Nothing like creating a list of arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines to calm the nerves!
I also have a thesis formatting appointment, which means that the thesis baby will officially be birthed on April 28th. Whoo-wee, a real deadline now folks! March is gonna hurt, carrying this growing theoretical thesis baby around. But man, I’m going to be 20 pounds lighter come May 11th!
Posted in Uncategorized
Mopey McMopester laying in front of the front door
I would like to write a story about someone who saves the world because they make lists. Mostly because that’s the only way I seem to get things done, so what if the right combination of words on paper could just make things “click”?
I’ve been integrating pieces of my undergrad thesis into my current thesis, and it’s really making me realize how much I’ve matured as an academic writer. What I had three years ago was good, but I can see the gaps in it, now that I’ve had these years of detachment.
My class on 19th and 20th century European history (the only class I’m taking this semester), has lately been dwelling on imperialism, and makes me want to reread books I read for a class on the Literature of Imperialism back in 2006. Doris Lessing and Rudyard Kipling wrote some pretty stellar autobiographies and I wouldn’t mind a journey back through their lives.
Thursday night NBC comedies have become the highlight of my week. I tend to take the evening off and go to bed at a decent hour. Hooray for Thursdays! I usually have school or writing group meetings on Friday, so it never quite feels like the weekend’s started, but that’s okay.
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I really like my academic self, but sometimes I miss my fiction writing. Non-fiction is so structured and so planned out. I struggle with having prepared outlines before I start writing. I am always shuffling around sections, unhappy with the way things flow. I’m not much of an editor of my own work. I have a (not-so?) secret love of editing other people’s work, but when I get my own words down on paper I just want them to stay there. I put them there to begin with for a reason. It made sense to me at the time. But oh, I suppose there is a great need in non-fiction for things to “make sense.” I know you could call writing the transmission of thoughts, and in this way it is important for a reading audience to be able to understand the words typed or printed down. Ho hum.
It is raining and I have the whole apartment to myself tonight (no dog even!). Quiet and pleasant rain.
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Me falling asleep while taking notes – from a few years back.
I soaked beans overnight to cook the next day, but then I was lazy during the next day. I waited too long, so the beans sprouted. Rather than throw them all out I planted a few in some cleaned out yogurt containers. I’m curious to see if they come up! Stay tuned.
I would promise photos, but life is kinda chaotic. I’m on the verge of being on schedule at work and school, but I’m also on the verge of getting a bit behind and I can’t let that happen!
I’m looking forward to this weekend. I need to log some serious thesis writing/researching hours and get a schedule together for when I’m going to go to the archive to do some primary research. Until then, time to go to sleep so I can get up and get to work!
Two simple points I would like to live by:
1. Moderation
2. quality over quantity
My unofficial mission is less microwave foods and more freshly cooked things. I eat way too many carb-y things (oatmeal, bread, bread, bread, pasta, couscous) and microwave things. Nothing beats the convenience of a microwave meal on a busy work and school day, but (also) nothing is quite as satisfying as something cooked from scratch (or assembled mostly from scratch).
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I’ve been taking a lot of pictures with my phone since I upgraded to the 21st century and acquired a droid. I haven’t been uploading these photos with regularity yet, so no pictures to add to this post. (Next time I’ll stop being lazy….probably….maybe….).
School has started – only one class on 19th/20th century European historiography and then my thesis. The thesis is all up to me, which is great and scary. The thesis therapy group I have with a grad school friend has so far appeared to be a great help. Thanks to that and going to a metropolian history writers group at USC I’ve finally gotten the motivation to really get a move on with my reading/writing.
One book in particular really sang for me. Not sure if I mentioned it on this blog, but awhile back I wrote a response to an opinion letter in the Denver Post. Some dude was going off on how wonderful Focus on the Family is, and how all the press promoting same sex marriages was going to ruin society. The writer linked his assertions to historical concepts and events, and the misuse/misinterpretation of such events REALLY got my blood boiling.
One of the worst conceptions Americans (in general) have about the structure of the family is that the nuclear family is the one, true, traditional family structure that everyone conformed to/aspired to back in the day. The nuclear family, however, was only really an achievable concept in the 1950s, due to the post-war economic boom. And despite the prominance of nuclear families during this period, many housewives were drugged up on tranquilizers to deal with the type of restrictive house-life this nuclear family structure placed them in. So, to say that the nuclear family is an ideal and traditional American family is off the mark in several areas.
The response I wrote was published (yipee!). That was exciting. And then I read Mary E. Triece’s On the Picket Line: Strategies of Working-Class Women during the Depression, and boy did the conclusion just knock my socks off. The first part of the book gives the background of the 19th century evolution of the separate spheres ideology (men = work/public, women = home/private). The meat of the text discusses the ways in which women were labor activists in the Depression. Then the conclusion brings the separate spheres and the subsequent idea of the nuclear family up to contemporary times by discussing the rise in “marriage promotion discourse” which she identifies as “simply one manifestation in a long history of familialist discourses that espouses values of domesticity in an attempt to assuage public anxiety and unrest in an unstable economic context.”
She continues by highlighting the utopian element in dominant familialist discourses, which gives the discourse its hegemonic power. (Lots of hifaultin’ jargon in the argument, but there are some great thought nibblets in it.) “In short, the vision of a happy and stable nuclear family reinforces the capitalist patriarchal status quo by obscuring the need for collective action to disrupt broad-based discriminatory institutions and practices.”
I’ve tried to explain the book, and particularly the conclusion, to two different people, but the issues are very complicated and rooted in a historical viewpoint that I’ve found difficult to sum up in a 5 minute intro. I’ve been unsuccessful in really conveying much about the book at all. I’m not even sure if the above is very sufficient, but there it is.
Now back to reading – I’m tying up Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure by Nan Enstad at the moment. It looks at the ways in which working class women engaged popular culture to their advantage. A much easier read than Triece, though a lot of the bits on film are sourced from books I’ve already read (Steven Ross’ scholarship on the working class relationship with film in particular). At least it is getting my brain going again!
Posted in Life
I am fascinated with the early 20th century west and midwest. The dusty lonesome farmer, the wanderer, set against an unceasing landscape. An individual who either bucks community or searches for it – or sometimes both. A closed frontier and questions of where to go next. The newly domesticated. Or at that, the fear of the new. Having everything in the world seemingly open to you, but the closeness of community to keep an individual from being able to stray from accepted conventions. It is a crossroads, a meeting place. The landscape of the immigrant and of the disadvantaged. A natural landscape with humans struggling to get ahead to the unnatural. Fascinating.
Part of my fascination with it is also my personal connection to it. My Dad’s family were early Ohio pioneers. Today that is barely the midwest, but in 1800 (when they made their way out there) it was the edge of the American world. My Mom’s family went into Oklahoma after the land was opened up to white settlers. Every generation on my Mom’s side in the 20th century migrated to California to live for a period of time for various and sundry – though they have all left California by now (Except me! Though I’ve never lived in OK). The road between Oklahoma and California is a well-worn one for my Mom’s folks. None of my American ancestors come from rich families. We’ve always been average Joes, more or less.
This is instigated by working at a museum focusing on Western culture, and also on some rewatching of Carnivale. I love the texture of Carnivale – the dark, dusty, worn texture. I want to curl up in it.
Just got back from one of my closest friends’ weddings in Santa Fe. It was a hectic and tiring weekend, but mostly a very fun one. Hopefully I’ll have some photos uploaded soon.
In the meantime I was musing about how wonderful life can be, how gratifying. I climbed into my own bed in an apartment built in 1948, having finished cleaning a little retro alarm clock I bought at a thrift store for $1.99 this morning, to get to sleep to get up and work a museum job involving organizing unique papers in an archive. Not to mention the lovely lunch I had catching up with friends in the grad program I haven’t seen in weeks. We’re all writing our theses this semester and we’ve decided to test out weekly meetings for thesis discussion and updates. As a procrastinator, I see this as a potentially very useful set-up.
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What a busy close to the year! 2010 ended in a zoom of end of the semester papers, grading, work, and a week long trip out to visit family in Colorado. I just got back in time for New Year’s Eve and have pretty much been sleeping, bumming around, and cooking since then. As this is Monday I’ve decided to finally kick it into gear.
I looked into a financial aid issue (ultimately unresolved for the moment, but at least my question got answered!), got a pile of books to dig into for my thesis, and am about to get into thesis and (work) blog wrangling.
Photos of food and things to come once I get the ball rolling on the business items. (I’m hoping this semester will be less stressful than the last.)
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Last Thursday it was necessary to lay down in the car after work and an hour of rush hour traffic and before my 7-10pm class. This is the POV from my car when laying down in the parking garage.
So you see, I’m in this tunnel, right? Sometimes I feel like it’s going to squeeze me into a puddle of human goop. But sometimes, sometimes I think I just might see something at the end of it. Something bright and shiny, something like light.
And Christmas. Lots of sparkly Christmas lights. Just about time to go pray at the altar of consumption.
Illuminated Past 