Our Neighborhood

Last night, I took the dog for a walk at dusk. The afternoon thunderstorm was finished tearing through the neighborhood, and the sunset made for beautiful pictures. We are lucky to live where we do; Rogers Park is a diverse and ever-changing neighborhood. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a taste of city life on the lake.

Here's a few more: the skyline and Spencer the ghost.

Due to high critical acclaim...

...here's another video of Elayna.

Summertime for an academic

The beach is nice in the morning. We can get out there to get sandy and sweaty before the crowds come. Today, Elayna threw sand in her mouth and waded into the lake. She loves it - both the taste of sand and the lake. Summer offers a nice chance to play outside; it's nice because Chicago winters are so dang cold and we have to play inside with the same toys over and over again.

I ran across this pertinent tidbit of information via ALD:

"In the popular imagination, humanities professors don’t have anything to be ambitious about. No one really knows what they do, and to the extent that people do know, they don’t think it’s worth doing — which is why, when the subject of humanistic study is exposed to public view, it is often ridiculed as trivial, arcane, or pointless."

This is where I stumble on to the stage looking a little confused. Someone from the back asks, "Did you really choose a job that is not only pointless, but also low-paying?" I shade my eyes from the white-hot spotlight that is centered on my face and answer, "Um...yeah." To be sure, I don't think of my career choice (English Instructor) as pointless, nor do I think many of you do either. But it seems that there exists a phenomenom in our culture which situates academics somewhere between vagrants and savants. The article in question, describes recent portrayals of male professors in movies - a portrayel that is less than complimentary. It is true, as the article notes, that the perception of professors is changing (as is the field of academics in general). What was once a group of white guys wearing tweed jackets and smoking pipes, has become a scrambling bunch of geeky, young grad students hoping to score even the most menial jobs in hopes of securing tenure. Is it too much to ask to earn an honest living by teaching English? I sure hope not, otherwise, I'll have to look into becoming a professional reader or something.

iWanna iPhone

Well, I'll take one from you if you're giving it away. I'm certainly not gonna fork out the $500 to $600 dollars they cost - let alone the 2 year contract required. (We usually get the cheapest possible cell plan, you know...the one with a free phone.) Anyhow, today's Rocketboom got me interested in the arrival of Apple's iPhone. They go on sale tomorrow night at 6 PM, and people in NY have been in line since Monday. Just plain crazy. Anyhow, it got me wondering what was going on here in Chicago. Apparently, there was no line at the Michigan Ave. store this morning. There are five locations within about half an hour of our apartment in Rogers Park, so it seems that no one felt the need to start standing in line on Monday. Even so, according to one forum over at MacRumors, there are people planning to wait in line tonight, whether there's a need for it or not (at the time of this posting, there were 72 messages in the thread and at least 2 people staying out overnight). There are even moms offering to stand in line for those of us who actually have to go to work during the day. But whatever ends up happening in the next 29 hours, one thing is certain: Apple knows how to create a marketing frenzy.

And on a completely different note, here's an article by literary theorist Terry Eagleton on how Mikhail Bakhtin liked to - among other things - use his theoretical manuscripts to roll cigarettes.

In other news...

How do you stay informed? To begin with, I'd like to say that I'm not particularly well informed. Unless you're talking about ninjas. Or very small newts. Or perhaps about the people outside my window who are playing their acoustic guitar and yelling impromtu song lyrics. Other than those things, I'm pretty uninformed, but I thought I might pass along a few news pages that I've come across lately. I generally don't check in on CNN or FOXNEWS or whatever other big news pages people read. They seems a little depressing...or maybe it's sterile. I like to hear human responses to what's going on...usually humorous human responses. So, I came across The Morning News about five years ago. They have the daily headlines on the right-hand side of the page, and they often make me chuckle. They're on vacation or something right now, though. So the news is old and dry. I came across another interesting page a few weeks ago. It's called Arts & Letters Daily. It's put out by some academic types, but the links are on diverse topics. Also, they have a whole slew of interesting links to check out. I also subscribe to flavorpill. They send out emails once a week with current happenings and whatever. But since I scoff at the idea of staying out later than about 9:30 at night, I tend not to go to the events they talk about. Yet, they do have a weekly world news page that is interesting. It's called Activate, and it hits the high points of what's going on. Finally, here's a few other pages I'm still not sure will make it into my daily surfing or not: Rocketboom and First Things. And now you've read about a few places I like...so what am I missing? What do you read?

Edvard [2]

He doesn't sell many movie posters; it just doesn't seem possible to generate sales without customers. We've all seen the mobster movie where Al Capone launders money through some dry cleaning business. Why not a poster shop? The other night as I walked by, the door to the back room was left open, allowing a heavy, yellow light to make its way into the store. Our shopkeeper was asleep at his desk, take-out box left open. Pausing long enough to take in a scene from the back room, I noticed two men sitting at a green, '70s-style card table. They were smoking. One man was leaning forward with his palm on his forehead, cigarette dangling. The other was leaning back, arms folded across his chest. You can only imagine their dilemma: "I don't think ol' Edvard is gonna' keep us underground for long, Lukas. His hearse, those glasses, everything about 'im is too obvious." Casson was sitting up straight now, gesturing expansively with his meaty left hand, cigarette still dangling. "We all know that by now, Cass. It's only a matter of time. Our man Edvard has a lot of history in the company, but his history lessons 'bout movies or old friends don't get us anywhere now. Everything's changed."

Time slows down in Rogers Park

School's done, and free time is now easier to be had. As ambivalent as the spring weather is in Chicago, days seem to be warming up, and walks with the dog are much more enjoyable. As you can see from this picture, trees are starting to sprout leaves, and we have some flowers outside our front window. Unfortunately, the cold April weather and terrible wind killed a couple of our plants, but for the most part, they are still holding on to life. We are pretty much professional gardners if you didn't know. (Actually, in case you were taken in by the last comment, watering a living thing other than Elayna or the dog borders on the impossible for us.) Summer school starts next week (one class is enough for me), and we're going on a few trips (SoCal for Memorial Day for starters).