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Housekeeping

First things first, a hearty round of applause and thanks to John McGowan for his terrific guest blogging.  Yes, I know that some of you already thanked him, but I can’t hear you, people.  That “assault on democracy” series last week was worthy of a Koufax nomination, in this humble blog’s humble opinion, and I intend to nominate it myself when nominatin’ time rolls around in December.  I invite you to join me.

In fact, John’s guest blogging was so above-and-beyond (more than one person wrote to me and said, “I was wondering how your blog got smarter, until I realized that someone else was writing it,” and I take those remarks in the best possible way) that I’ve decided to offer him what was once known, in the late-Carson era of the Tonight Show, as a “permanent guest host” slot.  We’re still working out the details, because he’s got his own blog to tend to, and I haven’t quite offered to change the name of this blog, but we’ll come up with something.

Next, a second round of thanks to everyone who’s wished me well over the past month.  I’ve been mending slowly but steadily; I still have a clumpy ridge on my right side and still can’t play hockey, but I have now healed sufficiently to resume playing my bizarre Felix Krull impostor version of golf, in which it is difficult to tell whether I am a competent player just messing around, or a complete hacker who gets lucky on every fifth shot.  Late Sunday afternoon, Jamie and I went out to a course we’ve never seen before, one of those nestled-in-the-rolling-hills things about 25 miles east of us; Nick and I had played nine holes at PSU on Friday, during which we were continually reminded that for whatever infernal reason, the Penn State courses grow their rough to the point at which you can neither see nor get your club on the ball if you miss a fairway by five feet or more.  (Also, I just have a thing about public courses with greens fees higher than $30.  It’s not right, I tell you.) So I went looking for a new course, and despite the fact that this one is long and hilly with plenty of blind shots, fired a 42 on the front nine with two mulligans (uh, justified on account of the fact that I have never played there before) and three hideous three-putts (excused on account of the fact that I have never played there before).  As for the Felix Krull part—and you really should read the novel one of these days (Thomas Mann’s last published work), not least for its description of Krull’s attempt to play tennis—I hit a 295-yard drive (slightly downhill) on the sixth just after skulling a delicate chip into the next county on the fifth.  Oh yeah, and then celebrated the drive by clumsily pushing a wedge way right of the pin and three-putting.

But enough about my golf!  It is now time to blog about someone else’s golf.  Annika is a goddess.  All hail the Sorenstam Era.  May she cap off the LPGA Grand Slam this year by beating Vijay Singh 5 and 4 in a challenge match at Winged Foot.  You go, girl.

My surgery did have one nasty side effect, however, in that it has left me with a tragic inability to shave.  Opinions around here are divided about the result of this surprising development, but Jamie likes it, so it’s staying for a while.

Oh, one more thing about health matters.  I’m still not cleared to lift anything heavier than twenty pounds.  Every so often I insist to Janet that this stricture was meant for mere mortals, and not weight-training, beard-wearing hockey players like me, whereupon Janet suggests that I sit down and STFU.  As a result of my recent experiments in weightliftinglessness, then, I have discovered some surprising things about what does and doesn’t weigh twenty pounds:

Things that are far too dangerous to lift:

Laundry baskets
Groceries
Lawn mowers
Garbage cans

Things that are surprisingly lighter than twenty pounds:

Golf clubs
Hockey equipment bags
Drum kits
Beer kegs

Just some handy physics facts to keep in mind next time you’re laid up!

Next thing next.  Although we’ve done another little site redesign—as Kurt says, “it’s Easter in June!”—I have to do more blogtending in the “essays” section.  I haven’t yet added the last couple of essays I’ve published in public venues in the past six months, like the review essay on affirmative action in The Nation and the Schiavo piece in the Sunday Boston Globe, and I also haven’t added more recent things that just came out in PMLA (two weeks ago) and the New Keywords book, edited by Tony Bennett, Larry Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris.  For my severe laziness on that front, I apologize to the four or five of you who occasionally check out the “essays” section.  I can’t post the New Keywords items on this site, but I’m happy to say that the publisher (Blackwell) has made available one of my seven essays as a “sample entry” on the website dedicated to the book.  The entry is on “experience”, and for those of you who might be wondering what it was like for me to try to write a 1000-word essay on one of the most important items in the Raymond Williams word-hoard for a project that’s meant to update Williams’ lifelong work, I assure you that it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in this business, and that I screwed it up royally and repeatedly.  But I’m reasonably happy with the end result, or I wouldn’t hyperlink it here, now, would I.

Last but not least, I spent a great deal of time in late May and early June wondering why it is that none of the blogosphere’s major women writers seem to take extended hiatuses like mine.  Where, I ask, are all the hiatusing women bloggers?  Do they simply have more stamina than us guys?  Has evolution rendered them more adaptable to the arduous craft of blogging?  Or, as I read somewhere in the New York Times recently, is it just that they’re more competitive?

Posted by on 06/14 at 10:41 AM

  1. they do say we’re better at repetitive labor.

    Posted by julia  on  06/14  at  12:33 PM

  2. hi, Michael

    i’m posting a comment here because of two reasons:

    1. to thank you for your very well documented articles which were very helpful for my building of the diploma paper (constructing it now, at the Faculty of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai U. Cluj-Napoca, Romania) on the topic of transdisciplinarity vs. superspecialization and cross-domanin communication, by studying curricular perspectives of my faculty and of a simmilar in Bukarest. (one lead article: The Abuses of the University) Thank you!

    2. i really feel sad for replacing the south park picture, although i’m not a fan of the genre. i made sense, for some reason!

    thank you again! good luck!

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  12:44 PM

  3. My surgery did have one nasty side effect, however, in that it has left me with a tragic inability to shave.

    Where exactly did you keep your appendix?

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/14  at  12:49 PM

  4. errata: *it* made sense, instead of *i* made sense. i apologise.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  12:52 PM

  5. Great to have you back. Keep the beard.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  12:57 PM

  6. Ah, finally a blog to match the petunias, flowering sage, lavender, and funky geranium I’ve got out on the front stoop!  I guess it’s time to go wireless, in order to take advantage of this extraordinary episode of color coordination.

    I didn’t recognize you with the beard. 

    Will add Mann to summer reading list.

    Around here, there is one item that always seems be too heavy to carry, regardless of physical condition:  bags of cat litter.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  01:15 PM

  7. Forget tennis.  You should read Felix Krull for its description of cosmology: <http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/krull.html>.

    Posted by Sean  on  06/14  at  01:55 PM

  8. I didn’t recognize you in the new picture, either, but I think it’s more because of the sunglasses than the beard. You look about 10 years younger than in other recent pictures - but maybe that’s because you’ve had a nice “rest” lately…

    Really just want to say “welcome back” and tell you I enjoyed John’s writing as well.

    No disassembling required.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  02:19 PM

  9. I’m sitting in a hotel room in San Diego right now, e-sending stuff to Kinkos, prep’ing a conference, watching a Telenovela, AND blogging. You fellas are wimps.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  06/14  at  02:25 PM

  10. With schedules like that, Rox, no wonder you chick bloggers don’t shave your legs. Who’d have time?

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/14  at  02:37 PM

  11. Who’s that star of the Bertolucci movie in the photo seen upper right?

    As for your Keywords entry--I loved it! I think your choices were brilliant historically, and at least moving for someone of my (I won’t say “our,” you young whippersnapper) age.

    Nice to see Laing and Hendrix in there. Along with Spenser and Chaucer.

    To place your green thought under a green editor’s shade for a moment (and not to annihilate it, sans dout)--I didn’t see the second of in *Songs of Innocence and of Experience*.
    David

    Hey Michael, a note on “experience” in early English Bibles--

    There is a crucial passage in *Romans* that goes to the heart of the Christian ethic.  Among translators working from the Greek of the Apostle Paul, there is an interesting comparison between their use of “experience” or “proof” in a major passage.

    The Apostle Paul at *Romans* 5:4 uses the words *dokimen* and *dokime( in a crucial passage. 
    English Protestants translating this into English had a crucial choice here, relevant to the keyword “experience.”

    St. Paul’s “dokimen” and “dokime” are nouns formed from the verb “dokimazo.” DOKIMAZO was used for the process of experimental proving of precious metals (trying them in the fire), or for the trial of persons who wanted to earn a social or professional Seal of Approval or Purity or Soudness (it’s used of the process of examining candidates who wanted to be Medical Doctors).

    Tyndale, *Romans* 5: “For we know that tribulacion bringeth pacience, pacience bringeth experience, experience bringeth hope. And hope maketh not ashamed, 1 for the love of God is sheed abrod in oure hertes, by the holy goost, which is geven vnto vs.”

    Myles Coverdale (1535) and The Geneva Bible(1587), also use “experience” in there.  So does the 1611 *Holy Bible*:

    “5:1: Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
    5:2: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
    5:3: And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
    5:4: And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
    5:5: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”

    But in 1568 the Bishop’s Bible (what Shakespeare knew, perhaps?) has ‘proof’ ("profe") rather than “experience” in the crucial spot:

    “3 Not that only: but also we reioyce in tribulations, knowyng that tribulation worketh pacience: 4 Pacience profe, profe hope: 5 And hope maketh not ashamed, because the loue of God is shedde abrode in our heartes by the holy ghost, which is geuen vnto vs.”

    This suggests that the Spenserian inflection of “experience” that you adduce--a kind of experimental trial, or proving, or testing--is what Tyndale, Coverdale, and King James’ translators had in mind.

    Now I wonder why the wyf of Bath would say experience was of no authority in the world? Bureaus of Standards and Measures and Professional Licensing associations used “experiece.”

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  02:45 PM

  12. Yeah, Chris, it explains the hairy-legs thing, but then again, we don’t know which Telenovela Rox is watching.  I hear there’s a really hot pie fight between David Horowitz and William Kristol that you can watch by clicking on this link.

    And David, thanks for reading that mini-essay—and annotating it!

    Posted by Michael  on  06/14  at  04:20 PM

  13. Funny you should mention that particular pie fight as it’s offered on my in-room play-on-demand thingie for just $13.95.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  06/14  at  04:39 PM

  14. Forgive the hometown boosterism, but you did notice who finished second to Annika, didn’t you?

    The entire sports community out here has been ga-ga over the phenom for three years, and this achievement has put it over the top.

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  06/14  at  05:23 PM

  15. I like the rhododendron look too. And the beard, yes, sunglasses...which scene from Star Wars were you in, again?

    Looking forward to seeing more of John, too, if you ever want to remove the other appendix.

    Posted by KathyF  on  06/14  at  06:00 PM

  16. I am very pleased to see you back in good spirits.  Good.

    Please excuse me, I liked your old picture better.  One could see your face as it really was--why the sunglasses?

    The soul behind this blog comforts me.  I trust this place, which deserves a real face.

    Just my worthless opinion, please don’t take it seriously.  Please continue to get better.

    Posted by paradox  on  06/14  at  06:17 PM

  17. That wasn’t my real face, paradox!  That was a South Park cartoon.  My real eyes aren’t that big, and my hair isn’t spiky.  Even in 1981 it wasn’t spiky.  Honest.

    And I’m wearing the sunglasses only because I haven’t lost them yet.  I got them at an Altoona Curve game a couple of weeks ago, and if I hold onto them for another 18 days I’ll set a new personal record for continuous sunglasses ownership (though I did leave them at a colleague’s house three days after getting them).

    Seriously, thanks for wishing me well. 

    Posted by Michael  on  06/14  at  06:45 PM

  18. Hey Michael, the beard looks good. You look tough and in playoff form. Glad to see you on the mend. You have only one appendix—milk the demands of recuperation for all they’re worth. I was feeling pretty muscular about being in the office working today after twenty six hours of travel yesterday (we crossed the international date line, so it makes sense). Then I read Roxanne’s comment and felt a need to curl up into a fetal position and whimper.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  06:53 PM

  19. Bitch Ph.D. just finished up a short blogging hiatus due to travelling, complete with guest bloggers and all. Actually, I think one of her guest bloggers is still posting at the moment.

    Good luck with your continued recovery. The beard does lend a certain air of rakish stick-jockey flare to your photo.

    Posted by Ancarett  on  06/14  at  07:19 PM

  20. I find the sunglasses and beardy-thing sexy. Speaking of which, I DO believe there is a naked photo due of a certain prof of cultural studies.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  06/14  at  08:12 PM

  21. How strange: that looks like an early release of the Chris Clarke Beard V.1.02. Couple days’ worth, back before the gray bits. Even stranger is that it makes you look more innocent, shades and all, than the beardless shot before the South Park Real You.

    Or maybe it’s the purple shirt. Anyway thumbs up on the beard, says this old broad.

    So far my own record for sunglasses retention is for the ridiculously uncharacteristic wrap-around Ray-Bans I found in a parking lot in Death Valley in March, and for that I credit what I thought was a sunglasses bin in the uncharacteristically loaded RAV4 we bought secondhand from a guy who evidently liked a few of the Finer Things in Life. (Turns out the bin is for a garage-door opener, which we don’t have.)

    When I’m not driving, I just squint.

    Posted by Ron Sullivan  on  06/14  at  08:49 PM

  22. So it’s back to Dieter, eh?

    Lieb meine affe!!

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  06/14  at  08:56 PM

  23. Power tools weigh less than 20 pounds.  You know, in case you have to saw, drill or sand something.  Brooms, mops and sponges, on the other hand, are probably way over the limit and should be postponed indefinately.

    Posted by  on  06/14  at  09:39 PM

  24. Maud Newton takes a hiatus every weekend, I think.  New pic is groovy, especially the Northwestern purple.

    Posted by A. G.  on  06/14  at  10:05 PM

  25. Yeah, but a weekend isn’t a hiatus!  And Ancarett, Professor B. was gone only a few days.  Likewise, Laura in 11D took a break for a mere five days and then came back with an explanation for her prolonged absence.  Me, I’ve taken a two-week hiatus in June 2004, a three-week hiatus in November, another week plus off at the end of the year, and then nearly a month just now.  Clearly, I do not have what it takes to run with the mega-bloggers.  But that’s OK.  I’ll just shoot for the Next Best Thing.

    Which reminds me.  About that beefcake, Rox:  still working on it.  It’ll probably wind up looking like this, once I shave, grow my hair out into shaggy ebon locks, and check into the hospital for a radical ironyectomy.

    Posted by Michael  on  06/14  at  10:41 PM

  26. I just loved the photo.  I wonder if my wife will let me grow a beard, too…

    Posted by Mitchell Freedman  on  06/14  at  11:48 PM

  27. I can’t even get it together long enough to post anything anymore.

    I’d say more, but I don’t have a dram of hope left in me, so it would just ruin the good mood everyone’s in.

    I’m going back to sleep.

    Love,

    Hanna

    Posted by Hanna  on  06/15  at  12:54 AM

  28. I understand about the sunglasses record. I have the same problem, except the ones I’ve managed to hang on to for years are the butt ugly ones.

    That ironectomy sounds like what happens after you’ve eaten too much red meat.

    Posted by KathyF  on  06/15  at  08:06 AM

  29. Michael wrote:

    “probably wind up looking like this”

    BERUBE FOR BOLLYWOOD!!
    (sounds like that could be a good title for a popular song)

    Mumbai, 15 June 2005

    Fresh from his wow!-generating appearance at Cannes--where Mallika was heard to complain to her most confidential friends that she was “having the limelight stolen by that shameless Berubee and his skimpy gowns,” Michael jetted back into town with a breezy “No comment!” for those who asked whether it was really true that Mallika’s co-star Jackie Chan had backed down from a Cannes-fu showdown with Michael, because he’d been too daunted by the Beru-body.  We can tell you that, putting aside his revealing outfits once off the red carpet, the Beru-beach boy of the Riviera donned some Italian silk for some very hush-hush meetings with the most eminent producers at the festival. What was the big deal, Michael? Well, we were sworn to secrecy, but Michael set the whole town aflutter on his return, when he informed a press conference at the new Centre for the Promotion of Ice Hockey as the Indian National Sport that he was interested in getting the Bollywood Bigs to do a screen treatment of the LBJ story--minus of course the beagle-lifting episodes--starring himself as the scar-spangled banner item.

    Now you, readers, must voice your opinion as it is you who democratically support the industry with your tickets. Should a traditional woman like Pooja Batra play the Lady Bird? And for the Lovely Linda Bird, should it be Ash, or the Red-Hot Mallika Sherawat?  Ooh, that’ll set Jackie’s face to flush!! Hey Jackie, is it really true that you’re still the hardest guy in the movie industry, or will Michael steal your Princess and prove that your legendary toughness is really “The Myth”?  Stay tuned, viewers.

    Posted by  on  06/15  at  10:23 AM

  30. Does it count as losing your glasses if you remember as soon as you get on the interstate that you left them on the table at the restaurant, turn the car around at an exit two miles down the road, and try to claim them--only to find that, somehow, not a single waitperson, busperson, kitchenperson, or hostperson “remembers” seeing them?  Does your answer change if I admit it was a Cracker Barrell?  In Georgia? 

    By the way, what part of the Cracker Barrell image invites nostalgia for the good-old-days when nice country folk would rob you blind when your back was turned?  I tend to forget that most people who sat on their front porch rocking chairs also had shotguns laid across their laps--I know; I’ve seen the Beverly Hillbillies. 

    Welcome back, Michael.

    Posted by  on  06/15  at  10:45 AM

  31. Does it count as losing your glasses if. . . .

    Lance:  yes.

    And yes also to Linkmeister, I did notice who finished second to Annika.  She’s a phenom, that kid.  But don’t get your hopes up.  Remember when people thought that Karrie Webb or Juli Inkster or maybe Se Ri Pak could compete in the upper Annikasphere?  That all sounds so 1999 now, doesn’t it?

    Posted by Michael  on  06/15  at  11:11 AM

  32. That ironectomy sounds like what happens after you’ve eaten too much red meat.

    Or what Kos will need one day after he tells his wife he can’t fold the laundry because he’s “concentrating on the important shit.”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/15  at  11:30 AM

  33. H-o-t-t-t-t-t-t-t!!!!!

    (In a Don Johnson sort of way.)

    Posted by  on  06/15  at  01:27 PM

  34. My last surgery/bad health event - fall 2004 - triggered the growth of a goatee that has remained to this day. You look like Gary Sinese in that picture...thekeez

    Posted by Jeff Keezel  on  06/15  at  01:32 PM

  35. Good to see you back!  And, as I’ve said before, I don’t need breaks because I make my cabana boy type for me while I paint my nails.

    Posted by Amanda Marcotte  on  06/15  at  02:26 PM

  36. Well, that explains a lot, Amanda.  And it’s good to hear that the fine art of nail-painting has survived even the most stringent critiques of the sanctimonious women’s studies set!

    Don Johnson?  Gary Sinese?  Oh, well, better than Dieter, I suppose.

    Posted by  on  06/15  at  02:43 PM

  37. While you’re doing housework,

    “On Fine Clothes and Naked Emperors.” (green)
    - “This requested article does not exist.”

    “Biotech Before Birth: Abortion, Amnio, and (Dis)Ability.” (green)
    - “This requested article does not exist.”

    “If I Should Live So Long.” (Forthcoming)
    - is no longer forthcoming

    “Testing Handicaps.”
    - I trust you’ve seen my piece on scoring Down syndrome? http://home.vicnet.net.au/~borth/DOWN1.HTM

    Thanks for the tip to the Rapp - does she cover my theory that by allowing women to discount in their early years the risks of DS in later years the acceptance of amnio has shifted the age curve enough to provide a feedback mechanism to keep total DS numbers invariant?

    Posted by Chris B  on  06/15  at  11:39 PM

  38. O Sir, learn from my sad experience! I had my appendix out two years ago, and after eleven months of being Very, Very Good about lifting things, I thought: surely it’s OK now; it has been almost a year! And so I began to plant trees. That probably would have been OK, but it was not OK, as it turns out, to haul a big trash can half full of clay-ey dirt (and wet clay-ey dirt at that) down to the bottom of my garden and then up-end it.

    I will not reveal the unfortunate consequences of this. Let this suffice: it involved more abdominal surgery. Big mistake.

    Posted by hilzoy  on  06/16  at  03:22 PM

  39. Michael,

    Your bandwidth usage is about to go through the roof.  You were just read out loud on Chris Lydon’s Open Source, and links will follow.

    Posted by  on  06/16  at  08:00 PM

  40. Tip jar time!

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/16  at  08:12 PM

  41. John M did a great job while you were gone, but I am glad you are back.  Or on the way back.  On the way to being on the way. To being.  Being back.
    And one more thing.  Hmmmm. Purple.

    Posted by The Heretik  on  06/17  at  10:17 AM

  42. Hi there,

    I’m writing from Open Source, a new public radio show that aims to bring the spirit of the web onto the radio each night, to let you know that we included this post in last night’s show, something we called Blogsday, in honor of James Joyce and “Bloomsday.”

    We combed through hundreds and hundreds of posts that were all written on June 14, 2005, stuff we found all over the web, and then read excerpts of our favorites for an hour of live radio. It was a bit of an experiment, but we were thrilled with the results.

    We didn’t have time to alert any of the bloggers whose posts we included in advance, since we were producing the show until the second we went live, but I wanted to let you know now that this post—or at least a part of it—was read live on the air. Now that we finally have time to catch our breaths, we’d love to hear what you have to say.

    Best regards,
    Dave Miller
    Senior Producer, Open Source

    Posted by David Miller  on  06/17  at  07:28 PM

  43. It’s great to see you back from your long arduous trial, Michael. And I must admit that the beard and the perfecting of your nose (finally!) make you look much less girlish. But I still think Janet and LaToya are cuter.

    Posted by Kevin Hayden  on  06/19  at  02:26 PM

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