Middling

Perhaps this is why I find it fairly blah here in cheeseland. I have always said that it is "regular" here.

The question is, though, would you rather be a resident of a representative state? I wonder, if you polled folks from each state ahead of time about how much they thought it would be a good thing to be most representative of the U.S. population when it came to things like population density and home ownership rates (numbers that are going to leave extremely rural states and those with old-growth large cities on the outs). I would bet that, on average, folks would tend toward the condition of their state (e.g. folks in Hawaii would not consider it a good thing while folks in Michigan would).

The most 'representative' state: Wisconsin

By Mark Preston
CNN Political Editor

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Looking for a state that is a microcosm of the whole country? You won't find it in Iowa or New Hampshire -- there are 25 states that come closer to average statewide measures on important characteristics such as race and income.

[...]

Holland identified 12 key statistics -- four that measure race and ethnicity, four that look at income and education, and four that describe the typical neighborhood in each state -- and added up how far each was from the figures for the average state on each measure.

Holland said he chose these 12 different categories because "they have a strong impact on the political landscape in every state."

Close behind Wisconsin are four other Midwestern states that look most like a hypothetical average state -- Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Ohio. Most of the least-typical states tend to come from the Northeast, including Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. West Virginia is in 49th place, while Mississippi comes in dead last.

[...]

So, what makes Wisconsin so special -- or, to put it another way, what makes Wisconsin so average? It is about as close to the average state as you can get on most of the 12 measures included in this study.

[...]

"It's important to note that there are hundreds of ways of making this same calculation, and dozens of states could all make a legitimate claim to being the most representative state in the nation," Holland said.

To make the calculations easier to understand, Holland recalculated each state's score to produce a zero-to-50 scale -- there are 50 states, after all -- with a high score indicating a state that is more representative than a state with a lower score.

A ranking of the 50 states

1. Wisconsin 36.4

2. Missouri 35.2

3. Kansas 34.4

4. Indiana 30.8

5. Ohio 30.1

6. Oklahoma 29.9

7. Oregon 29.3

8. Nebraska 29.0

9. Georgia 27.3

10. Minnesota 26.9

11. Michigan 26.8

12. Washington 26.3

13. Wyoming 25.9

14. North Carolina 25.8

15. Florida 25.6

16. Montana 25.3

17. Virginia 25.3

18. Alaska 25.1

19. Pennsylvania 25.0

20. Arizona 24.8

21. Delaware 24.1

22. Tennessee 22.3

23. South Dakota 21.4

24. Kentucky 20.3

25. New Mexico 20.3

26. Iowa 19.6

27. Texas 19.6

28. Illinois 19.5

29. Rhode Island 19.0

30. Maryland 18.9

31. Colorado 18.8

32. Louisiana 18.3

33. Idaho 18.1

34. Vermont 17.9

35. Maine 17.4

36. New Hampshire 17.4

37. Utah 17.0

38. Hawaii 16.3

39. South Carolina 15.8

40. California 15.3

41. Arkansas 15.0

42. Alabama 14.6

43. North Dakota 13.8

44. Nevada 13.5

45. Connecticut 13.1

46. Massachusetts 11.6

47. New Jersey 11.4

48. New York 6.5

49. West Virginia 4.8

50. Mississippi 2.8

note of optimism

Meetings with advisors went pretty well this week although one advisor suggested a substantial reorganization of the project. Although I think he is right that it would make for a better project and a more interesting book, there is no way that I could finish the diss by the fall 2007 (seeing as I will have additional data collection to do in spring 2006) - a problem given the fact that I am going to try to sell myself to a few select places as someone who will have a Ph.D. by August.

Another problem: recommenders. I am so out of the loop I don't even know who to ask.

don't sweat the small stuff, right?

rocks along the starboard side

Working on this dissertation is a lot like being the captain of a sinking ship. Not the Titantic, however, more like some slapped-together, oddly-painted old wooden dinghy like the one belonging to Burt Dow, Deep Water Man.

it's been one of those days (weeks?) that lead me to suspect that I am the problem.

why am i such a freak/jerk/snowqueen/snob/puritan/perfectionist/nerd/bookworm/misanthrope/coward/poser?

Persnickety, pernicious, persimmon

Have I mentioned that we don't have air conditioning? Every year we (I) bring up the idea of purchasing a window unit but then we count the number of days we would have used it (it usually ends up being less than seven) and decide it would be a waste. In our case air conditioning would be particularly silly because I am a fanatic about having the windows open as much as possible from May through October (and even at other times of year. Basically if the temperature exceeds 60 degrees, I open the windows) and couldn't stand to give up use of a window for an air conditioner that I am only going to use 7 days of the summer.

It's all perfectly sensical but yesterday I would have signed a contract agreeing to keep my windows closed for all eternity in exchange for a little cool.

for free

it really irks me when people refuse to give without getting-- particularly when a request is converted in a bargaining discussion.

e.g.
[q]would you be willing to help me out next monday?
[a] only if you do something for me on friday.

so what you're telling me is you are able to help me out monday but you won't do it if you can't get something in return, right?

fair warning

I can hear you searching the coffee table drawers for the remote control. I told you that if you continued to leave it lying on the arm of the sofa I would hide it.

Sorry but I am a woman of my word.

[untitled]

I just don't have it in me right now, folks.

Part of it may be that after our treks the mundane seems a little too mundane to be blogworthy. I'm sure a large part of it is that I have enough mundane in my life that many days I am up by 6:30 and I don't stop moving, except for the occasional bathroom break, until after 8 p.m.

However there are a couple of items worthy of mention, and even discussion, although I am not likely to elaborate a great deal.

1. E started daycare this week. She's going 2 half days for the rest of the summer and 3 half days in the fall. She made the transition without any trouble at all. In fact, if I hadn't rationalized her obvious indifference to my leaving her as clear evidence of her sense of trust and security in her mother's love, I might be a bit upset that she happily scoots away to play with the daycare's toys the second I put her on the floor.

2. In the last 1.5 weeks I have doubled the number of times I've been to the gym in the past 10.5 months. I also brought my bike in for a tune-up and got a baby trailer. Heart health here I come!

3. I am going on the job market, albeit in a limited fashion, this fall. Not ready to apply to those dream jobs (and dream locations) yet, just throwing my hat in for a couple of openings in the area. I mean, given the difficulties of the market when you are coordinating with a partner who is also an academic, I would be crazy not to apply for available positions this year - they're small departments making multiple hires so I'm guessing they may not hire at all next year.

4. At present I find I can't eat enough cottage cheese and pineapple - two foods that I learned only in the past year that I can tolerate at all. Mostly I eat the cottage cheese with lettuce, snap peas and sliced tomatoes from our farm share. I eat the pineapple alone or with strawberries from the farm.

E's Photo of the month: 10 months old

Doors of Stockholm and vicinity

One of the things I do when traveling is watch for interesting doors and entries. Stockholm offered a specimen or two. So far my best sightings were in Tossa de Mar, Spain. We've recently acquired a scanner and, if I ever get this office organized, I'll set it up and scan some really great Tossa door photos for you. At any rate, here are a couple of doors, entries, etc. from Stockholm:

This first one is a knocker. The door itself was cool but difficult to photograph due to its size and location on a narrow street in the Gamla Stan, Stockholm's oldest neighborhood.


This is the old keyhole in a barn door in Uppsala.

Unfortunately I've nothing in there for scale but note how thin the actual door is.

This is my favorite kind. Door within the carriage door. You know there is some great open space behind that. That's one of the most intriguing things about older areas like this. On the street it feels so close and congested. There is nothing but mostly windowless walls and doors on the narrow streeta and then you get inside and there are plants and open courtyards and apartments.

You can get a glimpse of the green space inside through this door on the left. I also love the contrast and the close proximity of the two entries.

back from the hinterlands

We're back in Stockholm. Flying home Wednesday. Had a great time up in the land where the sun barely sets.
Enjoyed a smörgasbord with my friend's family. 6 types of picked herring. Veggies swimming in creme fraiche. Swedish shnapps. Mosquitos and the endless days of midsommar.
Loads of fun, truly.
Our 6 weeks of travel is soon to come to an end. How bizarre it will be to go home. I bet E doesn't even remember the place.

hej from stockholm

Busy, folks. We're having a great time. Travelling with the little one is a lot of work but not as much as you might expect.

Can you see these Swedish letters in blogger?: ö å ä

We're having a dinner party tomorrow night to watch Sweden v. England and the next day we are leaving to head north for Midsömmar - the solstice. Apologies to those of you who have been waiting for your invitation to the 2nd annual summer solstice party. We're going to hold it belatedly upon our return to the states.

A couple of mundane differences noted:
1. Pets are not spayed or neutered.
2. People don't use credit cards, they use debit cards.
3. The toilets have 2 flushing options, number 1 (small flush) and number 2 (big flush).

apologies

sorry. i have morphed so completely into my island self that i generally forget that i have a blog at all. there is something about this place - the contentment and completeness of the space i think - that makes it difficult to make plans, to return phone calls, etc. it's much easier to gadabout, read a book out in the yard, walk down to the ice cream shop for a cone and then walk "out backshore"to listen to the surf. to mosey on home as the daylight dwindles, throw some veggies on the grill and fall asleep in front of the red sox game. at night as you lie in bed you can hear the bell buoy marking the ledge in whitehead passage chiming away and, when it's foggy, the horns at two lights and portland head.

i told dad and mary that i was moving in permanently.

observations at home

1. I am old. How do I know this? The "grown-ups" of my youth are now old and grey and the islanders born after my departure are now the youth of the community.

2. I named E after my mother and it is so nice to introduce E to people who knew her namesake. So many people have gotten teary-eyed when they learn her name. It feels right.

3. This is the dog's last trip tp my island home. Although Mary was very kind to allow them into her home this trip, her home is not really fit for dogs. On the up side, the house looks great and my dad is as happy as a lark. It is so nice that he found someone to share this part of his life (kids out of house, retirement, etc) with. When I think about how much he and my mother sacrificed to raise all of us, it does make me sad to think that they didn't get the chance to enjoy this stage of life and marriage together. But at least dad is getting a chance.

moment of truth

The day of reckoning has arrived. Back when we were looking to get a family-friendly car my partner continuously trumped my but-a-station-wagon-will-be big-enough arguments with his claim that our drives out to Maine will require a mini-van. Of course, he learned long ago that the way to get what you want out of me is to somehow tie it to an increase in the frequency, duration and/or enjoyment of visits to Maine.

We have been packing for the last 24 hours and now loading has begun. I will try to snap a photo of the finished product but I highly doubt my partner, being the driven and task-oriented bloke he is, will allow me to run back into the house to post it for you all. He will likely claim that we'll get to Maine sooner if I don't take the time to blog and instead, say, make sure that we haven't forgotten anything.

meet the parents

sometimes my life imitates art except in my case it isn't art it's the movies, specifically, meet the parents, and life doesn't imitate art but instead recasts in an entirely different genre, say, horror.

(belated) E's photo of the month: 8 months old

ticking away...

although i don't generally go in for the hallmark holidays, i made of point of letting my partner know that i expected recognition today. apparently E decided to get in on the act by FINALLY starting to get that sleeping-through-the-night-and-taking-2-hour-naps thing figured out. if it sticks, i predict that life will improve immensely. let's face it, 8.5 months of 2-3 hour sleep blocks punctuated by the very occasional 4-6 hours of blissful shut-eye does take its toll.

anyhow, we slept in until 7:30 without any middle of the night feedings! we made breakfast and putzed around. after E's a.m. nap we went to the mke public market for lunch. we came home and the sun came out so i took the dogs for a walk on the river while E had her afternoon snooze. then it was off to the symphony for the family concert and home for baby bath and bed and the series finale of west wing. i've just finished grading so tomorrow i prepare for the great trek home to the island.

free at last and homeward bound!

master identity and total institution or "i'd like to thank the academy..."

I attended the departmental graduation ceremony yesterday. I make a special point of being present at the graduation celebration because I usually find it so heart-warming and encouraging. The event reinforces my hope that one day I, too, will finish my dissertation and that my advisors will have some nice things to say about my work and/or myself. Then I will get my moment to thank everyone. I can't tell you how many times I've daydreamed about that moment, standing up there and being done or at least done enough that in the fall my tenure-track appointment will begin.

Of course, yesterday I had additional motives. I like to attend departmental events to see folks. Since I am rarely on campus and have now been absent from the department at least as many years as I was in residence, I don't get much opportunity to keep in touch. Lastly, I wanted to bring E to the graduation. I guess I do have a little interest in showing her off but, ultimately, I want her to know that I am someone besides her mother, that I am a person in the world too. I know that she is too young to understand any of that now, but I guess I'd like her to grow up thinking of her mother as a sociologist-mom instead of having it be something that she must be taught explicitly when she is old enough for such lessons.

I am not sure how different the day was or if it was just me, but I ended up leaving Madison feeling defeated, insignificant and spent.

Many of the people I think of when I think of the department were not there for various reasons. This drove home the fact that the current department is not the department I knew. That the people I did know often did not recognize me (when I say they did not recognize me I mean that they passed over my face as they scanned the room for familiar faces not they didn't remember me when I said hello. I have discussed this elsewhere) confirmed that I am not a part of the life of that place now. If my day arrives and I attend the departmental celebration, I will stand before a room of strangers and my advisors, unable to share funny anecdotes or lament my departure as the loss of a regular companion, will say something about how I am an independent sort.

Then there was the whole motherhood thing. I thought that the event would be a perfect way to allow my mother and scholar roles/identities to interact. After all, the departmental graduation ceremony is a family affair, right? I was imagining that many other students would have their partners and children with them. I was wrong. Even students completing the program, with family in attendance, left the children at home. To top it all off, I brought my partner to help with E in case of trouble. He was uncomfortable since he knew very few people and he made me feel more awkward and out of place by trying to push me to socialize. Then E began fussing and he was forced to pace the hallway with her as there was no comfortable place for a dad and a baby to sit and wait. Naturally, he was grumpy and I began to suspect that I am a selfish and insensitive person for dragging my family all the way to Madison so I could feel connected, so I could persist with the illusion that the relationships between my disparate parts are smooth and seamless.

Good book?

I'm looking for a good ethnography concerned with the African-American middle class. One which focuses on intra-group class conflict in addition to particularly middle-class experiences with prejudice would be ideal. Suggestions?

No Play List

So, one of my best friends from middle school is getting married in a couple of weeks. Naturally, I am going home for the big event (and to get some sleep and to get grounded and to introduce E to the island and family and to eat some good food).

Well, the other day my pal K2(should be superscript) emailed me regarding her upcoming meeting with the DJ:

We have a meeting with our DJ on Friday, and we need to finalize the all important DO NOT PLAY list. SO much more inportant than what they CAN play...anyway, I've got a few, but I wanted to pick your brains to see if you could come up with any I missed. Here goes:

Wind Beneath my Wings
Old Time Rock'n'Roll
Any Celine Dion
Celebrate
We are Family
Electric Slide, Macarena, Chicken Dance, YMCA, etc
Any Vanilla Ice
Friends in Low Places
Love Shack (sorry kids, I know it was fun at Zootz circa 1990 but...)
Unchained Melody
I will Survuve
Shout
Pretty Woman
A Moment Like This
Paradise by the Dashboard Light (or really anything by Meatloaf)
Lady Marmalade
Any Michael Jackson

OK, well, see, I must be growing soft in my old age or, perhaps, I've spent too many nights at the karaoke kid because many of those songs would be on my DO play list (of course some, mostly the ballads, are right on). Sheesh... it's a wedding! I mean, Billie Jean, Shout, Love Shack... you might as well skip the cake too!

I've fallen out of touch with K2 over the years. If her eighth-grade self was picking the songs, I'd say we were going to spend the evening listening to Echo and the Bunnymen, Morrissey, the Pixies, the Replacements, Dead Milkmen, Bauhaus, Jane's Addiction, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Fun, true, but odd to think about.

codswallop

There is nothing to make you feel like a failure as an educator so much as to reach the end of the semester, give your students a journal question that gets at the myths you've been seeking to dispel all semester, and to receive entries like (these are not actual entries):
"I don't know what we can do. Things are different now. Discrimination and slavery ended over 100 years ago."
or
"I think the counter-protestors are right. I'm tired of immigrants coming in and taking our jobs. No one wants them here."

News

Sadly, I get most of my news these days from the newspaper in the town where I did (am doing?) my field research. When life gets crazy, I fall behind on my newspaper reading. Eventually the stack of newspapers is just so awful to look at that I do nothing else (when it comes to academic work, that is) but read month and two-month-old papers. This can be torturous.

This evening, however, I was entertained by a parade of amusing, heart-warming and/or particularly Maine-ish stories. There was the letter to the editor requesting that the person who stole the writer's garbage can return it or, at the very least, come by for the lid so that the thief might get full use out of it. There was the account of the string of bank heists involving a suspect, still at-large, described as a man "“wearing a blue sweatshirt, jeans and sunglasses."” Let's not forget stray kitten that fell part way through a storm drain where it hung, head in the middle of a busy downtown street, until, less desperate measures failing, the fire department was able to free it using a chain saw and the jaws of life.

And then, there was this story, which gave me such a chuckle and made me homesick for what I believe is a particular Maine real-ness.

We used to collect dandelion greens and clams and fish for mackerel for dinner.

left behind

I recently submitted some conference expenses for reimbursement. I transmitted the information electronically as the conference program, the airline ticket receipt, and the lodging invoice were all electronic.

I received a phone call that afternoon:
I'm sorry, but we need the original documents.
These are the original documents.
I can't take copies of conference programs and accounting will not accept these for your lodging and travel. I need the originals.
What do you mean?
They have to be original.
Can you define that? I'm not trying to be difficult but I really don't know what you need because these are the originals. I don't have original credit card receipts or anything like that.
Well, you'll have to call the airline and get them to send you something. And this receipt for the lodging, it needs to be in color or have a signature or something.
OK... I'll see what I can do

Later, me on the phone with northwest airlines:
Yes, my institution needs an original receipt for my travel.
Don't you have the e-ticket and receipt we sent you?
Yes, but that's not original enough for them. Can you send me out something on paper?
We can but it will be exactly the same document and you will be assessed a fee.
Oh screw it. Thanks, though. I think I'll just print what I have and fold it like it was in an envelope.