everything bad is good for you

Or so argues Steven Johnson in his newest book about media culture. He says we shouldn't discuss pop culture in terms of morality but rather in terms of cognition. And, his argument goes, today's media is actually making us smarter. IQs have been steadily increasing since WWII and according to Johnson media is the reason.

Media-junkie that I am, I want to accept his argument but I'm not entirely convinced. Perhaps I'm skeptical because Johnson spends so much time discussing video games. I'm not a gaming fan, and I find that while avid gamers are extremely skilled in whatever games they favor, I don't see how those skills apply elsewhere. Does a gamer's increased cognitive ability to make decisions in a gaming world apply to problem-solving in the real world? I don't think so. Even if a game requires a comlex, embedded problem-solving process, the process is still discreet with only a certain number of variables (and, if you can't figure it out on your own, you can buy a gaming guide to help you out). In real-world problem solving there are many variables and you can't always guarantee that those variables will remain the same. People who are good at video games aren't so immediately. They are because they move through the same levels (problems) over and over again. If I had the chance to revisit intellectual and emotional problems over and over again, I'd eventually get it right, but I don't think it would make me more prepared for the next cognitive puzzle.

Johnson also talks about how tv and movies (less so than tv) are becoming more cognitively challenging (no longer the chronological narrative, but a mix of narrative threads, multiple characters, unexpected structures). While I agree with his assessment that tv is changing in these ways, I don't know whether that cognitive shift means smarter people. Just like IQ measures a specific type of intelligence, any cognitive increase that we get from more-complex tv watching seems limited to a specific set of skills. If I am able to process a more complex narrative, does that mean I am able to process more complex ideas in all cases? Because Johnson doesn't consider applicability, I find myself skeptical. I think I am a more sophisticated tv-watcher than say my parents, but I don't really think that my tv-watching skills (if you can call it that) affect any other aspect of my life.

Even though I don't fully buy Johnson's argument, I'm glad he's making it as I always find arguments against tv, etc. to be sort of silly.

more thoughts on art

When I was an undergrad, I had this ambition to write an honors thesis about art and social responsibilty, but it never went anywhere beyond a lot of scribbled notes about Ayn Rand's antithetical view to my argument (I'm still not entirely sure why I was so hung up on Rand). Anyway, I've been thinking about the matter lately, not so much about art and social responsibilty, but about the relevance of art (as I mentioned in my previous cockroach post).

So, I was quite interested in a book review in the Guardian about John Carey's What Good are the Arts?
Carey, apparently, critiques elitist views of art (e.g. Clive Bell's comment that "All artists are aristocrats ... Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity?") and argues that the literature is a superior art form.

The comments about the snootniness of art have me thinking more about the recent trend to bring art to the underserved: Born into Brothels, Eve Ensler's work in women's prison, Mark Salzman's work with juvenile criminals. While the various artists are making a seemingly generous act, there is still an element of snootiness in what they're doing. Less so with Born into Brothels (can't remember the photographer's name) than with Ensler or Salzman. I'm not saying that none of them has good intentions, but the kids' photographs get shown to rich westerners (to raise money, of course, but I still sensed this assumption that these viewers will have more ability to understand what the kids are doing, to see the value of their art--and this is underscored by the parents' unwillingness to let their kids get more education, to spend time taking photographs); the prisoners' words get interpreted and performed by professional actresses, Salzman's book is as much about his own writing as it is the kids he works with. With Ensler and Salzman there is almost a sense of surprise about what they read ("the delinquents have souls!") And Salzman's writers don't work at all with craft (whereas he continually references his own efforts to craft Lying Awake); it's as if art for these writers should only be about expression, not art in the terms of careful craft. I hate to by a cynic, but it seems like there's an assumption that these writers won't be able to get writing in terms of "high art."

Ok, just some caffeine-induced rambling. I'm going to stop before my thoughts get totally convoluted.

Also interesting is a collection of artists' comments on art in anticipation of the publication of Carey's book.

Harry Potter and the Curse of Hype

I swore I wouldn't buy the new HP. As I declared to lisa b. last night, the last book was tediously long and Rowling's editor needs to reign her in. And it's not like I don't already have a dozen books stacked by my bed, waiting to be read.

But I caved. Maybe it was the kids at the farmer's market sporting HP glasses. Or maybe it was all the folks on my children's lit listserv talking about the arrival of their books and their HP parties. Or maybe it's just that, despite myself, I really do want to know who the half-blood prince is. Whatever the catalyst, I caved to the hype. Now I have it--all 650 pages of it.

It was funny being at the bookstore today: a group of kids on the way in, arguing whether there would be any left ("they ordered billions," one declared. "it's not a problem); the near sense of awe as people approached the display--"there it is"; the adults hidden away in corners, devouring the thing. I can't imagine what the midnight release parties must be like.

I feel a bit ridiculous buying it, especially since I was so displeased with the last one. But, if you've read 5 you may as well read all 7. And besides, if you teach children's lit, you're almost obligated to read it, right?

when I was a broadway orphan

Yesterday, I was sitting in a coffee shop, idly working but mostly eavesdropping on conversations (of which, unfortunately, there were few). The coffee girl started telling a customer about how she received an injury: in trying to rescue a Bengal tiger from a tree. The story was full of detail about how the tiger moved and she moved and for a few seconds I was cursing my mundane life, wondering how I might also be of assistance to exotic animals. And then I quickly realized that she was lying, and that the guy was buying it, wondering how he might get such an exotic woman. And then she paused, and he shifted nervously, realizing that he'd been duped. She laughed and admitted she was joking, telling the real story--which had something to do with walking down the street.

My envy of her exotic lifestyle quickly shifted to envy of her ability to lie. I am a terrible, terrible liar. Even when I want to lie, when I think lying might serve me well or entertain me, I just can't lie. Just after I finished my cancer treatments, everyone kept asking me about how I lost my voice and giving me rememedies for it. Knowing they all meant well, I still hated people asking and having to tell them my health history. So, my sister and I made up a bunch of lies that I could tell people instead. There were many (kick-boxing lessons, getting mugged, being a singer in a heavy metal band) and they were detailed. But I never told a single one. Every time I was about to, I felt guilty for lying and for playing with people's sympathy. This was my favorite:

When I was eight, I was Annie on Broadway. I was a star. I could sing louder and longer than any Annie had ever sung before. I was selling out the place. jAnd then, I got a cold, a bit of laryngitis. But the show must go on, of course. They filled me full of lemons and honey, and I bravely stepped out onto the stage. Just me and Daddy Warbucks bringing hope to the masses. I sang for weeks soaked through with lemons, and one day my voice simply stopped. I was put to the streets with my red curls and my patent leather shoes. They foudn another Annie in the wings of the stage and scratched my name off every program.

The plan for the end of the story was for me to have tear hovering at the corner of my eye, gliding slowly, sadly, haltingly down my cheek and to offer a final chorus: "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow. . . "

housekeeping

I finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping this weekend. I've been meaning to read it, of course, for years. I'm actually glad I waited so long because now I can go out today and buy Gilead instead of waiting for years, hoping she'll write something else. I especially found the last few chapters among the loveliest prose I've read.

The summary on the back on my copy says the book is about "the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience," but I'm not sure that gets it right. Yes, the book is about transcience, but I don't think any judgments are made about its merits. (and maybe the blurb writer was just trying to be cute with the emphasis on water). Dangerous suggests avoidabililty. It's not such a new thing that Robinson is saying, that life is transcience and memory pulls at us because it's an acknowledgement of loss. But what I adore about the way she says all of these things is the way she links it to housekeeping, the mundane acts of dusting and straightening.

I've never thought about this much, how we try to affirm our own permanence by keeping house. I am generally a disinterested housekeeper, but recently I have become strangely attentive to domestic chores. This weekend I cleaned cupboards and sorted stacks of paper in my office and painted. I was particularly caught up in the painting, and I was inexplicably upset when the plan I had for my kitchen stools didn't quite work out. Then I finished reading the book and started wondering about my motivations. I think I can comfortably say (I'm still contemplating the matter) that my efforts at cleaning and painting were efforts to work myself out of a lingering funk. My own life has seemed starkly about transcience lately, and perhaps newly painted stools and tidy cupboards will ward it off.

blanding

Blanding is an unfortunate name for a town. It was called first Sagebrush and then Grayson, and I think either one is better for a town that is essentially bland. The town changed its name because a wealthy investor promised a thousand-volume library to any town that would adopt his name (actually his wife's maiden name; his name and 500 of the books went to Bicknell, UT).

I did get a bit of the "adventure" promised by Blanding: many deep scratches from canyon bushwhacking, a serious case of road burn from getting tripped by an over-eager kid in the 4th of July 5k, a cold, and a speeding ticket. Not really the sort of adventure I was looking for, but oh well.

I also learned that Blanding has some serious class strife. The town was settled by two main groups: the "Hole-in-the-Rockers" and the "Pachecoites." The Hole-in-the-Rock contingency arrived first. These folks decided to ignore long, established routes to the area and created a "shortcut" to get from the west to the east. The shortcut took six months of ridiculously hard travel and they had to blast and build a variety of wagon pathways across slickrock and down steep plateaus. The Pachecoites came later--north from Mexico, abandoning Mormon settlements because of political unrest. In the town's social structuring, it is better to be of Hole-in-the-Rock stock than Pachecoite. (my family, btw, is equal parts of both). And amazingly, the division still matters. When my aunt was a teenager, she dated an outsider (a family that came to work for an oil company) who everyone disapproved of. My dad found him once outside their property yelling about how to be any good in the damn town, your grandfather had to come through the Hole-in-the-Rock. Everyone you meet down there has to tell you who their parents and grandparents were and where they came from.

What amuses me about the whole thing is the assertion that the folks who came to the area in the most ridiculous, foolhardy way possible are better. Many of my family members (me included) possess a legendary sort of stubbornness, and I think this is where it all started. Sometimes tenacity is a virtue, but other times it is just a waste of time.

basecamp to adventure!

That is the tourism tagline for Blanding, Utah, which is where I'm headed for the 4th of July weekend, so I'm very excited.

Blanding is my dad's hometown. This year is the town's centennial and this weekend my dad's 50th high school reunion. So it's going to be a big family reunion/nostalgia fest (for my dad and his siblings, not so much for me). I will try to escape to hiking as much as possible (and the area around Blanding provides great hiking, thankfully).

Blanding is a funny place. It's small and sleepy and everyone knows everyone else. And even though I've never lived there and only visited a dozen or so times, the weekend will be filled with strange people coming up to me and declaring, "Oh, you must be LaMar's daughter."

I won't be blogging for several days, but I'll try to collect some good Blanding anecdotes for the return.

the decline of higher ed?

Has anyone seen the new PBS documentary Declining by Degrees? It's an investigative report on the state of higher ed, and worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet. The program tries to cover too much, I think, but it introduces some interesting questions. The two issues they seem to focus on are 1) the decline of the social contract that education should be accessible to all and 2) the existence of an unstated "no harm" contract between students and faculty--that both parties have tacitly agreed "I won't expect much of you if you don't bother me."

While I am interested in item #1, I found myself most bothered by #2. The reporter (John Merrow) asserted that the responsibility for remedying this situation lies with instructors (and in small part with the institutions, which he says need to focus more on teaching and learning). About this issue, he primarily talked with profs at 4-year schools, focusing on the distractions of research/ tenure. The assumption seemed to be that if profs did less research and taught more the problem would be solved. But I don't think it's that simple. I've taught at a 4-yr LA and a CC (both of which promoted teaching/ learning over research) and I've felt more of the "no harm" pressure at SLCC than at Knox. The difference? (and mind you, this is an anecdotal argument) Money. Knox had money, the students had money, and they had time to focus solely on education (and drinking, of course). Students at SLCC don't have money. They are working part-time, full-time, raising kids. They are in school to get a better job. I know I'm generalizing here, but whatever the circumstances, many students at the CC are there not because they were unprepared, but because they cobuldn't afford other options (and I actually would like to get more than an anecdotal sense of this). Because of economic pressures, I think students are more likely to pursue credits than education. It's not necessarily that they are disinterested in education, but rather that they are overwhelmed by the obligations of their lives. While Merrow's report focused somewhat on these economic issues, I wish he would have considered more fully how re-affirming the social contract about educational access might provide some remedy to the decline of teaching/learning.

nostalgia--a survey of sorts

I've heard two comments in the past few days that have me thinking about nostalgia. Without going into the contextual details, both comments suggested a link between nostalgia and age: "I am surprised to feel so nostalgic at such a young age" and "Being young, I wasn't interested in nostalgia."

I am a highly nostalgic person and I know that makes me a bit odd (I can precisely remember a moment of nostalgia at age seven: driving home from a family vacation, watching the horizon, thinking about my best friend, contemplating all the fun I'd had over the summer--and feeling sad knowing that time was altered and that we were altered and that those experiences would never happen again. Sometimes I even feel a sense of nostalgia for the passage of the immediate present into the past--in my happiest moments, I'm always a little bit sad because I know the moment is being shifted to an unretrievable past.) Even though I know I'm far more nostalgic than most people, I've strangely never thought much about nostalgia and age--that there's a moment when one becomes nostalgic or that there's a proper age to embrace nostalgia.

So, tell me:

• Do you consider yourself a nostalgic person? If so, how does the nostalgia manifest itself? If not, is there an age where you think you'll become nostalgic, where it will feel acceptable?
• Also, just because I love nostalgic songs and books tell me your favorites (and please, no Proust!). My favorite nostalgic song: Tony Bennett's "Once Upon a Time"

cockroach photographs and the relevance of art

I've been working on an essay that is, in part, about cockroaches and this week I've spent a lot of time looking at Catherine Chalmers' book American Cockroach. It's a book of photographs of cockroaches presented in three chapters: Residents (cockroaches in miniature domestic scenes), Imposters (cockroaches on pretty flowers dressed up like other, "cuter" bugs--if Anne Geddes photographed roaches instead of babies, this is how they'd look), and Executions (cockroaches "dying" in very human, vindictive ways--burning at the stake, an electric chair).

**Note: You can see a few of Chalmers' images and hear some of her comments on an old Studio 360: http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/show040304.html. You can also catch one of her short cockroach films at the Arts Festival this weekend.

Chalmers' work is pretty wild--gross, but strangely thought-provoking. I'm not typically a fan of conceptual art, but Chalmers really had me thinking about why we are so disgusted by cockroaches. In had a hard time looking at the first set of photographs because they so well conveyed our fear of cockroach invasion (huge cockroach antennae peeking out from behind a tiny sink, in wait for the unsuspecting human), but the cutesy outdoor scenes made me noticeably calmer. The roaches in disguise, outside of the house seemed like acceptable creatures. It has me thinking about how we interact with the natural world; the hierarchies we make for animals, bugs, plants; and how we determine what is safe and fearful. But Chalmers' work also has me thinking about the relevance of art.

For me, Chalmers' photographs are intriguing and they do help me to reconsider the cockroach, but I can imagine that someone who is living in public housing where cockroaches might be more abundant, where they might be crowded out of their hiding spaces during daylight hours would find Chalmers' work completely irrelevant, even laughable. There is certainly a class issue connected to her work--the woman, after all, makes her living raising and photographing bugs.

These thoughts, along with the current lisa b./ middlebrow discussion about poetry, have me wondering whether we've made art (and I'm using the word in the broadest of senses) too conceptual to be relevant to a wide range of folks. Creation, expression, even design seem like basic human acts, but often art is limited to certain spheres. I'm thinking about Born into Brothels. The kids taking the photographs clearly had a keen sense of how to interpret the world around them, to make something beautiful and communicative from the world around them. But when they showed their work, who did they show it to? Wealthy white westerners (I realize that part of the purpose was fundraising, but I still hoped to see the art having some relevance for the children's adult family members). I've often heard the argument that people can't contemplate the aesthetic if they are too consumed with meeting basic needs, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Last week, working with my writing group of adult learners (who all, in one way or another, are struggling to meet some basic needs) I realized how common the need to express and create is. One woman, in an uncharacteristic fit of anger, wrote a detailed fantasy about stealing a friend's car, driving out of state, and finding respite and a new start at a roadside cafe. As we talked about the story, she told us how much she had wanted to run away when she wrote the piece. She said, "I guess I ran away in my story." Another woman described a significant change in her life and how at the moment she felt like she was half inside a bottle and half outside a bottle. The writing isn't technically proficient, but it is lovely and meaningful. I think sometimes we make art so conceptual, so sophisticated, that we fail to make it relevant for everyone.

in the realms of the unhip

nothing brings out the dorks like 80's night at a dance club. and if said club has a name like Port O' Call, you're really in trouble.

sigh. I--dork that I am--just got back from 80's night at said club (and believe me, the name fits). Too wired from all the synth-pop to go to sleep, so I thought I may as well blog.

My favorite part of the night: some guy who kept coming right up to me and my sister, then abruptly walking away (was he trying to decide which of us to address? thought we looked better far away than close up?).

The evening led me to several conclusions:

• You can tell how old people are by the way they dance. People my age dance in a slow, long-armed sort of way. People just younger than me dance like they've been plugged in and are short-circuiting. People just younger than that mate on the dance floor.
• Men who want to meet women at dance clubs typically say they've been sent on a mission for a friend (e.g."my friend wanted to meet you, but he's shy"; "my friend needs to learn a few dance moves")
• Bucks Fizz's "I Hear Talk" is the best (forgotten) song of the early 80's
• Bucks Fizz is a terrible name for a band

I am music

Driving home yesterday, I was listening to The World (not in some trance-like metaphysical way, just the radio program), enjoying the world music segment when I realized that while I quite like world music, my cd collection is world-music-less, except for the following:

• Buena Vista Social Club (the everyman’s world music)
• Ibrahim Ferrer (I’m in love with him)
• a Putamayo “summer party sampler” (great for housecleaning) that I got for free back in my music-seller days at B&N

As I was sitting in traffic, I decided that I fear too much world music would suggest a shift in identity, like I would have to start burning incense all the time and drinking yerba mate.

Why, as adults, do we still associate music tastes with identity? It seemed vaguely reasonable to falsely claim love for Skinny Puppy as a teenager in order to cultivate an appropriate goth identity, but now? We all do it, right? While music tastes may no longer be relationship deal breakers, they do provide pause (like the time I found a Spice Girls cd in an ex-boyfriend’s otherwise acceptable collection). And we all have some music preference that we keep hidden. Mine? Barry Manilow (I can sing all the words to Copa Cabana).

education as commodity

Two events today have me thinking about my future as a teacher and education more generally.

First, I received a letter from a recently graduated high school student who wants to jump into my class mid-semester. He is trying to complete his Associates degree by the end of summer (a noble goal) and mistakenly thought that the course would be covered by his AP credits. He stated in his generally well-written letter: “I do not need an A, but just to pass the class.” While the student is clearly ambitious and probably quite bright, the request really rankled me.

Secondly (and perhaps more importantly) I gave my classes a mini-lecture on plagiarism; I even passed out copies of the relevant sections of the college’s Student Code of Conduct. The process made me ill, partly because I hate confrontation of any kind, but mainly because I was angry that I found the lecture necessary. In recent weeks, I have faced several cases of blatant plagiarism. Usually in these cases, I try to trust the students’ good intentions (ignorance of citation conventions, etc.), but this semester folks are handing in texts that were written word for word by someone else. (And beyond the basic dishonesty of the act, what bothers me is that they think I won’t know—that I can’t distinguish their writing from someone else’s, that they don’t think I can do a Google search).

I feel sometimes as though I should stop worrying about what I’m teaching my students or what they are learning and just give them all a gentleman’s C (or is that a B now?); sometimes, it seems like that’s all they want anyway. Teaching required courses, I am used to having some students primarily focused on the hoop they are jumping through, and sometimes I even enjoy the challenge of convincing them that it is worth their time to learn how to write well, but the attitude seems to be increasing. I don’t always feel so cynical; I generally find my students to be smart and engaging and committed to their education. And I should acknowledge that I did a fair bit of hoop jumping in my undergrad years.

But, I can’t help wondering whether students’ occasional bad habits are becoming institutionalized—the norm rather than the exception. Or maybe it’s always been this way and we are just more aware of it because of the abundance of online papermills, policing tools like Turnitin.com, etc. I know I’m not the only one asking these questions, and I’m not sure what I can add to the discussion, but today it feels personal.

Social Security is retro chic?

In preparing for today's class on rhetorical analysis (websites specifically) I was browsing through Rock the Vote. Their current campaign is "I 'heart' Social Security." Number 10 on their list of reasons to support SS: "Because Social Security is retro chic." Huh?


And they have trucker hats! (http://www.rockthevotegear.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=RTVG&Product_Code=RTV102). That makes me so damn happy.

trucker hats are for truckers

Since I made my students write commentaries this weekend, I was planning to write my own (a good, humbling, teacher exercise to remind me what it feels like to be a student); however, I spent too much time responding to their drafts of last week and I didn't get it done. Even though I didn't get the thing written, I did spend much of the weekend ruminating about my topic of choice: trucker hats.

Who decided these mesh and foam monstrosities were cool? Trucker hats should only be worn by truckers! What I find particularly offensive about trucker hats worn by non-truckers is that they never fit. They are worn with an extra inch between skull and brim (apparently held aloft by hair?). A former student of mine often wore a trucker hat, and I could barely make out her eyes under the puffy cap. If you are not a trucker and you still want to wear the hat, I think it's ok only if you can answer yes to one of the following questions:

• Do you regularly incorporate words like "breaker" and "10-4" into your sentences?
• Is your name Large Marge, Pig Pen, or Dick Simon?
• Do you watch Convoy every Labor Day?
• Have you ever worshipped at a Transport for Christ Mobile Chapel?
• Do you own a copy of C.W. McCall's Greatest Hits? (bonus point if you have it on 8-track).
• Was The Wichita Lineman your wedding song?

Any suggestions for additional trucker hat integrity questions?

See the following website for guidelines on how to construct your own trucker hat and reclaim the trend from the indie hipster mainstream: http://www.blacktable.com/gillin030701.htm

garlic scapes

Today was the first day of the local farmer's market, which in lots of ways is my favorite day of the summer. Too bad today was overcast and rainy (when will it end?!) But it was still a lovely day. Before the rain, I got to sit on the grass and eat my raspberry Berliner (a jelly-filled masterpiece that I only allow myself to eat in the summer--not that I don't find appropriate replacements in the winter). And the lovely, lovely vegetables. I finally decided to get a 1/2 share with one of the local farmers. I'm a big fan of CSA, so it's about time I joined in. And it will be nice getting surprises throughout the summer. What I like most about the FM is that I rarely decide beforehand what to get, so I can spend the rest of Saturday morning looking for recipes.

The market was a bit small today; because of all the rainy weather, farmers got off to a slow start. Regardless, I still found:

• chard, of course--my favorite veg
• salad greens, including some almost painfully spicy stuff
• fava beans (chianti anyone?)
• radishes and parsley
• the tiniest bit of peas (he was scraping the bottom of the bucket and only came up with $.25 worth--good thing I arrived when I did)
• garlic scapes--really, the best part of the market in early summer. So garlicky, so crunchy, so tasty. If you have yet to experience the joy of garlic scapes, you can read more about them here: http://www.maryjanesfarm.com/SimplyMJ/articles/column39.asp

Now I just have to decide what to cook first and what to do with the scapes (frittata, pesto, hummus?)

Along with all the amazing food, the Farmer's Market is great for socializing/ people watching--friends you haven't seen in a while, folks you wish you knew. If I didn't want the vegetables, I would probably go anyway just for the crowds.

Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and a bristling beard. W.W.

Amen, Uncle Walt. Amen.

But what's the female equivalent of a bristling beard?--I may not be willing to go that far.

Ah, Escalante

I just got back from a lovely trip to the Escalante. Good friend D. is moving to Texas, so we decided to take a "farewell" journey. Our original plan was to do a 3-day backpacking trip, but the weather did not cooperate. A lot of rain (and even a bit of snow!) on Thursday night/ Friday morning made the dirt road to our remote trailhead impassable. So, we opted for a shorter trail, closer to town and just off the paved Burr Trail. Despite the ease and accessibilty of the trial, we mostly had the canyon to ourselves (we passed an outgoing group of horseriders on day one and a solo hiker doing an insect study for USGS on day two). The canyon was lovely and wide (easy trekking, but great views). There were also many sidecanyons to explore. We wandered up a few--bushwhacking to a gorgeous arch and scrambling up a few narrow-ish rockfalls. Nothing too dramatic or challenging, but sometimes it's nice to take an easy route.

Oddly, one of the trip's highlights was food. Not Clif Bars and freeze-dried dinners, but a wonderful restaurant--Hell's Backbone Grill. If you ever get to Boulder (UT not CO) you must try it. Because we arrived to rain and ominous thunder/lightning Thursday night, we wimped out and stayed at a motel rather than camping. So, we had dinner at the neighboring restaurant. We liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next morning and dinner the day we got off the trail. I'm so used to eating Navajo Tacos and greasy burgers when I go to Southern Utah, I was thrilled to find this restaurant (which I'd just read a short blurb about last week in High Country News). The food is amazing--mostly organic, locally produced, delicious, and pretty (garnished with tiny edible flowers and the like). Trout encrusted with blue corn and pecans--it rivaled trout cooked straight off the hook. Grilled fennel, snap peas, baby greens. And this chocolate chile cream pot--sigh--perfect texture, just a hint of chile.

It was the perfect backpacking trip, really. Enough time on the trail to get grungy and tired, with a bit of luxury to balance things out.

The Ethos of Being Assertively Unhip

Now that I've recovered from my anger at the sexist canoeist, I thought I'd ponder a bit (as per Middlebrow's request) on what it means to be "assertively unhip."

To begin, I don't mean the self-conscious unhipness of trucker hats and re-sale shops. If you're trying that hard to be "unhip" you are definitely seeking the "hip" label. And you could say the same thing about me--that by asserting my unhipness I am hoping for hip. Instead of being counter-hegemonic against the pressures of hipness, I am just trying to fit in (which isn't really too hip, so I've made my point.) When I was a kid, I decided to give myself the middle name "crazy cat" which I'm pretty sure I intended as a derivative of hep cat. The truth is I've always just been a geeky girl trying to make peace with herself.

You could argue, as Clint did, that by mentioning both my love for American Idol and the Smiths in the same posting, I am asserting hipness (in that counter-hegemonic way). However, while in some circles my obsession with the Smiths earns me points, in others it makes me just as dorky as watching American Idol does. And oddly, the only folks I've seen in recent years wearing Smiths t-shirts are twenty-somethings wearing trucker hats. A couple of years ago, I went to a Johnny Marr concert. The crowd was divided between 20-something hipsters and 30-somethings like me. So, I guess I could be hip if I were still in my twenties, but it's just sort of sad that I'm still listening to the music I loved in high school. I'm like those middle-aged folks still hollering out for "Freebird."



Speaking of hipness (or the lack of) has anyone read Leland's Hip: A History? I've only heard a couple of interviews with him on NPR, so I don't know much about the book or its merits. Most of the reviews on Amazon are positive, but I love this bit: "But I can see Leland pitching this book to the suits at HarperCollins: 'See, the book is HIP. Instead of acknowledgments, it's got 'Shout-outs,' see? That's from rap. I may be 45 but I can Talk to the Young, a Target Market!'" If anyone has read it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Canoeing with the Sexist

This summer, I decided to volunteer for an outdoor rec. program that works with special populations (youth-at-risk, folks with cognitive and physical disabilities, etc.). Yesterday was volunteer canoe training. I've done a fair bit of canoeing (two summers teaching in the Boundary Waters, and I was looking forward to the training so I could understand more about adaptive canoeing and just so I could get out on the water (I haven't been out since last year's short trip to the BWCA).

We get to the reservoir, and after a few minutes of instruction, we group up (3 to a canoe) to practice. I asked the folks in my group (a woman and a man) if they wanted to paddle stern. No takers, so I volunteered. After two seconds on the water, it was clear that uptight man paddling in the middle of the canoe wanted to be in the stern. Let me just point out here that there is no real need for a paddler in the middle of a canoe. They don't really add anything to the process (except, perhaps, for a bit of speed). All one needs is a paddler in the bow for balance and forward power and a paddler in the stern to steer. So, the man (who because of a brief conversation on the shore knew that I'd paddled before) immediately started steering--from the center of the canoe! Duh--it doesn't even make sense in terms of the physics of the craft to steer from the center. And he was doing wild, agressive steering. It takes very little motion (unless you're paddling in windy conditions or rapids) to steer a canoe. So, I tell the guy to stop steering. But he doesn't. And I tell him again. No luck. He tells me, "You can't do it." Uh, yeah, I can if you would stop being a sexist ass. He tells me, "You're in charge, you've got to tell us what to do." (I guess he was expecting me to yell, "Hard right, hard left."--no agressive paddling was needed on the sleepy reservoir). I don't need you to do anything, I hollered back--just paddle forward. Apparently the man was not capable of doing such a thing--he kept doing D-strokes and prys and other wild flappings. I don't think he ever stopped to consider that the canoe might not have been going along smoothly because he was counter-acting my steering. I really, really wanted to wack him in the head with my paddle. I've been fuming about it since yesterday. Nothing pisses me off like a man who thinks a woman can't accomplish physical work.