Month: March 2008

Before I settled down to write this morning, I meandered among my bookmarks and links on a path that eventually led here, to the local history page of the Curtis Memorial Library of Brunswick, Maine. The links include an account of the now-defunct Merrymeeting [Amusement] Park and the Underground Railroad in Brunswick and Topsham. Curious as I am about Brunswick history, I doubt I’ll have the stamina to work through the 959 pages of the History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell.
 
(The History of the Library was written by Jim and Alan’s grandmother, Louise Helmreich!)
 
And, a fascinating compilation of seminar papers from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies “Travel and Religion in Antiquity” seminar.

† Microsoft Windows users who enjoy digital music and computer games will likely be intrigued by AudioSurf. I might even look into running it under Wine, but I can’t even think about that till after Easter.

† Steve Moramarco of the Abe Lincoln Story appears in a short film about a pancake lover; I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll mosey over to check it out on the strength of my enthusiasm for The Kings of the Soul Punk Swing.

† A classless society (not in that way) — yes!
 
† John Gray’s response to the anti-“religion” meme
 
† Give Jeff his Rhetoric (for a good reason)! (And check out his Sesame Street clip about Visual Learning.)
 
† Jeneane is safe.

This afternoon I’ll point to River Seven Press’s digital images of John Baskerville’s 1761 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, printed by Cambridge University Press. This on the same day that I happened on a facsimile edition of J. C. LeBlon’s L’Art d’Imprimer des tableaux that I resisted buying — not being in a possession-acquisition mode just at the moment.
 
On another note, please bear with me if I post somewhat irregularly for a while, since one of the most prominent topics in my life right now is turning in a direction most prudently conducted offline. My mother told me that if I can’t say something nice about someone, not to say anything at all; my lawyer says, “Don’t even say anything nice.”

Just not feeling great.

The Perseus Project, which Jorn Barger himself has excoriated for its frustrating user interface (“created by academics who seem incapable of communicating simply and directly,” “almost entirely unreadable: very short pages, clumsy navigation, opaque urls, and a shrunken fontsize”), offers its software and database for download under open-source and Creative-Commons licenses — great!
 
But the process for installation is arcane enough that I’m not even inclined to begin to try it. I downloaded the packages, but I’ll archive them somewhere against the chance that I get a few weeks free to learn enough to run the installation process they describe, or the possibility that someone else will explain the process more lucidly, or perhaps even build an installer.

Three thematically-related links have crossed the threshold of my attention recently, and have resonated particularly powerfully with me given my current academic liminality.
 
First, Inside Higher Education notes that this year, the number of full-time administrators has for the first time exceeded the number of full-time faculty employed in higher education. Follow-up data on the proportion of full-time to part-time faculty and on the proportion of a faculty member’s time spent on institutional administration would (I suspect) underline the conclusion that the contemporary educational economy has shifted, and continues to shift, away from teaching and learning and toward survival-mode management skills (meet, obfuscate, produce data that affirm one’s productivity, and so on).
 
Second, Marc Bousquet over at How The University Works notes that the management rhetoric of “quality” amounts, in essence, to “more bricks, less straw.” As Chris pointed out to me in directing me to the site, the powerful exposition is as nothing compared to the punch line. Several institutions have considered appointing me their deans, in which processes I have always emphasized my commitment to situating the care and feeding, encouragement and promotion of the faculty at the center of a flourishing school; perhaps the contrast between my ardor for the faculty’s role in healthy educational life (on one hand) and Bousquet’s article (on the other) provides one clue about why schools have, in the end, chosen other candidates.
 
Third, Lee Wilson reports on a “future of academic publishing” round table he attended. In response, I’ll just observe that something is happening here, but I’m not sure they know what it is. Although the Disseminary project (for a variety of reasons) turned out not to have the catalytic effect I had hoped for, you can see scattered examples of the principles I articulated relative to the Disseminary at work in various settings (though not, at the moment, in way that draws them together in a coherent, complementary project).

Michael Budde called my attention to Inside Higher Education’s coverage of recent developments involving Episcopal seminaries.

I’ve gotten some challenging news over the past few weeks, so I cling to small pleasures where I can find them. This morning’s small pleasure actually solves, elegantly, a problem I’ve bemoaned here several times. (I appreciate your indulgence in tolerating my persistent concern over a design vexation.)
 
Cheap Impostor, my favorite among page-imposition programs, has at last released a version that resolves the two-up PDF problem for printed matter that doesn’t need imposition (re-ordering pages to accommodate folding pages into a booklet). From today on, I can use my half-page page size, print to PDF, and use Cheap Impostor to format the resulting file for consecutive-page two-up printing, without the excessive margins that Apple’s print routine adds. Moreover, Cheap Impostor includes controls for adjusting the text block’s position on the page and the relative size of the block. It’s ecstasy, of a print-geeky type.
 
Cheap Impostor is shareware, but I happily paid the registration fee for an earlier version and now even more emphatically endorse the latest iteration of this intensely useful application.

Does the Clinton campaign’s illogical propaganda bother anyone else? I keep hearing that Obama shouldn’t be nominated because he hasn’t won a primary in one of the big states (NY, TX, OH, CA). But in those states, Obama wasn’t running against John McCain — he was running against Hillary Clinton, and if he can draw the preponderance of Democratic primary delegates even without winning those states, I would think it makes him all the more strong a candidate in November, when his opponent won’t be a very-similar Democrat, but a very-different Republican.

Our neighborhood mechanic may have thought that he was in for a big payday when we had our Subaru overhauled in February, but since then we’ve been back four or five times to have the cooling system brought back to life. When I dropped it off this afternoon for the latest visit, the poor guy looked desperate; he may be wondering whether the big job in February was worth the enigmatic repeated problem that ensued.
 
They’re good people, and I admire their determination to get to the bottom of the mystery; I do feel sympathy, though, for the intractable puzzle that their goodwill and diligence have brought upon them.

We waited wa-a-a-a-ay too long for Bea to get her winter haircut; indeed, it doesn’t count as a winter cut at all, any more.
 

 
But she looks much more presentable, and probably a lot more comfortable, as well.
 

 
Pippa and I saw a gopher (or maybe a beaver, not sure) on our way to pick Bea up, which led us to speculate about what the groomers would have had to do to the matted, shaggy fluffball we left behind. To our gratified surprise, the groomer praised Bea for her good behavior, and displayed a dog who looked a lot less like an R.O.U.S. than we expected.

Typographica.org has announced its own list of twenty-four exemplary typefaces from last year. Open a link to the Type Directors Club selections in a new tab; compare and contrast. You have one hour; at the end of the hour, I will collect your essays, whether you are still writing or not.

Over the past couple of weeks a lot of people have asked me how Seabury’s recent announcements affect me and Margaret and Pippa. I’ve been corresponding with Seabury Headquarters, and this is where we come out.
 
Seabury will need to cut faculty. I’m a full professor who teaches an area that Seabury is confident they can cover by drawing on courses from other local institutions or adjuncts, if necessary. Nothing I teach was enumerated, for instance, as a course Seabury was committed to teaching next year. Now, Seabury would be obligated to see whether there is some other function I could serve in the institution — perhaps I could teach outside my main area, or serve as a registrar — but given what it would cost to employ me in those capacities, and given that other people are actually better at those functions (and enjoy them more), that doesn’t make sense. So although the formal decisions won’t be made for another month or so, I have communicated to the leaders and to my faculty colleagues that I expect them to terminate my contract, that that makes sense to me, and as of this week I am fully, officially, looking for another job. I will continue under contract to Seabury through June, but I do not expect to return there unless for a quick visit relative to disposing of our household furnishings (Margaret has stepped forward to tackle the gritty “this we keep, this we sell/give/dump” work, bless her kind heart). Seabury may call me up if I need to cast a formal vote on something, but I have asked not to be part of the deliberations that presently occupy the institution.
 
So I’m pretty much a free agent.
 
That’s difficult, because this is a miserable time of the academic year to be looking for work. I have applied for one position, but that won’t be decided for a couple of months. One-year appointments don’t make sense for me, because I will be covered by a severance package; as Margaret reminds me, I should just take the next year as an extension of my sabbatical. I hate not having a job, though; joblessness haunts me, so I’d rather find a place to latch onto. Of course, if someone wanted to offer me a job beginning the year after next, that would be another story.
 
We need to find a place where Margaret can pick up some teaching too, either full- or part-time. We prefer to live closer to the east coast than further, though we’re not in a position to rule out an attractive opportunity elsewhere. (If you hear of such an opening, feel free to nominate whichever of us it fits.)
 
We presently plan to live in or near Princeton next year, unless a permanent alternative comes into focus. It’s a good location we know well, and (most important) Pippa has grown strong connections to Trinity’s choir and to her music teachers here.
 
Seabury and I had persistent differences, but now is not the time to talk those out. Now, they need to chart a new future, and Margaret and I need to find jobs.

The sky is bleak grey, we’ve been keeping our spirits up for a few days in a row, and now today feels gloomy. Just so’s you know.

I’m not in a position to equip an office with typefaces at the moment — but if I were, I’d look very closely at Canada Type’s handsome revival of Ronaldson. For a modest $120 (Canadian, so USians will have to pay more, by a factor depending on the election campaign, Ben Bernanke’s ulcer, and the formation in which pigeons flock over Wall Street), a church or a school (for example) would have sturdy, readable serif face complete with small caps and an outlandish complement of ligatures. Ronaldson signals clearly that it’s not just another Times New Roman without looking archaic or noisy.
 
Plus, it’s a Scottish design. Now, what more could you ask?

I read Dave Pollard’s report of Meg Tilly’s dismaying experience at the Northern Voice blogging conference with tremendous interest and sympathy. Among the many important dimensions of the situation, two particular constellations of points stand out to me.
 
First, neither the presenter nor Dave Pollard had the vaguest idea that someone was actually being hurt. Dave mentions hearing Meg interject a protest, but he only just registered the sound; he didn’t (as he notes) hae time to follow through and identify what was happening. Thing One: Well-intentioned People cause others profound (“devastating”) pain without even noticing it. Nancy and Dave were not egregiously careless — they were going with the program, a program that commendably advocates getting away from mere cognitive-verbal engagement with information. I want to emphasize that this purpose resonates deeply with my hermeneutical interests, and I vigorously endorse Nancy’s interest in getting people out of passive attendance into active participation. It’s all good, as they say; except that this particular day, this particular well-intentioned exercise was not good at all for an articulate, thoughtful participant.
 
The point is that no matter how purely commendable your intentions, no matter how apparently innocent your program, no matter how brilliantly successful its effects in the previous ten situations you tried it out, a presenter (or a preacher or a teacher) always stands under the likelihood that something they say or do will injure somebody. There’s no way to immunize yourself from that possibiliity, and the reflex to blame the person who suffered pain only aggravates the offense. In this situation, Nancy showed laudable concern and humility and extended herself to apologize and make amends (well done, Nancy). Nonetheless, anyone who ventures to take up that sort of position of public leadership runs the risk of causing unanticipated (and entirely unforeseeable) injury. If you want to be sure that you don’t hurt anyone, sit back and stay quiet. If you care enough to speak up and lead, begin by considering the chance that you’ll hit someone at a very vulnerable point, and from the very start resolve not to shrug it off, not to blame her or him, but to take responsibility for the injury that you could have chosen to avoid (even though you had no reason to expect it).
 
On the second point, I’m going to be less complimentary to Nancy. The exercise she led (and countless others like it) looks to me to be extraordinarily extrovert-centric. I’m very skeptical about the ethics of dragooning people into participating in a public exercise, then displaying the results of their participation for the whole conference (and in this case, for the whole world) to see. I heartily sympathize with the value of getting an audience (or a class or a congregation) involved in what’s going on, and as I said before, I emphatically support the particular concern that impelled Nancy to assign the drawing exercise. At the same time, I’m introverted enough myself to wince in pain when I hear Meg’s story. As a presenter/preacher/teacher, I try to avoid anything that puts people in so exposed a situation; where circumstances warrant an exercise such as this one, I try to make the justification explicit (“This is practice for times that you’ll be doing this in public once you graduate”) and to emphasize the limited publicity of the setting (“We’re the only ones who will see it”). If something must be done out in the big, wild public, I emphasize caution, patience, and preparation. None of that precludes hurting somebody, but it helps build mutuality in expectations and the understanding of the exercise. Please, though, please please please, don’t assume that everyone is extroverted.
 
(P.S. I’d never read Meg Tilly’s blog before — didn’t even know she wrote one — but she’s a charming blogger, just the sort of online correspondent who gave blogging a good name. And I’m not saying that because I had a mini-crush on her after seeing her in The Big Chill. That was so long ago, and so mini.)