first efforts

Why do I do this again?

What I love -- and hate -- about running is the way that it kicks your butt when you haven't been running. Lately I've been in what I think of as my  "winter hibernation" mode. From early November until about late January, I do a minimal amount of running. From 3-4 days a week, I bump down to about 2-3. As I ramp back up and prepare myself to do silly things like this, though, I know I need to be running longer and more frequently.

This morning I didn't need a calendar to tell me that it has been a full week since my last run. My lungs told me all I needed to know. I got too tired, way too soon; depressing, especially because Thursday's my "easy" day.

Why exactly do I do this? Google to the rescue. Here are some things Google tells me about the benefits of running:

1. Running burns more calories per minute than anything except cross country skiing. Running backward burns even more.

2. Running fights aging by preventing bone and muscle loss.

3. Running reduces the risk of heart attacks, diabetes, and lowers high blood pressure.

4. Running forces you to use the 50% of your lungs that typically go unused.

5. Running produces endorphins that contribute to what is commonly known as "runner's high," which is chemically similar to the buzz you get from smoking pot and a heck of a lot cheaper.

What's wrong with "image culture"?

A few days ago while scanning Arts and Letters Daily I came across Christine Rosen’s essay, “The Image Culture,” published in the Fall 2005 issue of The New Atlantis, self-described as a “journal of technology and society.” Rosen, a senior editor for the publication and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, makes a smart if familiar case for why we should be concerned about images in contemporary American society: photographs and moving images saturate our culture and circulate at ever-increasing speeds, making it hard to stop and assess their impact on us. Along the way, Rosen offers a standard recitation of the problems posed by these features of “image culture.” She peppers her essay with the requisite quotations of Susan Sontag and Marshall McLuhan, offers summaries of recent diatribes against the evils of PowerPoint, and even muses about the results of neuroscientific studies suggesting that young ferrets forced to watch The Matrix showed different responses to visual stimuli than did older ferrets (I’m not kidding; see page 42).

What’s problematic about the essay, and what makes me so excited to teach it (because teaching smart but problematic essays is fun), is that it’s utterly unreflective about its foundational assumptions. Rosen is aware that anxiety about images has been a theme of our cultural conversation for centuries (though she does not cite one of my favorite iconoclasts, Plato). Yet she doesn’t challenge the fundamental and flawed distinction between “reason” and “emotion” that grounds most arguments about the “danger” of images. Consider the following statements:

“And images appeal to emotion—often viscerally so. They claim our attention without uttering a word. They can persuade, repel, or charm us. They can be absorbed instantly and easily by anyone who can see. They seem to speak for themselves” (28).

“Or are we merely making a peculiar and unwelcome return to forms of communication once ascendant in the preliterate societies . . . and in the process becoming, as the late Daniel Boorstin argued, slavishly devoted to the enchanting and superficial image at the expense of the deeper truths that the written word alone can convey?” (29)

An important but missing premise hovering over each of these examples is the assumption that the printed word or text is the opposite of the image and therefore superior. What “picture” of images does Rosen give us here? Look again at the examples above. Images are visceral. They appeal to emotions. They persuade. They are “absorbed” (interesting word) “instantly” and “easily” by “anyone who can see.” Images require no thought, no reason, no special expertise or education. Why, even the “preliterate” can easily understand them and become (echoes of Plato here), “slavishly devoted” to their enchanting yet superficial qualities. (My readers who study the history of rhetoric are perking up right about now, for this is, not coincidentally, also the familiar critique of rhetoric as the “harlot of the arts”). Images are too easy, too emotional, too democratic. A culture of text or the printed word, by contrast, is difficult. It fosters thought, reason and "deeper truth" and requires educated experts and elites.

The word good/image bad argument is a major player in conversations among scholars and politicians regarding communication and politics. The question goes something like this: If "the people" are supposed to deliberate to help leaders make good choices, how can this happen in a culture that seems to privilege "emotion" over "reason"? We'll be talking a lot about this question (and the communication norms it assumes) in my graduate seminar this semester. I will have more to say about Rosen's essay at some point (if you're even interested), but for now I'll leave it that I think Rosen’s essay is a classic example of the ways that iconophobia, or fear of images, gets mobilized into conversations about “what’s wrong” with the public sphere.

My three guna

Right now I am reading Light on Life by B.K.S. Iyengar (that's him over there on the right, at the top of my "On the NIghtstand" list). He is the father of the form of yoga that I practice, not coincidentally called Iyengar yoga. At the age of 87, he still teaches and practices for hours each day.

The book is part memoir, part commentary on yoga and its philosophy. Last night I read about the three guna, or qualities of nature. Everything has these qualities; one of the goals of yoga is to balance them in your mind and body. The first is tamas, which Iyengar defines as mass, or inertia. The quality of being tamasic grounds our bodies and minds, but too much of it is a bad thing (think couch potato). The second quality, rajas, is something of the opposite; this is the quality of vibrancy or dynamism. It is important for our bodies and minds to be rajasic, but too much rajas makes us flighty and agitated. The third guna is sattva, which Iyengar defines as "luminosity," or physical and mental clarity. This guna is the most elusive of the three, the ability to be relaxed and alert at the same time. While we are always balancing each of these forces in our minds and bodies, to be more sattvic seems to me to be an important goal for yoga and life.

I have heard about the three guna before, but last night it hit me that they provide a good way to describe my work habits. Lately I seem to be moving  between being too tamasic (think too much lying on the couch watching "E!") and too rajasic, periods of frantic, unfocused writing and agitated bureaucratic paper-pushing. Where is the elusive sattva that we are all supposed to strive for? Nowhere to be found. Still, it's a good goal: be energetic about work, but make it a clear, focused, relaxed energy.

It also strikes me that the three guna almost perfectly describe the dispositions of my beloved's three pets. The cat is all tamas, inert for large periods of the day (affectionate, but inert). One dog is very rajasic--he's alert, vibrant, and sometimes frantic (especially when he sees a school bus on his morning walk). The other dog seems to have found sattva. She is for the most part clear-eyed, alert, and relaxed. Although sometimes she seems a bit, well, dim, I secretly believe that she has it all figured out; she's achieved canine luminosity. She is also obsessed with eating the cat's food, but I don't know what category of yoga philosophy to put that in.

shameless puppy exploitation

This is Belle, my sister-in-law Lu's new fuzzy creature. I know it's shameless to taunt my readers with photos of puppies, but you have to admit: she is unbelievably cute.

Photo by Dad/Grandpa Jack.

the cranky professor

"Not everything you do in your life needs to be a line on your vita."

Yesterday I heard myself make this rather uncharacteristically cranky statement to a group of grad students and faculty who were gathered on our campus for a conference. During a faculty panel, a student asked a question about how to mix one's scholarship with one's activism. Greg wanted to know how he could do more to get such work recognized by the academy as legitimate. Great question. And an important one, especially for our students at Illinois who are actively working to build careers that blend traditional scholarship with public activism and engagement. I think it's important that universities continually rethink the kinds of work that "count" as scholarship and be more open to things like community organizing, public activism, or creative production. Yet...

When you are up for tenure, you begin to get the creepy feeling that people with whom you are barely acquainted suddenly know everything about you. Given that the tenure file lists nearly everything you've done in the past six years except what you eat for breakfast and how often you cut your toenails, you're probably not wrong. Maybe I'm suffering from post-tenure traumatic stress disorder (if it's not in the DSM-IV it should be), but part of me wants to assert that there should be parts of our lives that the institution doesn't need  to touch. My own twisted form of resistance is to insist that not all parts of my life have scholarly relevance.

Perhaps a less cranky way to answer Greg's question might have been to ask him a question in response: "If it didn't 'count,' would you do it anyway?" For Greg, and for all of our students, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. In that case, it seems to me that the best advice is, just do and leave the counting to others.

Be two people

I have a theory that everyone in Champaign-Urbana is at least two people; that is, they are in your life in more than one way. My friend at work is also one of my yoga teachers. One of my running partners leads writing retreats with me. On Monday mornings I listen to one of our grad students, who hosts a jazz program on local radio. I experienced the most extreme version of the "two people" phenomenon a few years ago at the Saturday farmer's market, where each week I encountered my attorney selling homemade dog treats and my dentist peddling strawberries and peaches from the back of a truck.

This is one of my favorite things about living in the "other twin cities." People here have more than one interest, hobby, or passion. Regardless of how they earn a living, they choose to spend their life energy doing lots of other cool stuff as well.

Maybe this is a good new year's resolution for all of us: be two people.

Friday night chili

It's a quarter to seven on Friday night and there's a simmering pot of black bean chili on the stove. It's a bastardized version of the chili recipe used by The Grit, a famous vegetarian restaurant in Athens, Georgia (it's been called the "indy Moosewood Restaurant"). My beloved gave me their cookbook for my birthday last fall, and this chili is tasty, let me tell you. I'll eat some tonight, then freeze the rest and take it down to Atwood next weekend, where we'll enjoy it at the writer's retreat I'll be attending.

As I was shredding and chopping and measuring (and drinking wine) tonight, I found myself thinking back to my earliest years in graduate school, where cooking large heaps of food and then sharing it was common among my friends. When you live by yourself and you are broke, this is a great way to go. During my first year at the University of Maine, Loralee and I used to make big pots of soup and homemade muffins and then split everything so that we each had good food to eat during the week. For the most part these cooking and baking escapades were great, except for the time when we didn't put enough sugar in the cranberry muffin batter. Can you say tart?

Probably my least favorite thing about living alone is that I don't cook enough good food for myself. In general, I do pretty well in terms of eating healthy, but occasionally I go on these binges where I eat out a lot, or can't scrounge up anything more interesting than macaroni and cheese or pita bread and an apple. I love the smell of something simmering on the stove or baking in the oven, but I hate that I'm left with piles of food after. Chili=good. Five days of chili in a row=a bit much. Anybody wanna swap? The chili's smelling really good right now.

St. Small

Growing up in St. Paul, I always sensed it was a different kind of city. Once I left, I knew for sure that it was. While the uninitiated seem unaware that anything but the Mississippi River separates St. Paul and Minneapolis, locals know better. The two cities are very different. And proud of it. Perhaps the best explanation of the differences between the two cities goes like this: Minneapolis is a small big city, while St. Paul is a big small town.

Last night I finished reading a book that explains in fabulous historical detail just why St. Paul is St. Small: Mary Lethert Wingerd's Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (Cornell, 2001). Wingerd, a labor historian, attempts to account for the distinctive civic culture of St. Paul -- in particular, the political power of the Catholic church and the parallel rise of what is affectionately known today as the "Irish Mafia." Wingerd argues that although St. Paul's "old Irish" (those who came to the city in its earliest years) and its newer, working- class Irish occupied vastly different social positions, a shared (and, certainly, rhetorically constructed) sense of "Irishness" bonded them together in a kind of civic brotherhood. These bonds weren't always tight, but for the most part, they held. This all just might explain that eerie feeling you get in St. Paul that everybody knows each other. Because, in some way, they probably do. I'm even connected to Wingerd herself: her son graduated from my high school a year ahead of me. There is an Irish Mafia in St. Paul and although I'm pretty sure it doesn't traffic in cement shoes or illegal booze, it's still a part of the social fabric.

My favorite blog

My favorite blog is BAGNewsNotes, a left-leaning analysis of news images. "The BAG" (aka  Michael Shaw, a psychologist, artist, and creative writer) began the site as a political cartooning site, but during the 2004 election he turned to analyzing political photographs. Each day he offers a new set of images for analysis and comment.

Last fall he published several of photojournalist Alan Chin's black and white images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. If you want to know why I study photographs, look at these pictures.

Just what Sinclair Lewis hated

This week my dad is going to the library to do research for our book. It sounds so cool to say that! He and I are collaborating on a history of the Chase Hotel in Walker, Minnesota; first we'll write an article and then see if we can turn it into a book. Dad's grandparents, Bert and Louisa Chase, came to Walker in the late nineteenth century and in 1922 opened the "New Chase Hotel," a very modern, sprawling resort on the shores of Leech Lake. My mom has done the majority of the research already, spending several good years of her life transcribing all of the local newspaper articles related to the hotel and the family.

I have suggested that we begin the article and set the scene by recounting the hotel's grand opening festivities.  The accounts in the newspapers are fabulous--1920s boosterism at its finest. Consider this summary of the day's speechmaking from the June 8, 1922 issue of the Walker Pilot:

"Mr. DeLury gave an address that proved much more than a eulogy to Mr. and Mrs. Chase. He introduced his remarks by paying them the just tribute that was theirs. As a fellow townsman he was fully aware of the trials that had to be overcome and obstructions surmounted in order for the proprietors to achieve this, their greatest desire. But now that we have seen their ambitions crowned with success it behooves each of us to emulate, according to our ability, something that will also be for the betterment of the town. Mr. and Mrs. Chase cannot do all that is necessary to make Walker the best town in the state. They have accomplished wonders and now it is up to the rest of us to build up to their ideals."

Ripe for a Sinclair Lewis parody...