mimsy and outgrabe

More bad news from the college this week. Last-straw kind of bad news. We're in the midst of finals and I have so. many. papers. to grade so I'm pausing before making any grand, stress-driven decisions that can be read as emotional or knee-jerk. But I have a good idea of how I'm going to proceed. I came across this article by physicist Alan Lightman on the TED web site about quiet time/mindfulness. Here's a small sampling: Somehow, we need to create a new habit of mind, as individuals and as a society. We need a mental attitude that values and protects stillness, privacy, solitude, slowness, personal reflection; that honors the inner self; that allows each of us to wander about without schedule within our own minds. I have paid lip service to these values that Lightman writes about for years -- since becoming a mother just over thirteen years ago. They became values because I no longer had an easy way to incorporate them into my life. Infants and toddler...

The web-world is filled with New Year's Resolutions as well as reflections on the past year, and I might as well put forth my own contribution to this electronic, public Literature of Good Intentions, since I'm going to be doing it anyway, whether it's public or private, and perhaps other people will find my own list helpful/interesting, as I find the lists of others helpful/interesting. 2012 was a relatively good year overall. I feel more confident about my teaching than I've ever felt, but I've loathed the other parts of being part of academia this year -- particularly the politics of department and administration, and to some extent, union, and I find the whole business draining and soul-sucking and I don't think I'm going to engage in any of that nonsense much more. If I can help it. I probably CAN'T help it, by virtue of my nature and by virtue of the nature of the job, but if I can keep "STAY OUT OF IT" ringing inside my cavernous h...