Today I was supposed to be participating in a Saturday service activity I abhor but had steeled myself for. Last night, however, I felt ill for unrelated reasons and e-mailed my dean, who organizes this activity, apologizing and saying I would have to go to the clinic this morning instead of the service activity. I … More Dream
Dear Z, Now that I have seen the madre patria I have a different and deeper understanding of you. I have much to recount, but I am distracted by the beauty of this place. — and I have spent a truly glorious day after the interview in — and later in —. We stopped for drinks … More An e-mail I received
This is the other reason for my general fatigue and mental fog; I keep forgetting that we undergo all this bullying every day. In extremely clear instances of it I get flashes of insight, this is paradigmatically abusive behavior, but most of the time it is just how people are and I do not understand … More Male violence
— direct method or versions of it: not rule then application, but example then explanation then expansion — emphasis on conversation, being able to converse; spontanaeity — emphasis on writing whole sentences — not fixated enough on accent marks, spelling, small grammar issues: yes, they irritate me, but no, not seriously — too intolerant of … More Things wrong with me as FL teacher
People do not realize that many decades ago at Berkeley they decided freshman composition should also be given by (many) departments other than English. They have it in Rhetoric, Dramatic Art, Comparative Literature, and now all of these departments. This means that English is more immune to being asked to staff these courses with adjuncts, … More On the adjunct crisis
I will order books from Interlibrary Loan. I will finish my Peruvian abstract and make the plane reservation. I will work more on my vita. I have enough to say to fill several books. I will go to the Home Depot and buy eight concrete blocks, each four inches high. I will repair shoes, and … More Jeudi
I said I would give a senior/graduate level course called Raza y palabra, on race and writing in Spain and Latin America, 1486-2014. This happened in a flash of inspiration and I do not now remember my concept clearly. The title is entirely too ambitious, and there is entirely too much potential material. I must … More Mon cours
I must find that Julio Ortega book, and I must teach something by Ortega y Gasset in that class on raza. On Spain, we will read things by Branche, Goode, Piedra, and Ortega y Gasset. We will also study Vasconcelos and Aztlán: espíritu, raza, palabra. Meanwhile: Deborah Root’s 1988 review of Todorov’s La conquête de l’Amérique points … More Deborah Root and the concept of my book
And, if what I am applying for now does not work out, I will apply for other things like it and yet more baldfacedly, things like this. In the meantime I must: ♦ do taxes ♦ make a reservation in Houston ♦ retrieve my coat ♦ buy a bed frame for those guests ♦ buy … More Take Two
Today we announced to each other that the problem is the infantilization and the undermining: they will not recognize our expertise. Talking to them is nearly impossible since the people they think they are talking to, are not us, but some suspicious and conniving, deceptive characters who have in essence faked our advanced degrees. We … More The gaslighting, el resplandor
coldhearted scientist وداد 