Book of questions

I’m sure someone’s pointed this out before, but if you want more comments on your blog, one way of attracting them is to ask questions.  (A way of augmenting this is suggested by a review of Dean Dad’s indispensable blog, Confessions of a Community College Dean: when asking your question, flatter your audience: “Wise and worldly readers, what do you think?”)  I have occasionally asked questions on this blog, but not often, and usually to resounding silence.  So I’ve decided to shape a week of posts around questions, and see whether I can entice a few of you out of the woodwork to respond.

Months ago (November!), I started drafting a post about a then-current Chronicle “First Person” column, “In the Spirit of Collaboration.”  The author, “Martin Sanders,” writes about the pleasure of co-discovering a “literary guest book” among the papers of “a half-forgotten British author who was once a prominent literary figure”:

The book, lovingly dedicated by one of literature’s Greats, held a treasure trove of fun: On facing sheets were such pedantic questions regarding literary taste as “Who do you think is the greatest poet now living?,” “Who is the best critic alive?,” or “Who is the most deplorable writer ever to have been published?”

All in all there were some 50 questions, and neatly penned in the blanks were answers our author had recorded from the likes of H.G. Wells, Violet Hunt, and many others. Can you imagine the fun we had going from one entry to another, as those artists and intellectuals gave their variously sincere and cheeky answers dating from 1917 through 1926?

In the essay, the collaborators start laughing, disturbing the fusty silence of the archive.  But truly: would this not be a wonderful thing to find?  And wouldn’t it also be a wonderful thing to start?  You’d almost have to assure people that the book would be lost in an archive for a few decades–and never, never posted on the Internet. 

The three questions in the quotation (conveniently boldfaced above) are still usable today–but we’d need more, of course.  Witty, literary, good-looking readers–what else would you ask?

Stuff white people like

I think one of my favorite blogs, Pop Culture Junk Mail, directed me to Stuff White People Like awhile back, but although it’s really funny, I somehow never became a regular reader.  Now, however, the book is out (claiming 50% new content–i.e., stuff you can’t get for free by reading the website), and the Katherine Mieszkowski interview with creator Christian Lander on Salon.com made me laugh out loud:

Why is it important to hate evil corporations, except for Apple, Ikea and Target?

That’s one of the great contradictions of white people. For the most part, all the world’s ills are based on large, evil corporations — government corruption, American expansion through the use of corporate contracts, pollution, globalization, every bad thing that’s happened. But if it happens with nice design, it’s acceptable.

What happens if you point out these exceptions?

You’re going to really annoy white people. They do not need to be reminded. It’s like with the Prius. It’s not a good idea to remind Prius owners that the car still burns gasoline. That really pisses them off.

You are a graduate school dropout. What is the significance of graduate school?

Graduate school — it’s very important, because you sort of get this impression in the rest of the world that getting advanced degrees helps you get a higher-paying job. But interestingly, within white culture it actually gets you lower-paying jobs.

Why is that?

A Ph.D. in English isn’t going to get you a higher-paying job than, say, a Ph.D. in chemistry or law, but it does give you one important thing, which is academic credibility at cocktail parties.

Upside your head

Caught up recently with Terminal Degree‘s blog, and her recent post about being criticized as an organizer by people who aren’t paying attention struck a chord with me.  As I have mentioned, I am on an organizing committee for a writers’ conference and this is the time of year when we field the most questions and requests from participants.

You’ve probably heard that the richest 10% of the world’s population own 85% of the world’s wealth (I know there are different ways of expressing this concept; here’s one); I estimate that 10% of our participants claim 85% of my attention during this time of year. 

Honestly, I am glad when I can help people sort out things they need to know.  Food is always an issue, and we get questions about the availability of vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free items in the conference-provided meals.  (The standard answer is that there is always at least one vegetarian option at meals, and our chef and her assistant can answer questions about ingredients.  We also try to let the food people know if we have vegans or people with allergies, because they’re very responsive to that.)

But I would never think of emailing a conference organizer to ask whether there is a natural-foods store in town, for example.  At least not without a quick Google first. 

Terminal Degree’s complaint was about someone who had clearly missed avalanches of publicity and wrote to say “Why wasn’t there more advance notice?”  Yes, as if we organizers are trying to keep the public from finding out about our events.  Similarly, I have–not many, but a not insignificant number–of people writing to ask questions that are very clearly answered on our website.  I usually reply with a brief version of the answer and then provide a link to the appropriate page, saying “More information is here.”  You’ve gotta train people somehow.

As a teacher, I realize that you have to say important things multiple times (and write them on the board and put them on the web page), and even then, there will be students who don’t appear to absorb them.  One of the things I find amusing about teaching high school is when someone asks, “When is the paper due?” and one of his or her classmates bursts out, “She just said the eighteenth!  Pay attention!”  Hee.

One year and 200 posts later…

• I enjoy writing this blog.  I was never a good journal-keeper, except in short, limited bursts (as with the summer journal that the Snork Maiden and I are keeping).  Now I can look back over the past year, see where I’ve been, and remember things I’d otherwise have forgotten.
• I am happy to have entered into a conversation, even in a very mild way, with other bloggers.  I’m particularly tickled to have discovered so many parallels between What Now? and me.  Can’t wait to talk about some of the books we are both teaching next year.
• I’ve made an unexpected but delightful transition from writer and scrabbling adjunct college teacher to writer and full-time high-school teacher.  Actually, I am still technically an adjunct, since I will continue to teach a graduate creative writing course at New RU in the fall–but I’m no longer a scrabbling (exploited, underpaid, anxious) adjunct (without employer health insurance).  I have a vague but nagging sense that using this blog as a space to record and reflect on the whole job situation–the juggling of multiple institutions, the forays onto the academic job market–helped me gather the conviction to make the leap when the opportunity came up.  Maybe this sense will become less vague as I go on.
• This blog, though, seems very separate from my regular writing life.  If my regular writing life were a professional sport (marathoning?), this blog would be something like backyard badminton.  It’s a little bit of exercise, and social fun, and a break, and it enriches my life, not my marathoning.
• I like it that about three or four people from my real life read this blog, but that’s it.  I love that Pym Fan, Friend of Long Standing (FLS) and EJB read it, and Stubb too, when he thinks of it.  But I’m glad that I haven’t told anyone else (that I can think of). 
• If you’re reading this, thanks.  I hope you enjoy it.

Red, white and blue

 

(Photos will disappear shortly.)  (Photos gone.)

Some holidays–Halloween comes to mind–are arguably more fun when you have a kid.  The Fourth of July could be one of these, but isn’t for me.  And I feel sort of bad about this, because the Snork Maiden is very attached to it and I tend to get snappish.

First of all, it’s always hot.  Duh.  And there’s always some outdoor activity.  In our neighborhood, at least since we have lived here (and this is our fifth Fourth), the kids decorate their bikes and have a parade.  Someone plays a CD of Sousa marches out the window, and they go up and down the street.  The old people (this neighborhood was built just after World War II, and a few of our neighbors are the original owners of their houses) sit on their front porches and watch.  Today, the parade was postponed until 11 a.m. so that a 95-year-old neighbor who was getting out of the hospital could be there and see it.

Adorable, right?  I don’t know, it’s just–outdoor socializing, not really my thing?  And it’s a wider group of neighbors than, for example, come to our Donuts with Dr. King party, so it’s also outdoor socializing with people I don’t know that well.  Add that a couple of our neighbors are in a snit at each other.  And one kid’s dad was supposed to pick him up last night (the parents are divorced), so the boy thought he couldn’t be in the parade.  Then the dad changed the plans and said he’d pick the son up at 10 this morning, so the kid didn’t decorate his bike, just kind of hung around while the other kids were getting ready.  But the dad still wasn’t there when the parade got underway.  Or when the parade was over.

So, you know, not the best day.  After the parade, the Snork Maiden got to go swim with some other kids, and I went along to help watch.  The S.M. is really getting the hang of diving.  But, again, hot.  And I’d really had enough social chitchat.  It would have been more fun if Stubb had been there, but then, most things are.

Now we’re getting ready to go to FLS’s house, and my cranky little brain is mostly worried about what the parking situation will be.  Maybe in my next life I will be one of those people who are really good at living in the moment instead of anticipating every problem that might possibly be around the corner.  For right now, I should just take a deep breath and blithely look forward to hanging out at FLS’s.  Our tortellini salad is ready, and the brownies are almost cool enough to cut.  And we will find a parking space somewhere.

The eleventh hour

Not bad!  Feels like I got a lot done today.  I spent the last bit of time tinkering with the front matter for the book–acknowledgements and so on.  Writing acknowledgements is a type of productive daydreaming for me.  I wrote them many times while working on my first book.  I ended up with a huge number of acknowledgements.  The usual “parts of this book were first published in…,” plus thanks to the institutions that gave me money, but then I also thanked a lot of people. 

I gave a lot of thought to whether this would sound ridiculous, like I thought the book was such a huge achievement that it required dozens of people to help bring it into the world.  Generally, creative works have fewer acknowledgements than academic ones.  If you’re an academic, I guess it’s understood that you have libraries and administrators and graduate students and undergraduate students to thank, plus maybe a research group or a few colleagues.  A lot of creative writers, however, just thank two to three people, if that.  It reinforces the idea of the lonely writer at the desk, which of course one is–but one also isn’t, if one is an MFA student, or teaching in an MFA program, or otherwise linked to an institution that’s providing a base from which to work.  I was affiliated with an MFA program for a while, and a lot of the graduates brought out books.  Almost all of them thanked at least one of their teachers; few thanked all, even though all of them had had more than one teacher in the MFA program. 

Of course, if you did an MFA and got anything out of it at all, there’s usually one teacher who is THE teacher for you.  There certainly was for me, and I singled that person out.  But I also mentioned the others.  And the literature professors, grad and undergrad, who’d “taken an interest” in my writing.  I actually thanked eight professors, including the medievalist with whom I took History of the English Language and a seminar on the Gawain-poet.  Once I realized I was going to have a bulky acknowledgements section, I decided to go whole hog and thank any damn person I genuinely wanted to thank.  I figured I could get all terse and dignified with the second book. 

But I guess terse and dignified is just not me.  The acknowledgements will be shorter this time (they could hardly be longer).  I am, in fact, getting less help this time, and from fewer people.  When I wrote much of my first book, I was in workshops.  Now it really is mostly me at the desk, and a few people who are helping along the way with feedback or encouragement.

The lesson of the first set of acknowledgements: you never really regret thanking someone.  When I’ve been thanked, my usual reaction is that I didn’t really do much.  But I’m always pleased.

The hours

I have roughly six of ’em left before I pick up the Snork Maiden.  In that time I need to:

• Put in another hour of writing.  (Level of difficulty: Medium.  Mostly because it’s hard to focus with these other tasks rattling around in my head, which is why I’m writing them down.)
• Attempt to finalize some arrangements for the conference.  (Level of difficulty: Medium.  I have to call people I don’t know, which is something I dislike, and I won’t be able to control how long the whole thing takes.  Some of it I can do by email, but either way, it’s a hurry-up-and-wait situation: I have to get in touch with some people before the July 4 holiday, but some of them won’t call me back until afterwards.)
• Make a quick trip to the grocery store.  (Level of difficulty: Low.  I could do this with the Snork Maiden, of course, but it’s a quicker, cleaner errand without her.  Also, I will eat a healthier lunch if I do it now.)
• Collect the library books that need to go back, and drop them at the library. (Level of difficulty:  Low.  Actually, I could probably renew online the ones that are due today, then make one big trip next Thursday with the Snork Maiden to return everything and get some books for our trip to Hometown, which commences next weekend.)
• Spend an hour, or a bit more, on one of the cleaning/organizing zones around the house.  (Level of difficulty: Low.)
• Take a shower.  (Obviously, also Low difficulty.  It’s just that I know I’ll get sweaty again from cleaning, but I don’t want to clean first; I should do the conference stuff before cleaning, as the conference stuff is more urgent and more important.  But I feel yucky from yesterday, when I showered in the morning, then ended up both cleaning and exercising, and didn’t shower again later.)

I think the grocery store has to wait.  I will cobble together an okay lunch from what I have in the house.  Maybe that red bell pepper is still OK.  (I should be aware of using up what we have in the house, anyway, but I need a few fresh things for meals over the holiday weekend and for the pasta salad we’ll make for a Fourth party.) 

The library, too, can probably wait.  I will check online.  If something has to go back today, I’ll take it with me and drop it off when I get the Snork Maiden.  Then she and I will buy a t-shirt for a camp project, possibly hit the library, and do the grocery shopping before we come home.  Saves gas, too, to group the errands together when I have to go out anyway.  (Yes, this works fine.  We’ll go on Saturday, since that’s when the next books are due.)

You know, I think I’d better just go ahead and take the shower, since I’m filthy enough to be distracted by it.  Then I’ll give myself an hour (setting cellphone alarm) to deal with the conference stuff.  That should be enough to at least initiate some contact with the five or so people I need to touch base with. 

Then I’ll read for about half an hour, to drive all that other stuff from my mind.  Then I’ll write.  I have something good lined up to work on today.

Then I’ll have a late lunch.  And then I’ll do some cleaning.  I’m going to work on the front room–the room you step into from the front door.  We sometimes call it the library because that’s where about 85% of our books are, and this computer, and a small dresser on which we pile the mail, and a chair on which we throw our jackets and the junk we carry in with us.  The Snork Maiden’s winter coat is still on that chair, if you want to know.  And our duffel bag from going to see Stubb is still on the floor with half its contents. 

An hour of work on this room will yield results.  It won’t take that long to put away most of the crap, because most of it (like the Snork Maiden’s winter coat) does actually have a place to be.  And I’ve already done the immediate area around the computer, including a small desk on which we pile current paperwork and projects (it’s mostly got conference stuff on it now, plus things like a fall parking application for New RU and a postcard to my mother that’s waiting for the Snork Maiden to finish it). 

Then I’ll check my email again and see if there’s anything I have to respond to.  I, of course, will be doing conference things over the holiday weekend, but the main conference office will be shut, and our administrator who does the financial stuff will be away, so I might have one or two things I need to check with her before the end of the day.

And by then it will certainly be time to pick up the Snork Maiden and do our errands and come home.  We might swim at a friend’s place–that would be a treat for both of us to look forward to at the end of errands on a hot afternoon.

Okay, writing all this out has helped a lot.  Thanks, invisible people.  More later.

Who moved my cheese?

This post is being written while I boil six eggs for egg salad.  My BIL & SIL are coming over for dinner with both nephews.  Actually, nephew 1 (Snufkin) is going to the same two weeks of day camp as the Snork Maiden, so I’ll pick ’em both up this afternoon.  Nephew 2 (hereby named Sniff) is one of last summer’s babies, now one year old. 

The plan is for a light, dairy-ish, summery supper: egg salad and tuna salad and crudités and cheese and crackers.  Quesadillas, too, to appease the kids (even though they could certainly make a meal out of crudités, cheese and crackers).  I went to the store on the way back from dropping the Snork Maiden and Snufkin at camp this morning.  Wow, those grocery prices!  I am feeling the pinch.  It seemed worse when we were visiting Stubb, maybe because it’s a less densely populated area and there are only two stores, whereas here there’s more competition (major chains, regional chains, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods). 

Several years ago, a writer friend got me hooked on Amy Dacyczyn’s Tightwad Gazette–the book, not the newsletter, which I think had already stopped publication.  My friend warned me, as I’ll warn you: Not everything in this book applies to everyone.  There are ideas in it which I’m not willing to consider (such as Dumpster diving, which Dacyczyn investigates but doesn’t regularly practice), as well as ideas which have no application if you don’t have a car, or a boat, or kids, or whatever.  But reading around in the book really helps reset my attitude toward spending less and using less, as well as giving me many practical tips I can actually use.  Since the book was published in 1998, it only grazes the surface of ways to save money using information and tools from the Internet, but you can probably figure out how to use the Internet to enhance the implementation of many of the suggestions in the book.

Two of the most useful concepts in the book, for me, are the grocery price book and bulk buying strategy she uses.  For the price book, you spend a few weeks keeping track of the prices of the items you regularly buy at the store.  You can do most of this quietly at home with your grocery receipts, but as you fill up the book, you can take it with you to the store and add entries.  The idea is to identify the best possible prices for grocery items you want to buy, so that you know when the item can be bought most cheaply.  And then you employ the bulk buying strategy: you stock up, at the lowest price, on as much of the item as you can reasonably use before it goes bad OR before the lowest price shows up again.  Eventually you just keep these prices in your head and you don’t need the book anymore.

Take cheddar cheese, a staple in this household.  In my main grocery store, it is available in both store brand and name brand versions and in blocks of various sizes.  Because I had a price book (which was actually just a sheet of paper–I updated it on the computer and printed it out to fold up and carry in my pocket), I know that a good sale price at this store for regular old non-artisan cheddar cheese with annatto coloring is 25 cents an ounce, or $4.00 a pound.  For some reason, the 8-ounce store brand package is the one that goes on sale at this price (two for $4, but you don’t have to buy two to get the sale price); the larger packages rarely seem to dip below 35 cents an ounce, or $5.60 a pound, so $2 for an 8-oz. block of cheese is fine.  I’ll usually buy one, and by the time it’s gone, cheese is on sale again.  If it’s not, I usually don’t buy it, knowing that the two-for-$4 price comes back quite frequently.  Once in a great while, the 8-oz. blocks go down to 18 cents a pound ($1.44 each) and that’s when I really stock up, buying as much as I think we will use before it goes moldy.  From the Tightwad Gazette, I also learned that cheese freezes OK if you shred it, but I don’t use much shredded cheddar, hence my motto:

Don’t exceed the cheese needs, lest ye need to freeze.

This sounds complicated, but it becomes second nature very fast.  You can do the bulk-buying strategy without the price book; lots of people already do this (either by buying a large amount at Costco or just stocking up at the grocery store when there’s a sale), but if you haven’t paid close attention to what constitutes a good price per unit, you risk getting snookered by the huge tub at Costco or by those grocery-store “sales” that aren’t really sales.  Sometimes I see a “two for $5.00” label on the cheese blocks, and I cruise on by, knowing that I can do better.  Too cool for the cheese section, that’s me.

Anyway, I have not been putting a lot of energy lately into keeping our grocery costs down, especially in the last couple of months, when it’s just been me and the Snork Maiden at home.  But after today’s sticker shock, I think I’ll start stocking up again–a little bit now, on nonperishables like canned goods, and more later, when our summer travels end and fall rolls around.  Since there are only three of us, we don’t go crazy with dozens of cans, but when we’ve been carefully bulk-buying for a while, our weekly grocery totals are lower because we have the makings of multiple meals at home, and our cart looks like this: milk, fresh produce, coffee, and six jars of spaghetti sauce. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if by now there was a grocery version of GasBuddy to help you with this, but I suppose it would be complicated to organize, given the thousands of products in any grocery store and how stores and prices vary from area to area.  Making your own price book, for your own area, reflecting the one or two or three stores you’re willing to hit, is probably a better use of your time. 

If you don’t already know the blog The Economical Academic, it’s well worth reading.  It’s targeted to graduate students, but it’s useful to anyone who’s thinking about saving money–and who isn’t, really? 

Oh, and speaking of that egg salad.  I don’t like egg salad or hardboiled eggs myself, but Stubb assures me I make a good one, and BIL & SIL eat it (and the Snork Maiden will eat a regular hardboiled egg).  And I have some eggs to use up (another cornerstone of grocery thrift: using what you’ve got).  And they are boiled now and waiting for me to come and chop ’em up.  See you after the egg salad.