Light and Momentary

Jiggety-jig

Home! Safe! Tired!

Travel blogging, day 3

Alex made it into town, hurray! He had some delays and hassles getting out of NYC, but he persevered. We met up in Cambridge and walked back across the river together. We walked through the Boston Public Garden, past the statue of Ouack and his siblings plus mom. (Poor Ouack. What a horrible name he had!) He took me out for a delicious dinner and I have spent the rest of the evening talking with my long-distance collaborator turned hotel roommate. 

Presentation was pleasant and low-stress. Home tomorrow!

Winter Wonderland

It’s snowing! I am in Boston at my conference, watching the snow fall. I think we’ll get enough to be pretty but not enough to cause hassles, though I suppose one never knows with the weather. Alex is supposed to meet me in Boston tomorrow, but he might have some trouble getting out of New York tomorrow. We shall see.

You know the thing I said yesterday about a five-digit number of people under one roof? That is a lot of people under one roof. Apparently there are 18,000 attendees this year. It’s bananas. There are lots of things to learn and also lots of lines for the bathrooms.

Trainblogging news you might be able to use

Mid-November, time to head to my discipline’s annual convention. This year I just have one presentation, so I’m hopeful that it will be mellower than usual. Although— maybe it’s not possible to put a five-digit number of people in an enclosed space and get something mellow as a result.

This year I tried something new with my poster: I used Spoonflower to print it on fabric. If you’re an academic you already know the poster hassle. It’s a nuisance to transport something that’s three feet long and unfoldable.

Spoonflower prints images on fabric for customers, including academics weary of hauling poster tubes around. You guys, this poster cost $18 shipped! It is nestled in the bottom of my bag, taking up less space than my pajama bottoms.The one fiddly thing about the process was using the registry editor to change the default dpi in PowerPoint. It was so worth that small hassle!

Strong Support

I wasn't expecting to hear from the department committee about my tenure application until next month, but my chair is a person who Gets Stuff Done. She popped her head into my office today, envelopes in hand, and asked if I had a minute. They'd drafted the letters to the college quickly, because she wanted us to have them before our big disciplinary conference this week.

Their letters, you might remember, are a big deal-- the college almost always follows the department's recommendation. And the department's verdict is...: heck yeah, tenure Jamie Gladly. Unanimous vote for promotion, unanimous vote for tenure, supported by an enthusiastic letter from the committee, which mentions that my external reviewers were unanimous in their support for my application. "We are writing in strong support of Dr. Jamie Gladly's application for promotion and tenure," the letter begins.

OH THE RELIEF. I have been a little frustrated with myself about my agita over the tenure process. I keep thinking that a wiser, more mature person would have just completed her application unflappably. I have not been that person over the past few months.

Elwood picked me up and took me out for a delicious pre-celebratory lunch. Nothing is final until May, but this is really good news. 

Thanks, Google

This afternoon I went searching through my email archives. I have a plane to catch later this week, and I couldn't remember exactly when I was leaving. Gmail obligingly pulled up a United reservation for me, but it was a one-way reservation.

I did a little more looking, with a few different search terms, and my heart began to sink. Had I really only bought myself a one-way plane ticket? Had I somehow left the other half of it unpurchased back in August? I checked on the airline's site. Yep, it was a one-way reservation.

A cold chill snaked through my middle as I tried to imagine how much it would be to buy a plane ticket at this late date. Help me out here, Google, said I. How many zillion dollars is this going to cost me?

At the top of the page of search results Google put a box with my profile picture in it. You're flying out at 5 pm on Wednesday, it said. On American.

When I bought tickets back in August I booked them on two different airlines so I could optimize schedule and ticket price. All memory of this decision went sailing merrily out of my head as soon as I clicked "purchase," apparently. It's a good thing Google is smarter than I am.

Sara Crewe Revisited

A Little Princess was one of my very favorite books when I was a kid. I couldn't tell you how many times I read it-- enough that I can still recite parts of it. I never once read it to my sons, though, and so it's been a long time since I dove into that riches-rags-riches story.

Stella loves it, which is really fun. I am finding myself a little skeptical about Sara, which feels disloyal. Can we talk about Sara?

I'm having the same reaction to Sara that I did to Esther Summerson when we read Bleak House for one of those AMDRALs. Virtue takes practice and maturity, and young girls who leave shining trails of virtue behind them, like garden snails clad in gauzy Victorian-era frocks, arouse my ire. The idea of a 7-year-old who is unrelentingly patient, generous, polite, and unflappable seems less plausible to me in adulthood than it did when I was 7 myself. Why would Sara have needed to cultivate those virtues in her years of fabulous wealth and ease? How could Esther have cultivated those virtues in her years of deprivation? Why would anyone want to teach kids that virtues arise ex nihilo? 

I suspect my skepticism will intensify as Sara moves from the parlor boarder suite into the attic. If memory serves, she slides capably into a life of servitude.

One of the early chapters sparked an all-but-forgotten memory of a conflict at Girl Scout camp that I tried to resolve by channeling Sara Crewe. "We," I said imperiously to the doubtless puzzled ringleader, "are not little gutter children." 

It worked better in Sara's schoolroom.

It would be unfair to expect Frances Hodgson Burnett to write in a way that isn't quite so classist and colonialist; we're all products of our times. It doesn't seem unreasonable, though, to expect her to write in a way that has some connection to the actual moral development of actual children.

The Mittens of Uncertainty

Stella and I were walking together earlier this week when she said, "I wish I had a pair of mittens in fall colors." I asked her to tell me more. Flame orange, she thought, perhaps with some golden yellow.

Coincidentally, I had stumbled across a leaf-patterned mitten when I was in my Rav library on Tuesday night. (You guys, the election temporarily broke my brain. Do you remember that stretch on Tuesday evening when Nate Silver started revising his House projections downward? I just-- I couldn't do anything. I cast on a new brioche project that was supposed to be a pleasing distraction and I couldn't manage it. I have never met a knitting pattern that was too hard for me, but I unraveled my cast-on attempt and set it aside, confounded. When I start it over and add it to my notebook I will have to give it a suitable name, like maybe Free & Fair Elections Forever.)

I went stash-diving that very day and asked Stella to pick two of the three yarns I found. She chose a beautiful red-orange paired with a cheerful golden yellow, and I cast on last night while we read A Little Princess together.

I am not entirely sure about this mitten, you guys. While in theory the colors should remind one of a grove of beauteous autumn trees, I fear they are more reminiscent of ketchup and mustard. Some of the acorns are looking like they were attacked by famished squirrels before they made it to the mitten. Here, I'll show you. In person the yellow is much brighter. It's pretty much Lego yellow. It's lovely on a tree. Some find it delightful on a hot dog. The jury is still out on Lego yellow mittens.

There's also a possibility that the finished item will be way too big for Stella. It's an adult-sized pattern. I tried to scale it down by using DK yarn and smaller needles, but she may still end up with a lot of extra room. This is a theme across my knitting posts. There was the hippopotamus cozy hat, and the hippopotamus-friendly socks, and now it seems that Stella will be able to tuck a pet pangolin into her mittens when she heads outside.

I hope her pet pangolin likes mustard.

Milestone

Last week I got an email from Research Gate. "Jamie," it said, "you have a NEW CITATION!" I clicked. The full text of the article was available, and I skimmed through to see why they were citing me.

I found the sentence where they wrote about my paper. I frowned at it. It sounded very familiar. It sounded...too familiar. It sounded like ME, dernit.

I pulled up my original article and CTRL-F-ed for the giveaway verb. Sure enough, they had pasted in my very own words. There were a couple of minor tweaks to my sentence, but it was unmistakably my work.

Probably the only thing I'm going to do about it is write this post. It's in an OMICS journal, which means that your pet tarantula has higher ethical standards than the publisher. I once agreed to review for an OMICS journal, back before I knew better, and it was an eye-opening experience. I said, "It is imperative that the authors with undisclosed formula industry connections complete the required disclosure forms accurately." It was egregious: transparent pro-industry bias evident in the manuscript, multiple industry relationships apparent within minutes of googling. I recommended that they reject the paper. Surprise! They accepted the paper. There were no disclosure updates.

Scholarly papers often include the timeline for the submission process: when did the manuscript first cross the editor's desk, and how long was the revision process, and how long has it been in press? This journal used the framework established by more reputable outlets to undermine its own credibility: submitted 8/24/17, returned for review 8/31/17, accepted 9/14/17. Those dates do not suggest a rigorous peer review process. That's how the predatory journals roll: they persuade academics to pay for the privilege of being published quickly.

Academic writing is kind of a lonely gig. You sweat and labor over papers only to hear that the reviewers want you to rewrite them and the editor isn't sure she can accept them. You finally parturite* them out into the world, only to discover that hardly anyone reads them. 

*I am coining that verb to describe the uniquely struggle-filled oxygen-deprived soul-depleting puuuuuuush required to propel a baby out into the world-- the kind of push that leaves a person bruised in her tenderest places and utterly exhausted. Can I get an AMEN from my fellow academic writers?

But hey! Somebody read my paper. And liked my writing, evidently, at least enough to repurpose it. If the author were my student I would give him an F. Since he's not, I'll just shake my head and blog about him.

Set in its ways

Every year my body clock is a little less inclined to listen when I tell it that time change weekend has arrived. Last week I thought, "Maybe I'll just stay on DST myself -- move back my bedtime, and get up when the clock says 5:10 instead of 6:10." Instead I've been going to bed when the wall clock says it's bedtime, and waking up when the body clock says it's morning. 

Anybody else still muddling blearily through? This strategy is not great for my mental acuity. So: short post, early bedtime, fresh start.