First, do no harm.

Released in 2001, A Beautiful Mind still makes me angry. I bring it up because Netflix keeps suggesting that I take another look at it. In terms of craft, the film is lovely to look at, and the actors do their jobs. And I don't really care if it remains true to the events of Nash's life. What angers me is its fantasy about schizophrenia and the old saw about mad genius. Critics and viewers alike laud this movie for offering a glimpse into the experience of having serious mental illness. Isn't it pretty to think so.

(For bonus points, name the allusion.)

---

In other news, last night M asked me about how a person determines whether a poem is good. I talked a little too long about "One Art," then said that it's easier to show with a selection of poems, rather than a list of qualities. Our conversation makes me think about how I approach teaching poetry in 102. I don't care for the approach lampooned Dead Poets' Society---I'm not going to make a bunch of graphs. But I do believe that one can tell whether a poem has merit. As a pedagogue, I try to make the concepts we talk about as concrete as possible (e.g., handouts for 6 steps to a good thesis statement, 12 steps to a close reading, 6 right ways to use commas). Students like lists and handouts. So, it's not enough for me just to say that these 10 poems we've read are excellent because I say so and anything with 14 lines is a sonnet, no matter what anyone else says.

Poetry is a long and vibrant mode, such that its forms, variations, and ambiguities are much more difficult to quantify than any more recent form (e.g., novels). A traditional Shakespearian sonnet contains 14 lines of iambic pentameter, organized into three 4-line stanzas and a couplet, with a standard rhyme scheme, and a turn of some kind at the end, usually somewhere in the last 4 lines.

Using this description of the form, a person can still write a poem that will make your eyes and ears bleed. In fact, that's the most likely outcome. (Ooh!) It's like giving a person who has never cooked a bare-bones recipe for hollandaise sauce or pastry creme. Something's going break.

So I don't think I can write a list of elements to look for in a great poem. I can only repeat what has been said to me: Great poems are revelatory. They don't conform. Here's a list of terms you can use to talk about poems. Now let's look at one. 

Wilfred Owen (written between two tours in WWI. He himself became one of these youth just before the war ended.)

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen. 

(He died in WWI a week before Armistice Day.)

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs,----

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Rest peacefully, Mr. Russert

Tim Russert died this afternoon. You can turn on any t.v. channel or look at any website for the obligatory language of public grieving, but, watching MSNBC, I was deeply moved by the expressions of loss by those who knew him as a man. 

To me, Russert has only ever been a face on the screen, yet his integrity and curiosity were always evident. As much as I will miss him as a journalist, his family and friends must be devastated. 

Sam and I were talking about it just now, and he said what I've always felt as well: When you part from someone you love, even just to go to the grocery store, you should say, "I love you." The future is inscrutable. Our lives are short in time's span. But we become meaningful through expressing our connections with each other, however fleeting and however flawed.

From Yeats's "The Circus Animals' Desertion":

Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

The erstwhile planet

Remember when the astrologists destroyed a planet and a time-honored mnemonic a couple of years ago? (In our school, it was "my very eager mother just served us nine pickles.") No more pickles. When they debated, they determined that either Sol has 8 planets, 12 planets, or potentially dozens, depending on one's view of the Kuiper Belt. Had Pluto been retained as a planet, schoolchildren across the country would have had to figure out a mnemonic for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, and UB313. Another suggestion at the time was that Pluto and Charon be named a double planet. (They share a center of gravity between them.) 

Instead, the IUP created planet rules that exclude Pluto. 

The reason I bring this up is that Newsweek online recently published an interview with Venetia Burney, who named Pluto in 1930, at age 11. While breakfasting with her grandfather, Venetia suggested that the planet be named for the Roman god of the underworld. Old Grandad happened to be the head librarian at the Bodleian, so that all worked out rather well. 

Venetia Phair is now 89 and unperturbed about Pluto's demotion. Other things have been named for her since, like planetoid 6235 Burney. So, astronomically, she's had a pretty exciting life so far. Tonight raise a glass to Venetia, namer and named. 

A lovely gift

One of our family members hunts for fun. He thinks that dead animals make the perfect gift for any occasion, and it's even more fun when the gift is a surprise.

That family member is Dave, our cat. The most recent small animals include a rat, a bird, and a rather large lizard. The bird is pretty impressive, I'll admit, especially because he managed to sneak it into the house when we weren't paying attention.

It's disgusting. This is one situation in which it is not the thought that counts. (Not that much complex thinking is going on. Cats have walnut-sized brains, most of which are dedicated to their eyes and reflexes. You never know when you might have to land on your feet.)

Nora appreciates Dave's thoughtfulness the most. They're buddies. She's just the right height: Dave likes to arch his back and walk under her belly, which rubs him just right. She likes to lick him in the face, which he'll sometimes allow. He brings home dead animals. She likes to eat and play with stinky things. They don't sleep curled up together yet, but I say, give them another five months. Four if he keeps bringing her presents.

Why, bless my stars!

As you might imagine, internet abbreviations (e.g., IMHO) get under my skin. But I've recently noticed a use of LOL that intrigues me. 

The following will initially seem like a diversion. Bear with me. When I was in college, I worked for the theatre department's costume shop under a Mr. Lou Bird. (I'm not kidding.) Lou is an interesting guy, and one of his theories was that a person can perfect a laugh that will get him out of any social bind, even one he himself creates. Lou often experimented in order to find this perfect social laugh by saying things like "Oh my god, your ass looks enormous today! What have you been eating? Chocolate Cadillacs?" Then giving a laugh of some sort. It was funny, unless I was the butt of the experiment. I don't think he ever found that perfect laugh.

The laugh derives from a long, genteel tradition of using a mitigating phrase in conjunction with a cutting remark: "Oh, you're so pretty when you fix yourself up!" Or, in an indirect form, "He has the worst breath I ever did see, bless his heart." Regional variations of "bless his heart" include "bless his stars" and "bless his little cotton socks." Sometimes a small touch on the forearm or knee accompanies these phrases. 

Southern uses of "bless your heart" are often quite complex, shifting from affectionate to biting and back within one conversation. But the suppressed kiss-off gets the most play, as in a shortened version of a long joke. 

Southern Lady 1: My husband just bought me a big diamond ring. 

Southern Lady 2: Oh, bless your heart. 

Lady 1: What did your husband get you? 

Lady 2: He gave me a trip to finishing school.

Lady 1: Poor thing! Why ever would he do that?

Lady 2: So I could learn to say "bless your heart" instead of "fuck you."

So, to bring it back, I think sometimes LOL is a new manifestation of this social form of veiled hostility. You can write anything on the web, no matter how petty or pointed, so long as you follow it up with LOL. The reader can't hear which laugh you're using.

Disclaimer: This post in no way comments on or accuses any commenter on this weblog of engaging in the rhetorical device I describe.

Proper

I've been thinking about words to do with "uptight." My online American Oxford Thesaurus gives a number of synonyms (close and far), including 1) tense, nervous, on edge, anxious, hypersensitive; and 2) straitlaced, prim priggish, rigid. 

Further exploration of the definition of "prim" yields "stiffly formal; feeling or showing disapproval of anything regarded as improper." The AOD pairs it with "proper" in its example, as in a "prim and proper lady." Synonyms range from "formal" to "prudish" to "governessy," if you can believe that one.

Now, I disapprove of a lot of things that, naturally, I think are improper, in the AOD's first definition. Personally, I think that makes me a bit of an asshole, not a prude. But what is quite interesting is the constellation of these words around the notion of femininity. To be proper is to be prim. I know this isn't news (always cross your legs at the ankles, darling!), but the persistence of the association between being anxious and being a woman still surprises me.

Hysteria had its diagnostic heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Symptoms included weakness, fatigue, inappropriate appetite (too much or too little), gastrointestinal discomfort, other pains unassociated with injury, and extreme sensitivity or (paradoxically) insensitivity to sensory perceptions. The symptoms were unfeigned and unexplainable by any other diagnosis. Until recent updates to the American Psychological Association's differential diagnostic criteria, patients could be diagnosed as hysterical without complaining about symptoms, a phenomenon known as la belle indifference. 

Essentially, hysteria was a catchall for bodily complaints that couldn't be explained by a physical examination. Or let me phrase this a different way: hysterical women were women who complained or didn't act like ladies. The APA, in the interest of reform and equality, has retained hysteria as a diagnosis but labeled it "conversion disorder" instead.

So the associations of "uptight," "nervous," "anxious," and "high-strung" with  "high-maintenance," "prim," "prissy,"and  "prudish" gestures toward hysteria, and you don't have to be Freud to see that it all still points to sex.

Do any of these terms (or terms like them) make you feel dismissed or belittled? How do they affect men (e.g., by feminizing men who worry a lot)? Can they be re-incorporated, as the word "queer" has been? I'm interested to hear your responses and ideas. 

Canoeing

We went to the Buffalo this weekend, which was fun (but would certainly have been more fun if someone hadn't backed out. M.) The water was high, and the canoeing was fun. I think I'm getting better at it, partly because I'm not so worried about dumping the boat and partly because I have these new magical water shoes. I don't have the best balance, and these shoes keep me from falling down so much. 

Serious water at the end of our run. It was awesome, and I'm proud of Sam's and my communication through the whole thing. He's a good instructor. 

On the second night, I slept on the hammock. It's super comfortable, even if you're a restless sleeper. I got through the night pretty well: I only fell out once.

And then there's coming home. It always feels good to come home, as clichéd as that might be. I think we'll go canoeing again weekend after next.

ow!

Trazodone again. Less effective and again I have a wicked, all-day headache. You know, the kind of headache that makes thinking difficult. 

I'm as hydrated as I can get, and taking ibuprofin dulls the ache only a little. So now I have to weigh whether to keep taking it and hope that the side effect goes away soon. 

Reading the PI sheet and other information on trazodone, I thought it would be a good fit for me. In addition to its sedative effect, it works as a mild anxiolytic. For whatever reason, I usually don't experience side effects extreme enough to not take any given med, so I decided not to worry about the "trazodone hangover." 

We have plans to float the Harpeth tomorrow. I think I might rather be a little tired than how I feel now. So it's back to the Ambien/clonopin combo for tonight at least. 

Dreaming with trazodone

So Ambien has crapped out on me. It's pretty common for a person's body to get used to some sleep aids (and certain other agents) after a while, which is probably part of why their makers recommend them for short term (6 months or less) use only. Last night, I started a round of trazodone to replace the Ambien. 

----

It worked. And I had one of those movie dreams I sometimes have when I'm sleeping deeply. In last night's dream, I was a teenage daughter in a family of five. We had a colonial-style house in the country, with really big rooms. When a series of catastrophes killed most of the adults in the world, the family opened their (our) house to refugees, but it was safer for us to not let on that the house had belonged to us before the apocalypse. (I don't remember why, something to do with immunity to something.) Most rooms filled with cots, benches, and terribly sad children.

In one of the most vivid scenes, one of these children asked why I was so sad. After all, I still had my family. "This used to be my home!" I sobbed. The child replied, "It still is." Very dramatic.

Cut to a montage spanning a long time.  More and more people found their way to what was becoming a children's colony. Many of the children hit puberty, and many of the teenagers became adults. Slowly, we erected more buildings. As a community, we set up a complex system to protect people from what was still killing most adults, by taking kids out the general population when they showed signs of puberty and putting them in small, isolated groups. The idea was that if an illness emerged in one set of adults, the rest might still be protected. It was an unpopular stopgap, and a serious problem remained: discovering the onset of puberty in each child. No one wanted to be quarantined. Pubescent children began hiding their development. Adults clamored for solutions that would free them from isolation. But no doctors were available to determine what exactly was causing adult deaths, how to determine who would be affected, or how to inoculate adults from whatever was killing them.

----

A lot happens after that, and I think I've set up the major conflicts. To describe it all would take up too much space and time. (Maybe I could write a serial.) At any rate, my main point is that the trazodone worked. Now I just need to get through the temporary side effects I'm experiencing. The liver metabolizes trazodone, so initial side effects feel like hangovers. And it doesn't help that I had five glasses of wine last night. 

Political Math

As I mentioned in the previous post, Obama should be the Democratic nominee.

But this afternoon I figured out why Clinton still thinks she could have the numbers to win. I believe that when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on 5/31, she will argue that all pledged delegates in Florida and Michigan should be seated. As a compromise, she'll offer that half of the superdelegates of those states should be seated. This argument fulfills both the idea that every vote should be counted and the idea that the state DCs must still be punished in some way.

I won't try to reproduce the chart I made on the back of our electric bill, but let me give you the highlights of this math. As the DNC rules stand, Obama has a 190 delegate lead over Clinton. He needs 56 delegates to reach the magic nomination number (2025). 294 delegates are left. You can see how the current situation (i.e., what Florida's DC, Michigan's DC, and both candidates agreed on before the process began) makes Obama the clear nominee.

If the Rules and Bylaws committee choose to seat all pledged and half super delegates of FL and MI, the new number for the nomination would be 2143. Clinton's net pledged delegate increase would be 145, which would decrease Obama's delegate lead to 42. Of the 311 delegates still available, Clinton would need 57%, or 176, a number that she could still reach. 

(I think my math is right. These numbers were current on 5/21, just so you know.)

The Rules and Bylaws Committee probably won't select this option. It smells of corruption. But I wouldn't be surprised if they chose to seat half the FL and MI delegates, pledged and super, raising the nomination number to 2117. This would cut Obama's lead to 133, and he would need to win 11 more pledged delegates (out of 86) to clinch the majority. It would still be unlikely for Clinton to win the nomination, but such a solution gives her quite a bit of bargaining power.

Now I just need to figure out why her campaign isn't floating the new political math.