Doctor's Orders

About a week ago, when Mari went in for her routine check-up, she told her doctor that she had experienced an alarming number of contractions during the course of one recent night, some of which were fairly strong. At the time she was not much more than 24 weeks into this pregnancy and the doc told her that some of his colleagues would prescribe strict bed rest from here on in. He didn’t want to do that, but he did advise her to reduce her activity level by a significant amount, to avoid stairs, and to stay off her feet as much as possible. “We’ve got to keep those babies in there another ten weeks at least,” he added, setting 35 weeks as a goal (the week of October 15th). (On a previous visit, he had told Mari that twins are recently born during the 36th week of the pregnancy.)

Over the past week, Mari has greatly reduced her activity level and has noted a correlation between the time she spends on her feet and the strength and frequency of the contractions. We are thankful that Gimena has been here this week to help us transition into this new phase of household habits. In addition to cooking every day and watching over Emilio (and blogging about him and the rest of Chicago), she has done some shopping and house-cleaning and has helped me move boxes into our basement. We will miss her after she leaves a week from now.

Mari had hoped to start back to work in September, but that’s out of the question now. This means that we’re going to going through her remaining sick days sooner, and after that we’ll be without income until she can go back to work in the spring. We have savings, but flying without an income net for that long is a little scary. I’m doing everything I can to wrap up my dissertation (I recently completed a first draft of the last chapter and the epilogue). I plan to apply for jobs this fall and, hopefully, land some interviews at this year’s Modern Language Association convention (which is being held in Chicago this year).

After Gimena leaves, Emily (Emilio’s babysitter) will coming on a regular basis again. She’ll help Mari with Emilio and other household chores, while I get some work done. We’re thinking about getting a second babysitter to fill in on days when Emily is booked elsewhere (she’s wrapping her master’s degree in poetry this fall and has classes and a thesis project to finish).

Thanks to everyone who has offered to help us out over the next couple of months with offers of food, counsel, transport and cash.

Wed, we went in for a routine “level two” ultrasound and got the good news that the babes continue to grow at a similar rate.

Lefty (the boy) weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces and Rightie (the girl, although I prefer to think of her and her brother: "Lefty" and "Far Lefty") weighs 2 pounds, which is right on schedule, too. That was my first opportunity to see the tykes “live.” The highlight of the experience was seeing Lefty yawn (it was early in the morning). He and his sleeping sister are both taking this all in stride, clearly.

There's a New Blogger in Town

Gimena joined the blog world about an hour ago (that's her behind the flash in the photo at right). Woo-hoo!

When we were walking home from Lincoln Square tonight (25 minutes from the plaza to our front door), I told her I think of my blogs as letters to friends and family. I think that helped convince her to stick a toe in the blogwaters.

Her first post is rich with clever comments and observations (in Spanish). It also includes a lot of photos she has taken of Emilio. Click here to check some of them out (I've also added a link in the column at left.)

¡Bienvenida, Gime!

¡Gime!

Mari's little sister Gimena (Gime of the title) flew in from Madrid an hour and a half ago for her third visit to Chicago, wearing a "Too Much Light Makest the Baby Go Blind" t-shirt no less (she bought it last summer when she was here with Mari's little brother, Gerardo).

She'll be with us until the 24th and we're very happy to have her.

This photo was taken before Emilio had gotten up from his nap. That's a take-out menu from Andie's in her hand. We had Andie's on Sunday when Fay and Company came to visit and we liked it so much, we're ordering again: vegetarian couscous, spinach pie, greek salad, stuffed artichokes with dill rice.

Work Camp

When Mom and Dad flew in from Texas on Sunday, I told Dad, half-jokingly that he should think of his next seven days in Chicago as Work Camp, as a number of times since we’ve moved in to our new house, I’ve told María José something like, “Maybe we can do that when Dad comes.”

Since then, Dad has assembled Emilio’s backyard pool, spent a day cleaning out our basement (which included moving washers and dryers around--see image at left; thanks to Franz Stuck for the illustration) so that we can move stuff there that we are now keeping in storage, spent another day installing two child-safety gates (a process that was much more complicated than expected), took notes at my request on several books relevant to my dissertation that I have not yet had a chance to go through myself, proofread and provided editorial suggestions on rough drafts of the last two chapters and the epilogue for my dissertation, spent an afternoon going through those chapters with me line by line, and, during his “down time,” built a cardboard fortress for Emilio.

Mother, meanwhile, in addition to watching over Emilio and assisting Dad with his many labors, washed the dishes from our first potluck, consented to read two books from my Forty Reads list, and spent last night making gold-medal French fries and pork chops (see video at the bottom of this post).

As I write, they are in the backyard, scrubbing down dingy patio furniture that we inherited from the previous residents.

So, come to Chicago, folks! And find yourself, in the words of Carl Sandburg:

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
. . . Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

It's a Girl! And a Boy!

At her doctor's appointment on Wednesday, Maria Jose learned that, if all goes well, sometime this fall Emilio will be able to welcome a younger sister and a younger brother to our new home.

Mari is now more than 21 weeks down the road on this. November 24th is the official due date, but we have been advised that it is unlikely the kids will want to wait that long.

We are, in a word, psyched.

Wonders Never Cease

Earlier this week, the Swiss-based New Open World Corporation (NOWC) announced the winners of a worldwide vote for the New Seven Wonders of the World:
1. The Great Wall of China
2. Petra, Jordan (which I saw for the first time in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).
3. The Colosseum in Rome
4. The Taj Mahal in Agra, India
5. Chichen Itza in Mexico
6. Machu Picchu, Peru and
7. Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro (see photo at left)
8. The Pyramids of Egypt (an honorary inclusion as the only remaning member of the Original Wonders Club)

I've seen the first three of these. I 've also seen seven others that made the final round of 14: The Acropolis, The Alhambra, The Eiffel Tower, Hagia Sophia in Instanbul, The Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral, the Statue of Liberty and Stonehenge.

Seven Wonders of the World That I Have Seen

1. The Great Wall of China, 1995

2. Petra, Jordan, 1993 (see photo at right)

3. The Colosseum in Rome, 1983

4. The Acropolis in Athens, 1990

5. Hagia Sophia in Turkey, 1993

6. The Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, 1994

7. Stonehenge, 1990

A couple of non-candidates that I might have gone with over Stonehenge and Hagia Sophia, say: The City of Venice (1983) and Hong Kong Island (1995) with honorable mentions to the Forbidden City in Beijing (1994), the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (2003), the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican (1982), and the Cathedral in Cologne (1982). Apparently only one candidate was allowed per country (a lame limitation).

Of the wonders that made it in, I think Christ the Redeemer is the least deserving. And according to wikipedia, Brazil stuffed the ballot box.

Seven Wonders I'd like to See Before I Turn in My Passport:

1. The Taj Mahal in Agra, India

2. The Pyramids

3. The temples of Luxor, Egypt

4. Machu Picchu, Peru

5. The statues of Easter Island in Chile

6. Chichen Itza in the Yucatan.

7. The Potala Palace in Llasa, Tibet

Voting is now beginning for Seven Wonders of the Natural World. Top on my list of seen is Sequoia National Park (which will surely lose out to the Grand Canyon on the one country-one nominee restriction).

Of those I'd like to see, Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Angel Falls in Venezuela look like good candidates.

Vandals!?!

When we got up on the sixth, we discovered that our Comcast Triple Play--phone, TV and internet service—was out of commission. We were then none too pleased to learn that the understaffed Comcast repair team could not fit us into their busy repair schedule until Sunday, when they promised to drop by some time between 8 a.m. and noon.

At noon on Sunday, I called in to report a tech no-show. At 12:20, I was told that the tech was twenty minutes away.

Forty minutes later, I called in to report another no show.

Soon thereafter, the tech appeared at the back gate and within a quarter hour he brought us back to the land of the digitally connected.

The shocking diagnosis: some time between 3 a.m. and the time Mari got up on Friday morning, a vandal had come into our back yard, pried open our locked cable connection box (that the little one on the right in the photo at left) and unscrewed the cable that connects Comcast to us. The tech said it was not the first time he’d come across such a case.

The Rest of the Birthday Story

After Mari dragged me away from the stevesforty blog (see the new link at left), I picked up the gang in a rented I-GO and headed to Evanston. Lunch at Chili's--a birthday hamburger for me and chocolate molten dessert--then grocery shopping at the World Market. Emilio (who loves car rides) fell asleep on the way home and we spent the balance of the afternoon preparing the house and yard for the arrival of Jack, Julie, Nathaniel, Fernando, Lisa, Bob and Hillel (see video above). It was the first time any of them had met each other (except for those who were married to each other or were of the same genetic family).

The rule breakers brought gifts which were both unexpected and appreciated. Hits of the 80s, The Indigo Girls and Seals and Crofts provided the evening's soundtrack, broadcast on a portable CD player brought by Fernando and Lisa, who also collected dessert extras from our raspberry bush. The Sweet Occasions chocolate cake was decorated with an airplane, a computer and a baby bottle.

Farewells followed at sunset and good wishes from Argentina and Spain were then found on the answering machine. I got calls in to Brian and Lisa before joining Mari for debriefing and clean-up.

Conclusion: This may have been the best birthday ever.

Zowie!

Well, this day is off to a great start. Lisa and Dad called early this morning (any time before 10 a.m. is early for me) with directions to this amazing blogsite. I have been wallowing in it ever since, but my specially dressed son (see photo at left) and my wife are now reminding me that the birthday show must go on. I look forward to more reading, but we're headed out now, care of our friends at I-Go. I want to thank all of you who have participated in this labor of love, though, especially Dad and Lisa who did the heavy lifting.

Hasta pronto!

Class of ‘67

The forty folks listed here are turning forty with me this year (I’ve got less than 24 hours left as a thirty-something). Most of the athletes are retired, of course; those that are not have a slight whiff of the geezer about them (Kenny Lofton, say). Some of the actors seem to be on the downside of their careers (Laura Dern?), too, but others are on the rise (Miranda Otto) and some are at the top of their game (Will Ferrell). The writers seem like newbies. My considered decision not to pursue a career as a professional athlete is looking pretty good now.

Think of the group as a high school class and the list as a ballot and you can use the comments section to vote for the following class awards:

1. Prom Queen and King (the class icons)
2. Class President (whom would you choose to make decisions on your behalf?)
3. Most Likely to Succeed (over the next ten years)
4. Most Beautiful
5. Most Popular (whom would you want to hang out with?)

Other more specific voting categories (Idol Sixty-Seven, Class Clown, Graduation Speaker, Roles in the Senior Play, Top Athlete) are integrated into the list.

Idol Sixty-Seven: Talent Show Finalists:

Who is your Idol Sixty Seven?

1. Toni Braxton (“Unbreak My Heart”)

2. Harry Connick, Jr. (“It Had to Be You”)

3. Kurt Elling ("Night Moves"). Kurt has won the Down Beat and Jazz Times critics’ polls three years in a row in the Best Male Singer category. He plays regularly at the Green Mill here in Uptown.

4. Macy Gray (“I Try”)

5. Faith Hill (“Breathe”)

6. R. Kelly (“I Believe I Can Fly”)

7. Dave Matthews (“Where Are You Going”)

The Newspaper Staff:

Whom would you ask to speak at graduation?

1. Monica Ali (her debut novel—Brick Lane—shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003)

2. Jhumpa Lahiri (Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction in 2000 for The Interpreter of Maladies; most recent novel: The Namesake)

3. James Surowiecki (New Yorker columnist, author of The Wisdom of Crowds)

Class Clowns:
Who gets your vote as Class Funny Man?

1. Will Ferrell

2. Darryl Hammond

3. Matt LeBlanc

4. Chris Parnell

The Senior Play:
Whom would you cast as the female and male leads in the senior play (without knowing the play)?

Whom would you cast as the principal supporting actor and actress?

(All actors listed below are up for all parts).

Oscar-winning lead actors (female):

1. Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, 2000)

2. Nicole Kidman (The Hours, 2003)

Oscar-winning lead actors (male):

1. Jamie Foxx (Eric Bishop) (Ray, 2004)

2. Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, 2005)

Oscar-winning supporting actors (female):

Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite, 1995)

Oscar-winning supporting actress (male):

Benicio del Toro (Traffic, 2000)

Oscar-nominated lead actor (female):

Laura Dern (Rambling Rose, 1991)

Oscar-nominated supporting actor (male):

Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man, 2005)

The Company:

1. Emily Watson

2. Miranda Otto

3. Maria Bello (see photo at right)

4. Guy Pearce

5. Mark Ruffalo

The Hotties:

(Pamela is not auditioning for the senior play and Anderson is not on the newspaper staff, but you might consider them when you vote in some of the general categories).

1. Pamela Anderson

2. Anderson Cooper

The Jocks:
Who gets your vote for Top Athlete of the Class of ’67?

The Current World Record Holders:

Michael Johnson (200 and 400 meters)

Javier Sotomayor (high jump)

The One-Time World Record Holders (in the 100 meters):

Donovan Bailey (see photo at left). Best time: 9.84, set at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, was not broken until 1999. Won gold medal in Sydney in 2000.

Leroy Burrell. Best time: 9.85, recorded in 1995. Twice set world record.

Team Sports

Captain of the Football Team:

Deion Sanders (8-time Pro Bowler, 1990s All-Decade Team, World Champiion in 1995 and 1996--the second time with the Cowboys).

Captain of the Basketball Team:

Glen Rice (won NCAA and NBA championships; holds record for most points in an NCAA tournament).

Baseball Co-Captains:

1. John Smoltz (see photo at right). Cy-Young award winner, 9-time all-star--including this year--with a 202-142 lifetime record is the only pitcher in MLB history with more than 200 wins and more than 150 saves. Lifetime ERA: 3.27.

2. Kenny Lofton (6-time all-star; 4 Gold Gloves; .299 lifetime batting average)

3. Mo Vaughn (1995 AL MVP; 328 career home runs).

Solo Acts:
On the Tennis Court:
Boris Becker (won Wimbledon in 1985, making him the tournament’s youngest singles champ ever; won his sixth Grand Slam single title at the Australian Open in 1996).

In the Boxing Ring:

Michael Moorer (3-time heavyweight champion of the world).

In Memoriam (didn't make it to 40):
Kurt Cobain

Anna Nicole Smith

Derrick Thomas

Forty Reads

Welcome to the third of my four Top 40 at 40 lists: forty books that have held special meaning for me at one time or another in my life. Like the other lists in the series, it is almost as long as a book itself.

The Early Years
1. The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien.
2. The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien. Dad read the Tolkien tetraology to me in its entirety before I had finished kindergarten. His Gollum—and the one I hear in my head—sounds like Peter Lorre. I read the books for myself when I was in third grade and again in sixth grade, when Rusty Ruggia and I did an illustrated book report on them (the orcs I drew looked like gorillas). At some point in her Life Before Steve, Mari had sampled Tolkien, but hadn’t inhaled. At my urging she gave it another go and became almost as big a Tolkien toker as I am. She dug The Hobbit, but when she started The Fellowship of the Ring, she was very skeptical about the prospect of a Middle Earth journey that did not include Bilbo. Frodo and Sam ended up winning her over. I read the whole series again in anticipation of the release of Peter Jackson’s filmed version. My favorite scene in the series is the one in which the Fellowship comes across Balin’s Tomb in Moria.

3. The Fabulous Flight (1951) by Robert Lawson. The concept is wonderful: a tiny boy constructs a cabin that can be strapped to the back of a friendly gull who will fly him across the seas; but it is the drawings that make this classic a stand out.

The Elementary School Years
4. A Wrinkle in Time (1962). by Madeleine L'Engle.

5. Sounder (1969) by William H. Armstrong, and James Barkley. I read A Wrinkle in Time, Sounder, and Pride of the Yankees: the Lou Gehrig Story in rapid succession when I was in fourth or fifth grade. That’s three memorable tear-jerkers in a row.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956) by C.S. Lewis. The sequels didn’t reach the standard set by the the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I was sorry to see the older children, Peter and Susan, eventually bow out. But it was nice to be afforded multiple entries into this alternative universe, which gave some hope that there was fantasy life beyond Middle Earth.

7. Secret of the Unicorn (1943) and Red Rackham's Treasure (1944) by Herge. I met Tin-tin at an independent bookstore when we were vacationing at the Morrison’s cabin in Taos. That, Paydirt! (an NFL football board game) and Nerf in the yard (especially the Staubach to Pearson bombs) were highlights of the trip for me. I also read my first Perry Mason on that trip. When we went back a year later, I got another Tin-Tin fix. I love the cliff-hanger at the end of the Unicorn.

8. The Giving Tree (1964) by Shel Silverstein. I played Boy and Holly Hodgkins played the Tree in “Love,” the Godspell-like dramatic production Dad put on at Central Christian in Fort Worth. The story is touching if you think about it from Tree’s perspective, but Boy is really kind of jerk.

9. The Book of Lists (1977) by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace. And I’m still listing today.

The Junior High and High School Years

10. Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams. Surprisingly dark account of the adventures of a gang of migrating rabbits.

11. The People's Almanac (1975) by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace. The internet before there was an internet.

12. The Family of Children (1979), ed. Jerry Mason. A collection of photographs of children in various moods and stages of life, ranging from the tragic to the joyous. The first birthday present I gave to María José. We recently gave a copy to Emilio’s babysitter, Emily.

13. Diary of Adam and Eve (1904-1906) by Mark Twain. Sheryl and Ray Fancher read excerpts to our junior high youth group at First Christian in Wichita Falls at the Sex and Sexuality retreat. One of my favorite all-time lines from a book: “Wherever Eve was, there was Eden.”

14. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. The episodes involving the King and the Duke have always been my favorites. One of good things about Jerry Graff is that he indicates enthusiasm for a plan by quoting from the book: “If that don’t fetch them, then I don’t know Arkansaw!” The best edition of the novel is the one Jerry and Jim Phelan edited, which includes critical readings of the text. My favorite critical reading of the novel, though, "What's funny about Huckleberry Finn?" , by Sacvan Bercovitch, is not in the Graff-Phelan edition.

The College Years
15. Please Understand Me (1984) by David Keirsey. Introvert/Extrovert; Sensing/Intuitive; Thinking/Feeling; Judging/Feeling. A personality classification system that beats horoscopes and palmistry even if some academics do question its scientific value.

16. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway. Read it the summer before I went to Spain to begin my junior year abroad. Hemingway's Spain promised romance, adventure, and heartbreak and I would got a little bit of all that there.

17. The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles. The Let’s Go guidebooks recommend Paul Bowles to those who travel to Morocco and my Moroccan adventures inspired me to read everything I could find that he had written. Bowles makes Morocco sound like a very dangerous place and that added drama to my travels there.

18. The World According to Garp (1982) by John Irving. I saw the movie before I read the book. When I was told that John Irving had studied at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna when he was in college (as I did), I read Setting Free the Bears, his first novel, which is set in Vienna. I ended up reading everything else he wrote up through The Cider House Rules. Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire are my favorites. My favorite line from Garp poignantly combines tragedy with humor: “I mith him.”

19. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera.

20. Ferdydurke (1937) by Witold Gombrowicz. I was introduced to Kundera and Gombrowicz in the course on East European literature that I took when I was in Vienna, and during my senior year at TCU I asked Dr. Loud to supervise an independent study project that would require me to read everything these two authors had written. I used one of the papers I wrote for that course in the application materials I sent to the University of Chicago. I love the way Kundera combines fiction and essay. He is a master of the genre. But the absurd outrageousness of Gombrowicz’s sense of humor speak to me. I love the studied silliness of the "Preface to the Child Runs Deep in Filibert" chapter in Ferdydurke.

21. Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut.

22. Mother Night (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut. During my senior year, I read pretty much everything Vonnegut had published. Mother Night is my favorite, partly because of this memorable line: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”

The Expatriate Years
23. Immortality (1990) by Milan Kundera. For some reason, I accidentally read some of the chapters in this book in the wrong order. Because Kundera’s chapters tend to be self-contained units that derive little of their power from narrative drive, it didn’t really matter.

24. Midnight's Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie. I turned to Rushdie when the Ayatollah issued a fatwa against the author of The Satanic Verses and was delighted to find an author with such a prolific imagination.

25. Memorias de Fuego (1982-1986) by Eduardo Galeano. María José turned me on to this, the only foreign-language text on the list. I used it as a vocabulary enrichment tool and drew pictures of the new words I came across, some of which made their way into the pages of The Madrider. I appreciate Galeano’s efforts to link the histories of exploited peoples and rebellious heroes in North and South America.

26. Gulliver's Travels (1726/1735) by Jonathan Swift. In anticipation of a possible return to grad. school, I read the Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Great Authors from cover to cover, pausing along the way to pick up some biographies and important novels along the way. I learned about my taste in classic British literature in the process: Thomas Hardy and George Eliot got a thumbs up. Thackeray got a big thumbs down. The gold medal, though, goes to Jonathan Swift, whose hilarious abuse of the human race puts him in a pantheon beside Mark Twain, and Kurt Vonnegut.

27. Professing Literature (1989) by Gerald Graff. The best advice I got about where to apply to graduate school came from TCU professor of religion, Claudia Camp, who recommended that I find a scholar I’d like to work with and then apply to the school where they are currently employed. When Mari and toured the American South in the summer of 1992, I located Professing Literature and Literary Theory (see below) on the shelves of the Emory University bookstore and soon thereafter Jerry Graff and Terry Eagleton became the scholars I dreamed of working with. Five years later, Jerry Graff comes to Tulsa, Mom and Dad turn out to see him, put in a good word for me, and I establish e-mail contact. The next summer Lisa and Dad and I visit the University of Chicago and learn that Eagleton will be a guest professor in the master’s degree program Graff is running there. I apply, get a tuition break and in the fall of 1998, Eagleton and Graff represent two-thirds of my fall trimester. As a course line-up, it was the highlight of my grad school years.

28. Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983) by Terry Eagleton. Memorize this book from cover to cover and you'll have the equivalent of a quality education in English. I trust Eagleton as much as any writer I know.

29. Friday Night Lights (1990) by H. G. Bissinger. An illuminating examination of an Odessa Permian High School football world that shaped the two years of my life (and left a scar on my chin and broke the tip of the middle finger on my left hand).

30. The Woman with Two Vaginas (1995) by Denise Duhamel. I’m not a big fan of poetry, but I am a fan of Denise Duhamel’s poetry.

31. Beyond the Culture Wars (1993) by Gerald Graff. Has done more than any other text to shape my view of education.

The Grad School Years
32. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (1981) by Joseph M. Williams. One of the most valuable aspects of my passage through the University of Chicago was my encounter with the Little Red Schoolhouse, the University of Chicago writing program founded on principles of composition articulated by Joe Williams. Now my inner-Joe Williams offers counsel on almost every sentence I write.

33. Sensational Designs (1985) by Jane Tompkins.
34. West of Everything (1992) by Jane Tompkins. I appreciate the tools of literary analysis that Jane employs in both of these lively, forcefully argued studies of American popular culture. The first defends popular American female novelists of the 19th century that the American literary establishment has traditionally dismissed; the second criticizes the misogyny and anthropocentrism of Western films and dramas which Jane cops to enjoying in spite of herself. West of Everything is the kind of book I’d like to write on the subject of educator-hero films.

35. The Trouble with Principle (1999) by Stanley Fish. The course on Liberalism that I took with Fish in the fall of 2000 was based on this text. It was one of the highlights of my grad school years. As a result of taking this course, I no longer identify myself as a “liberal.”

36. Clueless in Academe (2004) by Gerald Graff. I watched this one grow, was given a generous tribute on the acknowledgements page, and scored my first publication critiquing one of the excerpted chapters!

37. They Say / I Say (2006) by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein-Graff. Knowing this text frontwards and backwards greatly improved the quality of my teaching experiences.

38. Nice Work (1988) by David Lodge. I originally came to Lodge for Morris Zapp, a fictional character based on Stanley Fish, but I have returned to Lodge for his intelligent exploration of the inner life of academics like the feminist theorist who is one of the two main characters in this novel.

39. March (2005) by Geraldine Brooks. The surprises in this fantasy about the Civil War experiences of the father of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women were enhanced by my knowledge of the character’s original model—Louisa’s father, Bronson—who figures large in my dissertation-in-progress.

40. This Land is Your Land (2002) by Woody Guthrie and Kathy Jakobson. Emilio and I have enjoyed exploring Woody’s lyrics and Kathy’s illustrations on a nightly basis.

Foster Home No More

When Jack and I moved the heirloom dresser mirror and the remaining closet shelving unit out of the Foster home on Wednesday night, I thought I’d seen the last of the place. Today, however, Mari reminded me that we still have to get the bicycles in the basement. We’ll hold onto one of the extra sets of keys so that we can do that at our convenience at a later date. But meanwhile, Mari will be meeting with the hated, soon-to-be-ex-landlord at 1:30 on Friday to exchange the official keys for a security deposit. Check back in this space some time Friday afternoon to see how we did on that front.*

Some final thoughts on the about-to-be-concluded Foster chapter, which we opened almost eight years ago, after a single morning of apartment hunting courtesy of The Apartment People in July, 1999:

1350 W. Foster is the 23rd address I’ve had attached to my name and I spent more nights there than I have at any other address in the world—by a long shot. Second place, coming in at 3.5 years: 2015 Victory, Wichita Falls, Texas.

We never actually saw the apartment before we rented it. For some reason, our Apartment Hunter’s key wouldn’t work, so she just sneaked us into the apartment downstairs. We went on to look at another address further north before deciding that Foster was our best option. In the mean time, another Apartment Hunter had shown the place to another client who also wanted it, and when we got back to headquarters our hunter and hers got into it. They ended up leaving the decision to the landlord. We were led to believe that he picked us because he “likes families.”

When we met the guy for the first time, neither of us liked him. Our opinion of him did not change.

Hillel recommended the Andersonville neighborhood to us and one of its original benefits was that it was close to Hayt Elementary, where Maria had just been hired to teach. We love the neighborhood, but since Maria started working at Belmont-Cragin in 2001 (?) she has had a loooong commute across the city.


When we first moved to Foster, we didn’t realize that the Neo-Futurarium was but two blocks away. We had tried to see a performance of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind with Hillel the previous year, but it had sold out. We also didn’t know how easy it was to get to get to Evanston from our neighborhood or why we would want to go there anyway. Now, of course, we are two of the Neo-Futurarium’s biggest fans and Evanston has become our weekend home-away-from-home.

Obviously, 1350 W. Foster’s principal claim to subsequent fame will be as the first address Emilio called home.

*2 p.m. update: Landlord didn't show. Sent buiilding maintenance crew instead. They said the landlord has 45 days to return our security deposit and that we should call him sometime in August after his accountant has fixed everything. At that point, he will either mail us a check or we can pick it up from him in person.

Claus Comes to Camp Carmen

In two days, I’ve gone from feeling like Hitchcock’s villain to feeling like Santa Claus. Now when I go to bed, I imagine María José walking into the kitchen in the morning and coming across all the packages I’ve brought to the house during the night and picture the expression of surprise and delight on her face when she opens one to find . . . our old toaster!

The moving process has been complicated by the fact that Comcast shut off our internet connection at Foster a day earlier than we asked them to and will not turn us on in the new place until Monday morning (I am now at a Burger King with free wi-fi). Consequently, it’s harder to line up our I-Go reservations. Nevertheless, since my last post, the Honda Civic I-GO reindeer helped me bring over the car seat, a bedspread, 2 lamps, pillows, tablecloths, a dish-drying rack, a VCR, 2 cable boxes, half a refrigerator of food, a shower curtain, several packed boxes and sundries out the wazoo. Ahead: more lamps, the stereo and its speakers, mirrors, trashcans, a gaggle of coffee cups, more dishes, posters and other hanging art, the computer printer, the closet shelving unit, half a refrigerator of food, several more packed boxes and more sundries out the wazoo. Then comes the clean-up: the dust bunny round-up, a refrigerator cleansing and then, finally, a showdown with the awful, sanctimonious landlord we’ve been giving our money for the past eight years. After inspecting the place and its various nicks and stains with one of us, he’ll decide how much of our security deposit he deigns to return to us.

In separate visits, neither Mari nor I have felt any lingering nostalgia for or connection to our ex. It’s amazing how different the world we live in now seems from the one we lived in just six blocks away. Living out of recently packed and unpacked boxes, in a single-family dwelling (I haven’t lived in one of those in 18 years) with no television (yet), on a quiet, one-way street with no bus traffic, it almost feels like we’re camping. The pine tree I see outside our window in the morning reaffirms that feeling.

As the Move Continues

Silly me. I thought we’d be moved by this time, after 10 days or so of wee hour runs by me from the old digs at Foster to the new digs at Carmen (the I-Go car-sharing club offers free per-hour rentals between midnight and six a.m.), $500 worth of various sized boxes (cardboard and plastic) bought from Target and The Container Store plus a slew more borrowed from Jack and Julie (who recently completed their own move). Now, though, I find myself sitting in the Foster house surrounded by things that the movers left behind: a car seat, posters, umbrellas, our bedspread, four lamps, pillows, stereos, mirrors, table tops, trashcans, a dish-drying rack, stereo and speakers, VCR, cable box, computer printer, closet shelving units, a refrigerator full of food, shower curtain, several packed boxes and sundries out the wazoo. Now it looks like my midnight runs will continue through the coming week. (As I’ve told some of you, over this past month, I’ve felt like the mysterious neighbor--played by Raymond Burr--who takes suitcases in and out of his apartment late at night while being watched through binoculars by a suspicious immobilized Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic, Rear Window.) We ended up paying the movers $900 (including tips) for less than five and a half hours of work and in the process, they destroyed our shoe cabinet and broke Emilio’s bed (though unstable, it is still usable, we think; he slept in it last night).

The morning’s good news is that Mari found my wallet, which went missing last night around ten. It was on a kitchen shelf. It was almost worth losing it so that recovering it today could provide me with a welcome surge of gratitude and relief. We also had a good breakfast—banana walnut pancakes for me—on the patio at Angel’s.

And the beat goes on . . .

Hello, Fay!

Fayge "Fay" Miriam Crandus was born on Saturday, May 26th and on Tuesday, June 19th, Mari, Emilio and I enjoyed our first chance to see her and her parents, Hillel and Nava (for those of you who don't know, Hillel was the first friend we made in Chicago). In the video below, a smiling Hill and an intermittently contented Fay pose patiently, waiting for the click and flash of a photo that never comes as the video camera rolls along. When I pan the camera to pick up Fay's mama, the Crandus family realizes what I'm doing. Hill says this will be Fay's internet debut.

Beautiful home, beautiful Fay, beautiful family. Mazeltov!

Dad's Day II

Father’s Day II got started with a late sleep-in for me, followed by an on-line shopping outing for gifts for Dad (result: food for thought in anticipation of a Sci-Fi course Dad hope to teach next school year--a stack of Sci-Fi books mentioned in Walter Michaels’s The Shape of the Signifier and The Shape of the Signifier itself, a book by a UIC prof that I've enjoyed reading ). After showers, we took the El to Evanston and Emilio went to sleep while I checked out the t-shirt collection at American Apparel. Emilio continued sleeping while Mari and I ate nachos, country-fried steak, Texas toast, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, grilled chicken, steak and shrimp, followed by chocolate molten cake—the same menu we had last year—and Emilio woke up in time for the last bites of dessert. On our way back to Chicago, we picked up four carefully selected American Apparel cotton tees and spent the balance of the evening hanging out at the house--our last Sunday here (the movers come on Thursday). Before the day had ended, I called Dad to wish him a good one and Emilio gave me several kisses and hugs, some of which can be seen in the video below. It was, in short, a fine, fine day.

The Great Snail Race, Part VII: The Second Debate

At the second Democratic Presidential Candidates debate, held Sunday in New Hampshire, an aggressive John Edwards came out swinging, Barack Obama unveiled a devastating counterpunch, and Hilary danced away from trouble, presumably to protect the lead she believes she has on the judging scorecard. Though Obama delivered the big punch of the night, sending Edwards to the canvas momentarily, Edwards hit the mark more consistently over the course of the night.

On Health Care
The first thirty minutes of the two-hour affair focused on Iraq, but for my money, the most substantive discussion turned on the question of health care. On this issue, Edwards took the gold, Obama the bronze, the silver went unclaimed, Kucinich merited an honorable mention, and Hilary was disqualified.

Edwards rightfully took credit for being the first to come out with a detailed, universal health care plan, and gave Obama credit for coming out with his not-quite universal health-care plan just a few days ago. In praising Obama, Edwards was making an indirect swipe at Hilary, who has not come out with a plan. Edwards also rightfully took credit for presenting an honest plan, admitting that he will have to raise taxes ( “roll back the Bush tax cuts,” as he puts it) on those who earn over $200,000 a year in order to pay for it.

Obama says the difference between his health care plan and Edwards’s is that Edwards favors mandatory health care for all, whereas his plan keeps health care optional and focuses on lowering coverage prices so that those who want it can afford it. He just wants mandatory health care for children (we also later learn that with regard to rolling back the Bush tax cuts, he sets the “rich bar” at $250,000 a year, $50,000 above where Edwards would put it). Edwards says Obama’s plan would initially leave 15 million people uncovered; Obama agrees, but insists that those 15 million will buy insurance if it is made affordable enough. Color me skeptical.

Hilary says the most important thing is not the plan, since everyone on the stage agrees that one is needed, but finding the political will to change the system. She then adds that by simply reforming the system through electronic medical records to better management of critical care, she thinks she can save $120 billion a year. Edwards had said earlier that the price tag for his universal plan would be between $90 and $120 billion a year. Edwards says all the savings Hilary talked about are both in his plan and Obama’s plan. Obama agrees that Hilary’s reform savings will not be worth the $120 billion a year she claims it will be.
Kucinich supports a single-payer system and wants to keep the insurance companies for running the system. It’s the best position, but he is the wrong one to advocate it.

On Darfur
Darfur was another topic that elicited a lively exchange. Biden kicked it off by claiming that Sudan has forfeited its sovereignty by refusing to allow United Nations and African Union troops in to stop the genocide in Darfur. Consequently, he’s in favor of enforcing a no fly zone and committing 2,500 NATO troops to take out the janjaweed. When moderator Wolf Blitzer asks the gang who agrees with Biden, everyone falls over themselves to clarify that they are in favor of enforcing a no fly zone, but don’t want to raise their hand to commit troops (even 2,500 NATO troops, apparently). Hilary comes off as the leader of the group when she says, “We” referring to herself and her fellow candidates, “are not going to get into hypotheticals.” Barack leans over to Hilary and says, “I don’t want to raise hands anymore.” Hilary laughs. Meanwhile, Bill Richardson is saying, “Wolf! Wolf! I was there. Can I respond?” He said the same thing earlier, but was beaten to the punch by Biden who made a similar “I was just there” claim. Bill says we don’t need another military involvement, but suggests that we ought to threaten not to go to the Olympics if China refuses to use its influence to stop the genocide in Sudan. Edwards agrees with Richardson that threatening to withdraw from the Olympics might be a necessary step. Dodd, Hilary, Obama, and Biden disagree, but Biden is angrier than anyone else on the stage and comes off as a hawk on Darfur. Edwards links the Darfur conundrum to the larger problem of America no longer having the moral authority to lead in the world and starts to roll out some ways to counter that perception, starting with a program to provide primary education to 100 million children. Wolf cuts him off to get back to the Darfur case, but Barack makes a similar move, referring to America’s moral leadership problem and complaining about the treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo and the suspension of habeus corpus. Biden says the way to recover America’s moral leadership with respect to Darfur is to send troops into Darfur.

On Iraq
Not much new with regard to Iraq in terms of substance, but we did see some of the first intra-party scrapping of the campaign. Edwards throws the first legitimate punch of the primary season by hammering Hilary and Barack for not being leaders on the war funding vote. They cast their “no” votes quietly and said nothing in the lead up. Obama swings back hard and connects by calling Edwards four-and-a-half years late on the Iraq issue and then cautions him against playing politics with the war funding vote. He gives Biden credit for having “a legitimate perspective” (Biden voted for the war funding bill). Hilary comes in clean after Obama clears the deck, saying the differences between her and her peers are minor. Edwards doesn’t do much besides repeat himself when the question gets thrown back to him. He later gives Obama credit for being right on the war and talks about the importance of being “open and honest with the American people,” an oblique reference to the fact that, unlike Hilary,he is willing to recognize that it was a mistake to vote to give the president authority to go to war with Iraq. Hilary says that with regard to the vote to authorize the president to go to war with Iraq, her mistake was to trust George Bush to do what he told them he was going to do. The veins in Biden’s neck are bulging when he claims that the 50 Democrats in the Senate cannot stop the war as long as Bush is president in response to the claims of Kucinich (and Crazy Uncle Mike) that the Democrats had failed to do the job the voters elected them to do. He is the only one on the stage to vote for the most recent war funding bill.

Scorecard.
John Edwards’ game-plan is to lead and to be honest. He talks about his “college for everyone” plan (the governments will pay for books and tuition for students who agree to work while in college) and suggests that we may want to change anti-trust laws to get at energy companies that refine the oil that they later sell for record profits. He didn’t do a good job of explaining his view that “The War on Terror” is a bumper sticker and little more (a view I agree with). And after he came out as a states-rightist on gay marriage he, incongruously, goes back to his “I’m a leader” line. When Hilary got a good question from a New Hampshire professor of military history about the U.S.’s military alliance with Pakistan--which is not a liberal democracy, she basically ignored the force of the question by talking about sending a high-level envoy to help Pakistan’s President Musharaf and President Karzai of Afghanistan. Edwards came back and tried to pick it up by talking about the danger of Musharaf away without knowing what will replace him. Not an idealist’s answer, but a fair one.

Hilary consistently redirects the focus away from her differences with her fellow candidates and to George Bush’s failures, but she starts the night by claiming that we’re “safer than we were”—distancing herself from Barack, who started the night by saying “we live in a more dangerous world not a less dangerous world partly as a consequence of this president’s actions.”

Barack did a good job of not backing away from his forceful claim that we should not be grateful to the Bush Administration for the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States since September 11th, 2001. His word of the night is “foresight.” Presumably, he has it. But Barack is also pushing himself as a hawk on Afghanistan. Wolf says Obama wants to raise the size of the military by 100,000 and increase the defense budget by billions. Obama does not disagree with the claim.

Joe Biden. Biden comes out strong in favor of letting gays serving openly in the military, noting that all our allies do it. When all the candidates were asked whether they would take out Bin Laden even if it meant some civilians would be killed, everyone’s hand shot up, but Biden added the necessary caveat that it would depend on how many civilians would actually be killed. Then several other voices tried to jump in and make the same claim. The next president has better be smarter than his advisors, Biden says. Presumably, Biden thinks he is that guy.

Dennis Kucinich talks about getting out of NATO and the WTO and going back to bi-lateral trade agreements based on workers’ rights, human rights and the environment. Good point, Dennis. I wish someone besides you would make it.

Bill Richardson. Richardson doesn’t get a chance to speak until we’re 18 minutes in (besides telling everybody his name), then he doesn’t do much with his at-bat. Bill gets more “thank you, please stop rambling” comments from Wolf Blitzer than anyone else. When a soldier’s mother asked why veterans cannot seek care in any hospital they want, Obama said that the Veterans Administration has access to certain “efficiencies” with regard to prescription drugs. Bill jumps in and disagrees by saying that veterans ought to be able to wherever they want. It was almost a strong play . . . but he blew it by talking about the question asker’s husband (it is her son, not her husband, who is a soldier.)

Mike Gravel. Gravel is the only one to raise his hand to the question of whether English should be designated as the official language of the United States. Barack complains that it’s a divisive question. Hilary speaks to the details: if it were official, we couldn’t pay to have translators in emergency rooms.

Chris Dud. Present.