Naomi Riley blogging (on a team of bloggers) for The Chronicle on Higher Education has criticized dissertations written by students in the Black Studies department. She argued in bold words that the ideas kicked around in Black Studies dissertations were vapid, hunting for racism in every tiny microcosm of America culture. Many Chronicle readers were outraged. Riley responded in part by writing:

I find the idea that there is something particularly heinous in criticizing graduate students or dissertations to be laughable at best. Just because they are still called students doesn’t mean they’re not grown-ups. When someone in their 30s (me) criticizes the dissertation topic of someone in their 20s, that’s “bullying“?

Feel free to entertain yourself by reading the posts and comments, but to cut to the chase, Alan Jacobs lays it all out. In short, he explains how hard it must be for the Chronicle to hire a blogger for the sake of diverse, atypical thinking, and then have to fire her for diverse, atypical thinking. Gotta hate it.

I don’t know exactly why it is that the Festival of Nations—four days in nearby St. Paul—somehow manages to be perceptually more exhausting than Høstfest, five days all the way off in Minot. But so it does. I have my theories.

Mostly I blame the venue. Our Viking group is always situated in basement space in the River Centre, all concrete and low of ceiling. It echoes, not only the clamor of voices, but the bellow of the vuvuzela and the shrill chirp of the warble whistle.

(Although I must concede that they moved us to a new spot, far nicer than the one we’ve had for the last few years. Close to the Men’s room, the water fountain, and the food court. Better traffic. I sold a satisfying number of books, except for on Sunday, which always seems to be slow. Perhaps the visitors are observing the Sabbath.)

I have also discovered, since getting home last night, that part of my exhaustion was due to the fact that I was coming down with something nasty. I dragged myself through work today, but I’m not sure about tomorrow.

There were pleasant happenings, however, for me to report. There was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, who brought her two little boys to my table and eagerly asked all kinds of questions, clearly delighting in opening the world to her sons.

There was the man who introduced himself as a native of Jämteland in Sweden, a region that was part of Norway for many centuries. He said his family traced their genealogy back to the kings of Man, which gave me the opportunity to talk about the book about the Vikings in Scotland I was reading.

And the tall, red-haired high school girl who wanted to know about the kings of Denmark, giving me an opportunity to discuss my theories about the centrality of Denmark to all Viking history. Turned out she was an exchange student from Denmark (couldn’t tell from her accent), and descended from the Danish kings.

So I won’t say I didn’t have some fun.

I’ll just say I feel about a decade older.

And now I shall go boil a mustard plaster for my chest.

Pete Peterson writes about the shape of good stories. “So what makes a story work? … Transformers—didn’t work. District 9—did work. Star Wars—worked. Battle Beyond the Stars—didn’t work. Interview with a Vampire—worked. Twilight—well…I say it didn’t work. It’s harder to play this game with books because books that don’t work quickly fade into obscurity and we never even hear of them, but trust me, for every Gilead there’s another diary-based memoir out there that’s an interminable bore.”

I wasted a couple hours of my life watching Battle Beyond the Stars. I’m sure I saw an edited for TV version, because looking back on it, it looks much worse than the slock I remember. On the other side of the spectrum, I stopped reading Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, because the pacing is just too slow. Don’t look at me that way. I know I’m losing my English major street cred. I’m not happy about it.

There’s a play performed in North Carolina about an early American colony on Roanoke Island. It tells the story of the attempt to settle an English colony on that island, and their mysterious end. One of their leaders, John White, left the colony to get necessary supplies from England and was unable to return for a few years. When we made it back, the colony was gone. The only sign hinting at where the people went is the curious wreckage of what is believed to be the world’s first aircraft and a toddler being raised by friendly, English-speaking wolves.

Now, Researchers say they have discerned the meaning of a patch to “the ‘Virginea Pars’ map of Virginia and North Carolina” created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866… [T]he discovery of the fort symbol offers the first new clue in centuries about what happened to the 95 or so settlers, experts said Thursday. And researchers at the British Museum discovered it because Brent Lane, a member of the board of the First Colony Foundation, asked a seemingly obvious question: What’s under those two patches?”

Made it through the first day of Minnesota’s annual diversity binge, The Festival of Nations in St. Paul. Today was the easiest day—only 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The next three days will be 9:30 to 10:00. If there’s such a thing as Death by Crowd, I may be in danger of it.

Today was the first of the student days, reserved for elementary through high school kids. Tomorrow is also a student day till 4:00, at which point the doors will be thrown open to taxpayers. As in past years, the students exhibited an undiminished enthusiasm for buying vuvuzelas and those little bird-shaped whistles that make warbling sounds. If you suspect that this noise might be irritating, you are correct. Sombreros are also popular souvenirs, though the felt pizza hat seems to be declining in public favor.

The best thing about the festival, so far, is that they moved our exhibit to a spot right next to the Men’s Room and the water fountain. I find that that’s about all I really need in life, at this age.

The great disappointment was a technical problem with our photo printer, which prevented us from taking people’s pictures in Viking garb and selling them the prints. This has been a major earner for us in the past, and I hope we get that straightened out tomorrow.

Ah yes, I sold a few books, too. So I came out ahead for the day, even considering the cost of food in the International Food Court.

Tomorrow I’ll drag home sometime around 11:00 p.m., so I expect I won’t be posting anything.

Several people have reviewed Lars’ latest novel in various avenues, but only one review has been posted to Lulu.com, the main ebook publishing site for the book. If your review is on Amazon, for example, copy it here. Of course, if you have not reviewed the book, but you have read it, please take a few minutes to post your thoughts on Lulu and Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, that MySpace page you haven’t updated since 2004, your wife’s Pinterest boards, and your local newspaper. Need any more ideas?

Thank you, I’m a little better tonight. Not well, but capable of functioning at a minimal level.

The most insidious thing about depression (I know I’ve written about this before) is the false sense of clarity it gives you. “Now, at last,” you feel, “I’ve cast aside the self-delusion and the rose-colored glasses. Now I see the world plainly, as it is, and I understand that it’s all death and corruption and doom.”

Naturalism in art, as generally practiced, I think, is almost a cultural form of depression. The Naturalist artist prides himself on painting (or writing about) decaying corpses and deformed children, congratulating himself that he has pierced the veil of illusion to portray the world as it actually is.

This same artist, however, very likely has a spouse or lover on whom he dotes, and children who delight him. But he will not include those things in his art, except in order to set the the viewer or reader up for some shock. He’s not a hypocrite, but he’s as delusional as the Pollyannas of this world, only from the other side. His view of reality is one-dimensional and consciously selective.

That’s one of the reasons I appreciate the Bible.

You’ll often run into people (especially on the Net, particularly on Facebook) who will delightedly point out all kinds of awful things somebody (usually not they themselves) found in the Bible—atrocities and rapes and injustices—and natter about how the Bible is really pornography and anybody who takes it seriously must be some kind of deviant.

These people are as superficial as the Christian Triumphalists, whose understanding of Scripture is frequently shaped, not by actually reading the Book, but by books of Biblical Principles written by religious celebrities. Or just some celebrity preacher’s TV sermons.

I wrestle with many things I find in the Bible, and I cannot claim to have solved its mysteries (I’ve written about how I deal with those things elsewhere, and won’t address that subject tonight). But when I go to the Bible I come away with the sense that I’ve encountered something entirely true to life. It is not a happy book about bunnies, nor is it a “realistic” novel by Zola. It contains real pain, real tragedy, and real hope.

Some Christians may be glib. The Bible, whatever else you may say about it, is not that.

I may or may not post tomorrow. I plan to be at The Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul, as has been my wont in recent years. It closes early tomorrow afternoon, so I may get time to post something, if only a scream from the heart of an overtaxed introvert. Or not.

Jonah Lehrer writes:

If nothing is learned, why are students and parents so desperate to get into the best schools? Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming book “The Case Against Education,” argues that colleges are more about certifying their students than actually teaching them useful skills. Their primary function is to provide “signals” of intelligence and competency, which is why they put students through a variety of mostly arbitrary and useless academic hoops. “Good students tend to be smart, hardworking and conformist—three crucial traits for almost any job,” writes Dr. Caplan. “When a student excels in school, then, employers correctly infer that he’s likely to be a good worker.”

This is discouraging and challenging. I will likely not have the money to send my children to my alma mater or another suitable school, and I have begun to fear that it would a waste of money to do so. I loved my college experience, but I don’t know that I can offer a similar one to my children.

I’m deeply, profoundly depressed tonight, and not up to thinking up a post.

Instead, a picture of a dragonfly. Because I like them. I thought of doing a butterfly, but I’m in more of a dragonfly mood.



Photo credit: André Karwath