Fencing Bear at Prayer

OMG, it's been a whole week since I last posted! I have no idea where the time has gone. Okay, so I've made it through, let's see, several more levels in Angry Birds . And, okay, there were those episodes of Castle that we just had to watch (which you will too if you follow the link because it will open the trailers--oooh, Nathan Fillion!). And there have been a number of long phone calls with my family, thanks to the ongoing crisis we're in. But surely there should have been time to post something, anything, in the seven days since I last wrote. But, no. I spent Sunday morning commenting on my students' blog posts about animals and Sunday afternoon (after church and grocery shopping) marking papers for my course in EuroCiv. Monday morning, there was the EuroCiv staff meeting to prepare for, Monday afternoon I had to take notes for Tuesday morning's class on the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu before going to a department meeting, by which time it ...

I am sick of being the Tortoise. Okay, okay, sure. "Slow and steady wins the race," whatever race it is that I'm (stupid enough to be) running. But meanwhile there are these damn hares bouncing around all over the place, overtaking me, and I'm stuck plodding along in the heat and the dust, getting nowhere. I'm sick of everything that I think about coming with so many entailments. Of everything that I write needing so many footnotes. Of everything that I want to know being connected to everything else so that I have to read everything before I feel like I know anything. Couldn't I be a hare just for a little bit? They look like they have so much more fun than us tortoises.

I've been complaining a lot for a while now about feeling like I have reached the limits of what I am going to be able to accomplish in life, most viscerally (and vocally) in fencing , but more seriously (and melancholically) in my career, particularly my research . I have various theories about why I've been feeling like this: * delayed post-tenure depression brought on by the opportunity at long last to spend a year off actually working on my research; * fatigue brought on by working so hard this past year on my research, coupled with despair over the fact that there was no way I was going to be able to finish anything like a full draft of my next book in only a year, particularly since I was more or less starting from scratch on the research; * anxiety at the thought that my son is now a teenager, which means that he will most likely be leaving home for college within the next five years, leaving me without a reason to get to campus in the morning other than to work on my o...

About the time I was finishing my doctoral dissertation and preparing to go on the job market, my not-yet-then husband and I composed a little ballad. Think Flanders & Swann crossed with C.W. McCall, sung to the tune of Mercedes Benz with apologies to Janis Joplin. Here it is: THE CURSUS ACADEMICA (sic) Oh Lord, there is something I want to confess. When I become grown up I want to profess, Drink sherry, do crosswords and play lots of chess. Oh Lord, there is something I want to confess. Oh Lord, won’t you give me an honors degree? I’ve passed all my courses with only one B. I’ve picked out a topic for my Ph.D. Oh Lord, won’t you give me an honors degree? Oh Lord, won’t you grant me a doctoral gown? For I have enrolled in a school of renown. Tho’ my supervisor is getting me down. Oh Lord, won’t you grant me a doctoral gown? Oh Lord, won’t you get me a tenure track job? I don’t want to be a postdoctoral slob. I want to drink sherry and mix with the nobs. Oh Lord, won’t you get me...