Freedom 45, where are you?
it being 14 above today and me not working well anyway, i went for a run in the river valley. at 2:15 the only people about were the blue-rinse crowd. they tend to be friendly but i am not. i am angry and resentful. i fantasize about retirement all the time, even though i live in a world where no one wants to retire. my people, the academic tribe, boast about never wanting to go. this suggests that most academics have a better worklife than i do, or a higher pain threshold.but i digress. when i get there, to freedom 55 (okay, 60: i really don't think i can make it to 65), what will i think of this moment in my life? will i remember what it's like to be buried under unanswered em

Architecture
this afternoon i spent an hour and a half with 799 other people at the winspear centre listening to randall stout describe the philosophy, technology, materials, intention and process behind the new AGA.architects, it turns out, are pretty knowledgeable. where did stout start his talk? with freud. freud! (the affective vs the symbolic.) then he showed us pictures of the tobacco sheds he played in as a kid in tennessee: drying racks like monkey bars and light streaming through the ventilation gaps. you understood imme

Virginia made me
reading three guineas at an impressionable age left me with a deep distrust of ritual. i couldn't go to convocations. funeral rites creeped me out. i still have a hard time chanting at protest marches. i can't even do the soccer cheer before a game: "3-2-1-snipers!," i mouth. but of all of these, nothing was so suspicion-inducing as marriage.well, today's news is that after decades of principled objections to marriage as a hetero/sexist institution, and years of scorning gay marriage, i have put down my bow of burning gold. i've decided i am in favour of gay weddings. the way i see it -- now -- life's too shor

How to expect what you're not expecting

Stop clamouring, audience of one!
ok. i'll write again.but first take a peek at the tenured radical's excellent post on workload, its mystifications and inequities (thanks, nat!).