Rain

It's pouring rain here, with lots of thunder. This is the Arkansas weather I signed up for.

My health is much improved, and my appetite has come roaring back. God, it's good not to be queasy all the time.

Being Ill Not for the Weak

The antibiotics the doc put me on seem to be helping, but they have destroyed what little appetite I had left.

This, combined with having to drink first Gatorade and then Pedialyte, which are both really nasty, you will be interested to hear, means I'm having a hard time eating anything, even if it isn't nutritionally dense.

Also, I'm supposed to stay away from nutritionally dense things. "Simple carbs," the doc said. "No fiber. No dairy. Nothing that has a lot of fat. Not much protein. No sugar."

"Okay," I said, thinking through the sorts of things I eat, wondering what that left. "So... like rice?"

"Or mashed potatoes."

I'm thinking whether bagels would be simple carbs. But I've never eaten a bagel without cream cheese or at least butter.

Update Post

Y'all, I've been deathly ill for the past two weeks. I think I picked up food poisoning at a restaurant, eating vegetable tempura that wasn't cooked sufficiently, but who knows.

I tried to gut it out (pun intended), but yesterday finally gave in and went to see my doctor. (This was after I couldn't walk across the campus to my class without stopping to rest on the way.)

My bp when the nurse took it was 90/50. This is caused by dehydration, in case you're curious.

Now I'm on two different antibiotics and have been ordered to drink Gatorade. I don't know if you've ever had Gatorade. Bleck, is my evaluation. But I am drinking it.

Heh, yes

Shared by The Guardian:

Sunday Links

Have some links for your Sunday!

This is great

So is this

This, OTOH, makes me want to kick things

Interesting though a bit gruesome

This is the future the liberals want

Why are black people still upset when slavery was over in 1865 I have no idea

I don't think this makes the argument the authors think it does

Banning burqas, or any other form of religious expression, is a terrible idea. Also it doesn't work. Also, don't @ me with your "but feminism!" argument because that is also bullshit.

Grammar purity is also bullshit

This, however, is beautiful

As is this

(Sample from last link:

Reaping What I've Sown

Since my recent illness, I've had trouble eating. The thought of food makes me queasy, which means I don't eat until I'm really hungry. And then once I've eaten, almost everything I eat makes me even more queasy. (I've stopped vomiting but it's still pretty unpleasant.)

So I've been looking for food I can eat that will keep me from being hungry and yet won't make me ill. So far cheese is the biggest win, but also perfectly ripe bananas work, as well as some (very bland) yogurts.

But you see the problem. This is a very limited diet. So I've been stalking the stores, searching for food I can eat which will also provide me with more nutritional benefit than my current diet (though bananas are pretty good, nutritionally).

But the point of this story: I've been using the term "nutritionally dense," which the Kid hates. "I need something nutritionally dense," I mutter as I wander the grocery. "I could probably eat oatmeal, but it's not very nutritionally dense."

"Nutritionally dense is a made up term," the Kid seethes. I actually got it from the Kid, who learned it in health class in high school. "It's bullshit."

"I can't live on cheese forever," I say. "It's just not nutritionally dense enough."

"It's a ridiculous term! It was invented to make us feel terrible about what we're eating!"

"Peanut butter is nutritionally dense," I say, "but bread makes me queasy. I guess I could just eat peanut butter on its own."

"It's a term invented by the patriarchy to oppress women and control our lives!"

At this point I began laughing.

"What?" the Kid demanded.

"That's a good one," I said. "Excellent technique."

"Oh, shut up."

"You know exactly the argument to use against me."

The Kid is grinning now too. "It's true, though. The patriarchy --"

"Okay, okay. How about we find some food I can eat that isn't cheese? How would that be?"

"You should try ginger tea," the Kid says, heading for the tea and coffee aisle. "Or maybe ginger ale."

"Those don't sound very nutritionally dense," I say, and the Kid rounds on me. I laugh. "Now I'm just fucking with you," I point out.

Life in the delagar household.

My Kid and also a link

You should stop by this post at Nicole and Maggie's blog for two reasons.

One, their excellent links on what you can do (this is a frequent feature at their blog -- just saying). We often feel, or at least I often feel, helpless in the face of this much corruption and evil, and N&M give us do-able things we can do to help stop the destruction.

Two, the tweet from Merriam-Webster about the word genderqueer.

Here's a self-portrait from my genderqueer Kid to go with:

Attempting Discourse with Trump Supporters

After spending months at it now, I have reached the conclusion that it is useless to attempt an exchange of ideas with Trump supporters in the market place of ideas.

Here is what always happens:

Trump supporter: (Says something bizarre and obviously untrue, such as that schools in Oklahoma have banned the Pledge of Allegiance.)

Me: "I don't think that's true. I have several ex-students who teach in Oklahoma, and all their schools say the Pledge every morning."

Trump Supporter: "Well, I know it's true, because it happened at my friend's school! Where she teaches!"

Me: "What school is that?"

Trump supporter: "And it's happening everywhere, because LIBERALS hate the flag!"

Me: "Do you have examples of the places where it is happening? I've just done a google search, and I don't see any reports of anything like that happening any reliable media sources."

Trump supporter: "What do you consider reliable? The New York Times? LIBERAL BIAS!"

Me: "Do you have a reliable source that says this is happening in Oklahoma?"

Trump Supporter: "Why are you so ANGRY about this?"

Me: "You've given no evidence, except an anecdotal claim. Why should we believe this is true? Surely if this were actually happening, someone would be reporting on it somewhere."

Trump Supporter: "Why don't you give me evidence that it's NOT happening?"

Me: "I did. There's no media coverage. If all the schools in Oklahoma had banned the pledge, Fox News would be talking about it non-stop. You know that's true."

Trump Supporter: "I don't even watch Fox News! Stop condescending to me!"

Me: "You're repeating lies as if they were the truth, and getting other people to believe them. That's not okay."

Trump Supporter: "Don't call me a liar! Just like a liberal, always start insulting people when they're losing!"

And so on, endlessly. Trump supporters will never admit they're wrong, even when they obviously are. They will dismiss any evidence you give them as "liberal bias" or "liberal lies." And they will go straight to the "why are you so angry/mean/elitist" as soon as they start losing.

I'm an educator, and I have kept giving in to the urge to educate, certain that if I just present evidence and data in a reasonable way, learning can occur. People can change.

But Trump supporters dismiss any evidence or reason that contradicts their worldview. They are not using rational creatures. They are a cult.

Tuition Waiver

I went into school to turn in the tuition waiver for the Kid's fall semester. This is always such a hassle. I mean, it's absolutely worth it, since we get 40% off the tuition*. But jeez.

Every semester, there is some new required bit of paperwork. The required paperwork isn't actually listed on the form -- you don't find out exactly what you need until you try to turn in the paperwork, and then some apologetic human resources person says, Yes, you've got the waiver filled out correctly, and yes, you have the copy of your income tax form, showing this kid is actually your dependent, and yes, you have the enrollment confirmation, but this year we want (X) also!

So you have to go find that thing and make a second (sometimes a third, if the thing you find isn't the exact right thing) trip to file the paperwork.

It used to be just the waiver and the enrollment confirmation. Now it's like six different forms.

Still worth it, yes, but irksome.





*Nothing else, not the fees, not the room and board -- all of which are the most expensive part of a university education -- just 40% off the tuition itself. Still, this comes to almost $3000 saved per academic year, and that's not nothing.

The Kid's Apartment and Georgia O'Keefe

Today we moved the first part of the Kid's stuff into their new apartment. The second (bigger) haul goes up next week, when the Kid moves up to Fayetteville for the semester.

This is the exterior of the apartment, though you can't actually see the Kid's unit from this pic. They've got a top corner apartment, with big windows. Very nice.

After we moved the first load in, we went on up to Bentonville, to Crystal Bridges, to see the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit. This was several O'Keefe paintings and a couple sculptures by her, as well as a number of works by other contemporary artists.

One of my favorites was a collage by Mark Lewis, who is an artist from Tulsa. It just blew me away.

This is the collage, but believe me, this image does not do it justice. You have to see this one in person.


There was also this amazing collection by Cynthia Daignault, called Light Atlas. she drove across America, stopping every 25 miles to paint what she saw. These are small paintings, and just beautiful.

Again, this image does not do it justice.

If you can get to this exhibit, you should go. It's amazing.

Money money money

At the end of June, I got the first of the two checks I will get for teaching Summer I classes. This one was the larger one, and after taxes it was just over $3500. (The second check will be much smaller -- just under a thousand dollars.)

What have I done with my astounding wealth?

(1) Got the car fixed. We needed to replace two tires and the battery, and to fix a brake light which had been out for some time. We *ought* to have replaced the windshield, which has a pretty serious crack in it. But this will have to wait for some future windfall.

(2) Paid off two credit cards, the ones with small balances.

What we haven't done:

(1) Paid off the credit card with the larger balance -- a couple thousand dollars. (Medical bills and car repairs.)

(2) Gotten new glasses, which I desperately need.

(3) Fixed the dryer, which has been broken since early May. Dragging all the laundry to the laundromat is getting old fast, too.

(4) Paid off the remaining medical bills -- about $800 to my surgeon for my gut surgery, $300 to the Kid's doctor, $700 to the dentist from when I broke my tooth.

(5) Saved up enough money to move.  We would really, really, really like to move into a smaller, cheaper house closer to the university. But we'd need (probably) about a thousand dollars (maybe $1500) to pay deposits and first month's rent and hire a moving truck and so on. I'm starting to think we'll never have that kind of cash on hand. Ever.

We do have enough money to rent a truck to move the Kid up to FV, come Fall. So there's that.

Cat Picture

Here's a gratuitous picture of Jasper the cat for your viewing pleasure

What I'm Reading Now

I'm still in the four or five weeks between the end of Summer I and the start of Fall semester, so I have lots of time to read and write. It's bliss.

Here's what I've been reading lately:

Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series, is one of the few fantasy writers I like to read. In 2016, she wrote the acclaimed Uprooted, which I liked a lot. So when I saw she was bringing out another fairy-tale based fantasy novel, I put it straight on my wish list.

As with all of Novik's books, this one is pretty wonderful. Great characters, great writing, a narrative drive that will keep you reading long after you should be in bed. It's (very loosely) based on the folk tale about the girl who can spin straw into gold; but it's really about these people in this culture. Novik is really good at bringing a culture and its people to life.

Here, the main characters are three women and their families; but all of them live at the borders of cultures, and deal with code switching and conflicts between those cultures throughout the novel -- not in a "poor me" kind of way, but in the way that people just do, who live in multiple cultures.

It's a very heteronormative book, which is the only reason I didn't recommend it to my Kid, because otherwise it is totally the kind of book they would like. Except no dragons or werewolves either. But lots of complex politics and complex people and a couple trashbaby prince or two. And so much snow.



Rachel Pearson, No Apparent Distress

I picked this one up browsing the new books at the library. It's non-fiction, written by a young doctor who got into the field because she wanted to help people who needed the most help -- the poorest among us. Pearson starts her story with an account of her own childhood, growing up in trailers and campgrounds while her father did day labor and her mother worked her way through college. She and her brother worked right alongside their parents, building the house they would eventually live in and the houses her father would rent to the working poor.

Her father's dream was for his kids to get to college -- to move into the upper middle class through education. Pearson started out want to be a writer, but her childhood, filled with days in which she had done things, made things, fixed things, led her to want a life in which she did that. So she ended up in medical school, and then working at what she thought would be a charity hospital in Texas.

Except even as she started at that job, the charity aspects of the hospital were vanishing. More and more, medicine in the USA was becoming a for-profit business.

That's what Pearson's book chronicles -- that change in how America does medicine, and what that change means for most of us.

This is a brilliant and very readable book. Pearson also includes her sources, which I like in a writer. If you care about medical care in the USA (and if you live here you should) this book is a must-read.



Charlotte Voiklis, Becoming Madeline

I like Madeline L'Engle a lot as a kid (who didn't?). In my early 20s, I discovered her adult books, and liked them too. I like her a little less these days. (She's a bit too eager to believe the worst of people she disagrees with, and has some of the flaws of a religious writer who hasn't ever examined her faith.) But she's still a sentimental favorite, and when I saw this one at my local library, I picked it up.

Written by her granddaughters and based on her letters and diaries, it's a biography of the early years of L'Engle's life. Don't look for deep insights here. It's a labor of obvious love, and thus very sweet and touching. Very readable too.

Recommended for fans, not scholars.


Joshilyn Jackson, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Another one I found on the new book shelf of my local library. I took this one home based on the first few pages, in which the main character wakes up to find a ghost in her bedroom. Not the usual ghost though! This is a new ghost.

Okay, I was sold.

Set in the South, and written by a Southerner, this one is pretty good on the inherent class issues Southern culture is so rife with. (Jackson doesn't touch racism at all, but I guess not every book about the South has to, even a book set in Alabama.) The fucked-up family stuff is really good, too, as is the ghost story.

Also, the main character is an artist, and her art form is quilts, which I really like.

And it's very readable.

There's a child death right at the start, so if that's too much for you, maybe stay away from this one.



Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

I used to like Anne Tyler a lot. Her Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was one of my favorite books for a long time. And she is still very readable -- I read this one all in one sitting, for instance.

It's the story of a woman from the time she is ten until she is in her sixties. We drop into her life at ten year and then 20 year intervals, at the places in her life where she makes choices and so changes the direction of her life's course.

As I said, it's readable. It keeps your attention. But when you're done, you're left with a vague feeling of blandness. Meh, you think. That was okay, but so what?

I can't say what's wrong with these books, because really nothing is wrong exactly. It's just that nothing is really outstanding about them either.

Maybe that's it. They're about average people doing average things, making choices that lead to average lives. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's nothing all that interesting about it either.

On the other hand, that's what Anthony Trollope's books are about, essentially, and I really like his books. I don't know why Tyler's books leave me lukewarm and his fill me with satisfaction. It's a mystery.

Geography

Here's a game I'd forgotten about, until a reader asked me to update a link which was dead. (Thanks!)

How well do you know geography?

Interestingly, it's Canada that's killing my score. It's so big, and I don't know where anything except Alberta is, really. :(


UPDATE: This seems to be the original game!  Thanks, D. Shannon!

The Kid

The Kid has been visiting their sweetie (the datefriend, as these kids today call it) for the past week. Today they are flying home, from PA to Fort Smith, via Detroit and then Atlanta. (My parents got the tickets with their Frequent Flyer miles -- we could never have afforded plane tickets, though we were considering a bus tickets for a time.)

The visit was a lovely success, the first time they and their sweetie got to meet IRL, though they've been dating for over a year, via Skype and Messenger and Twitter. (This is life in the future.) They hung out, watched movies, visited Gettysburg, ate together, lived together.

The Kid and their Sweetie Standing on a Monument at Gettysburg

And now the kid is flying home. This is the most anxiety-laden part for me. I mean, intellectually I know my kid is 20 years old and well able to navigate airports on their own. But some lizard part of my brain still consider this kid my tiny baby. My tiny baby, in a giant airport in Atlanta, trying to find the correct gate, all on their own! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

(I am, of course, fretting over nothing. They are doing fine, despite their slight phobia of escalators.)

I'll be glad when today is over however.