Page Kayenta Arizona 1995- 2007

It's been a hard day. Ruby has a massive ear infection in each ear, but is thankfully on amoxicillin and will be better in a couple of days. This was the morning.

In the afternoon, we had to put down our dog, Page. This was tough. Very tough. We had been deliberating this for at least a month, perhaps really since she had a cluster of seizures a couple months ago. She has lived with epilepsy for most of her life -- she wasn't quite a year when she had her first seizure. We treated it with phenobarbitol until the cluster. When the cluster came, we had, in fact, already discussed a change in medication with our vet. Her dosage had gone up to 240mg! This was a cause for concern, so we decided to switch over to some potassium bromide. Because this wasn't on our vet's shelf, and because there was no immediate cause for alarm, he had to order it. However, it didn't arrive in time. Still, the vet hospital switched her over when we brought her in.

This worked well to control her seizures; she only had a few during the two months she was taking it. However, her liver panel suggested some stress from the years of Phenobarb and the KBr wasn't going to do much good, either. Furthermore, she could no longer walk well on the hard wood floor, the linoleum, and sometimes the carpet (probably from the KBr). When she was on the carpet or outside, getting up for her was a chore. When she was on a slick surface and sometimes outside, getting up was impossible. She would often become stranded and simply bark incessantly until someone moved her.

So, we chose euthanasia. It sucks. It not at all how I expected it to end. It is still hard.

I'm working on an obit, though, since there are so many people who loved Page and love us but are far away. They will want to share in the passing of a dear friend. Here's a draft:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
-- Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

Page Kayenta Arizona, 1995- 2007.

A survivor in spirit, a gentle heart, a friend, died January 30, 2007. Rescued from under a porch in the high desert of Arizona, Page was what locals there call a “purebred Navajo Shepherd.” She lived through the mange, epilepsy, and a corncob lodged in her intestine, but was never defined by these things. Until the end, she fought back at the squirrels and loved to be outside whenever possible. We are happy to have given her twelve years she would otherwise never have seen. With great remorse, we chose to euthanize her after continued complications from a cluster of seizures two months ago. We plan a memorial service in the spring. All dogs will be welcome.

Winter??

Wow, we actually have winter. Finally! Maybe there is hope for the seasons yet. Patience.

Funny conversation: Mom: Did you know Mr. Roger is a vegetarian? Son: Does that mean he walks everywhere? (True story!)

Dilemma: Apply to the RSA Workshop on "Rhetorics of Place"? or stay focused on defending my dissertation? I know it ought to be the latter, but the workshop calls me. And I already know John Ackerman.

I can see why folks end up ABD. By a certain point, writing out your intuitions can get dull. Yet, that's academe, no? The communication of the idea is the payoff. Otherwise, you're greedy for keeping knowledge to yourself. Even though I love it and glad for my job, it's still work:)

Back to Basics

A pretty good day all around, despite still being plagued by this head cold. Class discussion on "place" was fantastic! My 201 students read Yi Fu Tuan's (1991) "Language and the making of place: a descriptive narrative approach" alongside an interview with Vandana Shiva that appeared in Yes! magazine. I had to lead discussion on Tuan since the student who volunteered decided to drop th course. However, Megan, the student who led discussion on Shiva did a great job and the other students responded well, adding their own experiences, perspectives, and even some criticism - a rare thing to see on the second day of class.

On the bus, I got a better response to Rosa Eberly's question about the exigency for my dissertation. At the brownbag (a 9 am brownbag? who ever heard of such a thing?) I responded the context of the conversation. We had discussed critically examining outsider/ insider literacies and rhetorics and I said that motivated what I was writing. However, it didn't sit well with me and I knew it. There was a larger exigency motivating my work but I couldn't spit it out in the room with the sun glaring off both the snow on the capital and the ice on Lake Mendota, with my head cold making my voice sound like a 50s DJ, and with the roundtable discussion of professor Eberly and my peers -- all high level work and a little intimidating.

So, thinking back on my first chapter, where I gave an overview of what Tim Taylor called the EAS and EAM approaches within ecocomposition, I realized that this was the kernel for real exigency: the grit for the pearl, if not the nacre, as it were. What I wrote on the bus and revised later (just before writing this, really) was that yes, "the arrangement is bifurcated. Two views are simply juxtaposed and held in relation to one another. But, how are these views connected? To ask this is not necessarily to urge a totalizing narrative. Rather, it is simply to inquire into relationship between two areas of ecocomposition. On one hand, if nature is discursively constructed, we can view those constructions and reveal the ways they fail or succeed to accomplish given rhetorical tasks. On the other hand, if language is ecological, we are always already pawns in a system that supercedes the merely human. Both of these are worthwhile views and their respective projects are to be commended, even necessary for the well-being and survival of many species, not least of which is our own. But, the question becomes one of how we get from an analysis of the ways we talk about our environment to making part of that analysis a reflective recognition that our talk already bears traces of its environment."

Home Order

So, I added some content (see left) and changed things around. Let me know if you like it. I've been concentrating on content and decided to have a bit more fun. Also, be sure to check out my cronies and spread the amour viral.
I'm a little disappointed in the clouds. Maybe I haven't said it enough: ecology, ecology, ecology, ecology, ecology. It's all ecological. There is no separation between natural ecology, social ecology, political ecology, viral ecology, language ecology... any of it. Bakhtin was onto it right before he died. Deleuze explained it. No boundaries. No limits. Everything is connected. Ecology is what makes the postmodern condition sublime. Thought affects matter affects biology affects language affects nature affects... well, you get it.

Le Grand Content

Anne Wysocki had a post on her blog about this film, Le Grand Content (also available on You Tube). It's funny and creepy and pretty bizarre, but I like it nonetheless. Like others have said, it pokes fun at a culture devoted to Power Point, USA Today, and useless factoids that strive for gravitas. Students might learn something about argument from it, but maybe using it in a classroom would neuter its comic potential. I dunno... it's revealing as a process of (admittedly bad) theorizing, but to what degree do we all fall into the problem it points up? For those of us in the Western cultures, the triadic spheres are no accident, nor are the graphs. It's a pithy bit of satire on contemporary thought, really. Sad & depressing, but ain't it the truth?

Spring Semester

Well, it is officially underway with the staff meetings, syllabus workshops, planning, etc. I have to be careful this semester, cuz even though I'm only teaching my one course (English 201), I still have campus visits to do. I'm not publishing where just yet since this is a public site.

With that in mind, I *can* talk about the hiring here at UW. We have an excellent slate of candidates for the English 100 Director position. While there is a pretty strong literacy focus, we are a small department and really need someone who works in rhetorical theory and classical rhetoric. That, combined with my ecological outlook on language, leads me to Debra Hawhee. Her work on bodily rhetorics is first-rate. Recently on her blog, she linked a study that tracked the pitch and tonality of Dr. King's speech. We often forget, as Hawhee notes, that language is grounded in the body and its rhythms. There is a dance that happens when we speak as well as when we listen. We are affected -- not just moved along (bound by?) chains of reason, but moved in our emotions and bodies. I don't see this reflected in activity theory (see below) but I do think it is part of the ecology of language.

Maybe this is a strange point to (finally) get on to Ulrich Beck, but his argument is that we now live in a risk society. The future-orientation planning and designing "safe" futures generates the notion of risk. This is quite evident, in my mind, with the Bush administration's harping about security -- of troops, U.S. citizens, borders, etc. However, it works by extension: if a sovereign nation poses a perceived threat (real or imagined) to any body (individual or corporate and so deemed worthy enough of action, for not all U.S. bodies are equal in the eyes of the administration) then the U.S. can claim the right to assume "management" of that risk. Curiously, though, as Beck discusses about ocean management, no one is actually responsible for the consequences because the argument is that everyone (or at least a network) is contributing to the problem. This is what Beck calls "organized non-liability," which plays a role in his argument that "the nuclear power or chemical industries etc. are their own most powerful and enduring adversaries" (1995, p. 12). As these segments of the economic and political order try to "distribute away the 'poisoned cake'," capital turns against capital and such segments of the order can come crashing down.

Or, so goes his analysis of social rhythms within the era post-Enlightenment. Certainly, he has the legacies of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Love Canal, DDT, the Endangered Species Act, etc. on his side. But isn't the dilemma here troubling? Armed with an ecological perspective and to preemptively avert damage to a citizen body, the state claims the right to move beyond itself, into the realm of some other nation-body if need be, to disrupt that body and do violence to it. After all, if my neighbor is stockpiling uranium and I may be dosed with unacceptable levels of radiation as a result, aren't I permitted to do something about it? Or, maybe that's not the best example. Rather, we might ask who is responsible for global warming? What is to be done to stop it?

So, I think what we see is a divide between paradigms of thought here. In the post-Enlightenment version that currently reigns from corporate boardrooms to the Bush administration (and even the Democratic Party), bodies are discreete, stable entitites that are separate from each other but can move into or across other lines and segmentations under certain circumstances. Concepts such as justice, and responsibility become key ethical terms. Someone has to take the blame, and if it's not really the body responsible, then a suitable scapegoat will be found. In the neo-sophistic version -- which may include Hawhee and certainly includes an ecological outlook on reality -- everyone is responsible and must act accordingly, consciously, and with respect for all Others. What we do to one reverberates and echoes through the systems of bodies, from sub-individual organs (often sustained by non-human bodies), to Others we recognize, to the social and cultural systems -- the guts and organs -- that sustain those Others.

MLK Jr.

Well, after a long hiatus, I'm back and just in time to give props to the Reverend. It took me a while to remember how to get back in my account, but thankfully, I did it.

First, I want to not only talk about the continuing racial and economic disparities in the U.S., but also about how an ecological perspective DOES account for these inequities and is not just a white, male, middle-class obsession with leisurely pursuits.

First, I think the Dr.'s dream is fulfilled in name only. Victor Villanueva posted a great article about the new racism. To me, it seems he's either been reading or come to the same conclusions as did Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire. While the social narratives insist Dr. King's legacy was success in making the lives of African-American's better, folks like Alonzo Kittrels knows that there are real problems. Black folks are still impoverished, still marginal in our society. Yet, to many students I see and to many people I have talked to, civil rights is a thing of the past. There are almost no marches, racism rarely makes the news, and many students can't really spot it when they see it. That's why Peggy McIntosh's essay is important for a lot of students to read here in the midwest. Racial and economic inequity are linked.
But this is also why an ecological approach is important. Racism has become embedded in the way we organize ourselves -- as an effect, if not an outright cause. We can call the playing field level because we have Affirmative Action, color blind bankruptcy laws, etc. But at the end of the day, racial minorities are the ones who get screwed. Blacks, Latino/ Latinas, Native Americans, muslims, etc. are structurally marginalized in our society and the average college student, much less the average voter, is unable to recognize how the system works to the disadvantage of many. It's a systemic problem and a systemic approach is the only way to challenge it.