Frogs and Ravens

Poetry Friday - A Late Winter Triad

We'll see how long I can keep this up... (thanks to jo(e) for the inspiration).

The geese are honking
Overhead
I hear them
Through the creaking plywood walls
That sound like a ship on the sea
Or trees in the wind
Lonely sounds all
But speaking of holding together
In the face of a storm.

---

The crystals lie on the ground
Bright, shining, faceted
Like sweet rock candy
Or broken glass
Or chunks of the very same ice
They were intended to melt.

---

Picking up trash in the yard
Blown into the weeds by the wind
I notice between the dry dun blades
A hint of green.

To Bomb Or Not To Bomb -- That Is NOT The Question

There is a question going around the poli-blogosphere at the moment, a question that I believe was originally posed by Kevin Drum (who has a knack for this sort of sophistic dreck): Is it acceptable to kill 18 innocent people in order to get rid of one "bad guy"?

Obviously, this is a reference to a recent event in which our military forces dropped a bomb on a house believed to contain an al-Quaeda officer, and ended up killing 18 innocent people in the process.

Now, at first glance this question seems straightforward, and even carries with it a wholesome tinge of the kind of late-night what-iffery one engages in during one's years in a college dormitory. Playing with the answers, you can get deep into your shared assumptions about the nature of life, of innocence, of guilt, of the worth of an individual, and all those lovely mind-crunchy questions that philosophers enjoy whacking about.

The problem is, this question is not some random hypothetical dreamed up for the purpose of mental and ethical playacting. It is a response to a real act, a real set of circumstances, and is being asked in a very specific political context. Moreover, it is also a hypothetical that, by its very nature, inevitably leads the respondent to answer in the affirmative if the surrounding hypothetical context is extreme enough. (Thanks to tristero for pointing this out so nicely.)

As if that were not enough, the context in which the question is asked -- the recent bombing, the ongoing "war on terror" -- makes it easy to interpret the question as being in essence a question about the problem of global terrorist activity and the way in which we respond to it. The answer to this question -- to bomb, or not to bomb, to kill or not to kill -- is intended to serve as a litmus test for deducing how the respondent perceives the administration's response to this activity; if you answer "no" then you are not in line with the administration's handling of the issue, and if you answer "yes" you are.

As tristero explains, ultimately the result is to force everyone into supposed alignment with the administration, because eventually one can dream up a situation in which you have to either answer "yes" or appear to be an inhuman monster. (Ironic, no?)

(In many ways this echoes the dynamics and problems with the "Is torture ever justified?" question. Similarly, it is possible to escalate the variables until the respondent has to answer in the affirmative. Similarly, simply answering the question means buying into the questioner's value system, a set of values that considers torture an acceptable addition to the anti-terrorist toolkit instead of a moral abomination beyond the pale in any and all circumstances. If you believe in the latter, the only response you can make to that question and maintain your integrity is to refuse to engage with the questioner at all. The same applies here: if you do not believe that the loss of innocent lives is ever acceptable, or if you believe that the situation demands solutions more nuanced than a bomb, you can't answer the question without simultaneously compromising your position, even if you answer "no.")

But the problem with that question is deeper than that bit of rhetorical sophistry.

Knitting Olympics

I have decided to rise to the challenge and participate in the Knitting Olympics! The goal is to challenge yourself as a knitter with a project that stretches you and which you can complete in the 16 days between the lighting of the Olympic flame and its quenching at the end. The challenge can be anything you want, knittingwise, as you are the best judge of what is challenging to you. Stephanie (whose idea this is) is doing an insane bit of Norwegian colorwork; my own challenge is less ambitious (more because of my slower knitting speed than anything else).

My challenge: to cast on, knit, and complete my mother's long-delayed sweater vest, using the last pattern in this book.

The challenge will stretch me in the following ways: making pockets (first time), doing a fold-under hem (ditto), knitting a picked-up edge (ditto, ditto), buttonholes (ditto x 3), and -- the biggie -- starting and finishing a project on time.

Wish me luck!

Winter Day

I look up and out the window, and there is snow falling. Rain turned into hail turned into drifting flakes and granular snow. I wrap myself up in my scarf and new coat and pull my hat down further on my head, regretting my sleepy morning decision to pick a hat that doesn't cover my ears. The snow swirls down as I step outside, melting on the walkways, piling up on the grass and leaves. I head out across the lawn -- none of the paths go directly to my destination -- in a sort of dancing stride-shuffle, moving fast on the smooth parts, dodging and leaping around the puddles and bogs of leafy mud. My breath billows before me, a miniature fog of my own creation. I feel tiny balls of ice striking my face, and they pile up on the black wool of my coat as if a mad chef was pelting me with cornmeal. The pavement beneath my soles makes a wet cementy sound; the grass and leafs a sort of squelching crunch, the sound of crisp ice and snow and frozen leaves and soft muddy ground beneath the grass. The snow beats at my forehead, sneaks around the rims of my eyeglasses, forms drifts in my eyelashes and in the corners. I blink over and over and more swirls in, the only reprieve a sudden tilt of the head leeward, letting the snow pile up on my shoulders and nape. The birds are silent, the squirrels tucked up in their nests. I flap the edges of my coat, hands deep in pockets, but only the edges shed their dandruff of snow. There is nothing here but me and the crunching, squelching ground, and the world seen sideways through a veil of swirling vapor and snow.

5 Weird Things

This meme is everywhere!

1) My pinkie fingers are freakishly short. At least when it comes to trying to do string figures. I just can't manage the more complicated ones without the string falling off my short, short pinkies.

2) I pronounce the word "orange" as a nearly one-syllabic "orrinj" (which used to amuse D. when we were first dating; I think he's used to it now).

3) I am both amazingly untidy (piles of laundry, piles of books, piles of papers, piles of piles...) and obsessively anal (pictures must be hung perfectly straight, I align placemats with the edge of the table, I don't like things that are slightly assymetrical, I like having things organized so that there's nothing hiding behind another thing, all my footnotes or pictures must be formatted in exactly the same way...).

My working theory is that I'm a perfectionist who gives up when it looks like there's too much work or too much stuff.

4) I can hear and hate really high-pitched noises: tv monitors, mosquito repellers, some fluorescent lights, some dog whistles...

5) I can feel buildings and bridges bounce and sway due to wind or people driving or walking on them. I'm not fond of this sensation.

Another Silly Thing

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Rana!

1. Bees visit over three million flowers to make a single kilogram of Rana.
2. The only planet that rotates on its side is Rana.
3. The first American zoo was built in 1794, and contained only Rana!
4. It's bad luck to whistle near Rana.
5. The ace of spades in a playing card deck symbolizes Rana.
6. If you drop Rana from more than three metres above ground level, she will always land feet-first!
7. Rana was banned from Finland because of not wearing pants!
8. Rana once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike contest.
9. On stone temples in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of Rana.
10. A bride should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and Rana.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Some of these are true. If you whistle near me, you'd better be good at it, or I'll whap your arm. I am about as far from Dolly Parton as you can get while still being female.

Wearing me would either be hard, creepy, or fatal to me, so, brides, don't do it!

Seen at New Kid's.

Quickie Meme

Hair: Somewhat combed, and in need of a wash.

Wearing: Khaki yoga pants, handknit sweater, black tanktop, grey turtleneck, handknit socks, fuzzy wool clogs.

Drinking: Green tea that I just poured out of the thermos (I fill it up in the morning so I can have hot tea all day long).

Listening: Cars on the road outside, a chickadee scolding, D. turning pages and occasionally grumbling about the book he's reading, the central air system.

Reading: Blogs right now; otherwise alternating between the New York Times, Orion, and S. M. Stirling's Against the Tide of Years.

Seen at New Kid's.

Teaching

If nothing else, my winter class is doing a very good job of reminding me that, even when I was still fully invested in the academic mission, I was always more excited by the research and the learning than the teaching.

It's not the students; they are almost to a person lively, interesting, and fun to spend time with.

It's not the materials; I found them interesting, at least on the first read through.

It's not learning new things; I'm enjoying that part too.

It's not the grading; the course is pass/no pass.

It is, I believe, the nearly unbearable weight of feeling responsible for the success of the thing, and the unpleasantness of watching it thud and blunder about ungracefully, knowing that I'm the one who needs to put in the time to teach it to dance.

It is about having to force people to stay focused on the task at hand, even when I myself am bored with it.

It is about having to be cheerful and enthusiastic about something that tires me out and which on bad days seems generally pointless; it's even worse when I have to defend it against the complaints of students who feel the same way.

It is about the tension between wanting to be a leader and needing to be a teacher. If the goal were simply to get things done, it would be easy. But the goal is to help the students develop the skills needed for them to get things done themselves -- skills that some of them are indifferent about learning.

It is about the tension between wanting to be a student and needing to be a teacher. I want the room to stumble about and hare off in wild directions and get excited and to show off that they all have; instead it is my job to squelch and redirect and temper -- while simultaneously presenting myself as a sort of tabula rasa of neutrality and discipline.

I do not want to teach the class. I would rather take the class -- except that I suspect my young student self would have found this particular class as much a waste of time as it is clear a few of my students do -- and I can't honestly say that they are completely wrong about that.

Sigh.

Vanity Thy Name Is Rana

This site, which allows you to compare your face to that of various celebrities, is hellishly addictive for a vain person like myself.

Posting only results with over 50% correspondence:

Observations - January 13th

I think I'm finally getting the rhythm of winter here. The first few weeks were generally puzzling, as there would be a huge snowfall followed by sunny days, then rain, and wind and who knows what else. The default mode seems to be chilly, somewhat windy weather with overcast skies. Some days, like yesterday, wax bright and sunny; others, like today, are cold and rainy. Much of the time I feel like I'm in central Oregon, only without the moss and the mud.

There hasn't been much in the way of animal life to notice, or perhaps (more likely) it's that it's too chilly for me to spend time rambling about the yard. Teaching obligations have also put a crimp in my nature-observing schedule, though I do try to walk to campus and back as much as possible. Doing that, it's impossible to ignore things like wind and rain!

The small neighborhood mixed flock of birds is still around, still regularly coming to my small feeder -- much more regularly now that our next-door neighbor has moved away, taking their feeders with them. The chickadees yell at each other from the railing or tree branch, the house sparrows jostle their flockmates off the rim of the feeder, the female cardinal gets in the middle of it but manages to keep her gentle dignity, and occasionally the male cardinal or a blue jay or a junco makes an appearance.

Something ate the osage orange this week. I'd collected it in the fall, and set it on the porch railing, where it had been slowly rotting until D. got tired of it and pitched it over the side. It gradually turned from green and lumpy to reddish brown and lumpy, and was generally not all that attractive to look at. One morning I was coming out the door to start my walk to campus, and there were bits of it all up and down the porch stairs. A day later, and there were even more further down the walk, and the orange had been completely decimated; little was left except for a bunch of pieces forming a ring around the place it had sat. Squirrel? Rabbit?

The squirrels have been absent to a greater degree than before. One did briefly stand up on its hind paws to stare at the feeder hopefully, and tried picking at the suet, but it hasn't been back yet. (The feeder's up too high, and under the edge of the roof, for it to be easily accessible to climbing creatures.) The rabbit is occasionally seen in the backyard if we are coming home late at night, its eyes gleaming in the headlights and its fur puffed up enormously against the cold.

I saw an ant in the kitchen the other day, but no others. Yesterday, there were ladybugs along the walkways of campus, lured out of their crevices and cracks to bask in the fleeting warmth.