This is what is required at my alma mater.

The schools I work at now have very different requirements.

I am just wondering how often the criteria is less clear cut than it looks.

Can you tell which person was conceived by rape? No. Not really.

JP Morgan bailed out the US in a situation eerily reminiscent to the one we are in today.

I have an interview today with a sister college of one I teach at. The drive is long, but the potential for growth is huge.

I am looking forward to the interview and hope I do well.

As part of a job application I have to write a philosophy statement of faith and learning.

Goofing off, I wrote this:

Education without faith is dead. For degrees will pass, classes will cease, and intellectual stimulation is not the be-all and end-all of life. Faith calls us to an eternal experience that supersedes all education, but can use our education to the benefit of others.

This is particularly relevant to me.

R and I asked God for an answer as to whether we should apply for this job that is at my alma mater. I had a long conversation in my head with God in which he said no. However, in the past, long conversations with God have primarily been my own invention. That is, I get an answer and then I go on a two-way conversation that I invent myself to make sense of his response.

I am not sure I actually heard from God on the no.
R didn’t hear at all.

God knows way more than I do and I do not want to move my family halfway across the state for a situation that would be worse for them than where we are.

I do, however, want to have friends again and enjoy my teaching.

So… What does this mean for me?

It means that I still don’t know what God is saying about the application. We are moving forward with what could be a HUGE change in our family’s life… but I’m not sure we should.

One of my chapters was supposed to be published this summer. But the press appears to be folding. So that’s not going to happen. I went to a conference and heard of a new press, know another press that is soliciting, and looked up university presses that publish in the topic area and that the editor might not have thought of. I sent an email off tonight.

I really would like this work published, since I wrote it. It was fun and I think people who are generally interested in the topic would like the work. It would also be useful to students who need to write papers on the subject, since it includes already culled primary sources.

I hope one of the presses works out. I would really like to have the book in print. I’ll buy several. One for each of my libraries (That’s four, three universities and my own.), one for my folks, and (if it’s hardback) one for my sister. So… if each of the contributors bought five that would be a guaranteed sale of 100.

I don’t like the music, particularly, but the art incorporation is good.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

I am a strong believer in the second amendment. I like guns. I think everyone who is not mentally deficient or a criminal and is over 18 (or possibly 21) should own one, at least.

American Daughter has an interesting post on the differences between US gun ownership and Swiss gun ownership. The Swiss come out way ahead.

And the “Why no one invades Switzerland video” that my husband liked so much is also there. (And now here.)

My wife and I often have very different recollections of events. And not just the little details. Sometimes our shared memories don’t even feature the same mammals, themes, or points. The scary part is that we don’t realize these differences until we have some reason to compare memories, which doesn’t come up that often. Every now and then there will some independent way to verify whose memory is accurate, and it is sobering to discover how many of the problems are on my end. A lot of my so-called life is apparently a patchwork of delusions.

The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.

From Scott Adam’s blog at Dilbert.

I am spreading my mess. It’s growing. Someone help me. Soon I will need the clutter people! (Okay, not really, but I did put a whole stack of papers on the bed. Gotta move those.

John is in the hospital right now. Nancy took him this morning because he wasn’t feeling well yesterday. He had a heart attack in the doctor’s office. He has some kind of infection they can’t find. He has coded four times. His liver and kidneys are failing.

I know that God has some fishing gear and a great place in the kitchen, with folks in heaven lined up for some of John’s special meals, but I also know that this will be very hard for Nancy and their kids and the grandbaby.

Please pray for them.

Is it true?

It was here, half a dozen years ago, that Cope put Emmy to sleep. She was just a software program, a jumble of code he’d originally dubbed Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, hence “Emmy”). Still — though Cope struggles not to anthropomorphize her — he speaks of Emmy wistfully, as if she were a deceased child.
Emmy was once the world’s most advanced artificially intelligent composer, and because he’d managed to breathe a sort of life into her, he became a modern-day musical Dr. Frankenstein.

His second creation, Emily Howell, is creating modern music, letting go of the problem Emmy had, with recreating works by great composers or in their style.

But what does it say for musicians? Will art go away as we see software creating it?

Read more inTriumph of the Cyborg Composer.

Just saw a CFP for a topic that would help my publications and my chances of being accepted for that job I have an interview for… But it’s due next week.

Could I get it written that fast?

Probably not. But I might could… If I had my books with me. But I don’t, because I am at my parents’ house. I might get Ron to come over here and bring them. That’s a possibility.

I need to look at the possibility.

mixed genres= autobiography/biography with other things, fiction, recipes, etc.
mixed time= the works don’t follow a natural time progression

These two effects are significant. I think there are good aesthetic reasons for both of these. Life is not clean and easy, why should our literature be? Plus it helps the monolingual person understand the confusion and disorientation of the new immigrant/dual culture person operating in the U.S.

I think that’s what I want to say. The problem would be saying it for 4,000 words and doing a good “scholarly” job with it.

Does it make any sense that people send you email and say, “In order to ensure that you receive this mail…” and then they tell you what to do? If you didn’t get the email, you aren’t going to know what to do. If you do get the mail, do they not understand how annoying that is?

Wall Street Journal on a woman who has autism and is making a good life for herself. She’s published ten books. She sends kids to college.

I decided that since there is not a written limit to proposal numbers that I would apply to the three or four that are due at the beginning of March. Then I will wait and see if I hear anything from them before I apply to the ones in the middle of March.

I have two I would prefer to do the most, because of their topics for my résumé, another I would like to do because R has been helping me with it, two that are good because they are on the scholarship of the profession, and one that is fun.

I did decide not to apply to the science fiction group. If I ever get a full-time position somewhere that won’t slap me down, I might move into that as a field of study more strongly, but right now I need to keep my work more marketable. So…

I sincerely hope that two of the first ones accept my work early on. The problem is, of course, that no one knows me. So I do, in fact, have to be accepted on the weight of my work and it is not always sufficiently clear what they are asking for to let me feel confident that what I wrote is what they are looking for. However, I do like the ideas I have sent in so far.

I have no idea what other people are receiving. I do know that the first session I went to was amazingly cutting edge. None of my proposals are amazingly cutting edge. However, only one said they wanted cutting edge, so we will see.

I am looking at the largest English conference (MLA) in the US. It takes place next January; however, proposals are due in March.

I cannot find anywhere in the CFPs that says you can only submit two proposals. However, you can only participate in two sessions.

So, is it legitimate to apply for four or five different sessions in the hopes of getting two? What if you get accepted to all of them? Obviously some would have to be turned down.

If I applied to more than two, and I was accepted to two, I would immediately withdraw from the other sections. Obviously that would need to be done.

But I would like to present at MLA and applying to more than two sessions makes it more likely that I will be able to present.

Gotta think about the ethical implications and what I would need to do. Strategy is important too. Which sections would be the best for me to present in?

I am working on regaining my Spanish. It is very lost and I am having to search long and hard for it. This evening I read two short stories for intermediate Spanish students and it took me somewhere between half an hour and an hour to get through twelve pages. However, I did learn some new words and I was overall able to follow the story without looking up everything.

So I am keeping myself busy with Spanish, not even counting all the work I need to do with my grading. However, I have made priorities. Spanish is the priority. Getting grades back in two days is sufficient.

I also am writing proposals for the big national convention next January. I wrote one and it turned out, when I read the long call, that what I thought they were asking for was actually totally off topic. Of course, that may be true of other things since the big conf keeps the CFPs short.

I sent one off already (on teaching Old English texts) and I am working on another two (one on postapocalyptic literature and one on adjuncts as professionals).

I figured three attempts I ought to get one yes out of the bunch. But actually maybe I should do more. Unfortunately you can only get two yeses, and I wouldn’t want to turn a bunch of people down, which is why I was thinking three.

I will be sad though if none of them is accepted.

Yesterday I received a phone call for a phone interview, but I could never reach the person. (She called when I was in class, so thankfully she could not reach me.)

I did call early this morning and I have a phone interview on Thursday afternoon on my home phone (supposedly) at 2:40.

I hope it goes well.

My college has declared a hiring freeze, even though we have 27% more students than last year. So there will be no job here when I could take advantage of the absence of the person who doesn’t like me. (Of course, that has spread to others, so it probably wouldn’t make a difference. People who don’t even know me don’t like me.)