And so it has begun, the end of my last year teaching at Champlain, or, well, probably anywhere (at least full-time). It has left some many things with a bittersweet feel. On Thursday I walked out the end of the hallway in Wick and saw this little message from God.
Last night I was able to go to the Friday Night Cookout at the Adamant Co-op and not actually cookout and not actually grill, which made for a much more pleasant evening. It's not that grilling isn't fun, which gives Ken (the true grill master) and I an opportunity to talk baseball, but with my leg condition it's pretty brutal to have to stand for that long a time. Instead, it was Janet's turn to grill (she does a lot more work at the cookouts than I ever do), so I just was able to stop by fur a burger and to soak in a lovely summer evening. Here's a picture I snapped, as I lounged under a tree and waited for Janet to finish.
Thanks, ESPN, I could have figured that out on my own. I liked that I predicted Flailing, but the Bot calculated Woeful instead. It didn't allow me to choose my favorite CFL team, so obviously its the most invalid form of clickbait.
It wasn't that long ago, it seems to me, that I was lamenting with my friend Cyndi that I had just finished my 1000th blog post but that it was impossible to conceive ever making it to 2000 (sort of a misdirected, "my life is over" sulk). And, yet, here we are at 3000 posts. Part of it relates to my desire to create themed discussions (Proust, Pessoa, faith, 2025 readings, etc.), which inspire posting. Part of it, I guess, is that, despite my protestation s to the contrary, I'm not quite dead yet after all. But most of it is extraordinary self-absorption. Now, how to mark this odd moment? I think for the 2000th post I created a Top Ten places visited post, so that's out of the question (maybe I'll revisit it for my 4000th post). Since I have nothing planned, why don't I just capture this moment in time.
Labels (non-geographic) with the most posts: 1) Proust (740); 2) Faith (381); 3) Personal (269); 4) Reflections (238); 5) Friends (217); 6) Travel (129); 7) Discography (125); 8) Family (93); 9) Readings 2025 (76); 10) Disquiet (74); 11) Champlain (73); 12) Literature (47); 13) Food (42); 14) Marcus Aurelius (40)
Labels (geographic) with most posts: 1) Vermont (132); 2) Jordan (123); 3) United Arab Emirates (117); 4) Portugal (101); 5 tie) India & Zanzibar (97); 7 tie) Iceland & Tanzania (38); 9) Canada (35); 10 tie) Italy & Russia(34); 12) Namibia (30); 13) China (29); 14) Egypt (26); 15) Yemen (23); 16) Spain (20); 17) South Africa (19); 18) Austria (17); 19) Zambia (16); 20 tie) Oman and Croatia (15); 22 tie) Sri Lanka & Czech Republic (14); 24) Hungary (12); 25 tie) Belgium, Kenya & Lebanon (11); 28 tie) Australia & Cincinnati; 30 tie) Morocco & Turkey (8)
This doesn't do justice to this moment, I suppose, but it's an interesting snapshot, nonetheless.
This is as useful as I get anymore: glorified cat couch.
I'm posting this mainly because of my childish glee at seeing Mothman the name of the email sender. Yes, I'm that immature. I sent away for a few Mothman swag items lately and I was checking on the status (one of them was a onesie, and I didn't want the kid to be too big before the swag arrived). Until that moment, I didn't know that the Mothman's name is Jeff.
I can't believe that it's already our third anniversary. Janet is out in Iowa at a writing festival (which she's loving), so I'm bumming around here without my wifey - although I'm so happy that she's out there with her fellow writers, working on her craft. A dozen times since she made the initial reservation she talked herself into backing out, and I talked her into staying in. This morning I sent her a long thread of pictures, starting with one I snapped on our first date and ending with this one from our wedding day.
It's amazing how much of my YouTube stream has been taken up by Nicole Wallace and Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller and George Conway and the Bulwark and the Lincoln Project, etc. I guess, on one level, I get it, because I'm clearly not someone who is in favor of the current authoritarian regime. That said, it doesn't mean that I like this crew, and, seriously, they can fuck off. The reality is that they're all Republicans, all children of Reagan, and some of them directly played a role in the nightmare that George W. Bush unleashed on the world. I can't help but think that their rage is directed less at Trump's authoritarian regime, but rather that they're no longer the inside players shaping the autocracy. If Trump and MAGA disappeared tomorrow, they would happily skip back to an only slightly less abhorrent and slightly less racist and slightly less Islamophobic and slightly less misogynistic GOP, but one that provided the requisite tax break. The fact that they're given such a central role in the anti-Trump world is a testament to the right wing dominance of American media and the total failure of the Democrats to provide a different path forward.
The other day, after finishing a workout at the Planet Fitness at the Berlin Mall, Janet walked into the nearby store to buy a couple shakes while I grabbed a table (mainly, I think she was giving me a chance to rest my weary legs). She returned with not one, but two, biographies of Charles Dickens. I don't know how she does these things.
Somehow neither Janet nor her friend Erin had ever seen Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It's like they were raised in a nunnery or something.
This is apropos of absolutely nothing, but it was a strange thought I had this morning. When you're in that intensely physical stage of an early relationship (what Janet and I jokingly/lovingly refer to as the "cheesecake & sex" stage), the first day that you actually don't have sex is either the true beginning of your relationship or the beginning of the end of your temporary relationship. I think this is an observation that will launch a thousand Rom-Coms.
But, in spite of so much sorrow in the world at the moment, I'm very blessed. Five years ago I would have never thought that I'd find someone again or experience such a profound level of happiness. And where would I be without these two (and, of course, Miss Mollie, my constant lap companion).
After brooding over the question for several weeks, this morning I went ahead and cancelled my Audible membership. On one level it was hard to do, because I have a long commute and books on tape and Great Courses help make the drive manageable. Essentially, I don't mind the drive as much if I feel that I'm learning something at the same time. I recently made the decision to stop ordering things from Amazon, although it has often made my life a lot easier because I could track down objects, especially books, which would have been difficult to acquire. However, simply because I can punch a button on my phone and have a book magically appear at my doorstep doesn't make the process an ethical one. And if I'm going to ween myself off of Amazon, it didn't make much sense of keep Audible. Bezos climbing into bed with the other oligarchs in their adulation of Trump made all of this an easier decision. There was a time when millionaires invested their money in building libraries, whereas now they alternate between creating vanity spaceships and overthrowing our democracy. I was asked for a reason why I was cancelling my Audible account, so I simply wrote: "Greed of Jeff Bezos."
When Janet and I talk about moving overseas, which we talk about quite a bit, one of the reasons why we sometimes cite for not following through on that dream is how much we love our odd little community here in Vermont. However, we also had to be honest with ourselves and admit that, having said that, we haven't been engaged in the community as much as we should be. That may be something as simple as making an effort to shop more at the Adamant Coop as compared to Shaws's, or taking a more leading role in organizing things where we can get the community together. For example, we're both presenting as a part of Vermont Public Philosophy Week this year, and, in fact, we're arranging a doubleheader on Saturday 5 April, with me talking at 1:00 and Janet at 2:30 (obviously, more on this later). Mainly, I'm just taking advantage of Janet's popularity to get someone to come to my talk. Another example of this goal is that Janet set up a community book group to discuss Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed. We held our first chat a couple of days ago, on a very frosty Sunday morning at the Maple Corners Community Center. It was a great chat, and we have two more coming up.
Last night I showed my students Bill Forsyth's Local Hero. I told them it was one of my favorite films of all-time and that it was the movie that introduced me to the beauty of independent cinema, mainly because it clearly didn't care what the audience thought, in a formulaic fashion, should happen next. Sadly, the conversation wasn't as rich as I had hoped, mainly because they didn't do the assigned readings on the Relational and Moral self (sigh); pearls, swine, yadda yadda. It reminded me of what a crush I had on the character of Stella Urquhart, played wonderfully by Jennifer Black. There are scenes in movies wherein I could imagine myself living, and running the hotel with Stella in Ferness is probably first amongst them. "I'll be a good Gordon, Gordon."
I walked into class yesterday morning and Renzo, one of the (obviously troubled) Scudder veterans, told me that he had seen my picture on one of the screens around campus. Of course, my response was something like, "Why are you causing mischief, miscreant?" Oddly, he was correct, as I went out into the hallway and saw the following. Clearly, this is a product of some sort of Brandenburg/Kelly machinations. Beyond all that is holy, apparently this is going to be on a continual loop for the next couple weeks. Obviously, I have many enemies.
Saudade - "Longing, melancholy, nostalgia, as a supposed characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament." Oxford English Dictionary
"Saudade is a word for a sad state of intense longing for someone or something that is absent. Saudade comes from Portuguese culture, and it is often expressed in its literature and music. Saudade is described as a king of melancholy yearning. . . In Portuguese literature and music, saudade is used as a theme or a motif . . . Saudade is most often discussed in terms of its importance to Portuguese culture and for the supposed difficulty in translating it to English." Dictionary.com
"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness." A.F.G. Bell (from James Cave)
The concept of saudade popped up to me a couple of times yesterday, in the strange interconnected ways that only happens in Dickens novels and reality. I completed, clumsily and painfully (my legs are not getting any better), a forty minute hike through Jerash on our NordicTrack. Experiencing Jerash made me happy (I've been there many times), but the experience also made me sad, not simply because I may never make it back to a country that I love so dearly, but also because my declining health is increasingly limiting what I can do, even much closer to home. Then, through mere happenstance, YouTube offered me up a Portuguese language series from Sandra Carapinha (which is one of the precious few things of value that YouTube has ever given me; I'm going to start following her videos, and see if she actually has a Portuguese language course). The first video of hers I saw was her description of saudade. I was already familiar with the concept (as all Lusophiles are) but her discussion was lovely (and I shared it with my students). Later I shared the entire story with some of my Jordanian veterans, and my wonderful former student Michael Manfredi sent me this picture:
Yesterday I answered a meeting request from the esteemed Katheryn Wright, and this was the result. In between Katheryn, Cyndi Brandenburg, Mike Lange, Mike Kelly, Jonathan Banfield, and, inexplicably, Kristin Wolf, I was encased in a cocoon of silly string. As Janet opined, "that's what you get for winning?" Obviously, this is much better than having to display the Horrendous Wixon Glass Clown on your desk for a year - or having to wear the Ridiculous Wixon My Little Pony Sweater in public (with photographic evidence) - so I'll happily accept the silly string assault. I suspected that something might have been up, which is why I wore my Toronto Argonauts sweatshirt as an homage to 2024 champions (obviously, none of my Vikings jerseys would have been useful).
There is something about this picture, which I snapped looking out our kitchen window on a -12 degree morning, which seems to completely capture my mood at the moment. I mentioned in a post the other day that I was essentially at my nadir in response to living in Calais, but which I proposed had much more to do with my larger feelings of unhappiness about living in the US. This week Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, and immediately set about destroying the few things t he didn't destroy in his first term. He is an ignorant, mean-spirited, racist sociopath, elected by a nation increasingly made up of ignorant, mean-spirited, racist sociopaths. In the past I've tried to cut the people who voted for him for more, as in, they didn't really understand the enormity of the damage they were doing. However, I don't think that's true. They know that he's not actually going to lower the price of groceries - and even the most clueless has to understand, at least on some level, that decisions such as withdrawing from the Paris climate accord are going to make for a much worse life for their grandchildren - but those things pale in comparison to the ability at this moment to inflict cruelty on people of color and Jews and Muslims and immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community. As was often pointed out in the first Trump administration, the cruelty is the point. Now it's the overriding point, nothing else matters. Trump needs to go fuck himself, and the same goes for everyone who voted for him - and if you sat out the election you're equally as guilty. We have reached a tipping point, and while America may someday be a democracy that stood for something, it won't be in my lifetime.
I suppose all of us have peculiarities that we throw money at, but how many of us can say that it's the CFL? Even my exes who ended up hating me said that at the very least I was very easy to shop for because I had so many things that I was passionate about. With that in mind, maybe the CFL is just the latest in a long line of odd fascinations on my part. That said, I've never really been interested in spending money on them. I've always been happy to spend money on the folks in my life, but more than hesitant to spend money on myself. Maybe I'm just getting old and hence more willing to give into my desires (the less happiness we have on a daily basis may make us more willing to madly chase short term adventures - and I guess I owe the blog a post on my recent trip to the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia).Having said all that, it's hard to not love the CFL. They're the absolute underdog on the North American football landscape, and I'd simply quite happy to throw money their way as compared to those assholes in the NFL. Plus, unlike the Minnesota Vikings, no CFL team has ever broken my heart.
