by liberal japonicus
I an reaching the point where I measure out my life with 5 day open threads. How about y’all?
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
by liberal japonicus
I an reaching the point where I measure out my life with 5 day open threads. How about y’all?
I’m afraid I’m not even managing to keep track of the number of days any particular thread has been running. Too much else going on around me. I’ve got time (or make time) to read the comments. But that’s as far as my bandwidth will stretch most days.
Has the invasion of Greenland already begun in an unexpected way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGpC91qs8yA
How unexpected is it really? I mean, Trump had no permission to raze the West Wing of the White House. He just did it, presented everybody with a fait accompli, and there was no way to put it back. So this sounds exactly like his usual MO.
If I were the Danes, I’d make it a priority to send a tug and barge, reload all that stuff, and haul it away. It has, after all, been abandoned on the shore, and has the same status as an empty beer can on the beach. Might even be worthwhile, if the Danes can establish ownership, to charge the company with littering and assess a fine for the cost of picking up the trash. Never going to collect on that, but it does help make the point.
My husband and I are measuring our lives in terms of progress on his effort to get Canadian citizenship and the vagaries of the housing market. He hit a roadblock at the starting point when he found out that his mother’s birth certificate didn’t match the name she used for the rest of her life, including in legal documents. So just last week we achieved one of those points of measure when Montana sent us a corrected birth certificate. We are now waiting on Quebec. And we have an appointment with a Canadian immigration specialist in September!
Meanwhile I have discovered a great deal of confusion over my legal name since my birth certificate, my Social Security card, my voter registration, and my driver’s license are all different. I caused some of the confusion by taking my husband’s name when I got married the first time and then I assumed that the divorce automatically caused my name to revert. (And maybe it did. I got divorced 20 years ago and simple started life under my original name with no problems until I began thinking about my application for permanent residency in Canada).
I’m pretty sure if SAVE passes I won’t be able to vote.
Acquiring a new citizenship is not for the faint of the heart. I found it useful to hire a lawyer who specialises in it. Apart from getting the grunt work out of the way and giving you a to do list, they actually helped us in a big way because they had inside knowledge of planned legislation disadvantageous to us and managed to get the application through beforehand.
Tomorrow marks me being one week free of pins and out of a cast. My thumb’s range of motion is still quite limited. My hand and wrist are still sprained, stiff, puffy and achey. I’ve improved a lot, but it’s challenging to keep that in focus rather than focusing on how far there is still to go, or wondering what sorts of consequences may linger from a serious injury. Eh…I have Swedish heritage and I’ve read Marcus Aurelius. Life will go on.
I’ll see the orthopedist again in a week to get his assessment of my recovery. Working to get more range of motion back before then, and hoping that the swelling continues to lessen.
In other news, I’m in the midst of a milestone teaching evaluation, assembling materials that cover the last nine years of classes. It seems that over that time I have taught somewhere north of 1100 undergraduates. That seems a small number in an age of huge lecture classes and MOOCs, but writing instruction needs to be intensive and personal by its very nature. I knew the names of every one of those students, and knew the contents of every one of their paper drafts.
…at least for the time that they were enrolled in my class. Most of them leak back out over time, though a surprising number manage to stick and stay real people long after the class is over.
It’s disheartening how little of that experience goes into the evaluation process, and how little of that experience goes on to shape the institutional conception of what a university education should be. I’ve never had a dean, or a chancellor, or a regent ask a single question about the intellectual life of my classroom. Their concerns lie elsewhere.