What's interesting is that it was post-pandemic that, at least in our tech corner, it became the norm to turn off your video.
Teaching online never worked for me though. I need to be in the room to make teaching work, since about 70% of it is trying to keep them engaged.
The Ben Lerner interview at Shakespeare & Co is really interesting, but as someone who spent most of my tech career working WFH by choice, and who has never met in person MANY people I worked with for years on Zoom/WebEx, I'm kind of shocked by how traumatic that was for normies during the pando.
On the 1st anniversary of Pope Francis' death, and I'd like to take this moment to urge everyone who loves the earth and the environment to read his monumental and gorgeous Laudito Si. If you're not religious, just replace "God" with Gaia. www.usccb.org/offices/gene...
The performativity of upper class white people is exhausting. It's one reason I'm so cranky about the way Livingston has gentrified.
everywhere we disrupt natural processes we end up finding out the only real "solution" to maintaining the things we like is restoring the natural processes
My dearest hope it that this kills off the giant fucking murder trucks.
Boldest of the baby chickens went on walkabout this morning! It's TOO SOON baby chicken! You're too little! The big hens will kill you.
Hank, the mixed-breed sheepdog, alerted me, herded her into a corner where I could nab her. Good boy.
The solar panels on my roof are the very last of a family fortune that came over to our side because Aunt Ruth's only son survived WW1 but died from the flu. A death that was very much present in our family.
Since it was a cardboard box fortune, I hope the solar is a kind of enviro reparation.
The very 1970s mall here in Bozeman was a defacto baby play area for years. RUNNING toddlers. There's a dance-on-it light up thing in the middle, but a real play area would be so great. Winter (used to be) LONG.
Fun fact: I read an early version of the script for the exec producer who was my dearest college friend! I'd go visit him in grad school because he was the only other person I knew who had to read all weekend (also, he made real money and took me out to dinner). ❤️
Ben Lerner on Shakespeare & Co pod, talking about the post-covid phenomenon of "school refusal" among kids. Listed a bunch of potential causes, none of which was the enlightenment that comes from seeing that all narratives of "success" in our current culture are a lie.
Jacques Pepin has some good videos on his YouTube about this too ... FYI
Mostly it's just practice, which means delicious egg dishes even if they're not the right shape yet.
Oh yay. Eye twitch.
20 minutes bike here today -- I usually prefer the treadmill (because desk/laptop) but sometimes it makes my feet hurt.
However! 20 minutes rowing machine is a LOT -- congrats!
Oh those sound good -- thanks for the rec!
The problem with re-reading this manuscript is that no matter how beautiful I make it, it still describes loss, then loss again, then more loss.
Channeling Robert Hass as I dive in ...
My take on the debate over when to arrive at the airport is why do any of you care enough about this to debate it
I played the older-lady card and sent them an email asking if they'd stop by and reconnect it, and give me an estimate for battery backup.
I WOULD take Amtrack if I didn't have to drive FOUR HOURS NORTH to the stupid northern line because BNSF refuses to allow passenger rail on the southern line through Montana. You know, where all the PEOPLE LIVE.
Sorry for shouting, this makes me furious. The depot is 3 blocks away and useless.
Printing out a fresh draft of the whole thing. Putting it in a fresh, Exacompta folder with the ribbon closure.
Reading it again from the start.
Making notes for the chapter summaries for the proposal.
I'm getting this thing out of my house this year if it kills me.
Oh my god. I have to download an app to reconnect my solar panels to my wifi.
When people tell you using a certain technology is inevitable (in your personal life), just think of Joy Williams and her typewriter.
Bozeman people refusing to drive up here, but wanting you to just "pop over" for a drink.
I may order it from Blackwells -- they ship free to the US. Trying to decide if my TBR piles are high enough to wait for the paperback in September.
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/home
Patterson laments the shift from knowledge to information, an apt description I think.
Don't get me started on the death of card catalogs. When I started grad school, they were just beginning to decimate them. All those handwritten notes on the cards. Finding something, going to the shelf, finding the thing you really needed a shelf down.
Local library useless for browsing now. Shelves half empty and they chirp how this is Better! Because you can "search the system"! Where there are SO MANY MORE books!
I don't want a new mystery next week from fucking Kallispell. I want to go in, browse among the BOOKS and choose one.
Listening to Ian Patterson & Ali Smith on theLRB Bookshop podcast re: this book. Strikes me as no accident that the first thing the techbros went after was card catalogs and physical books. www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/ian-p...
I'm heartsick to see my first wilderness in danger again like this, but one thing to watch is metals prices. Mines are expensive to build and run, but there's pretty good grift in threatening. Can build a mine and will build a mine are not the same? Thin hope, I know, but hope nonetheless.
Out here in MT, it's mostly oldsters, many of whom worked physical jobs their whole careers, who got weed passed twice. And are the majority of the customers.
Which does help keep the kids out of it. Who wants to do the same drugs as dad/grandpa?