our budget!

In other words, the last few weeks have gone by in a blur. In addition to house business, I've been getting another class up and running. Although the class is similar to one I taught last year, I'm using a slightly different format--we meet more frequently, the class is capped at only ten students (instead of the usual 15), and I teach in a "smart classroom" that includes computers, a projection screen, and all kinds of audio/video equipment. Although the students are sometimes distracted by the computers, it's nice to be able to switch from DVDs to VHS tapes, from Powerpoint slide shows to images on the internet. In any case, it's all working out just fine and I've got a nice bunch of students who, for the most part, seem really invested in the course. We've spent several weeks looking at some historical trends in the representation of madness, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous novella, "The Yellow Wallpaper", and excerpts from The Snake Pit and Girl, Interrupted. Tomorrow we'll begin a section on "madness and possession." Let's see what they have to say about The Exorcist. . .

Google Has Made It Official

I just discovered this fact from reading a post on the DailyKos. Try typing the word "failure" into Google and you'll see that even the world's most famous search engine knows whose face should be used to illustrate that word in the dictionary. Let's see how long the googlebomb lasts. . .

Just Don't Give Me the Same Idiot

I'm dismayed by everything that's being said and done by the Bush Administration in their desperate attempts to regain a modicum of credibility after their royally botched handling of Katrina. Here are some of the most ridiculous statements made by Bush and his associates, followed by a few memorable responses.

Barbara Bush, when she visted the Astrodome in Houston, made this incredibly insensitive comment: "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them." Then there's Laura Bush mistakenly calling Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Corrina--not once, but twice--during a visit to Greenbrook Elementary School in Southaven, Mississippi.

GOP Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana:"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

And here's what President Bush was doing on Tuesday, August 30, when the Gulf Coast regions were filling with water, playing guitar with Country Singer Mark Wills. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz)

Despite the fact that Michael D. Brown's ineptitude has been noted by critics from across party lines, Bush continues to praise his hapless Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director, whose disaster credentials seemed to consist of once being the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. In one often-quoted moment, George Bush put his arm around the addled FEMA functionary, Michael Brown, and declared, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Yesterday, Time released a report that disclosed a series of discrepancies in Brown's resume, including false claims that he was a professor at a university and director of a nursing home. Today, his online FindLaw bio even removed his credentials as commissioner of the Arabian Horse Association because, as one NPR commentator stated, even the horses are now rejecting him. Well, finally, so is the president. As of this morning, Brown has been relieved of his Katrina leadership, though he's not yet been officially fired. Brown's response to being dismissed from the Katrina response? "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep."

In his plea for a full investigation into what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina, Jefferson Parish president, Aaron Broussard, made the following apropos comment: "So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot." It's unfortunate that more Americans hadn't felt that way about Texas's missing village idiot during the last election.

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked his guest, Samantha Bee, the following question: "The president has vowed to personally lead the investigation into the government's failed response to Katrina? Isn't that a job perhaps someone else should be doing?" Bee's response: "No, not at all, Jon. To truly find out what went wrong, it's important for an investigator to have a little distance from the situation. And it's hard to get any more distant from it than the president was last week."

A plea for the "forgotten victims"

If anyone out there is looking for another way to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, I'd really encourage you to support the ASPCA, Humane Society, or other similar organizations. I know that sending donations to support the human victims should be our top priority, but the animals caught in the hurricane's crossfire also need assistance. As someone who relies on my pets for emotional support and comfort, I truly believe that the people impacted by the hurricane will benefit from being reunited with their lost pets. I also hate to think about people's beloved animals being left to starve in the flooded buildings and streets of New Orleans. These people have lost everything; they shouldn't have to lose their pets too. Even if you can only make a small donation, it will help the animal rescue organizations care for the animals while their owners are in shelters, retrieve pets from their water-logged homes, and reunite them with their owners.

Running Playlist

I've been having fun with my ipod smart playlist lately, using it to search my music collection by key-word. I've used this method to construct a couple of running playlists to help me get through some of my long runs. I don't run with music all the time because I find that listening to the world around me and listening to my own body is often more important. However, I like to bring my ipod along when weather or time constraints force me to run on the track or treadmill. I also use it for portions of my weekly long run when I feel like I need a bit of a motivational boost. Yesterday, I ran for about 13 miles, which took me just under 2 hours, and my long run playlist only has about 1.35 hours worth of music on it. So I'm looking for songs to add to the list. This list was devised by searching for songs with words like distance, miles, running, etc. I also selected a few songs just because they are motivating. For some reason, Moby and Cake ended up appearing more than once because they seem to have a propensity for songs about racing and other appropriate activities. I've selected"My Pal the Tortoise" as my personal theme song because never seem to get any faster no matter how much I train/run. Sigh. These tunes are all fairly slow-paced because I need to keep it mellow in order to get in enough mileage without hitting the proverbial wall. For my shorter runs, I've constructed a much more high-paced playlist. Here's what I've come up with so far for those longer treks:

Cake: "The Distance"
The Thinking Fellers Union: "My Pal the Tortoise."
Moby: "Southside."
PJ Harvey: "Big Exit."
Guided by Voices: "Motor Away."
Indigo Girls: "Go."
Ian Simmonds: "Theme to the Last Puma."
Cake: "Satan is My Motor."
Eddie Kendricks: "Keep on Truckin'"
Moby: "Run On."
Cake: "Never There."
PJ Harvey: "Highway 61 Revisited."
Moby: "Rushing."
Jimmy Cliff: "You Can Get It If You Really Want."
Catie Curtis: "100 Miles."
Leona Naess: "Chase."
Willie Nelson: "Midnight Rider."

Suggestions would be most welcome.

Enough of the Storm-tainment

I've been periodically watching the news out of New Orleans and the other southern states and, like everyone else, I've been horrified by the physical and emotional devastation. I can't believe those images are from the same city I visited in Spring, 2003 to attend the Popular Culture/American Culture association convention. I had such a good time in the Crescent City and became so enamored with its beautiful parks, historic streets, and welcoming, laid-back citizens.

Although many people resist politicized the official response to the crisis, I can't help but wring my hands in frustration as the Bush administration commits another heinous crime, one that, once again, is hitting citizens who can least afford it. I've been disgusted by the slow arrival of supplies and rescue crews and I can't help but believe that the critics are right: the predominantly poor, black people of New Orleans are just too far down on the Bush administration's list of priorities to warrant the kind of immediate, no-holds-barred action that such a crisis warranted. I firmly believe the response would have come more quickly, that hundreds of people would not still be stranded in their homes, had the victims been middle- or upper-class and/or white.

I've done what little I can financially by making meager donations to the Red Cross (actually, a food-card purchasing program that will provide food for the shelters but I suspect it was being managed by the Red Cross) and other organizations, including an HIV/AIDS service organization and the SPCA, though I wish I could actually provide more concrete, substantial assistance. Watching the news just makes me sad, frustrated, and horrified. And I also feel like I'm only fueling the networks' tendency to treat the latest tragedy as just another spectacle that has the added benefit of drawing more viewers to the television. As a result, I finally decided to pull the plug on the storm-tainment after waking up with nightmarish images in my head for the fifth night in a row.

This afternoon, I tried to clear me head a bit by taking a long run along the Erie Canal tow path. I started at the Scotsville Road entrance and ran to the Winton Road crossing before returning home. I'm sure that means nothing to anyone outside of Rochester, NY but it made for a distance of about 13 miles, including the distance from my house to the canal path. It took me almost two hours to complete it, but it felt completely pleasurable, even up to the last few steps. The weather was ideal, with clear, dry temperatures around 75, and I found myself really zoning out and "meditating" in a way that only running allows me to do. I also felt tremendously lucky to be able to return to my safe home full of running water, electricity and plenty of food.