Today's New York Times opinion page features an essay that makes nearly the opposite claim regarding randomly-assigned roommates as your humble blogger (and some of her commenters) made two weeks ago. According to Dalton Conley, the kids today are over-managing their lives! they need more serendipity! and if it doesn't come in the form of a randomly-assigned roommate, they'll never be able to play well with others or appreciate diversity!
Okay, I exaggerate. Slightly. But Conley's essay, in addition to not taking the problems inherent in randomly-assigned roommates very seriously, just isn't an accurate imagining of young people's lives or even the college experience (this, despite the fact that Conley is a professor at NYU). Rather, it's a nostalgic look back at the benefits that Conley himself received from rooming, in the 1980s, with someone very unlike himself--confusedly conflated with a larger and basically unrelated worry about the ways that The Modern World has eliminated serendipity. Conley speaks about how he knows people "who can't bear to eat in a restaurant they haven't researched on Yelp," and laments that "Google now tailors searches to exactly what it thinks you want to find," but from where I sit it sounds like he's mourning the diminished opportunities for serendipity in his own life, or the lives of those in his peer group (do 18-year-olds fetishize Yelp? I think not), rather than providing a realistic picture of life as a young person living among thousands of other young people.
As we age, we do indeed tend to associate more and more with people like us or at least already known to us. We have fixed groups of friends, we have families, we have partners, we have colleagues, and we tend to be fixed more stably in a community or at least in a personal and professional identity. But college freshmen meet people unlike themselves all the time: in the dorm, in the classroom, in extracurricular activities, in the dining hall. Many of them (though certainly not all of them) are actively looking for new interests, ideas, identities, and they turn to their peers (and, yes, to technology) to help them learn more about a particular band, movie-maker, political position, or religious belief.
Moreover, any roommate is different from oneself, just by definition. Even someone who shares all one's tastes is likely to have different habits, personality quirks, and simply to manifest his or her presence at inconvenient times. It's hard for me to believe that a randomly-assigned roommate is actually significantly better at teaching one how to live with other people than a roommate one has had some limited say in choosing. The number of people I know who lost friends over shared-housing drama indicates that "difference" isn't always recognizable from the outside.
Yes, as Conley cheerfully notes in his closing, most people who wind up with "the roommate from hell" do survive, and some may even wind up with "great stories to tell [their] future spouse." But that's hardly an argument in favor of random roommate assignment.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Coming soon to a theater near you
As I've mentioned before, I'm co-editing a scholarly edition. It's to be the first volume in a multi-volume "complete works" published by a major press, and the work we're editing is the author's best-known. It's well-beloved and frequently taught, but there's never been an edition that adequately addresses the work's multiple versions and composition history. If we do it right, ours will become the standard critical edition.
Fucking impressive, right? That's some hot shit right there!
Our contract confirms my self-regard: there are pages and pages itemizing our royalties for hardcover, paperback, e-book, online, and book club versions--modest percentages, but not when you expect to sell millions--concluding with a paragraph that details where the really big money comes from:
Film adaptation? Totally.
T-shirts, lunch boxes, and action figures? No doubt.
But the idea of a strip cartoon version is just silly.
Fucking impressive, right? That's some hot shit right there!
Our contract confirms my self-regard: there are pages and pages itemizing our royalties for hardcover, paperback, e-book, online, and book club versions--modest percentages, but not when you expect to sell millions--concluding with a paragraph that details where the really big money comes from:
All Other Subsidiary Rights not mentioned above (including without limitation Anthology, Quotation, Mechanical Reproduction, Serialization, Broadcasting, Television, Dramatic, Film, Video, Microform, Digest, Strip Cartoon Picturization, and Merchandising Rights).Book club sales? I say yes.
Film adaptation? Totally.
T-shirts, lunch boxes, and action figures? No doubt.
But the idea of a strip cartoon version is just silly.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Rooming with others
Students the land over are packing up their things and heading away to college. And seeing those heavy-laden station wagons on the interstate always makes me wonder: taking eighteen-year-olds, removing them from family and friends and forcing them to live with a complete stranger in a tiny room--who still thinks that's a good idea?
Most shared-room situations don't end in tragedy, as the pairing of Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi at Rutgers did last fall. Some people (and I'm one of them) make fast and lifelong friends with their randomly-assigned roommates. But even those people who don't have serious problems with their freshman-year roommates can still find the ordinary stressors attendant upon going away to college compounded by the stress of trying to figure out how to live with another person.
And I think it's bizarre how sanguine we adults are about this process, and indeed how little thought we give to it. We tend to talk about rooming with strangers as useful and character-building, a way of learning to negotiate adult responsibilities. And that's certainly true (and it's also true that most young people will live with roommates or housemates well into their twenties). But I have plenty of students whose first weeks of college are made infinitely more complicated, and sometimes acutely traumatic, as a result of living in close quarters with someone they don't like, or who doesn't like them, or simply someone who has a radically different schedule or set of habits. Just sharing a room with someone you don't know and don't connect with--when you're already homesick and uncertain and wondering if you'll ever make any friends--can feel profoundly isolating.
Most young people going away to college today have never shared a room with another person. And we can say that this is a sign of class privilege, or that it leads to kids who are spoiled or selfish or maladaptive or whatever, but it's not a sign of being spoiled not to be prepared to do something that you've never had to do before. Once upon a time, the young men who went away to college tended to have gone to boarding school--or they'd lived in barracks in the military or were expecting to live in them after they graduated. Once upon a time, it was common for siblings to sleep two or three to a bedroom. But that's rarely the reality these days.
Don't get me wrong: I think dormitory living is useful for all the reasons other people allege, as is being thrown in with people you haven't elected to live with (and whom you might never elect to live with again). But there are smarter and less smart ways to organize freshman dorms. I'd argue that no freshman should ever be placed in an isolated double. Quads or sextets--two or three doubles with a common living space or some combination of singles and doubles with a common living space--make the most sense to me. That way students aren't stuck, alone, in a room with just one other person.
I'd also like to see us be more attentive to the difficulties of adjusting to dormitory life. Most roommate complaints aren't serious, in the sense that they don't require any intervention, and most such problems will pass. But that doesn't mean that there aren't real emotional and sometimes academic costs.
Most shared-room situations don't end in tragedy, as the pairing of Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi at Rutgers did last fall. Some people (and I'm one of them) make fast and lifelong friends with their randomly-assigned roommates. But even those people who don't have serious problems with their freshman-year roommates can still find the ordinary stressors attendant upon going away to college compounded by the stress of trying to figure out how to live with another person.
And I think it's bizarre how sanguine we adults are about this process, and indeed how little thought we give to it. We tend to talk about rooming with strangers as useful and character-building, a way of learning to negotiate adult responsibilities. And that's certainly true (and it's also true that most young people will live with roommates or housemates well into their twenties). But I have plenty of students whose first weeks of college are made infinitely more complicated, and sometimes acutely traumatic, as a result of living in close quarters with someone they don't like, or who doesn't like them, or simply someone who has a radically different schedule or set of habits. Just sharing a room with someone you don't know and don't connect with--when you're already homesick and uncertain and wondering if you'll ever make any friends--can feel profoundly isolating.
Most young people going away to college today have never shared a room with another person. And we can say that this is a sign of class privilege, or that it leads to kids who are spoiled or selfish or maladaptive or whatever, but it's not a sign of being spoiled not to be prepared to do something that you've never had to do before. Once upon a time, the young men who went away to college tended to have gone to boarding school--or they'd lived in barracks in the military or were expecting to live in them after they graduated. Once upon a time, it was common for siblings to sleep two or three to a bedroom. But that's rarely the reality these days.
Don't get me wrong: I think dormitory living is useful for all the reasons other people allege, as is being thrown in with people you haven't elected to live with (and whom you might never elect to live with again). But there are smarter and less smart ways to organize freshman dorms. I'd argue that no freshman should ever be placed in an isolated double. Quads or sextets--two or three doubles with a common living space or some combination of singles and doubles with a common living space--make the most sense to me. That way students aren't stuck, alone, in a room with just one other person.
I'd also like to see us be more attentive to the difficulties of adjusting to dormitory life. Most roommate complaints aren't serious, in the sense that they don't require any intervention, and most such problems will pass. But that doesn't mean that there aren't real emotional and sometimes academic costs.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The rich and educationally advantaged reply
The subject of this post has replied. Comments to that post are now closed (I have comments sent to moderation for all posts that are more than a couple of weeks old, to cut down on spam), but I published Ms. K's because it's only fair that someone who discovers she's being discussed by a bunch of random people on the internet--in a discussion that will turn up whenever people Google her name--be permitted a public response.
However, further comments to that thread will get deleted. If Ms. K's NYT letter was already a bit of a fish, barrel situation, that barrel is now crammed full. I don't take much pleasure in unequal contests.
However, further comments to that thread will get deleted. If Ms. K's NYT letter was already a bit of a fish, barrel situation, that barrel is now crammed full. I don't take much pleasure in unequal contests.
Late papers and guests will be penalized at instructor's discretion
Planning a wedding liturgy is an awful lot like designing a syllabus. There's a set form with a variety of constraints, but so many moving and movable parts. What readings? What prayers? What hymns? In what order, and done by whom? And once you settle on all those individually-appealing parts, you have to decide if they work well together and add up to a coherent whole. At least there are no assignments to devise, no stern policies to articulate, and no anticipatory weariness at the thought of all the grading that awaits.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Ladies who change their names: feminist traitors? (Now with data!)
As a long-time reader of the New York Times Sunday wedding page, I like to think that I have a strong, albeit impressionistic sense of the mating and marriage patterns of the ruling class. Since the mid-90s, for example, I've seen a steady decline in pairings between investment bankers and grade-school-teachers-with-art-history-degrees-from-Brown, and a corresponding rise in the number of couples who met in law school or on the job and who seem to be professional peers. I've also kept a general eye on such things as age at first marriage and the frequency with which a woman takes her husband's name--but those are harder to gain an accurate sense of without tracking the numbers.
So this weekend, my dears, I decided to do some valuable procrastination in the service of collecting cold hard marriage data. I skimmed the 500 most recent NYT wedding announcements, from May 1st until yesterday, and recorded how many women in heterosexual partnerships kept their last names, took their husbands', or did something in between. I also recorded their ages.
And I'll state up front that I came to this project with a strong prejudice in favor of women keeping their birth names. About half of my own friends have taken their husbands' names, and that's cool: it's their choice, I'd never tell anyone what to do, blah blah--but I'm not going to pretend that, internally, I've had an entirely neutral reaction to what the women of my acquaintance chose to do in this arena. Moreover, it's been hard not to notice that lots of the women who submit announcements to the NYT and do take their husbands' names are women in their 30s and even 40s, women who went to fancy schools and seem to be high-powered doctors and lawyers--not just, as I would have assumed (and as actual real studies have found), younger women or women with less fully developed professional identities.
So armed with a primitive spreadsheet, I decided to investigate. I can break the numbers down in detail in the comments if anyone cares, but the short version is this: of 450 heterosexual marriage announcements, 75% clearly indicated whether the bride was changing or keeping her name. Of that number, 30% kept their birth name outright, with an additional 10% "continu[ing] to use [their] name professionally"; hyphenating their last names with their husbands'; forming a new shared surname; or indicating that they would be using their maiden name as a middle name, à la Hillary Rodham Clinton. The remaining 60% took their husbands' names.
Moreover, from this sample, there is not a strong correlation between the age of the bride and her decision to keep or change her name. Women who got married at age 26 and younger showed almost exactly the same 40/60 split as the data set as a whole.
*
The number of women keeping their own names surprised me; it was higher than I'd expected. But more importantly, the process of skimming 500 announcements, including an increasing number celebrating same-sex unions, made me. . . kinda not care any more. There's nothing I can imagine that would make me want to change my own name--but then, I'm in a profession where name-changing after one has established some kind of professional identity is extremely uncommon. However, I'm coming around to the position that for most women this isn't a major feminist issue.
This is not to say that I think the choice is negligible, or that it doesn't relate to important feminist issues (see this post by Historiann for a marriage in which the wife's decision not to change her name revealed what an insecure douchebag her husband was). But perhaps we shouldn't insist on its symbolic importance in every instance.
Here are factors to consider:
So in sum: if you're fighting the good fight at home or in the workplace and making generally gender-conscious decisions? I really don't care what you call yourself.
But as always, readers, I trust you to tell me how I'm wrong
So this weekend, my dears, I decided to do some valuable procrastination in the service of collecting cold hard marriage data. I skimmed the 500 most recent NYT wedding announcements, from May 1st until yesterday, and recorded how many women in heterosexual partnerships kept their last names, took their husbands', or did something in between. I also recorded their ages.
And I'll state up front that I came to this project with a strong prejudice in favor of women keeping their birth names. About half of my own friends have taken their husbands' names, and that's cool: it's their choice, I'd never tell anyone what to do, blah blah--but I'm not going to pretend that, internally, I've had an entirely neutral reaction to what the women of my acquaintance chose to do in this arena. Moreover, it's been hard not to notice that lots of the women who submit announcements to the NYT and do take their husbands' names are women in their 30s and even 40s, women who went to fancy schools and seem to be high-powered doctors and lawyers--not just, as I would have assumed (and as actual real studies have found), younger women or women with less fully developed professional identities.
So armed with a primitive spreadsheet, I decided to investigate. I can break the numbers down in detail in the comments if anyone cares, but the short version is this: of 450 heterosexual marriage announcements, 75% clearly indicated whether the bride was changing or keeping her name. Of that number, 30% kept their birth name outright, with an additional 10% "continu[ing] to use [their] name professionally"; hyphenating their last names with their husbands'; forming a new shared surname; or indicating that they would be using their maiden name as a middle name, à la Hillary Rodham Clinton. The remaining 60% took their husbands' names.
Moreover, from this sample, there is not a strong correlation between the age of the bride and her decision to keep or change her name. Women who got married at age 26 and younger showed almost exactly the same 40/60 split as the data set as a whole.
*
The number of women keeping their own names surprised me; it was higher than I'd expected. But more importantly, the process of skimming 500 announcements, including an increasing number celebrating same-sex unions, made me. . . kinda not care any more. There's nothing I can imagine that would make me want to change my own name--but then, I'm in a profession where name-changing after one has established some kind of professional identity is extremely uncommon. However, I'm coming around to the position that for most women this isn't a major feminist issue.
This is not to say that I think the choice is negligible, or that it doesn't relate to important feminist issues (see this post by Historiann for a marriage in which the wife's decision not to change her name revealed what an insecure douchebag her husband was). But perhaps we shouldn't insist on its symbolic importance in every instance.
Here are factors to consider:
Women don't lose their maiden names or identities upon adopting a husband's name as completely as they once did. The internet has a lot to do with this. I've noticed that most of the women whom I went to high school with, virtually all of whom changed their names upon marriage, now identify themselves on Facebook according to the formula "Firstname Maidenname Lastname." This doesn't mean they've actually retained their maiden names legally, or that they use them professionally (my own mother, who has never to my knowledge used her maiden name in the 40-odd years since she got married at age 21, identifies herself thusly on Facebook). However, this informal retention of one's birth name is, I think, part of a larger, pragmatic trend: if adopting their spouse's name seems important to many women, so does retaining a clear link to their birth name.
The rise in legally-recognized same-sex unions. Though the sample size here is even smaller, and it's hard to tell what trends will develop over time, right now it's pretty rare for same-sex couples to change their names upon marriage (and when they do, it's usually by linking both names with a hyphen). How gay and lesbian couples choose to communicate their commitment is bound to have an effect on the rest of us, if only by making a wider range of options seem normal.
It's not all-or-nothing. Related to both of the above, I'm interested in the various compromises I've seen in the selection of wedding announcements I perused: women who continue to use their names professionally, women who merged their names somehow with their husbands', and a tiny minority of women who chose entirely new surnames for both themselves and their husbands. This strikes me as an age in which there's a lot of experimentation with naming conventions. So, you know: let a thousand flowers bloom.
Retaining one's birth name upon marriage may remain a minority custom, but it's now a well-established one. Thus it's unlikely suddenly to die out, be thought of as irremediably bizarre, or cause serious, regular problems for women who don't change their names. (Note: I reserve the right to retract this claim if, in a few years, I encounter such problems.)
So in sum: if you're fighting the good fight at home or in the workplace and making generally gender-conscious decisions? I really don't care what you call yourself.
But as always, readers, I trust you to tell me how I'm wrong
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Team teaching bleg
This fall a colleague and I will be team-teaching a course of our own design, as well as running a related series of public lectures, readings, and other events. I expect it to be a breathtaking amount of work (during the same semester that I'm also getting married and going up for tenure!), but I'm really looking forward to it.
The course is keyed to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and it focuses on Early Modern readings, rewritings, and adaptations of the Bible. It's an exciting course largely because it's one that neither of us could confidently teach alone--he brings the Bible, I bring the Renaissance--but it's daunting for exactly the same reason that it's exciting. How do we mind-meld successfully enough to make this a coherent class? And how do we prevent this one course from taking over our entire lives?
This, dear readers, is where you come in. If you've team-taught before, what practical strategies did you use (before the semester began, during your weekly lesson planning, or in the actual classroom) that made your class work? Or what do you wish you had done that you didn't?
The course is keyed to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and it focuses on Early Modern readings, rewritings, and adaptations of the Bible. It's an exciting course largely because it's one that neither of us could confidently teach alone--he brings the Bible, I bring the Renaissance--but it's daunting for exactly the same reason that it's exciting. How do we mind-meld successfully enough to make this a coherent class? And how do we prevent this one course from taking over our entire lives?
This, dear readers, is where you come in. If you've team-taught before, what practical strategies did you use (before the semester began, during your weekly lesson planning, or in the actual classroom) that made your class work? Or what do you wish you had done that you didn't?
Friday, July 29, 2011
Flavia's guide to foreign travel
(Note: I do not always follow my own advice.)
- Unless you're traveling for research purposes and/or have a place of your own (i.e., not a hotel room), the ideal trip is 12-15 days long.
- Never stay for fewer than three days in any one city.
- Never visit more than two different countries in a single trip. This is especially true if those countries involve different languages.
- Your first 12 hours in any new city will be annoying and cranky-making, even if you're not suffering from jet lag. Roll with it.
- Sight-seeing is exhausting. If you're walking all over tarnation every day, budget more than 8 hours of sleep per night.
- You must learn how to say at least "please," "thank you," "excuse me," and "the check" in the local language.
- Every country has its own marvelous wines, liqueurs, and/or beers. Get to know them intimately.
- Tourists are a(n extremely tedious) breed unto themselves. Happily, American tourists are generally no more annoying or offensive than anyone else.
- If you dress well, you will get treated better.
- Don't just see sights. Do stuff.
- If service industry personnel routinely address you in a language other than English, you're doing it right.
- If you're traveling in a tourist-rich environment, and especially in a (European) country with a minority language, your best bet when squeezing through crowds, etc., is to say, "Pardon!" in as French an accent as you can muster. Everyone understands it, and you can be as peremptory as you like.
- Don't worry about doing it all. Assume that any trip to a new place is merely your first visit.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Interruption in blog service/commencement of tweet service
Cosimo and I are in NYC for all of 36 hours--just long enough to catch Mark Rylance in Jerusalem, hit the McQueen show, take advantage of Restaurant Week, and grab drinks with a few friends--before flying to Prague tomorrow night. (I know! I'm glamorous like that. We tear up the Long Island City Howard Johnson.)
I'm unlikely to be blogging while abroad, but it's conceivable that I might be tweeting. I haven't been impressed with Twitter to date, but all the fuss about the boring Google+ made me wonder whether I might be missing something. So I signed up. If you long breathlessly to follow my every move (or, let's be honest: a few very occasional, selected examples of my moves), check out the sidebar or add me to your designated twitsters.
It may all be a terrible mistake. But you'll get to say you were there! Catch ya on the flipside.
I'm unlikely to be blogging while abroad, but it's conceivable that I might be tweeting. I haven't been impressed with Twitter to date, but all the fuss about the boring Google+ made me wonder whether I might be missing something. So I signed up. If you long breathlessly to follow my every move (or, let's be honest: a few very occasional, selected examples of my moves), check out the sidebar or add me to your designated twitsters.
It may all be a terrible mistake. But you'll get to say you were there! Catch ya on the flipside.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
City living
When I started looking at houses, I noticed that a lot of the real estate listing for homes I was interested in included some variation on the phrase "nice city home": charming city home, perfect city home, etc. It didn't quite seem to be a euphemism, but more of a necessary descriptor: "a house, but in the city! If that's the kind of thing you want."
Most of the time, when people talk about living in "cities"--and especially about the difficulty of living in cities or the impossibility of raising kids there and so on--they seem to imagine that they're talking about living in apartment buildings. Not necessarily apartment towers, but places where you're schlepping up a lot of stairs or contending with an elevator, where it's an expensive pain in the ass to have a car.
But living in a city does not mean living in the urban core, which isn't where most of the housing in most American cities is anyway. A lot of city neighborhoods involve single-family homes on leafy streets. They may be sited pretty close to one another and they may not have private, covered parking--but they have porches and backyards, attics and basements, and more than enough space to raise a family. They've got the benefits of the suburbs, in other words, while also being walkable and neighborly, with shopping and dining nearby.
And if "city homes" in your particular city are anything like those in mine, they're half the price of homes just a mile away, in the technical suburbs. They're also, probably, handsomer and more architecturally interesting.
So in many ways, "city home" seems code for "a nice house as long as you don't care that the city schools suck." Except, at half the price? I've done the math. I could buy a city house, send two kids to the local (highly-rated) Catholic school for all four years of high school, and still be ahead financially relative to someone who bought in the suburbs. Actually, I could send two kids there for junior high and high school.
But it's not just about the schools. Ultimately, city living means "economic diversity": there are people who don't keep their houses up, or renters with innumerable family members coming and going. There are people on the street at midnight--heading home from a bar or restaurant or just from visiting their friends--who have loud conversations under your window. Your neighbors have friends who honk, repeatedly, rather than ringing the doorbell or using their cell phones. And let's face it: there are more potholes, crappier post offices, and generally poorer service.
And I guess most bourgeois don't have a high tolerance for economic diversity and a lack of sufficient buffering from the lives of others (I also think that many people who insist that there's so little space in the city do so somewhat disingenuously, as a cover for a resistance to city living that has more to do with class and race). But it's still hard for me to understand, because I can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else. I love that I'm out in public and yet in private when I'm having a drink with a friend on my front porch. I love that the neighbor kids play basketball in the street and in my driveway, and that when I'm outside or when the windows are open, I can hear snatches of conversations from several different houses. (I even kinda love the young woman across the way who has shouted cell-phone arguments while sitting in her car with the windows rolled down.) I love that this is a mixed-race neighborhood. I love that I can walk to a couple of bars, a barbeque joint, and a pizza shop--as well as a store specializing in exotic reptiles.
I moved scarcely more than a mile, from a neighborhood with more apartment buildings than single-family homes. But somehow, in acquiring a house and a porch and a yard, I moved more decisively into a city.
Most of the time, when people talk about living in "cities"--and especially about the difficulty of living in cities or the impossibility of raising kids there and so on--they seem to imagine that they're talking about living in apartment buildings. Not necessarily apartment towers, but places where you're schlepping up a lot of stairs or contending with an elevator, where it's an expensive pain in the ass to have a car.
But living in a city does not mean living in the urban core, which isn't where most of the housing in most American cities is anyway. A lot of city neighborhoods involve single-family homes on leafy streets. They may be sited pretty close to one another and they may not have private, covered parking--but they have porches and backyards, attics and basements, and more than enough space to raise a family. They've got the benefits of the suburbs, in other words, while also being walkable and neighborly, with shopping and dining nearby.
And if "city homes" in your particular city are anything like those in mine, they're half the price of homes just a mile away, in the technical suburbs. They're also, probably, handsomer and more architecturally interesting.
So in many ways, "city home" seems code for "a nice house as long as you don't care that the city schools suck." Except, at half the price? I've done the math. I could buy a city house, send two kids to the local (highly-rated) Catholic school for all four years of high school, and still be ahead financially relative to someone who bought in the suburbs. Actually, I could send two kids there for junior high and high school.
But it's not just about the schools. Ultimately, city living means "economic diversity": there are people who don't keep their houses up, or renters with innumerable family members coming and going. There are people on the street at midnight--heading home from a bar or restaurant or just from visiting their friends--who have loud conversations under your window. Your neighbors have friends who honk, repeatedly, rather than ringing the doorbell or using their cell phones. And let's face it: there are more potholes, crappier post offices, and generally poorer service.
And I guess most bourgeois don't have a high tolerance for economic diversity and a lack of sufficient buffering from the lives of others (I also think that many people who insist that there's so little space in the city do so somewhat disingenuously, as a cover for a resistance to city living that has more to do with class and race). But it's still hard for me to understand, because I can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else. I love that I'm out in public and yet in private when I'm having a drink with a friend on my front porch. I love that the neighbor kids play basketball in the street and in my driveway, and that when I'm outside or when the windows are open, I can hear snatches of conversations from several different houses. (I even kinda love the young woman across the way who has shouted cell-phone arguments while sitting in her car with the windows rolled down.) I love that this is a mixed-race neighborhood. I love that I can walk to a couple of bars, a barbeque joint, and a pizza shop--as well as a store specializing in exotic reptiles.
I moved scarcely more than a mile, from a neighborhood with more apartment buildings than single-family homes. But somehow, in acquiring a house and a porch and a yard, I moved more decisively into a city.
Monday, July 11, 2011
It's worse, somehow, than "URGENT! PROBLEM!!"
Maybe I should be pleased to open my inbox and see an email from a former student with the subject line "Platonism." But I'm not. I'm just not.
Friday, July 08, 2011
The life of the mind owes back taxes
I underreported my income on my 2009 tax return. It was money from an external research fellowship, and I both realized and didn't realize what I was doing.
When I'd had fellowship income in the past, I'd tried to report it but had nearly always had a difficult time doing so: I wouldn't receive tax forms from the granting institution in January, and when I'd call they'd persist in not sending me tax forms. Twice I was referred to an office with a phone line that was never attended and on which I couldn't leave a message. Upon digging through my award notifications, I would also find ambiguously-worded statements such as, "this may or may not count as income and may or may not need to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service."
Nevertheless, I dutifully but half-assedly reported the income. Since I hadn't received a 1099 form, I didn't have a tax I.D. number or a proper address, but I listed the dollar amount and some version of the institution's name. And every time, I owed a chunk of money for my pains.
Based on this lackadaisical institutional reporting, I more or less came to the conclusion that fellowship income must not really need to be reported. The institution that awarded me a fellowship in the winter of 2008-09 also did not send me a 1099 form, and this time I didn't bother to try to track one down. Their checks and check receipts had suggested that they were deliberately underreporting what they paid me, so I figured that if there was a tax loophole here, they were definitely taking it.
Also, it was a decent amount of additional income. I would have owed hundreds of dollars rather than getting back hundreds of dollars. So I didn't report it.
*
When I got the notice of underpayment from the IRS this past spring, I acknowledged its justice: I owed $1,000 in back taxes, plus $37.00 in interest. I wasn't happy about it, but I knew that I was the one at fault. I called the IRS immediately to see whether I could pay in installments over the 90-day window I was given. They told me that I could, and I wrote a check for $350.00 that night.
But it didn't turn out to be so easy. The Treasury Department has been cashing my checks and then, a week or two later, cutting me checks for the same amount (plus interest!): "OVERTAX REFUND," they tell me. I kept sending them checks, for increasingly large amounts, until last month I paid the full $1,037.00 in one lump sum. Last week I got a letter by certified mail telling me that I was delinquent in my repayment. I called, and was told that it was probably an error, since my account had been credited. Yesterday I got a refund check for $1,037.91.
Graduate school did nothing to prepare me for this.
When I'd had fellowship income in the past, I'd tried to report it but had nearly always had a difficult time doing so: I wouldn't receive tax forms from the granting institution in January, and when I'd call they'd persist in not sending me tax forms. Twice I was referred to an office with a phone line that was never attended and on which I couldn't leave a message. Upon digging through my award notifications, I would also find ambiguously-worded statements such as, "this may or may not count as income and may or may not need to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service."
Nevertheless, I dutifully but half-assedly reported the income. Since I hadn't received a 1099 form, I didn't have a tax I.D. number or a proper address, but I listed the dollar amount and some version of the institution's name. And every time, I owed a chunk of money for my pains.
Based on this lackadaisical institutional reporting, I more or less came to the conclusion that fellowship income must not really need to be reported. The institution that awarded me a fellowship in the winter of 2008-09 also did not send me a 1099 form, and this time I didn't bother to try to track one down. Their checks and check receipts had suggested that they were deliberately underreporting what they paid me, so I figured that if there was a tax loophole here, they were definitely taking it.
Also, it was a decent amount of additional income. I would have owed hundreds of dollars rather than getting back hundreds of dollars. So I didn't report it.
*
When I got the notice of underpayment from the IRS this past spring, I acknowledged its justice: I owed $1,000 in back taxes, plus $37.00 in interest. I wasn't happy about it, but I knew that I was the one at fault. I called the IRS immediately to see whether I could pay in installments over the 90-day window I was given. They told me that I could, and I wrote a check for $350.00 that night.
But it didn't turn out to be so easy. The Treasury Department has been cashing my checks and then, a week or two later, cutting me checks for the same amount (plus interest!): "OVERTAX REFUND," they tell me. I kept sending them checks, for increasingly large amounts, until last month I paid the full $1,037.00 in one lump sum. Last week I got a letter by certified mail telling me that I was delinquent in my repayment. I called, and was told that it was probably an error, since my account had been credited. Yesterday I got a refund check for $1,037.91.
Graduate school did nothing to prepare me for this.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Cocktails + fireworks: what could go wrong?
I've been spending every available moment this holiday weekend on my new front porch. Since we seem to need to go to the TargetHomeDepotPlex approximately every 29 hours and since I have an extremely overdue book review that I'm determined to get done before Tuesday, it hasn't been quite the all-day-every-day affair that I'd like. But still: there has been grilling. There have been cherries and berries, newspapers and novels, watering the plants and watching the neighbor kids play in the street and wondering WTF is up with that cop car that keeps circling. And most importantly: there has been drinking.
Independence Day Americano, à la Flavia:
2 oz. Campari
1 oz. sweet vermouth
4-6 oz. club soda
Pour over ice and garnish with blueberries
Celebrate it with me, kids: your independence from crappy beer and cheap white wine!
Independence Day Americano, à la Flavia:2 oz. Campari
1 oz. sweet vermouth
4-6 oz. club soda
Pour over ice and garnish with blueberries
Celebrate it with me, kids: your independence from crappy beer and cheap white wine!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Unpacking my library
I'm finally mostly unpacked, one of the last tasks being the organization of my library. I actually have fewer books to unpack this time than when I moved five years ago, since hundreds of books now reside in my on-campus office. However, without all my Early Modern books and my teaching books and my theory books (and with many more rooms in my home!), the task of ordering and bestowing the remainder is even more of a puzzle.
We don't have a room that can serve as a dedicated library, and I've taken a smallish room--the beautiful, sun-filled sleeping porch--as my office. My books might all fit in there, if I crammed bookcases against every available wall, but that doesn't seem to make sense; aside from the size of the room, there's no point in having Don DeLillo and August Wilson, much less Helen Fielding, hanging out in my workspace. In theory I could keep leisure reading in one place and scholarly reading in another, but that division isn't absolute. Is the Odyssey research, or leisure? How about Jonathan Swift? Or the Romantic poets (whom I hate, will not read for fun, will never need for my research, but need to keep as part of my library)? And what the hell do I do with my collection of books on jazz and Old Hollywood? Or my two dozen books on contemporary religion?
Since I'm by nature an organizer and a systematizer, I'm haunted by the belief that there's some perfect way to organize my books: easy and rational but also intellectually coherent. I know that this isn't so--and that whatever I do with my books, within a few months I'll be accustomed to where everything is and the underlying organization won't matter--but I still want to do things right.
So I sit on the floor, surrounded by books, interrogating them: what are you? How do you matter to me?
The organizational method that I continue to find the most satisfying is chronological. So with the exception of a few special or set-aside collections, everything else gets mixed together: literature and history, philosophy and social science, starting with the writings of the ancient world and continuing up through last year's best-sellers. The idea is that my bookshelves will chart patterns of intellectual and aesthetic development, influence and response--and for the most part they do. Still, chronology doesn't solve all my problems. Should Gibbon go next to Catullus, or next to Johnson? Does an author with a long career get all his books shelved next to each other, or should they be interleaved with those of his earlier and later contemporaries? Should national groupings be respected? (It might be reasonable to interleave works of Early American literature with those from 18th C. Britain, but what about continental Europe? Should Choderlos de Laclos and the Marquis de Sade really be next to Charles Brockden Brown?)
It's a pleasurable task, though, for exactly these reasons. I enjoy finding six totally dissimilar novels published within a year or two of each other, and thinking about the different issues and movements they're in conversation with. I like seeing which patterns emerge, and what different patterns I can create if I shuffle authors into a slightly different order, or place them in the context of an epochal event like WWII.
But then, that's how my brain works; I may have a rage for order, but I'm more a lumper than a splitter.
How do the rest of you solve your book organization problems?
We don't have a room that can serve as a dedicated library, and I've taken a smallish room--the beautiful, sun-filled sleeping porch--as my office. My books might all fit in there, if I crammed bookcases against every available wall, but that doesn't seem to make sense; aside from the size of the room, there's no point in having Don DeLillo and August Wilson, much less Helen Fielding, hanging out in my workspace. In theory I could keep leisure reading in one place and scholarly reading in another, but that division isn't absolute. Is the Odyssey research, or leisure? How about Jonathan Swift? Or the Romantic poets (whom I hate, will not read for fun, will never need for my research, but need to keep as part of my library)? And what the hell do I do with my collection of books on jazz and Old Hollywood? Or my two dozen books on contemporary religion?Since I'm by nature an organizer and a systematizer, I'm haunted by the belief that there's some perfect way to organize my books: easy and rational but also intellectually coherent. I know that this isn't so--and that whatever I do with my books, within a few months I'll be accustomed to where everything is and the underlying organization won't matter--but I still want to do things right.
So I sit on the floor, surrounded by books, interrogating them: what are you? How do you matter to me?
The organizational method that I continue to find the most satisfying is chronological. So with the exception of a few special or set-aside collections, everything else gets mixed together: literature and history, philosophy and social science, starting with the writings of the ancient world and continuing up through last year's best-sellers. The idea is that my bookshelves will chart patterns of intellectual and aesthetic development, influence and response--and for the most part they do. Still, chronology doesn't solve all my problems. Should Gibbon go next to Catullus, or next to Johnson? Does an author with a long career get all his books shelved next to each other, or should they be interleaved with those of his earlier and later contemporaries? Should national groupings be respected? (It might be reasonable to interleave works of Early American literature with those from 18th C. Britain, but what about continental Europe? Should Choderlos de Laclos and the Marquis de Sade really be next to Charles Brockden Brown?)
It's a pleasurable task, though, for exactly these reasons. I enjoy finding six totally dissimilar novels published within a year or two of each other, and thinking about the different issues and movements they're in conversation with. I like seeing which patterns emerge, and what different patterns I can create if I shuffle authors into a slightly different order, or place them in the context of an epochal event like WWII.
But then, that's how my brain works; I may have a rage for order, but I'm more a lumper than a splitter.
How do the rest of you solve your book organization problems?
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Something other, something different
Apologies for my extended absence here and elsewhere on the internet--moving plus a delayed Time Warner hookup means I've been reliant on an erratic stolen wireless connection.
Patchy as my internet access has been, I did follow the news from the New York state senate pretty much as it was breaking on Friday night. I'm very glad that my adopted home state has legalized gay marriage, and I do think it's an important step in the fight for gay and lesbian equality. However, I share some of the ambivalence that other people have expressed about turning marriage into the default standard for "loving, committed relationship." Let me be clear: I'm a big believer in marriage, and although I understand that some people can't get over the icky feelings that the patriarchal model of marriage produces in them, I don't personally believe that marriage is limited to or compromised by that model.
Nevertheless, though I want all my gay friends who want to get married to be able to do so, I don't totally love the way that gay marriage has gotten marketed as "gay people are exactly like you and me! they want exactly the same things that you want (or are supposed to want)! They're good consumers and citizens, and if only we allowed them to marry they wouldn't have to go to those scary nightclubs or wear weird clothes and stuff."
The flurry of news stories surrounding marriage equality has also made me brood more on the cover story from last week's NYT Magazine about the psychotherapeutic treatment of gay people who don't want to be gay. According to this story, an increasing number of mental health professionals--including those who are themselves openly and happily gay--are attempting methods of treatment for closeted patients that are not necessarily aimed at making those patients embrace and affirm their true gay selves. As one therapist notes, it's not always true that life would be happier or get better for them if they came out. When confronted with a deeply religious man who's attracted to other men, but who is married to and loves a woman, has children, and is utterly convinced homosexuality is wrong, their approach is basically to figure out how the patient sees himself: his orientation might indeed be homosexual while his identity is heterosexual. The therapist's job is to help him lessen the conflict between those two things so that he's able both to be honest with himself and others--and to lead more or less the (heterosexual) life he wants to lead.
I suppose one way of reading that story in light of New York's legalization of gay marriage is to see it only as evidence that we haven't come far enough yet: some day no one will be closeted, because even a conservative, religious kid who likes boys will be able to attend a theologically traditional church, meet another conservative boy there, and get married and have kids and coach little league and serve on the PTA.
I actually think the above scenario will eventually mostly come to pass (the most interesting chapter of the fight for gay equality will surely be the one that unfolds in the Bible Belt), but that's not my primary reading of the Times magazine article or why I've been brooding over it. I find the plight of the gays-who-don't-want-to-be-gays sad, but not because I think they're just deceiving themselves or that there's a direct line from gay liberation to self-actualization for men like those profiled in the story. (No female patients were profiled, nor was it suggested that conservative, religious lesbians confront the same problems--or even that they exist. There's probably more to say about that omission or assumption.)
What interests me about the article is the way it dramatizes the experience of identity conflict. Basically, what do you do when who you are doesn't make sense? What happens when two or more intensely-held aspects of your identity seem to be in conflict with one another? That may not be a universal problem, but it's not just a gay one or just a religious one. I've talked before about my fascination with personal experiences that don't seem tellable because they exist outside the normative categories of description or defy narrative logic. And though the gays-who-don't-want-to-be-gays might seem to be the exact opposite of the gays and lesbians who are so comfortable in their sexual identity that they don't want to get married, and who resist the enfolding or smothering of gay culture into the dominant culture, the two groups have at least this in common: they want something other, something different, and to be whom they imagine themselves to be--even when there's not an obvious or explicable path for them to follow or when that life comes at great personal cost.
We talk a lot in this country about going our own way and doing our own thing and having the "courage" to be different. But normalcy is hard, too, and the people who are different don't always look it. Being a functioning member of society without being a liar or a hypocrite is everyone's work, but there's no single path to that end. The men in the article have found a way that works for them, at least for now. Isn't that as much as any of us can hope for?
Patchy as my internet access has been, I did follow the news from the New York state senate pretty much as it was breaking on Friday night. I'm very glad that my adopted home state has legalized gay marriage, and I do think it's an important step in the fight for gay and lesbian equality. However, I share some of the ambivalence that other people have expressed about turning marriage into the default standard for "loving, committed relationship." Let me be clear: I'm a big believer in marriage, and although I understand that some people can't get over the icky feelings that the patriarchal model of marriage produces in them, I don't personally believe that marriage is limited to or compromised by that model.
Nevertheless, though I want all my gay friends who want to get married to be able to do so, I don't totally love the way that gay marriage has gotten marketed as "gay people are exactly like you and me! they want exactly the same things that you want (or are supposed to want)! They're good consumers and citizens, and if only we allowed them to marry they wouldn't have to go to those scary nightclubs or wear weird clothes and stuff."
The flurry of news stories surrounding marriage equality has also made me brood more on the cover story from last week's NYT Magazine about the psychotherapeutic treatment of gay people who don't want to be gay. According to this story, an increasing number of mental health professionals--including those who are themselves openly and happily gay--are attempting methods of treatment for closeted patients that are not necessarily aimed at making those patients embrace and affirm their true gay selves. As one therapist notes, it's not always true that life would be happier or get better for them if they came out. When confronted with a deeply religious man who's attracted to other men, but who is married to and loves a woman, has children, and is utterly convinced homosexuality is wrong, their approach is basically to figure out how the patient sees himself: his orientation might indeed be homosexual while his identity is heterosexual. The therapist's job is to help him lessen the conflict between those two things so that he's able both to be honest with himself and others--and to lead more or less the (heterosexual) life he wants to lead.
I suppose one way of reading that story in light of New York's legalization of gay marriage is to see it only as evidence that we haven't come far enough yet: some day no one will be closeted, because even a conservative, religious kid who likes boys will be able to attend a theologically traditional church, meet another conservative boy there, and get married and have kids and coach little league and serve on the PTA.
I actually think the above scenario will eventually mostly come to pass (the most interesting chapter of the fight for gay equality will surely be the one that unfolds in the Bible Belt), but that's not my primary reading of the Times magazine article or why I've been brooding over it. I find the plight of the gays-who-don't-want-to-be-gays sad, but not because I think they're just deceiving themselves or that there's a direct line from gay liberation to self-actualization for men like those profiled in the story. (No female patients were profiled, nor was it suggested that conservative, religious lesbians confront the same problems--or even that they exist. There's probably more to say about that omission or assumption.)
What interests me about the article is the way it dramatizes the experience of identity conflict. Basically, what do you do when who you are doesn't make sense? What happens when two or more intensely-held aspects of your identity seem to be in conflict with one another? That may not be a universal problem, but it's not just a gay one or just a religious one. I've talked before about my fascination with personal experiences that don't seem tellable because they exist outside the normative categories of description or defy narrative logic. And though the gays-who-don't-want-to-be-gays might seem to be the exact opposite of the gays and lesbians who are so comfortable in their sexual identity that they don't want to get married, and who resist the enfolding or smothering of gay culture into the dominant culture, the two groups have at least this in common: they want something other, something different, and to be whom they imagine themselves to be--even when there's not an obvious or explicable path for them to follow or when that life comes at great personal cost.
We talk a lot in this country about going our own way and doing our own thing and having the "courage" to be different. But normalcy is hard, too, and the people who are different don't always look it. Being a functioning member of society without being a liar or a hypocrite is everyone's work, but there's no single path to that end. The men in the article have found a way that works for them, at least for now. Isn't that as much as any of us can hope for?
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