ramble through the bronx

Saturday, August 20, 2005

The New York Times does hangin' out

Guess what, everyone! The latest cool thing is to hang out with your friends, maybe drinking, maybe making lewd jokes, maybe eating frosting. Oooh, boy!

(This is up there with the Times reporting cowboy boots as the "latest" trend, a good year after every hip chick south of 14th street had them. Oh well)

jane 2:58 PM [+]

Dropped off the first draft of my proposal with my advisor on Thursday

Here's the first page (introductory paragraph):

Statement of the problem

My dissertation will argue, roughly, that there is an important bridge that can be built between feminist work on relational autonomy, which derives mainly from Anglo-American feminist philosophy, and the conceptions of personal freedom and self-determination that can be found in German Idealism, particularly in the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel. There are two reasons that this is an important bridge: (1) the feminist work has not adequately explored the metaphysics of the subject involved in relational autonomy; namely, how a self who is constituted in and through social relations can still be said to be an autonomous individual; (2) the scholarship in German idealism, while acknowledging that the status of women has changed since the 19th century, generally fails to examine how the particular concerns of feminists are met by the idealists, and has not made any sustained attempt to view the idealist practical philosophy in the light of the important work that has been done by feminists on issues of subjectivity and relationality. No one who is strongly familiar with both sets of scholarship has made any recent attempt to bring the two to the table, despite the striking structural similarities in driving questions (how can we both be free and related? how is it that our social relations determine us and at the same time are part of our freedom?) and solutions (reflection, freedom through responsibility). Further, both of these sets of scholarship have been inadequately brought into the contemporary mainstream analytic discussions of autonomy; perhaps a carefully articulated view of relational autonomy that drew from both of these sources could dialogue with the mainstream discussion.

Anyway, I've given copies of it to my advisor, as I said, and to Doug and Stephen, and will print out a copy for Josh, in order to get comments/criticisms and so forth. I'm not expecting to hear from my advisor super-soon (he said he'd get to it once his life got back to normal), so it's nice to have an excuse not to work on it for a little while. Of course, I've already been thinking of additional things I'd like to fix about it. Oh well. It's just a proposal, it just needs to be good enough to convince five professors that it's a workable dissertation project. It doesn't need to be perfect.

If I can propose this fall, life will be very very good.

jane 1:33 PM [+]

Ah, Ann... a.k.a., GO ANARCHY! YAAAA!

Fave new Ann Coulter quote:

“Liberals promote the right of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and Communists. They instinctively root for anarchy against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason.”

(from Right Wing News, via Crooked Timber, who has posted a litany of wacky right wing nonsense lately.)

Sounds like fun!

jane 1:30 PM [+]

My brain is oozing out of my ears

Hey, I don't know what happened to the photos in the last post. They looked fine last week when I put them up, but now they look wonky. I don't know what's up with that.

in other news, I've been working like a madwoman on my dissertation proposal. Today I gave a first draft to my friends Stephen "the Machine" Minister and Doug "the Jesuit" Pierce. I'm going to tinker with it some more tomorrow, and then put a copy in my advisor's mailbox. It's not done, by any means, but it's definitely at the stage where others need to look at it & tell me what needs more/less emphasis, explanation, etc. I can't look at it properly anymore. It's about 22 pages; my bibliography's at about 7 pages.

Oh, and I'm almost done my syllabus for the fall; I dropped off some articles for e-Res (the electronic reserve system). So that's coming along.

Whew. Still need to write that book review, and get the abstracts ready for the Ancient & medieval conference. Oh, and Stephen "the Machine" named me hospitality coordinator for this spring's grad student conference. But I won't really have much to do with that until January (it involves booking the caterers, setting up the continental breakfast stuff, reserving a restaurant for the banquet, seeing that the visiting grad students are put up somewhere, that sort of thing).

jane 5:00 PM [+]

Update... various things

This will be relatively brief, as I should get to work on my proposal. I'm at my last shift at the reference desk at the library, and am here until 5pm. I should be able to get a lot of stuff done, but of course, there's always the lure of the evil internet.

First of all, for ex-Whitney-ites, there's a link off of Jennifer's blog to join the Whitney Hall group. (I don't know how to set up a button for myself. Oh well. This will probably do for now).

Second, I went to my friend Aaron's wedding last Saturday. It was truly lovely -- it was down in Chinatown, as Suesan, his bride, is Chinese Catholic. The church was pretty and very very old, down on Mott Street - the Church of the Transfiguration. It really stands out in the neighbourhood, as the photos show in the link. The wedding was lovely, albeit ultra-conservative Catholic (too much mass! aaaaugh!), and there was lots of very very very good food at the reception in the church basement (yummy Chinese buns and all sorts of goodies), and very very tasty at the banquet at the Oriental Palace Restaurant (103-105 Mott Street). There were even chicken heads.

People, of course, had to demonstrate their love for the chicken heads, as you can see below. Poor little chicken head. There was also lobster, and prawns, and steak, and abalone, and shark's fin soup, and everything.


Ah yes, lots of love for the chicken heads (there was lots of wine at the banquet, of course). Amy and Josh, both more or less vegetarians, had a special bond with the chicken head. Here's Amy, loving that head.


And Josh, in his old glasses that he recently found and has started wearing again (I think they make him look like a New York Intellectual), with the chicken head. LOVE IT!

Needless to say, there was a lot of frivolity.


In addition to eating good food and being super-happy for my friend Aaron, I also got to kind of meet Richard's new girlfriend. Her name is Bazhonka, or Bajonka, or something like that. It's some sort of Eastern European name. Anyway, you can see her & Richard in the back of this photo of me & Josh. (The one, to the left of Richard, in the black dress with the deep V; the woman Richard's actually talking to in this photo is one of our lovely philosophy department secretaries, Margaret)


She's also in the back of this photo.



And of this one. Oh yeah, check out that wine bottle. For our table of 7 (Josh, me, Paul, Amy, Craig, Rosie, Sterling), we went through five bottles of wine, and Craig and Josh didn't even have any -- they had endless bottles of Tsingtao beer. Ah yes. Oh, and I had some beer as well. This is after the wine we had at the bar we went to between the reception and dinner.


This photo is after much, much wine. I think I'm a little flushed.


Anyway, do any of the St. Catherine folks vaguely recognize her, off in the back of the first three photos? I can send you a photo of her & Richard up close, but I'd rather not post it to my blog. Anyway, whatever. Who cares? (For the record, we weren't actually introduced -- Richard introduced her around to everyone else, but kind of avoided me... I ended up chatting with them both much later in the evening, as I was leading folks to the Bulgarian Social Club (a.k.a. Mehanata) at Broadway & Canal -- I was chatting with her then, about the bar, but didn't bother introducing myself at that point. Anyway... seems nice, but whatever. I'm over it!)

Besides, look how adorable Josh is.



In still other news, I'm almost done my proposal, but I'm not expecting my advisor, Michael Baur, to have a look at it any time soon... his wife, who was expecting twins (due Octoberish), went into the hospital last week for careful observation. Earlier this week they had to perform an emergency C-section -- they saved one, but the other, Jacob, was stillborn. Daniel, the one they saved, is in an incubator, and apparently has been doing much better. So we're all thinking about them and wishing them well. (so, so, so bittersweet.... hey, they have their first son... but to lose one as well...!?!)

I think German Idealism is the last thing on Dr. Baur's mind right now.

OK, that's all for now... expect more today as I procrastinate (though I did get lots of work done the last two days at the Hungarian Pastry Shop). (Oh, and I found out that if you have a photo ID from outside the NYC metro area, you can use the Columbia library - for reading, whatever - but if you have one from within the NYC metro area - i.e., a Fordham ID - then you can't go in! Grrr! I just wanted to use their air conditioning! Anyway. Too bad I lost my U of Toronto ID. I could have used that to get in. Grrr.)

jane 9:38 AM [+]

What have you been listening to lately?

So this weekend I picked up Legend - Townes van Zandt, a compilation of his music from 1969 - 1978, including some duets with folks like Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. I'm really enjoying it, and printed off a whole bunch of the lyrics and chords to his stuff. I'm totally hooked. Wikipedia includes the Steve Earle quote, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

I don't know about a Dylan-TVZ comparison, but it's really really good stuff. (Any other Townes fans? I only first heard of him a couple years ago, and it's taken me a while to actually pick up any of his stuff)

Also worth looking at is this list of top 25 country albums of all time, many of which I think I should actually pick up. (I mean, Gillian Welch's Time (the Revelator) is in there; how could it not be a good list?)

Does this mean I'm growing up into a country fan? It was just this past April that I totally loved the Country Music Hall of Fame and wandering around Nashville....

jane 6:05 PM [+]

Help... Halifax?

Does anyone any friends/relatives in Halifax who'd be likely to want to put up a complete stranger for a couple days, or, failing that, a suggestion of a good cheap youth hostel or cheap motel? There's a conference I'd really like to go to (Sept. 3- - Oct 3), but since I'm not presenting, none of my travel costs would end up covered by Fordham. (lots of good feminist stuff on agency & autonomy -- it's the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy conference)

I probably won't go (it probably makes more sense for me to just email the presenters who are giving papers I'm particularly interested in, & ask them to send me a copy), but it would be cool. Besides, I've never been to Halifax.

jane 6:44 PM [+]

YES!!

We keep Tie Domi.

Domi Agrees to Two-Year Deal With Leafs

By Associated Press

August 4, 2005, 10:20 PM CDT

TORONTO -- Tie Domi agreed to a two-year, $2.5-million contract Thursday with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team he's been with the last nine seasons.

The 35-year-old enforcer is third on the league's career penalty minutes list with 3,406 in 14 seasons. He trails only Dave Williams (3,966) and Dale Hunter (3,565).

Domi has scored 99 goals and assisted on 130 in 943 games. The 5-foot-10, 215-pound right wing spent a little over two years with both the New York Rangers and the Winnipeg Jets before returning in 1995 to the team that drafted him.

He had a career-high 29 points in 2002-2003. In his last season, 2003-2004, he had seven goals and 13 assists.

jane 10:52 AM [+]

Gorgeous new Governor General

Wow. Michaëlle Jean seems lovely. I think I've been out of Canada too long -- I haven't seen her on any of the English CBC programming they mention. What do y'all think?

jane 10:28 AM [+]

Just for Jennifer, so she doesn't have to look at the snarky NOW post





Is that better? And we will perform the ritual exercise of the un-snark:

Un-snark, nice nice nice
Nice nice nice, un-snark
David Miller you are beloved
Figure out a way to make the Leafs keep Tie Domi
Nice nice nice, un-snark
Yes, you can beat up John Ferguson
And maybe Tie can help you
Un-snark, nice nice nice

(OK, so some of my own issues sneaked through there... hope y'all don't mind)*





Meanwhile, speaking of lovely males, here's a photo of the Texas Kitty. Kitty's been settling in nicely, for the most part. He's a friendly little critter, and quite vocal. If you Meow at him he will meow back (I think he thinks he's people). I'm not sure he's ready to be mayor of a major city, or right-wing for a major hockey team, but he's definitely pretty clever (much more clever than Trouble, who's a little dumb, albeit adorable). If they tried to take over the world together, Kitty would be Brain, and Trouble would be Pinky. But Trouble's much bitchier than Pinky. Hm.... (can you tell I'm procrastinating again?)


* I was hanging out with genuine Texans (i.e., my new roomate and her husband) and they really said 'y'all'! It was wonderful! And discussed when it was & wasn't grammatical! (which her husband could do with great accuracy, being a Latin teacher and all)

jane 11:57 AM [+]

But no! we do love you!

Apparently, Tie Domi feels unloved. Boo! We want him! (If he goes to Pittsburgh to 'help protect' Crosby, I may have to start cheering Pittsburgh -- a pair o' cuties!)

Bad enough to lose Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts to the Panthers. Oh well.


UPDATE Aug. 2 4.42pm: More detailed info in yesterday's Star article (i.e,. how much the various other Leafs are making, how much the Leafs have left to spend - $10.3 million - etc.)

jane 1:30 PM [+]