experimental results

maura @ 10:19 pm

Last week we took a vacation in Vermont and I put myself on an internets diet. In some ways it was fairly easy to do — cellphone and internets can be wonky up there, and I didn’t always have access in the places we were visiting. But with all of the bajillions of articles recently about information overload and hyperabundance and how our brains/behavior do or don’t change with all of the internet info we consume, I thought it might be an interesting experiment.

My rules were:
– Check work email once/day (I get kind of anxious when the work email piles up so I rarely ignore it entirely, even when we’re on vacation. But I only answered the few that seemed like they couldn’t wait.)
– Check home email once/day (Since we had catsitters I felt like I couldn’t completely ignore home email. And I get much less email at my home account anyway.)
– No Twitter
– No RSS feeds
– No other internets reading/browsing, e.g., New York Times (If you can’t ignore the news for a week is it really even a vacation?)

I also promised myself that I wouldn’t feel bad about skipping all of that info, or try to catch up on it later. Which for the most part was successful: though I did end up reading a couple of things published last week in the early part of this week, I also went into my Google Reader when we got home Sunday night and pushed the magical Mark All As Read button to clear out the feeds. (Oh, the power!)

The results were hardly earth-shattering, but they were sort of interesting. In practice what happened is that I didn’t use my computer phone to fill in the gaps between activities. Usually I’ll check Twitter or read feeds or check email in the myriad little bits of time I encounter throughout the day: waiting in line or for the people I’m with to be ready to go do something, watching Gus (in this case while swimming in the pool or pond), sometimes while riding in the car (though this is dicey because it tends to tweak my carsickness).

Without the internets I spent those bits of time last week thinking, spacing out, watching the world go by, etc. It was relaxing in a way, kind of soothing and boring at the same time. I was happy to learn that it didn’t make me all twitchy, which I’d feared since I am definitely susceptible to the mini-endorphin rush of a new email alert or a pile of new tweets.

For the longer stretches of time I did lots of book readin’, just like in the olden days. I read one from start to finish, finished up another I’d started a while ago, and read parts of two others. It’s definitely easier to read while on vacation, and I appreciated having the stretches of time while Gus was happily splashing around to get some reading in.

Now that the experiment is over I’m back to the usual stuff at work and at home. Though I do think I’m interacting more thoughtfully with the internets than before. Of course, it’s still the slowish summer — I’m sure my internets serenity will go right out the window once the semester (and the course I’m teaching) begins in (eep!) 22 days.

further up and further in

maura @ 8:58 pm

I just finished reading The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Guide to Narnia, by Salon.com’s Laura Miller. Yeah, I know, late to the party again — the book’s been out (and on my list) for a couple of years now. But Jonathan read it earlier this year and raved about it so much that we decided it passed the library test, and I put it on my list for my birthday last month.

The book is sort of a mashup of literary criticism of the Chronicles of Narnia and a biographical exploration of C.S. Lewis’s life and influences, with a hefty dose of Miller’s own history as a fan of the books, from her love of them as a child through her teenage disillusionment when she realizes that the books are full of Christian themes and on to adulthood. The whole book is a great read, but if you’re at all a Friend of Narnia it’s especially wonderful for her discussions of her own (and others’) childhood fascination with the books. In many ways the books are much more complex than they seem, and Miller is adept at exploring what makes them so compelling to so many children that those children continue to love Narnia as grown-ups. Our girl name was Lucy and our runner-up boy name was Eamonn (which is Irish for Edmund), so as you can imagine both Jonathan and I fit into that category.

It was also really interesting to read about her disillusionment with the books when she discovered their pervasive Christianity, which she realized after reading a piece of criticism of the Chronicles. In many ways Miller and I have similar backgrounds: I was also raised Catholic (though we weren’t the most devout by any means), went through all of the sacraments, and as an adult I am not Catholic. As far as I know there wasn’t a specific incident that drove me away from the church — I think that as a kid I just found Mass to be dull (though I did like the singing) and then as a teen I decided that all religions were hypocritical (as teens are wont to do). But as an adult I’m most comfortable as an agnostic, so that’s where I am now.

Unlike Miller, I don’t remember feeling betrayed when I reread the Chronicles as a teen. I think I was a bit older — late high school? — by which time it was readily apparent that Christianity ran through the whole series. But I don’t think the knowledge made me think negatively of the books.

It’s curious to think of it now. I’ve read them so often that I can’t actually remember when I read them for the first time, maybe age 10 or 11? A little late, if then. It’s been a while since I’ve read them as an adult, and reading this book makes me think it’s high time I started them again. We’ve tried to get Gus to read them but sometimes he’s really resistant to our book suggestions. Perhaps the best strategy is for me to read them to him?

happy lincoln’s birthday!

maura @ 8:10 pm

Today is the only day during the year that CUNY is closed but the public schools are OPEN. As if I needed another reason to like our 16th president.

In honor of this day I am doing no work at all. None! And also a couple of errandy things. And reading something for fun.* And I took a very small nap. Woo hoo!

* Just because I’m reading a book about plagiarism doesn’t mean it’s not fun!

Anyway, I have a couple of partially-written things to post here (or elsewhere) but I’m too tired from my day off to finish them now. Here’s some Twitter to tide you over.

RT @notjonathan My first iPhone app is live! http://cryptogram.com/tarot (iTunes http://bit.ly/bLLKH6) DM or @ me if you’d like a free promo code #tarot
1:22 PM Feb 11th from Tweetie Retweeted by you and 1 other

A brisk snowy walk, the quiet of the office before the library opens, taking some time to write. Happy Thursday!
8:40 AM Feb 11th from web

From the parent coordinator at my kid’s school: school is OPEN tomorrow. Best. Email. Ever.
6:27 PM Feb 10th from web

@alevtina Go, City Tech! Snow can’t stop the awesomeness, oh yeah. :)
8:20 AM Feb 10th from Echofon in reply to alevtina

RT @kittenwithawhip: RT @DrinkWellDoGood Southern Foodways Alliance seeking interns for Oral History programs. http://tiny.cc/8tVfD
11:36 PM Feb 8th from Echofon

Dear printer, Actually, paper is *not* jammed in the transport unit. Please get a grip. Thanks, Maura
4:07 PM Feb 8th from web

One of the cats likes to nap on the shelf next to my desk. Study buddy! http://twitpic.com/122mcu
10:23 AM Feb 8th from Echofon

RT @mwesch Check out “The Class” a parody of The Office on technology in the classroom from @LynnSchofClark ‘s class at DU http://bit.ly/cerGqP
7:48 AM Feb 7th from web Retweeted by you and 16 others

Watching Fringe + swooning over Olivia Dunham’s awesome black wool coat, as usual. 3 buttons on the sleeves!
10:41 PM Feb 6th from web

Brooklyn, NY = NOpocalypse. Bummed.
3:11 PM Feb 6th from web

Already disappointed that we are not going to get enough snow. Bah.
7:40 PM Feb 5th from web

Gus would like me to know that he does NOT have a giga-memory, GOSH, how can he POSSIBLY remember all of the THINGS he has to DO before bed!
8:41 PM Feb 4th from web

the future and the south pacific

maura @ 7:35 pm

This has been a weird day. I woke up with a sore throat and a headache and the sinking feeling that I may be getting sick at what’s really not the best time of the semester for it. (Though is there ever really a good time to be sick?) So instead of using this partly sunny + fairly warm day to go for a bike ride with Gus in the morning and maybe schlep us all to the Bronx Zoo in the afternoon, I sat on the sofa and read 400 pages of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and drank herbal tea.

I always feel kind of guilty when we spend the whole day inside if it’s nice out, even when there’s a good excuse. Gus played video games and read nearly a whole book (The Great Cheese Conspiracy, a refugee from my ’70s childhood) and played D+D with Jonathan. Over dinner Gus asserted that he didn’t want to go for a bike ride today anyway. But it still seems somehow wrong to spend the whole day inside. Maybe I am also feeling a bit guilty that I just read today rather than tackling all of the other stuff on my list, much of which can be accomplished perfectly well from the sofa with my laptop.

We did get out yesterday, and in far more inclement weather. We went to Manhattan to see Fantastic Mr. Fox (surprisingly only playing in 2 theaters), which was a good time for the adults + the kid. Gus <3s Roald Dahl, and for the adults the movie was pretty much standard Wes Anderson fare with puppet animals instead of people.

Cloud Atlas is really good. I’m still in the middle of the other Cloud Atlas, which is a bit surreal. And the Mitchell book has a sticker in the back with the correct author information that’s covering a sticker that mislabels the book as the Callanan book. Woah, meta.

I could get to those other tasks now (Gus + Jonathan are playing a little Super Mario Galaxy before bed), but there’s only about 50 pages left in my book and I’m dying to know how it ends. Later, gators.

and i don’t feel so bad

maura @ 10:15 pm

This morning* I had an idea for a short story/novel/work of fiction, the second this month. I don’t want to write it, but I do want someone else to, because it sounds like a cool story.

* Where this morning = 4/29, because that’s when I started the draft of this post.

Today’s idea is about pens. Yesterday I went to a meeting and passed around my own pen with the sign-in sheet, and of course it didn’t make it back to me. Which is not a big deal — frankly, the library is nothing if not a repository for pens left behind, so I never want for pens. But I started thinking about pens, how they move around between people. What if there were tracking devices in them, cameras and recorders? What if the pens were semi-intelligent and they had a plan, an agenda?

(Probably this was inspired by the evil pen that kills people in The Lost Room, btw.)

Pens left behind in the library might be part of the story, too. You decide!

The other idea actually got a bit more fleshing out because I started thinking about the last time we visited my mom; it’s a 2-ish hr drive, so I made Jonathan talk to me about it for a while. The basic framework sprang from archaeology: archaeologists assemble knowledge of prehistory from an incomplete record.* No one knows how incomplete it is, and while they work in scientifically rigorous ways there’s still never 100% certainty with any interpretation of the past.

* I remember a great diagram in the shape of an inverted triangle from my archy days that depicted the estimated amount of stuff (animal bones, I think, because that was my bag) that makes it into the archaeological record. Each level of the triangle depicted something else that happens to the bones: carried off by scavenger animals, crushed by accumulating sediment, etc. Probably under copyright; I can’t find it on the interwebs.

(This goes for historical archaeology too, but I feel like the existence of historical records can make a big difference in interpretation.)

Anyway, then I started thinking about ground-penetrating radar, and how it’s been such a boon to archaeology to have the technology to “see” sites before digging them up (and even instead of excavation, in some cases, since excavating a site essentially destroys it). And I started to wonder: what will the next technological breakthrough be? What if a machine were invented that could not only see the shapes of buried objects and features but actually tell you with certainty, this posthole is from a dome-shaped structure made of wood and skins, or this bone fragment is from a domesticated goat? That kind of technology could potentially completely rewrite prehistory and even history as we know it.

As Jonathan and I talked about it we tried to come up with a plot, since this is really just a setup, but we couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve aliens, which is kind of lame (and makes the whole dealie too much a derivative of Battlestar Galactica anyway). And this is probably a book only an archaeologist would love, sigh.

So if anyone wants to take these ideas and run with them, please do! Just write them quickly, because I’m almost out of things to read.

how’d you get on the ceiling?

maura @ 8:41 am

I’ve had a hard time keeping up with leisure reading this semester. I think it’s partly because I’ve been reading lots for a research project I’m starting soon, and also trying to keep up w/general library + higher ed news. Or maybe it’s TV — there seems to have been much more good stuff on lately (and we haven’t even started watching Dollhouse yet).

Another reason for the leisure reading drought is probably because the last piece of fiction I read was Neil Stephenson’s latest 900 page bruiser “Anathem.” It was intense + awesome: compelling and academic scifi with lots of good plot twists in all the right places. I haven’t been so sad about finishing a book since “Time Traveler’s Wife” (which still hurts to think about, actually).

A couple of weeks ago I finished 2 disappointing nonfiction books. And afterwards I experienced an incredibly intense need for fiction, it was really weird. Now I’m reading “Never Let Me Go,” courtesy of our building’s ad hoc basement lending library. It’s pretty good so far, creepy + atmospheric + engaging.

Next up I think I’ll read an old collection of Kelly Link stories, “Stranger Things Happen.” Jonathan recently reminded me that it’s available for free for Stanza, the awesome iPhone ebook reader. And I have a bunch of meetings in Manhattan coming up this week so it’ll be convenient not to have to carry an extra book with me.

One of our recent TV diversions was this 6 hr miniseries that ran on the Scifi Channel a few yrs ago called The Lost Room. The intriguing premise is that there’s a hotel room that disappeared 50 yrs ago, no one knows why. The objects that were in the room have weird powers, and the key makes any door open into the room (and when you leave you can come out of any door that you can envision). It was a good ride for the first 5 episodes — the plot moved fast + hung together well — but the last ep was kind of weak, as if the miniseries had been a pilot for a show that wasn’t picked up.

When we finished watching the show Jonathan proposed that it was kind of like reading Borges or Donald Barthelme or Steven Millhauser or Kelly Link: “They’re all working on the same project. I don’t know what that project is, but clearly they’re all involved.” Which is what made me remember that Kelly Link book in the first place.

i won’t tell you, but if you only knew

maura @ 9:37 pm

On the heels of last night’s longish post, well, here’s a cop out. I had some insomnia last night and I’m tired, and I want to read the (fiction!) book I got from the library last weekend. It’s a kids book w/a gorgeous cover written by a fellow citizen of the CUNYverse; hope it doesn’t disappoint.

So I leave you with this, which is apparently what happens every day after Jonathan gets home from the coop and leaves his backpack open on the floor as he’s unloading it. And today he took a picture.

like a whole bucket of stars

maura @ 10:17 pm

It’s time to blag, time for the blagging. That’s what the calendar tells me, at least. That it’s been nearly another week. And how can the time go by so quickly, anyway? What have I been doing?

Not much interesting, really. Working at work. Last week was a bad sleep week, so lots of coffee was consumed (and not much scooting done). Enduring high heat + humidity. Moving to temp office space during renovations. The members’ picnic night at BBG. Sesame Place. Family visiting + nephew baptizing. Driving on the NJT, 2nd most hated of all roads (right behind the SIE, which was also driven on). Kitten love (they missed us when we were away). And laundry, there is always laundry.

I am buried under reading at the moment. 1/2 a fiction book from the public library (renewed at least 13 times!). Another fiction book from work (plucked from the shelves mere hours before the PSs were sealed off for the rest of the summer!). 2 kids books. 1 new arty-n-writy book by Lynda Barry that I did not even know existed until my rad spouse got it for me for my birthday. 1 exciting (if you are me!) work book. Rounding out the pack are a few work-related articles, a few articles for the literature review of an article I hope to write, and a few articles for a research project I hope to start in the fall.

I need to stop sleeping. That’s clearly the only strategy.

no music in my head right now, just words words words

maura @ 10:10 pm

Jonathan bought us each a fun book for our week off. At first I was kind of annoyed, because they’re new (= hardcover, which is so heavy + space-sucking) and I’ve been trying to get us on the path of borrow from the library first, then buy only what we love (for money + space reasons). But I have to say, there’s nothing like opening up a pretty, fresh, tasty new book. The creamy paper, the embossed spine, the promise within. Yum, yum, yum. I couldn’t wait and started reading mine today, and it is really really good.

I’ve been fairly gorging on fiction since finishing my pop stat book* a few weeks ago. Last week I read Saturday, which was okay. I mean, he’s a good writer, and the tense bits were tense, but in the end it left me kind of eh. Which is not what I expected from a book that made all the top 10 lists last year.

* Oooh, be impressed! At least until I reveal that I skipped over the pages full of equations, that is. Then you can lose all respect for me whatsoever.

But on the other hand, Steven Millhauser, where have you been all my life? He had a story in the New Yorker a few months ago, which Jonathan ripped out for me to read (I don’t usually read the fiction in the New Yorker, having been disappointed too often). And it was fantastic, in the true sense of the world. Very much like Borges. So I casually looked him up on Amazon one day and woah, he’s written zillions of things! Right now I’m reading Little Kingdoms (SO good), and I have Martin Dressler out from the library too.

How could we have missed him? Some of his stuff seems to have come out in our post-college first-round-of-grad-school days, when all I read was anthropology and Douglas Coupland, I think. But Martin Dressler won the Pulitzer in 1997 — where the hell was I? Probably toiling too late in the early new media trenches (and partying in indiepopland), but still, that’s no excuse.

Classes start up again next week, so I’ve only got a bit longer to fatten myself up solely on inventive narrative. Chomp, chomp.

goodbye small hands

maura @ 10:41 pm

Phew, just barely coming up for air here before we jet off to the great Midwest for our 5 leisurely days with the grandparents, woo hoo! Things have been a mite crazy-busy recently, I’ve had lots of work, Jonathan’s had lots of work, and of course Gus is off school all this week. He and I have been seriously head-butting too, which doesn’t make anything easier. We are so similar, so stubborn, it’s a bit scary at times.

But never fear, for tomorrow we hit the promised land! Gus never wants a thing to do with us when the grandparents are around to attend to his every preschooler whim. Playdoh on the porch! Endless hours spraying everything with the garden hose! No pants ever! So we lounge, read, sleep, occasionally take a field trip to the playground or supermarket. It’s just lovely. I have FOUR books in the suitcase right now, AND my journal.

And, since that hotel date was so successful a few weeks ago, we think we’re going to try an overnight in Chicago while we’re out that way. I have been seriously suffering from the Chicago nostalgia recently. I read this, which I REALLY loved (even though it’s an Oprah book, o, the shame!), and of course reading Mimi Smartypants gets all the Chicago up in me, too. Our college friends we’ll be staying with told us that Demon Dogs, our favorite hot dog place (conveniently located under the El tracks), has closed, though, so who knows where we’ll eat. At least we can still have breakfast at Ann Sather. And I have this weird desire to see Millennium Park, does that make me completely uncool? Of course, if it’s 90 million degrees out we will not be spending any time outside, so I guess we need a plan B. Any ideas?

So, finishing the abovementioned book has put me in a bit of a fiction depression. I’d been on a serious, hardcore non-fiction jag, really for a few years now. But that book was so good, so dreamy, romantic, but not sappy, with all those tasty Chicago tidbits… Finishing it has left a big hole in my literary life. I know not what to read, I’m interested in nothing beyond reading MORE stuff EXACTLY like that. Sigh. Made an emergency run to the library last night to grab a few new books, so hopefully one of those will grab me. And if any of my 4 readers have any books they’re loving, let me know!