Today is Christmas Day. A bit cooler than usual for Austin, Texas. We got surprisingly high tech gifts this year—including an iHome for the old iPod. Having the iPod attached to an external speaker has already made a big difference. I must not be of the headset or the ear bud generation and could never bring myself to use the iPod on my head. It’s fun to have it playing away through the speaker. I feel so iModern.
Don’t have a plan of Resolutions yet. I would like to keep writing on a frequent basis. I did two papers to wind up my semester as a graduate student—a paper on “Olympics as Television” and the other was on “Seinfeld: In the Sitcom Tradition.” I noticed the effort helped me with putting in concentrated effort. I learned some things with both papers—got some sense of how to write a Research Paper with the Olympics effort and learned much about American comedy with its roots in minstrel shows and the Borscht Belt and the evolution into television comedy. I did sweat getting the papers completed.
Learned the word “doozie,” meaning “something outstanding or unique of its kind" came from the Dusenberg automobile. Just checked that on the computer dictionary and they said doozie was of unknown 20th century origin. Does that mean I know something the dictionary does not know? Well, I’m calling it a victory. Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 25, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Time Running Out
My dream last night, of Providence, R.I. was inspired by conversation with Texas professor—about her grandfather’s grandfather, Truman Angell, architect of the Mormon’s Salt Lake Temple, who was from Angell family of Providence. Brigham Young sent him to Europe so he could learn how to design a building. The professor could tell I was interested to learn more about the man named Angell, with my memory of Angell Street adjacent to Brown University, my alma mater. She said the family had his personal diaries, and she read Angell’s records of his journey across the plains; he may have been a bit of a whiner, with “complaints” of various pains on his body. (He was architect of the Salt Lake Temple for thirty-five years until his death in 1887 and was said to know every stone in its walls. He is credited with perfecting the acoustics of the Salt Lake Tabernacle.)
Following this conversation at a faculty cover dish on the same night of the University of Texas near loss of a football game… I had a dream. In my dream I was feeling amazingly sentimental feelings, and I spoke to college buddy Jon, from Brown University days, and he wanted me to say hello to his mother who I supposedly met on the first day of classes, an event that never happened and was strictly a dream invention. Jon was a native of Providence. The dream shifted locales, and a recounting of a Long Island story where I had danced with a high school classmate’s mother at a 1970 wedding and she told her son how handsome I was and what a thrill it was for her, an older woman’s mythology of memories, but one that did occur. I worked this over in my dream.
These events and pseudo events mingled and created a dream ambience of longing for past events that could not be grasped and held but somehow seemed rich and elusive at the same time.
Back to reality…And this mood connected to the Texas versus Nebraska game for Big 12 Championship, from earlier that evening. Colt McCoy and Coach Mack Brown almost let the time slip away and seemed not to be playing by the of rules of football time management at the highest level of college football competition. The faux pas on the field, a near disaster, was righted by good fortune and Texas won the game with a field goal in the last second, a second that had to be put back on the game clock. The “deep play” of American culture turned this into an ESPN talking heads debate on wanton carelessness the announcers sternly rebuked and made me dream about the dangers of letting time run out.
They almost let the time run out!
My dream grasped on time running out—which, just like on the football field, eventually happens. Time does run out. Like the quarterback, and as quarterbacks of our own life we lull ourselves to distraction… don’t want to consider this too closely.
We are all crossing a prairie. The wide open plains of life beckon us and though we’d like to think we have a solid steel car and not a rickety Conestoga wagon that’s all a matter of degree. The sun bakes hot and plain rolls endlessly ahead. How to get to the other side… Will Indians charge out on steeds whooping and hollering for a scalp… or maybe we will reach the patch of green, an outpost in Utah. I was amused to find myself fascinated by a Mormon story, a group that also has seem strange and somewhat ominous. The professor had a very kindly demeanor, a bit of the prairie virtues in her bearing, and a nice modesty—part her heritage and part a function of being a truly educated person. Only someone like her could make Truman Angell come to life for me.
Following this conversation at a faculty cover dish on the same night of the University of Texas near loss of a football game… I had a dream. In my dream I was feeling amazingly sentimental feelings, and I spoke to college buddy Jon, from Brown University days, and he wanted me to say hello to his mother who I supposedly met on the first day of classes, an event that never happened and was strictly a dream invention. Jon was a native of Providence. The dream shifted locales, and a recounting of a Long Island story where I had danced with a high school classmate’s mother at a 1970 wedding and she told her son how handsome I was and what a thrill it was for her, an older woman’s mythology of memories, but one that did occur. I worked this over in my dream.
These events and pseudo events mingled and created a dream ambience of longing for past events that could not be grasped and held but somehow seemed rich and elusive at the same time.
Back to reality…And this mood connected to the Texas versus Nebraska game for Big 12 Championship, from earlier that evening. Colt McCoy and Coach Mack Brown almost let the time slip away and seemed not to be playing by the of rules of football time management at the highest level of college football competition. The faux pas on the field, a near disaster, was righted by good fortune and Texas won the game with a field goal in the last second, a second that had to be put back on the game clock. The “deep play” of American culture turned this into an ESPN talking heads debate on wanton carelessness the announcers sternly rebuked and made me dream about the dangers of letting time run out.
They almost let the time run out!
My dream grasped on time running out—which, just like on the football field, eventually happens. Time does run out. Like the quarterback, and as quarterbacks of our own life we lull ourselves to distraction… don’t want to consider this too closely.
We are all crossing a prairie. The wide open plains of life beckon us and though we’d like to think we have a solid steel car and not a rickety Conestoga wagon that’s all a matter of degree. The sun bakes hot and plain rolls endlessly ahead. How to get to the other side… Will Indians charge out on steeds whooping and hollering for a scalp… or maybe we will reach the patch of green, an outpost in Utah. I was amused to find myself fascinated by a Mormon story, a group that also has seem strange and somewhat ominous. The professor had a very kindly demeanor, a bit of the prairie virtues in her bearing, and a nice modesty—part her heritage and part a function of being a truly educated person. Only someone like her could make Truman Angell come to life for me.
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