After, not Before

As I mentioned last year, I would show a pic of me at the beginning of my first year as Asst. Prof. and at the end. Well, I'm late in getting to it, but I took this pic in my office in order to yearbook myself.Not much new, I know, but the office has been cleaned up and my desk moved. Oh, and the Yearbook picture? If you're not on Facebook, here it is:

Keeping Up With the... Well, not Joneses

Another blogger wrote about her trip up north and included pics to boot, so I feel kind of obliged to keep the two or three folks who actually read my blog updated with like info. So, here are some pics from Slim Lake in the BWCA:

Solon's 15 inch northern pike. Good eats, if a little bony! It looks like I'm more proud of this accomplishment than Solon, but it may also be his dislike of getting his picture taken.


The calm after the thunderstorm! Perfectly calm, mist on the water and a gorgeous sunset!

My mom took this as we portaged out.

Now, folks might call such experiences with nature, especially in "wilderness" areas sublime. But, like William Cronon, I would have to disagree -- at least, if they are sublime, they are not the kind of sublime Kant would say ultimately gives purpose to reason. It seems "sublime" is often very close to "wonder" in philosophical discourse. Really, at the base of it, doesn't Kant's sublime simply re-inscribe the 'gap' in knowledge Descartes says (like Plato before him) is caused by wonder? Doesn't "wonder" then, also point toward something transcendent? Yet, curiously, it is the emplaced, bodily, sensuous aspect of these experiences -- a heightened affect of being-in-a-(different)-place and living within unfamiliar rhythms -- that is often pointed out as what makes them worthwhile and often connects them to ethics.

It would seem to me that an argument for "wonder" as something that points toward transcendence of gaps or fissures in knowledge, even ethical knowledge, can only happen in a mind-body duality. But, given the writing on critical potentials of outdoor activity from recreation and leisure studies and ecopedagogy, wouldn't it make more sense to follow other critical theorists in a rejection of Cartesianism and thereby arrive at a sense of wonder that is immanent as opposed to transcendent? Wouldn't this seem to be more ethically consistent in terms of its ontology? Wouldn't this radically alter philosophy?

Catching Up

I need to blog about so many things. Georgia, U.S. politics, the rise of neo-Nazism in Germany... the list is long and so very complex, but I also have TONS of writing for others -- for the Iowa Writing Project, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Green Theory and Praxis, and don't forget my syllabi for Fall semester! And that's just the stuff due in the next month! What about my book proposal! *sigh*

Well, one way to get at some of this might be through comics. "What?!" you say, "How does writing about comics get at the complexity of international and national politics, the timely production of knowledge, and educational planning for fifty students? Well, as an undergrad I bought into some of Joseph Campbell's Jungian analysis of myth. And comics, it seems -- especially when translated onto the big screen as Deleuze would no doubt agree -- offer us some mythic structures that guide our times. So, without further ado, let me take you to a convo over at Culture Monkey.

BWCA Bound

I'm off to the almost-Great-White-North, eh! I have to say that I am very excited since i haven't been up to the BW in over a decade. First., living in AZ, then kids have kept me away. I plan to do a lot of introspection on wonder and reorganize the diss/ bok around its rhetorical implications. It's the prefect place to do so and a, linked with travel as it is, a kairotic moment. Maybe I can also finish that review for Green Theory & Praxis.

OK, see me next week for pics!