Now that I am a graduate student again, I am subject to the post-holiday blues that come the Monday after Thanksgiving break. The day when you realize you didn’t get enough work done on your seminar papers because you took a two-hour nap every day during the long weekend and saw the really bad holiday-release [...]

Last night, we picked up Doug’s parents at the airport who are going to spend the Thanksgiving break with us. They are the textbook definition of amazing grandparents, complete with slippers and robes for their morning breakfast. I love them to death!  And, so do my boys.  My sisters, Emily and Megan, will arrive tomorrow [...]

Aristotle:
“A speech has two parts. You must state your case, and you must prove it.”
Rhetoric, III.13

On Friday mornings (every other week), I go to my son Collin’s elementary school to volunteer in his kindergarten class. This makes me feel like my academic life has not totally taken over my important life: raising two boys. I do a variety of odd jobs for his teacher to make life easier for her; [...]

Last Friday, I went to hear a lecture at the University of Minnesota by a distinguished scholar Anna Tsing. Her talk was entitled “Figures of Capitalist Globalization: Firm Models and Chain Links.” I won’t do her talk justice; but in brief, she discussed new stories of capitalism that must emerge within our global economy. [...]

There’s something so compelling, yet distainful, about the shamelessness, necessity, and comic relief of playing the martyr role.
My most recent favorite:
Eating a luke-warm rice bowl while driving 18 miles to campus to attend an afternoon class. How’s that for “five miles through the snow”?