Gym-servations

And now for something completely different: things I've observed at the gym.

Sometimes people get so caught up in their workout that they forget other people are around. I once told of a guy who started singing "MacArthur Park" while stretching out. A couple of months ago, a woman on the treadmill next to me kept clapping at various intervals. I was in a bad mood and getting annoyed by it; then, she started saying "c'mon! Let's go! Keep workin'!" quietly to herself. So, she kinda became my unwitting coach, and I wasn't so annoyed anymore. Yesterday, a guy just started singing along to his iTunes. I didn't recognize the song because I am becoming of an age at which all of the young folks' music sounds exactly alike.

Speaking of which, does the gym-MTV channel have to blare so loudly? Good god! Not everyone wants Taylor Swift as an earworm for the rest of the day! It's loud enough in there with the general machine noise and the D00dz shouting their conversations that we really don't need whatever computer enhanced, teen pop diva adding to the din. I can hardly hear my own audiobook, and the earphones are crammed in to my ear drum.

Since I am exposed to these gym-MTV channel videos, too, I have come to the conclusion that the main expression conveyed through dance these days is "I will need a chiropractor when this song is over."

Why do people think the gym equipment is living room furniture and hang out on it? Why are these people usually D00dz?

I sweat. A lot. It's genetic. The sweat naturally appears in the usual places around the neck and armpits because that is where the fabric touches your skin most often. The more I sweat, however, the more embarrassing my sweat marks become. Think of the female form. Which parts are most in contact with the clothing? Yep, breasts and crotch. I get off of the treadmill, look in the mirror, and fear they will kick me out for obscenity.

With all of my running and weight loss, I've begun to notice some ridges and valleys on my body. I believe they are called "muscles." I forgot that I had them. They make me feel tough!

After you run many miles, you can be very flexible. I'm almost back to the flexibility of my 20s. This also makes me feel tough!

I've also reached a conundrum. I am fairly addicted to running longer distances -- between 6 and 10 miles. The problem is that much running fatigues me. At some point in the week, I'm just too tired to function. Yet, if I scale back or give myself a day or two of rest, I end up feeling grumpy and blah. Perhaps I should increase the carbohydrates or protein in my diet? Not through alcohol and candy consumption, either.

Although, speaking of alcohol and candy, it is about that time of the evening, isn't it?

Burnout Mantras

I would give an update on my burnout, but we had two snow days this week. Yes, the first week of the semester and I only had to teach on one! Sadly, I do not think that is helping with the burnout. I just feel like I am playing hooky.

Walking to class on the first day, I began to chant a list of mantras. Is that the proper use of the term mantra? This list is rather like the Moscow Rules, only intended to get me through my burnout. They go something like this:

1. You don't have to like them, you just have to teach them.
2. They don't have to like you, they just have to learn history.
3. Hold firm. It's never just the one.
4. This is a professional relationship.
5. History is the point, nothing else.

These all sound like "duh!" points, but my particular personality and socialization means that I forget them. Somewhere along the line I bought one of those stupid and wrong ideas that I am supposed to be liked by the whole damn world. Being "liked," however, meant caving to every whim of another person. That led to resentment and self-loathing because I couldn't respect myself and because I felt I was following some sort of arbitrary set of rules set up to serve someone else at my expense. The corollary to this stupid and wrong idea was the equally stupid and wrong idea that the opposite of being "liked" was to be a bitch, to be cruel and abusive, to be the arbiter of that arbitrary set of rules.

These two stupid and wrong ideas became a bit of a problem when I found myself in a position of authority as a professor because, as the instructor, I'm in a position to be either a resentful pushover or an irrational bitch, drunk on power. Who wants to be either? Also, these are the options? Like most things in my particular stupid and wrong cosmology, I'm drawn between two extremes and trying to find a balance.

The list of mantras is the attempt to remind myself that there are, in fact, other options and that there are, in fact, reasons for holding firm to rules that the students might find unfair or arbitrary. For instance, not letting more than the maximum number of students into a class. I found out that the higher levels of the administration do look at the number of people enrolled over the class limit and think "hey, if they are willing to take forty students into the class, then maybe we should make forty the limit." Add that all up across the schedule and you have a whole other full class of students to deal with.

Heck, we even received an e-mail suggesting that we sign students in over the limit in order to make our "enrollment goals" (drink!). If we have to take more than our limit of students into our classes in order to make these "enrollment goals" (drink!), then why not just open new sections rather than overworking your faculty and diminishing the "classroom experience" (drink!) for the students already enrolled? That isn't exactly keeping with that whole "completion (drink!) agenda (drink!)."

In any case, I don't want to participate in that; but to not participate means that I have to tell students "the class is full so I will not sign you in," despite their puppy dog eyes, despite their pleas that they need THIS class to graduate, despite their promises to work SO HARD, despite my fear that someone somewhere might think I'm a horrible bitch who is ruining their life by not letting JUST ONE person into her class.

Oddly, it felt kind of good, to just know that this is my policy, this is the reason for it, and I don't have to take on anyone else's issues. I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to teach history. They aren't here to like me, they are here to learn history. The whole point is history.

I've also noticed in the past that the pecked at feeling comes on gradually, but I've identified the point at which it comes on. Usually, it starts with one person. The one person comes to me with some crisis and asks for an exception to some policy (at this point, it is usually not one of the real crises, but one of their own devising such as "I didn't understand that we were supposed to follow directions"). Me, in my desire to be the nice teacher who is soooo understanding and compassionate (drink!), makes an exception to the policy. "It's just this one," I think.

It is never just that one. The next one comes, and of course I have to make an exception for this one because I did for the last one. Then the next one and the next one and the next one. Then, I get frustrated and resentful at this mess that I created for myself all because I thought that not being a pushover meant that I was being an unreasonable bitch. Which is stupid and wrong. Hence, the "it's not just the one" part of the mantra.

Finally, I started to think about how most students come to the educational experience, especially the younger ones. They went through 12 or more years in which school was part of this adult/child relationship. Heck, I sometimes feel it myself. In college, it is not. College is the adult world. College is the professional world.

Furthermore, the adult and professional worlds are not egalitarian worlds. They are hierarchical. Within the scope of the classroom, I'm sort of their boss -- their history boss. In the professional relationship, the boss assigns the tasks and the underling completes them as assigned. Failure to do so has consequences. Lack of consequences leads to anarchy, or at the very least, the task not getting done properly. The task here being: learn history. History is the reason that we congregate in that classroom.

Again, all of this is "duh!" territory; but sometimes, if you have learned only a perverse -- stupid and wrong -- relationship to power, the "duh!" stuff becomes very difficult, or at least like a destination that is much much further away than for other people. You have to work your way toward it. By "you," I mean "me."

When I get fatigued, which is often, or burned out, which is now, I lose my grip on the obvious. So, I wrote that list down and chanted it to myself as I walked from my car to the office and then to the class. It helped a little on that first day of laying down the law. The real test will be later, when things are actually due. Then I have to fall back on the lines that my analyst gave me, "I'm sorry, but the policy is." Also, "I'm sorry about that, but it appears you have some choices to make." Sometimes when there is a script, I can fit into the authoritative role better.

Meanwhile, I'm using the snow days for research.

A Dirty Word

I'm finding out that I could probably walk into a crowded room and yell "fuckity fuck fuck fuck" at the top of my lungs then flash my boobs and receive fewer horrified looks than if I simply said, "you know, I'm burned out."

Not that I did the "fuckity fuck fuck fuck" and boob flash thing. I'm just guessing.

Burn out seems to be something everyone suffers from but, like and STD, no one will admit that they have ever had it nor do they really want to discuss what it is, how to recognize the signs, and how to avoid it. Although, I have found that some people actually do have suggestions for how to overcome it. Sabbatical seems like one of the best means of recovering. Unfortunatly, our sabbatical (and we actually do have one, which is surprising) is only available to finish a project. That's a bit off in the distance for me. Then, yesterday, the honors program coordinator had a suggestion that might have me team teaching an honors course, which would be such a wonderful releif. Sadly, if that happens, it would happen next year.

But this is not my point in this post. You see, I'm burned out right now. Since the traffic on my archives posts indicates that I am the purveyor of cautionary tales, perhaps I can use my burnout for the greater good. Perhaps I should write about my burnout in a constructive way, rather than a venting way. Perhaps I can muddle my way through this semester causing the least amount of harm. Perhaps I can identify the components of the burn out. Perhaps I can observe the ways that I deal with those componenents and figure out better ways of addressing them. Perhaps this writing unto itself might be a way of coping with the burn out as a whole.

The first part of the burn out has already begun. I've been dreading my return to classes this semester much worse than in any previous semester. In fact, I felt downright ill and on the verge of an anxiety attack on my way into our Festival O' Meeings yesterday. Walking from the parking garage to the meetings, I supressed the urge to duck and cover everytime I saw a someone who appeared to be a student. Heck, for the past week, I've felt this in the grocery store, on the Metro, in the parking lot at my apartment, in the elevator at my apartment, and pretty much anywhere people are.

What we have here, then, is the first part of my burn out. What shall I call it? Anxiety? Dread? Yes, dread. Gut-wrenching dread, often acccompanied by a sort of depression. The depression keeps you from running screaming back to bed where you huddle under the comforter in the fetal position while watching your DVDs of Mad Men and downing chocolate and pina coladas until you reach that lovely "don't give a fuck" state.

Maybe that last part is just me.

Also, maybe that depression comes from the Festival O' Meetings. Oh, how I dread these, too! Generally, they are simply pep rallies that make me realize that I should perhaps invest in a netbook in order to get some work done during the pep rally, kind of like the way that I used to read during the enforced school spirit rallies of my grade school years. Lately, however, they've become ever more demoralizing as the buzz words increase -- this year's is "completion," for which you could invent a drinking game -- and the underlying message is clearly "Excellence Without Money."

In fact, this year, the lower level administrators like our dean and provost could barely mask their own lack of enthusiasm for this lastest shiny-shiny "agenda" (drink!) that will in no way address the problems facing our students, our school, or our education system. Then, I start to think about the types of "agendas" (drink!) that would address this, and I see the whole anti-intellectualism, trade school mentality, unwillingness to pay for public services -- no, make that public NEEDS -- and expectations that people who work for the public do so on a volunteer basis and LOVE it. The problem is so huge, endemic, and cultural that it makes you want to run screaming back to bed where you huddle under the comforter in the fetal position while watching your DVDs of Mad Men and downing chocolate and pina coladas until you reach that lovely "don't give a fuck" state.

Maybe that last part is just me.

Anyway, here we have part two of the burn out: demoralization.

After the meetings, I return to my office and begin to prepare for the semester, updating my syllabi and WebCT courses. This leads to the next problem. As I do this, I begin to get that feeling that I'm putting more work into this course already than about 50% of my students will. I begin to sense the amount of grading that will begin crashing down upon me by the second -- yes, second -- week of the semester and not cease until May. In revising the "policies" section of the syllabus, I have to incorporate every new thing that cropped up this past semester and anticipate any new tangles or angles for whining. You have to stay one step ahead of them, you know!

What's worse, I begin to see the way I could be better at this online teaching, better at teaching altogether, except that I have these 125-150 students to manage so I don't have the time to put into that more effective teaching. I end up grading and putting out individual fires rather than teaching, and the grading becomes less of a conversation between me and the writer and more of me just plowing through the stacks of papers. The whole enterprise leads to an overwhelming sense of futility and makes you want to run screaming back to bed where you huddle under the comforter in the fetal position while watching your DVDs of Mad Men and downing chocolate and pina coladas until you reach that lovely "don't give a fuck" state.

Maybe that last part is just me.

That is the part three of the burn out: futility.

Dread, demoralization, and futility. Three goblins that go together, and they are not good companions for the day.

How do I deal with them now? I try not to read Inside Higher Ed or The Chronicle of Higher Education or anything having to do with the state of education today. I particularly avoid comments sections. This isn't productive, but it does help me muddle through the day.

A productive way of dealing with these is to simply throw myself into the task at hand and not thing about anything before or after it. The Nike Philosophy: Just Do It. Then, I can mark an item off of my list and feel like I've actually accomplished something, which fights off the goblin of futility, sometimes holds off the goblin of dread, and allows me to ignore the goblin of demoralization. They don't go away, but their effects are reduced.

One last way I've dealt with this. I run. Literally, I run. Since the summer, I've run more and more each week until, at the end of last semester I got up to ten miles (one time, but still). I get on the treadmill and start. When I reach what I consider a reasonable distance somewhere between 3 and 5 miles, I realize that, if I stop, I have to grade, or work on a syllabus, or something of that sort, so I keep going until I absolutely have to stop because I can't justify staying at the gym any longer or my legs give out. I've lost 20 lbs and my muscles in my legs are solid.

In any case, this is my state right now, living with these three goblins of dread, demoralization, and futility. Let's see how or if it changes when classes start next week, and then the following week when we can actually get into the subject matter but when I also have to start grading.

Ice

I awoke this morning to this view from my window:
An ice sheet covered all of the panes.

On Thursday morning, before I left from my holiday stay, I took this picture:
When I was quite small and we lived in Minneapolis, my granny came to visit one winter and told me about a very bad little boy who was put in an icicle as punishment for his very bad behavior. If I were bad, she said, she might have to put ME in an icicle. I pondered that for a while. What would the world look like from the inside of an icicle? I think that pondering bought my granny a minute or two of silence.

Although only two or three years old, I didn't really believe that my granny would put me in an icicle. Had we had icicles this big, however, I think I might have been seriously frightened.

Secondary Frustrated Venting

Somedays I wonder if some people -- learned people -- question how we know what we know. Isn't that sort of an underlying question in the pursuit of knowledge? It certainly is in studying history, since we historians are trying to discern and recreate a past time and what people have thought and written about it since.

Yet, I often come across things in the secondary literature that get repeated and repeated, and the only source cited is an earlier historian's work and I really want to know what the primary source is and I just keep going backwards and just can't seem to find a damn document. In fact, I might find a secondary source that says there is little documentation; but, nonetheless, subsequent historians not only continue to repeat the information but actually add to it, with no other sources. No one else seems to call them on it. In fact, they are often praised. What is going on here?

I'm reading this book, you see. This book is by a historian of some prestige. Dear god this book is dreadful. Shoddy interpretation, conjecture stated as fact, and extremely shallow research. Seriously, if there were a bibliography, it would probably be about two pages long. Whole chunks of chapters are paraphrasing of other works and have "ibid" as the citation. One of the main sources is the author's previous book, which is cited with alarming frequency. I mean, I get that the author should be able to cite previous work, but it isn't as if that is the only source on the subject. I have not yet come across a single recognition that a book on the EXACT same subject by another, more experienced historian has been published in the past decade. So exact, in fact, that this author has a chapter title that is the same name as the prior work.

Worst of all, however, is that this author makes at least one claim that is baldly false. The first time this claim was made, I looked at the notes. I know all the sources. None of them say that. the second time the author makes this claim, I looked again. The author cited one source. I do not know that source (yet!), but the author had written, just a few notes earlier, that this source is dubious and s/he never uses it unless there are other, corroborating sources. Yet, this is the only source listed for this alleged fact.

As I bitched about this to a friend, the friend asked, "who on earth blurbed it?" I looked at the back cover. All of the blurbs are naturally laudatory, and they are all by incredibly respected historians, one of whom knows this subject like the back of his hand. How could they agree to say such things about this? How could the editors let something like this pass? Will other historians now repeat the false information and cite this work without question, then maybe add to it? Is there some echo chamber in that part of the world in which everyone praises everyone else so that everyone else will praise everyone and no one says, "hey, maybe you should dig a little more into this?" No one says, "you might want to bolster that argument there with a few more sources?" No one says, "you ought to address these historian's work on the subject because people will wonder why you didn't engage with them." Maybe they do say these things and the author just ignores them, and they have to support their buddies. Maybe I'm just naive and don't know what game is being played here -- or won't admit that I do.

I don't name this historian for a couple of reason, the official one being that he isn't the first that I've come across with a research trail that is difficult to follow or even flat-out questionable. While reading another historian's work, I came across a source that, as far as I can determine, does not exist. This would be an AWESOME source, too, if it did exist. Yet, I cannot find the full citation in the book, nor can I find any further citations to the source, nor can I find anyone else who has heard of the source. This book is decades old, a classic, and yet no one seems to have noticed this.

Reading yet another historian's work, I would come across fascinating interpretations and, curious about the source, turned to the notes. The only source cited would be a letter. I had a copy of that letter and, let me tell you, it didn't say all that this historian was saying it did. Did an editor cut out the other sources as superfluous? Or was the author certain that this source was enough?

This same historian also made a claim that was sensationalist and meant to explain why his beloved subject would marry someone seemingly so ill-suited to him. The fact that the documentation did not support a premarital pregnancy and, actually, refuted it (as did biology), the historian explained away by saying that the record was probably incorrect. Now, I find another reputable source repeating this and citing this historian.

Of course, I'm venting here. Still, I find that I mistrust each of these sources more and more as I read them, and read that they are relying on each other and even praising each other. Can a historian have excellent interpretation if their research is weak? Can that interpretation be reliable if the research is weak? Have other historians found this same situation? Am I being ungenerous in my vents? Am I building up bad karma?

Furthermore, I must engage with all of these guys in my work (who am I kidding in trying to obscure the gender ? This is a total sausage-fest of a roster here), and they will probably be the ones asked to review it. I feel like I'm entering into a big league boy's club in which I don't know the rules; or, I won't admit that I know the rules because they seem a bit like the Emperor's New Clothes and that game makes me feel a little squirmy. Also, I don't want people -- especially my friends or my editor -- telling me that my work is good when, in fact, it stinks.

In any case, a friend told me that this is how my work will be important: it will professionally address some of these problems and correct them. I don't even have to be an arrogant bitch about it. He's right. That's also what the other blog is for. This blog is for the frustrated venting.

Will Spook for Food

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!
It's the Blair Witch!

Seriously, I have no idea what this is doing here, on the side of the road, in front of an abandoned gas station. Perhaps it is the remnant of some Halloween or autumn attraction? Whatever it is, there it is. The Blair Witch has taken to panhandling in these hard economic times.

Wintry Scenes

I may dread the winter, stretching out gloomily to April, but I would not want to live without it. I have. Southeast Texas, where I grew up – and New Orleans before that – exists in a state of perpetual summer with maybe a week of something akin to winter. That week isn’t even seven days, or 24 hours of a day, in a row. Such constancy did not work well for me. Something in me needs the change of season. While I need those humid, unbearably hot days of summer (as long as I have the option of a.c., of course, since I am a weather wimp), I also need the changing leaves and cooler days of autumn, I need the soft crescendo of colors in the spring, and I do need cold and snow in the winter.

Scenes such as this offer a sense of peace and quiet that no other season can:




Sometimes, deer flock through.

Despite appearances, these are not black and white photos.

My Very Own Cake Wreck!

One way to attack the winter gloom is to celebrate in one way or another every freakin' holiday that appears on your Hallmark calendar. This, fortunately, also expands the sugary goodness of the Candy Season cycle.

The first holiday after the New Year is Epiphany, the day that the Three Wise Men showed up to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Little Baby Jesus (or something like that). When I was a little girl in New Orleans (and the only non-Catholic on my block, or in my public school, or pretty much in the world, as far as I knew at the age of six), I didn't know exactly what Epiphany was, but I did know that it hailed the opening of King Cake Season!

King Cakes, for the uninitiated, are essentially a yeasty sweet roll in the shape of a ring with a little plastic baby hidden somewhere inside. The person who gets the baby in their piece of cake is the King and must buy the next cake. At least, that's how my grandmother explained it to me. At six, I just wanted the toy surprise.

King Cakes also began Mardi Gras season, if I remember correctly. My grandpa was in a Krewe (and I don't want to examine the implications of that too deeply), so I was aware of the balls that went on through January. Then, the parades began sometime after the next High Holy Day of the Candy Season, Valentine's Day. One route went right in front of my grandparents' house, so we were always finding beads and doubloons throughout the day; and, of course, all of the girls at school showed up to class decked out in the height of plastic jewels.

After Mardi Gras, Lent set in, a period of fasting and giving up of good things lasting forty days and ending with that orgy of chocolate, the highest of High Holy Days in the Candy Season, Easter. Who cares if bunnies had nothing to do with the suffering and sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ? There were pink frilly dresses to wear, and plush rabbits to cuddle, and -- mostly -- lots and lots and lots of CANDY!

Somewhere in there, too, St. Patrick's Day fell, which also involved a parade. I also associate it with a particular shamrock-shaped cake that my grandmother's students had made for her (or was it faculty or staff? She was a principal at a high school -- of the world, actually, if you asked her -- and their mascot was something or another Irish). I remember in particular that the stem was made of Twinkies. We ate a lot of different kinds of crap, but my mom had some sort of prejudice against Twinkies and other snack cakes. To her credit, she has overcome that prejudice in the intervening decades; but, at the time, that green frosted Twinkie was a rare treat.

One year, my grandmother overcame her own prejudice against the Italians, and took us to some St. Joseph's altars. St. Joseph's Day fell sometime around St. Patrick's Day, and, really, St. Patrick's Day parades were often Irish-Italian parades. People of Italian descent would put up these amazing altars, filling entire garages, covered with all sorts of baked goods. They may have had other things on the altars, but I seldom saw past the baked goods. Then, the families would serve you some of the baked goods, and -- boy! -- were they tasty!

In the midst of all of this, you can throw in Valentine's Day, with it's cornucopia of chocolate and explosion of red and noxious shades of pink; Groundhog Day, which was the day that a couple I once knew finally consented to remove their Christmas tree in order to milk the color and lights through the dark days of January; President's Day, which I associate with a cherry-topped cheesecake that my mother would make because, you know, Ole George chopped down that cherry tree; and MLK Day, which is usually the last day of liberation before the semester begins.

Notice how sugary things are always involved in these celebrations? Maybe I need lunch.

Anyway, in other words, if you are desperate, you can recognize these holidays in one way or another in order to hold off the Seasonal Affective Disorder that scoffs at your antidepressants and give the finger to your full-spectrum lightbulb.

Thus, in honor of Epiphany (although about three days late), to hold off the sadness of dismantling the Christmas tree and my imminent return home, and because the Gentleman Caller had never heard of one, I improvised a King Cake out of Pillsbury Grands Cinnamon Rolls:
TA-DA!

Winter of Our Discontent

This is the dangerous time of year. The end of the holiday, the greyness that turns the world into a black and white photo, the dirty muck of the leftover snow on the side of the road, and the months stretching ahead before any relief. It taxes the anti-depressants to their very limit, let me tell you!

The burnout is particularly acute this year, or at least at this moment. Once the grades had been submitted and I learned to let the out-of-office autoreply take care of the protestations (two of which were downright rude and demanding), I began to feel much better and put all of that out of my mind for a week or two. I could breath easily, I could read, I could relax. Now comes the dread of the next semester, the feeling of suffocation and of fruitful time slipping away.

In fact, dread characterizes this time of year. This is a dreadful time of year. I dread the strain put on my antidepressants and I dread the coming semester.

In the past, I've found a good tactic for dealing with the dreadful season has been to do something -- anything -- that takes my mind off of the dread and that suppresses or counteracts the burnout. One year, a decade ago, I became involved in a book group, which led to involvement in a feminist group. Another year, I decided to focus on the quiet of my somewhat less than desirable geographic location (then I spent about two months being sick). Yet another year, I tried out for plays and received good parts. Then, of course, there was the year I took an acting class on Saturday mornings, which I followed with a day at the museums. Last year, I finished a book proposal and a draft of an article. The book proposal ultimately yielded a contract. The draft morphed into another draft that has now reached the revise and resubmit stage.

This year, what shall I do? I have so much that the dread has almost transformed into a sense of panic. Revise and resubmit, although having no deadline, beckons from one side. A book review calls for attention from another. Yet another two books are sit in the mailroom back at my apartment. Then, all of the funding opportunities rush at me in rapid succession from now until February, when I am also giving a paper that will essentially be an outline of 1 1/2 to 2 chapters. I can actually be a grown-up historian this semester!

My time, then, must be viciously guarded -- a vow I make every single semester and violate by the 6th week. That cannot happen this time. That, perhaps, should be my new thing to do in this dreadful season: viciously guard my time and, in the process, also follow Comrade Physioprof's suggestion and do the doctorly thing of viciously guarding my own psyche from the problems and pecking of the students.

The first step in doing will be to stop thinking of my research and writing as moonlighting. In a way, they are, since they are not part of my job description; but thinking that way means that I've rather given up the fight, that I sell myself short already. None of that!

Now, off to get busy and fight off the dread!

A Tentative Idea

I'm toying with the idea of starting another blog under the name of the person behind Clio Bluestocking in order to write more about my research. Clio Bluestocking Tales has been a personal blog, without much division between personal and professional, but always a personal reaction to the professional. Recently, however, I started thinking a bit about ways to use this medium in which I have played with for -- jeez! How long has it been? -- four years and put it to a more concerted professional use.

This line of thought began with a book that I'm reviewing. It's certainly a fresh look on the subject, but the subject is also fresh to the author. In other words, the subject of the book is not in the author's usual area of specialty, and that shows a bit in the lack of historiographical grounding. The book was published through a respectable trade press, and trade presses tend to move the bulk of the historiography to the footnotes if not out of the book altogether. I find that distressing in general because, as happens in popular history books, ideas that came from other historians can easily be passed off at the author's ideas and the author may not at all have intended that.

I think, in particular, of a particular author who, in his text, seemed entirely surprised that the Almighty Founders actually discussed and included protections for slavery in the Constitution. Now, that could easily have been a pose for the audience, but the lack of historiographical footnotes seemed to suggest that said author had no idea that other historians had also discovered this fact long before even his grandfather had been born. If said author was aware of other historians on the subject, you would think that he would want his audience to know about this, as well. He may well have been wholly ignorant; or, he may not be ignorant, but his publisher thought that such a discussion in the text or the footnotes was superfluous or boring or unnecessary for the lay reader. I'm sure we all know of similar cases.

I also think of a historian, well-respected and aware of the historiographical background of his subject, who wrote lovely historiographical footnotes. His publisher, however, removed them. In his case, the historiography was implied in his text because he is a much better historian than the one described above (being, in fact, a historian). Nonetheless, he was so proud of those notes and wished his audience could have read them. We have all probably been in similar circumstances.

I, in fact, was in similar circumstances with the Tourist Book. The nature of the publishing venture, the scope of the project, and the word count for the book precluded the use of any citations. This became a problem when a rival historian on the subject (or, actually, just a small part of the subject) challenged both my interpretations and my facts. "This is just wrong," he said. Well, no, it was not. Gentrification was, as stated in documents, a response to fears connected with urbanization; and, a war against the Native people of the area has been interpreted by historians as genocide, based on documents stating the goals of the war. He could have looked all of this up himself if I could have had footnotes. Instead, he's now going around telling people that my book has "mistakes."

Of course, he says that about all books written about the area and subject that are not written by him or someone he has anointed. He thinks of the history as his territory, a tree on which he has peed.

I digress into bitchiness there. Clio would continue to engage in the bitchiness. The person behind Clio would edit that out.

Meanwhile, at the time, I thought that I would like to have a place where I could publish such things that the publishers would not include, or that I might not include because they were essentially footnotes to footnotes. You know, the note that you took, the little story that you came across, the interesting concept that you can't include in the larger project and don't know if you will ever or could ever turn into something else? Trivia, even; and pictures that you have taken that would not really fit in with the book. I feel the same about the current project, some of which has shown up here.

Then, as I shifted the time that I spent on the Reverb writing to time spent on hashing out ideas on the project -- that is, the project journal or what I call "project free writing" -- I began to realize that I would like to have the possibility to engage in a conversation about some aspects of the project, and that I would like those conversations to be in my historian's persona. This became especially acute in the past few days when I've come across a fascinating angle about the afterlife of the two wives. Not ghosties, mind you, but what I suppose would now be called the memory of the two women as they relate to the memory of their husband. I know a particular major historian has that memory angle covered in the biography that he is writing; but this is a particular gendered angle.

Also, I have received e-mails about my subject directed to this Clio email; but I'm so torn about responding to some of them because of this Clio/person behind Clio split in my persona and my ambivalence about the depth of that division. In regard to the research project, I could end the ambivalence and be less hesitant about corresponding because I would know better what role I would be playing. That sounds weird, I know, and I'll try to explain it more another time; but right now, this is how it works in my head and I have to go with it. I never, when I started the blog, thought that I would be in a position to deal with these sorts of persona questions because I never thought that I would be actually writing this book, much less writing it under contract with a Big Deal Press in their trade division.

In any case, for interested parties, I'll let you know what I decide. I won't link, in order to maintain at least some cyber division in the two persona for my own comfort (although I am just fooling myself); but you will know the search string to find it.

CT Scan and a Bad IV; or, What I Did on My X-mas Vacation!

The demons started creeping about my skull on Monday night. I felt them there, worming their way under the bone, tearing little holes in the membrane around my brain. "Get the meds," I told myself. "This is only going to get worse." My aunt was asleep on the trundle, however; and the Sudafed lay crammed in a bottle with the Ibuprofen somewhere in the bowels of my purse, which itself had tumbled away to some dark corner of the room. Since I did not want to wake my aunt, and since this was my parents' house, the place where roaches will join you in the shower so who knows what you might find if you go groping about the floor in the middle of the night, I decided to hold off until morning.

Over the next several hours, every anxiety and fury of the past month decided to visit my dreams. Students crowded into my face, their body odor suffocating me, their teeth bared as they screamed at me for not grading their assignments because the assignments had been submitted to the wrong places at the wrong times and well past the due date, or for grading them too hard and causing them to lose their financial aid and also to fail their other classes that they neglected to devote time to mine, or insisting to me that their plagiarism was not plagiarism since history is all facts and there is no other way to state facts than the way the author of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Eric Foner stated them.* Dear god, the pain!

Dear! God! The pain!

I awoke knowing that the day would not go well. My brain was being crucified. One massive, fiery spike of pain drove straight down through the top of my head, and the other through my eye socket, taking part of my forehead and cheekbone with it. I tried to isolate the pain to these two gigantic spikes and imagine pushing them out of my head, like I used to do when I was in high school and college. This technique no longer works. In fact, this technique only caused the searing snakes of pain to awaken, tighten their coils about my jaw and neck as they slithered down my back, rattling sparks of pain from my temple to cleft.

The sounds of my aunt making coffee in the kitchen gave me hope. Caffeine could save me. Maybe? With some help. I flailed about the room, finding the Sudafed finding the ibuprofen, thinking that I might also find Jesus if he would just make the goddamn pain fucking stop right now!

"Get on with the day," I told myself. "Drink coffee, have a conversation, take a shower, go to the children's museum with the nephews. This will all go away before you know it."

"Are you fucking out of your pain-addled mind!" the other side of my head said. "This one is worse than the Red Wine Brain Tumor of 2008. Hell, this one is damn well nearing the Quit Paxil Cold Turkey and Began To Think Trepanation Was A Good Idea attack of 1997. Sudafed and coffee will not touch it. This headache will kick Sudafed and coffee's collective ass."

While being out of my mind seemed a good place to go at that point, I simply reassured the other side of my brain that the current situation was in no way comparable to 2008 or 1997 if for no other reason than that I had not thrown up. Doctors always ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I never consider anything above a five unless I'm throwing up. So, I downed the Sudafed with the coffee and tried to smile pleasantly over breakfast.

If you ever have occasion to be in my situation of Tuesday morning, do not panic when you puke red. It's not blood. It's just the dye from the pills.

Yes, this migraine not only kicked Sudafed and coffee's collective ass, it bounced them right out the front door. Then it decided to bounce out whatever else was left of the previous night's dinner, followed by any spare acid that didn't wash out the first two times, followed by dry air that sounded a bit like it was trying to rip my stomach out and pitch it, too. It let me go to bed for a few hours, then woke me up to whup a little more ass, except without the Sudafed, coffee, or previous night's dinner. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised to see my lower intestine, or at least a lung, come up.

As I stood there in the bathroom, bracing myself on the toilet roll dispenser and tank (I wasn't going to touch the floor or even the seat itself -- two six-year old boys with bad aim had been in the house for a week, after all), I couldn't stop myself from thinking, "dammit! I really should have pigged out last night. What's the good of throwing your guts up if it can't have a little purge involved?" Then, the thought of eating sent my midsection into convulsions again, and I cheered myself with the thought that at least my abs were getting a good, solid workout.

The day progressed. My nephews exerted a monumental effort to maintain a decibel level that, while not quite in the "quiet" range, certainly demonstrated an amount of self-control unknown in most small children. At one point, they drifted back to my part of the house in order to refresh the toy supply in the living room. Seeing me prostrate with pain in the next room, they tiptoed in and whispered, "we're sorry you're sick, Aunt Clio."

Awwwwww....

I can't compete with Santa or Mom and Dad or Grandmas and Grandpas in the present department with the boys, so I don't even try. Instead, I get them t-shirts and souvenirs and candy and dumb little $2 toys randomly hanging from the shelves in grocery stores. It gives them a few days of joy and excitement. If I'm lucky, it also gives me a little payback with their dads -- my brothers. This time, I brought them these little gadgets that you can stick in your mouth, then flick a tiny button with your tongue and little lights will flash like a police car in between your teeth. Guess what they were wearing when they came in to offer their well wishes to Aunt Clio?

Later, the younger one, Boudreaux, got mad at his uncle, who -- if you want to make a chart -- is my brother and the father of the older nephew, the Spider. Boudreux sulked in the room next to my Chamber o'Pain. I could hear little sniffs and pouts coming through the wall. Then, I heard his uncle, my brother, father of the older nephew: "Hey, you little asshole."

"You're an asshole," said Boudreaux.

"No, you're the asshole," said his uncle.

"No, you're the asshole," said Boudreaux.

"Well, fuck you," said his uncle.

"Fuck you, you fucking fuck," said Boudreaux. I think I heard his voice catch.

"No, fuck you," said his uncle. "If you don't straighten up, I'm gonna kick you in the nuts."

"I'm going to kick you in the nuts," said Boudreaux. He paused to stop himself from giggling. "I'm going to kick you in the nuts so hard that they will go up on your chest and then you'll have boobies."

"Good one, little man," said his uncle. "Put it here!" I heard the smack of a high five.

The cuss fest proceeded in that manner for about fifteen minutes, which was, in fact, long enough to defuse the tantrum. Sadly, it was not long enough to defuse the migraine. Although, I am ashamed to say, a six-year old painting portraits in profanity provided an amusing distraction from the searing pain that shortly sent me back to my post in the bathroom.

Other than those two incidents, the rest of the evening and night passed pretty much as the day had until I stumbled into the kitchen in the morning, threw myself at my father's feet, and begged to be taken to a doctor. Sure, I knew that needles would more than likely be involved in one way or another; but I didn't care. I wanted drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. "Stick the goddamn IV in my head," I would say to the doctor, whom I envisioned as looking a bit like House and who would, therefore, have some bootlegged Vicodin on hand. "Give me a shot in the eye! Just make the bad pain stop!"

If the doctor were Gregory House, he probably would have hooked up an IV to my eye. Meanwhile, back in reality, my dad's doctor couldn't fit me in until 3 pm, so we took a little trip to the ER. I wasn't sure that I was going to make the 10 minute car trip without vomiting my pyloric valve or gall bladder or something of that sort, so I kept my hand on the button to roll down the window. "Drugs," I moaned, like a mantra. "Give me drugs."

First, before they can give you drugs, they make you fill out forms. My dad had to do the writing for me because the glare of the white paper sent a searing hacksaw of pain down the center of my skull. Fortunately, my dad knew some of the vital information like my name and birth date. I could just hand him cards and bottles for things like my address, insurance information and prescriptions. I could have even given him a calendar for the date of my last menstrual cycle. Fortunately for us both, this set of forms did not ask for that particular detail. I had to hand him cards rather than tell him this information because the migraine stood like a big ugly spiky wall between the box in my head where that information was stored and my ability to communicate anything other than "Owwwwwwww!" or "Shoot me!" or "Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs."

Once the whole form situation passed, they took me into the back and gave me some sort of minty wafer to stop the nausea. The nausea, aside from its fact, was irrelevant to my possible condition. "Puking all night?" they seemed to say. "Duly noted. Now it may end." The pain, on the other hand, they wanted around until a doctor could examine it. Fortunately, the lack of nausea seemed to take the pain down from five gigazillion to a mere 1 gazillion on a scale from 1 to 10 "with 10 being the worst pain you've ever had."

Incidentally, I was in the ER from around 10 am until 3 pm. I saw a nurse practitioner, three nurses of another variety, a radiologist of some sort, and a guy from the business department who took my co-payment. Not once did I see a doctor. Just like on House.

Thoughts of House actually did amuse me for the long stretches of time that they left me alone in dark rooms. House and er. House thoughts amused me more because I relish fantasies of being as much of a dick as he is and not giving one good goddamn about what other people think. er thoughts just annoyed me, and I wondered if any of the doctors or nurses would chase me out into the pouring rain if I just hopped up and walked out of my particular emergency room. That was always happening on er. Then, I remembered the story line about Mark Greene getting a brain tumor.

At which point, the nurse returned to take me for a CT scan. This, I must say, thrilled me to no end. Understand, I have not had a massive migraine for years, with the exception of the Red Wine Tumor of 2008 (which ensured that I will never ever touch red wine again). There was a time, however, when I had them almost twice a month, each lasting at least four days. For nearly a year, not one doctor that I saw would call what I was having a migraine. One old creaker even told me that I wasn't really having headaches and that, because I was on Prozac, I needed to quit expecting doctors to solve all of my problems with pills. That was about 1996.

Finally, somewhere around 1998, a doctor took one look at me curled up on the cool cool tiles of his darkened examination room floor and said, "oh, yeah, that's a migraine." Still, no one would do much beyond prescribe this med or that, even the neurologist who I saw for awhile in about 2002 and who prescribed me medicine for epilepsy. I always wondered why they didn't do some sort of head scan, given the frequency and intensity of the headaches. So, on Wednesday, the fact that not only did none of the nurses question my headache, but they all automatically turned the lights off in whatever room they placed me, and then someone said, "let's do a CT scan," well, that was just about the highlight of my headache history (except for realizing that I hadn't had one in years). I was so happy that I almost asked them to scan my right hip, which has been aching a bit, and then my left knee, which I injured skydiving in 1993, and then maybe even my heart to see if it grew three sizes that day, just for good measure. Hell, as long as we are checking out aches and pains to rule out worst-case-scenarios, let's go for it!

Later, after the scan -- which, incidentally, did not involve shoving me into a gigantic tube and did not reveal a sinus infection or brain tumor -- they put me in another darkened room. This one with a bed. They forgot to leave the remote control for the t.v. Back in the migraine plagues, I used to cope by drugging myself with whatever over-the-counter nighttime formula headache medicine I had, then shutting myself in a pitch dark room, putting on sun glasses, turning on the t.v. with the volume down just low enough to distract me, and waiting until I passed out so I would no longer have to be present for the pain. When I told the nurses that this method was how I usually treated headaches, I'm not certain that they believed me. I kept feeling like I gave the wrong answer to that question, and they asked it about ten times that day.

The worst part about waiting for an hour or eight days or however long it was until the nurse returned with the treatment, was knowing that the next step most certainly would involve needles. "Let's just get this shit over with," I kept thinking. "Stick the goddamn needle in. I can live through that pain, and then this pain will go away." I secretly hoped for an IV rather than a shot. I know, that seems counter intuitive given my distress at the mere thought of sharp objects that don't leave behind something pretty; but I felt that I had made my peace with the IV after my bladder spelunking procedure of last year. The nurse then had been so kind to show me that the needle was a mere wire, that the wire could be bent in half and wouldn't break, and that the wire only punctured the skin in order to push in a soft and tiny plastic tube. Anxiety abated. That, and they pumped in some nice muscle relaxers or something equally groovy at the time, too.

Eventually, they let my dad in. He's a big wimp about needles, too, so he sympathized. We had a nice little chat, completely devoid of all issues and reminding me of the things that are generous and good about him. He also went on recon for the remote, to no avail, and then looked up migraines on his iPhone. Nothing new has filtered down through the intertubes about them since I last checked.

A year, maybe two, later, the nurse reappeared. She had a plastic basket bristling with needles. "Aw, I was hoping for an IV," I said.

"The meds come in an IV," she replied. I'm not sure where they put the bag, or even if they really did have a bag, since I didn't see that part of the contraption; but I'll trust that this wasn't some sort of placebo ruse to fake me out of the headache. Of course, once she came in, I had to start getting myself mentally prepared for the puncture, so I didn't look too carefully in her direction.

As she started opening packages and setting out objects and binding up my arm to pop up a vein, I started my yoga breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, focus on filling your lungs. Exhale, blow out all the tension. Inhale, it's only a tiny pinch. Exhale, it's over in a second. Inhale, I have good veins. Exhale, so why is this taking so long? Inhale, this is much more painful than before. Exhale, and the pain is now going up my arm. Inhale, I'm not sure I can handle the squickiness of this any longer. Exhale, "something is wrong."

The nurse had seen my feet squiggling, despite my yoga breathing, and stopped sticking. "Yeah," she said, "there's a nerve that runs right up next to that vein. Yours aren't showing up very well. I'm going to have to try somewhere else. How are the veins in your hands?"

I thought the veins in my arms were good, so obviously I'm not the best judge. I'm also not as good at my yoga breathing as I thought, either. I nearly passed out, and I was laying down. The hell of it was, when I realized that she was going to have to stick me again, I had a hard time keeping myself under control and hoped that I would faint dead away like a proper Victorian heroine. She could just hook me up while I was out. Sadly, they don't let you do that.

So, I lay there, flat on my back, breathing deeply in and out, and trying desperately to unclench, at the very least, my arm. I don't know what she was doing, but that stick was not a mere pinch then sweet relief. That stick was a mere pinch, followed by another mere pinch, followed by a squeeze or two, followed by that sensation that doesn't quite qualify as pain, but is damn close and certainly makes you squirm. That pinch and squirmy feeling stayed. The squirmy feeling still hasn't left.**

Then my jaws started chattering. I couldn't stop them. They clacked like maracas in my head. I tried holding them in place with my free hand. I tried massaging my jaw. I tried my clearly inadequate yoga breathing. Nothing. My feet began to jiggle, too. I imagined myself as some clattering marionette of a skeleton shot through with electricity, trembling about the bed. All the while, I held my right arm ever more rigid because the squicky, squirmy, pinchy feeling emanating from my hand blew away all of my knowledge of actual IVs and replaced them with my old visions of enormous needles sticking through the walls of my veins and breaking off in my arm. I must hold very very still. Of course, my feet and my jaws rattled even more furiously.

Notice how I haven't mentioned the pain in my head in a few paragraphs. The snake still coiled and rattled. The demons still hammered at the spikes; but now I was distracted by the very uncomfortable place my body had become to inhabit. The IV had taken my attention away from the headache, but the headache could take my attention away from the IV. The TV could have provided a nice distraction from both, but the remote was gone. So, there I lay, flat on my back, with some weird form of self-induced ADD bouncing me back and forth from one unpleasantness to another.

Somewhere in all of the jiggling and chattering and squirming, I began to notice something fading. The fade was slow, like the twilight, when you don't really know when you pass from one state to another, and you aren't quite certain that you trust the transition anyway. I felt the migraine falling back, and I couldn't quite acknowledge its drift because the second that I noticed, it advanced again. Still, I felt it on the periphery, receding.

As I turned my head slightly to the left, in the direction of the pain, to observe the retreat without being seen, I saw my father patiently sitting in the chair much too small for his girth, reading a bit more about migraines on his iPhone. I saw my father and I saw a shadow dissolve and float down to the floor like ashes. I blinked to right my vision. Still, slightly, slowly, not quite certainly, the dissolve continued.

"What have I been so angry about?" I wondered.

"It's the drugs," the other side of my head told me. "Also, you KNOW you have reason to be angry."

"Yeah," I told myself. "That's true. Still, isn't that anger just the echo of an anger, not the real thing anymore? The real anger isn't relevant now, is it?"

"Well, I'll let the drugs talk if that's what they are saying," the other side of my head said.

The anger, it's really just a delayed sense of rebellion, of running away or shoving off from the first part of life. The anger also keeps you connected to it, and the anger keeps you running further and further if you really must, to keep yourself safe, to keep you aware of the bad ideas with which you were raised, to keep you trying to create a better set of ideas. At some point, however, you've actually made yourself safe, no longer have to constantly guard against the bad ideas because you inhabit a better set of ideas. You don't have to be angry. You don't have to run. You don't have to take certain things personally because they can no longer hurt you (or you know you can survive the hurt), or limit you, or threaten you. They aren't about you any longer.

I saw my dad, and all of the things that I have written about here, all of the anger from them, all of the anger that pushed me away from there, that kept me from going back there, that kept me fumbling along whatever winding road that has become my life and my life that is making more satisfied as I bumble forward -- all of that anger had begun to dissolve right before my drug and pain-addled eyes. The entire time that I was in Texas, I did not become angry once about anything. I did not pass judgement on other people's life choices. I did not pass judgement on other people's lives. I did not puff myself up to feel some sense of value in myself. I felt value in myself as myself and not in resistance to anything else; and, as part of the same sense of separateness, I saw value in my parents and my brothers as themselves and not as any connection to myself. I felt liberated and I felt an odd, less-diluted sense of love and well-being.

By the time the nurses returned to check on me, the headache could no longer distract me from the squirmy, pinchy IV, and I felt safe enough to tell them they could unhook me and not worry too much about the demons and the snake returning with reinforcements. They unhooked me -- and goddamn that tape holding in the IV was tight! -- and sent me on my way with prescriptions for some sort of anti-nausea medication and painkillers. Vicodin. Just like on House!

Because the migraine was so bad, I've kept a lookout for them since. I don't look directly toward the point of their retreat, for fear that will only encourage them to return. Occasionally I feel little pangs, like echoes of a migraine, or aftershocks. Simply writing about them here has caused me to reach for the Pseudophed a few times. In other words, I don't entirely trust that it has gone.

Similarly, I don't entirely trust this new feeling in regard to my family and their related issues. It feels so tentative. After all, drugs were involved. I can't exactly call it a peace or forgiveness or anything redemptive like that; but peace and forgiveness are within the realm of possibility. In fact, any kind of possibility seems possible at this particular moment. I want to see where that road might go.

--------------
*All real conversations that I have had in the past month.

**Seriously, is it possible for your veins to get bruised? I think all of the clenching did some damage. The vein from the puncture up past my wrist has become slightly rigid. In my mind, of course, part of the tube was left in my arm, and the tube is not a narrow, flexible thread, but a plastic straw like the kind you get in your Coke at McDonald's. Every hour or so, I shudder from the sensation. If I become to aware of the ache in my arm, my jaws start to chatter. The squick factor has also left me with a case of insomnia (note the hour of this post).