Upcoming Developments

I haven't written for a while, partly because every time I sit down and try to put into words this topic that's been raging around inside my head for weeks, I find something else in the blogosphere that I need to link to and think about and incorporate into my argument before I publish it. So my imagined post has just grown and grown, and I've had to break it up into multiple parts. I'm still not sure how many, but I've got to get it out soon, or else it'll never see the light of day.

What is it? Something of a manifesto, I suppose, though perhaps far too reflective to warrant such a label. All summer, just about everyone has been talking about Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas? It's a fascinating argument which Frank makes: so very right about many things, but so very wrong about the most important ones. To me, his book reveals something much larger than a simple electoral concern (or travesty, if you prefer); the disconnect between the conservative voting habits of culturally motivated lower- and working-class white voters in the American midwest and south and their (presumably more important) actual economic interests is a lot more interesting than a simplistic tale of elite capitalist Republicans manipulating fearful, redneck rubes. On the contrary, Frank helps get us close to the crossroads where (populist) culture and (progressive) class-concerns collide. But he refuses to look seriously at that crossroads, why it's there and what the costs of trying to transcend it or just dispose of it might be. In that sense, I have the same problem with Kansas that I had with John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's The Emerging Democratic Majority: a book that does so much to uncover the hard political demographic complications of culture and class in America today, but all in the name of just urging Democrats in the direction of a rather condescending bit of platform building. There is something that needs to be said here, something on behalf of the divide which these authors expose that doesn't turn it into a simple problem to be solved. I don't think these authors, in short, pay their topic the respect it deserves. (While I don't share either of their equally apocalyptic perspectives on the possible consequences of, and necessary responses to, this divide, I think both Timothy Burke and Scott Martens are at least aware of the depth of what's happening.) Whether I can actually manage to say what I think needs to be said, I don't know. But anyway, hopefully by this weekend or next week, I'll be able to start rolling my thoughts out. Expect excursions on the Democratic and Republican parties, socialism and populism, free trade and globalization, Christianity and Wal-Mart. Just what you've always come here to read, right?

In the meantime, be aware that I've installed a hack (borrowed from this good gentleman) that should make the comments function much more user-friendly. Also, keep an eye on what happens over at Laura's place. She's going to be talking about family and work-related issues all next week, and it appears that several high-powered academics and policy wonks are going to be following the conversation there closely. So if you have anything to say on those topics, plan on joining in the discussion; it's sure to be a rewarding one.

Rosh Hashanah

Today was one of those mornings where Alison was up early (around 5:00am) and wouldn’t go back to sleep, and so after feeding her Melissa went back to bed, and I put Alison in a stroller and went for a walk around the Arkansas State campus. It was dark out still, but warm: a pleasant early, late-summer morning. I could see the start pretty well for this part of Arkansas. Some whippoorwills were calling from the trees, but mostly it was just crickets and other ambient insect noise; other than that, silence. I was alone on the roads and walkways around campus, save for the delivery trunks arriving and the occasional night shift janitorial crew returning to their cars. As much as I'd like to have had a half-hour more sleep, it was a nice walk.

One of my oldest and strangest habits is my tendency to attempt to control and apportion my life and duties in a calendrical way: that is, I'm always searching for significant dates or events that I can use as an excuse to declare (to myself) a "fresh start" in whatever is occupying me at the time, or conversely declare something I've been struggling with "over," thus allowing myself to more easily rationalize and accept whatever incomplete, half-assed status things currently stand at, and forget about it. I've been doing this for years, and sometimes it’s bordered on an obsession--I've ripped pages out of my journal ("I'm starting over!"); deleted and set up again all my computer settings, just so traces of the "old arrangement" could be hidden away or self-consciously denied; rushed through assignments and responsibilities so they wouldn’t "cross over" into the "new deal" which I've convinced myself was going to begin the very next day; and so forth. Of course, I've also been bothered and embarrassed by this compulsive rebooting the whole time, and have engaged in all sorts of internal tricks to help me get over it (which has included both fretting about it on my old blog, and--in part--setting up this new one). In any case, knowing this about myself makes me, on some level or another, suspicious of the way in which I tend to turn holidays into dates of personal importance. But at the same time, I'm crazy about holidays, and don’t want my own hang-ups to get in the way of recognizing their essential importance.

Melissa and I incorporate just about any holiday we can plausibly conceive of a connection to into our family life. Traditional Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas, of course, but also various religious festivals connected to cultures and places with which we have some affinity: St. Andrew’s Day and St. Lucia's Day during the holiday season, for example. Then there are outright national, civic holidays: Independence Day, of course, but also Reunification Day (seeing as how our lifestyle gets in the way of celebrating Oktoberfest to its fullest) and Ch'usok, given our connection to both Germany and Korea. And we celebrate Rosh Hashanah. We don’t doing anything special--talk to the kids a little bit about the history and experience of the Jews, and eat some of Melissa's excellent challah bread for an evening meal after sundown--and I won’t pretend that we’re somehow plugging into something deeply authentic by putting it on our own personal (Mormon, American) calendars. Indeed, the closest personal connection I can claim to that tribe is my brother-in-law's wife, who was raised in a part-Jewish home. (They celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, for whatever that’s worth.) But I'm glad we do it anyway, and not just because it gives me the ability to take a nice early morning walk and, justifiably or not, lend the beginning of the day a certain (admittedly somewhat arbitrary, but nonetheless meaningful) significance.

Holidays are a way of putting ourselves in time, marking ourselves in relation to things that came before and things yet to come, people long dead and people yet to be born. Much communitarian thinking may, perhaps, be rightfully derided for being more a matter of philosophical anthropology than political theory, for failing to give any concreteness to the socially and morally necessary imperative to belong, but reflecting on holidays is one such area of inquiry where that accusation is, I think, clearly unwarranted. The calendric sense of recognition and orientation (not to mention the opportunity for association and celebration) afforded by holidays represents an affective binding at least as important, if not more so, than that associated with more explicitly shared beliefs, boundaries, or civic habits. (Charles Taylor has very thoughtfully focused on the role of holidays and rituals in the evolution our modern religious sensibility and "social imaginary"; Amitai Etzioni has led the way in more straightforwardly examining the sociological importance of the "ways we celebrate".) True, few Americans today live a sufficiently pious or agricultural life for liturgical or seasonal holidays to much normative force; believe me, we’ve packed up the kids and gone to see a movie on Christmas, just like the rest of you. But the eclipse of a holiday’s traditional restrictive authority doesn’t mean it's ability to help us "authorize" a particular moment, or turn, or feeling, or resolution in our lives has been lost. On the contrary, it's still there. All we need to do is invest the effort to get into its rhythm, rather than letting the commodification and banalization which so many holidays have fallen victim to (President's Day, anyone?) excuse us from examining their significance.

I'm not Jewish. But I know that for millions of people, carrying with them a history of thousands of years, last night at sundown a New Year began. The fact that for many of those millions that history doesn't matter much isn’t an argument that it can no longer be meaningful, in however small and simple a way, to anyone. As I walked around campus this morning, pushing a smiling, quiet baby (why is she always so much better behaved outside the house?!?), I breathed in some of the humid air (Ivan-influenced rain is no doubt on the way), and felt it was a good start to a brand new day. My old habit of calendrical self-arrangement manifesting itself again? Yes, probably, partly. But also something else: it was a feeling I knew that right at that moment was being shared by others, perhaps many others, wherever they may be. And if feeling something in common with others, whether near or far, isn't meaningful, then I don’t know what is.

Jacob's Break

Jacob T. Levy, whom I only just a week and a half ago finally met, is taking a sabbatical from blogging. And he's doing it for the very best of reasons: he has some year-long, pre-tenure review projects that he wants to focus on, and keeping up with the rest of Volokhs isn't, in his judgment, the best way to do it. He's probably right. Heaven knows I still haven't figured out how best to meld my desire to have an internet presence with all my other interests and responsibilities; my break this past summer was supposed to give me a chance to work it out, but I'm far from sure that all (or any) of the changes I've made are going to take. In any case, I'm going to miss Jacob's perspective and comments. I'm sure I'm not the only blogger and reader of blogs that will probably find less and less reason to keep up with The Volokh Conspiracy if Jacob's not going to be there; not that I don't respect the hell out of Eugene and Co., but their interests and opinions generally don't engage me the way Jacob's take on things always did. Indeed, his (one hopes truly temporary, but you never know) departure from the blogosphere is a real loss; there aren't a whole of lot of truly serious political theorists and philosophers currently blogging*, and it was Jacob's example of mixing the scholarly and the topical in the context of his--and my--particular discipline (a mixing that he thoughtfully and influentially discussed a long, long time ago) which, more than that any other single blogger, made the blogosphere seem like an attractive and interesting place to me. So thanks Jacob; I hope we'll see your signature around in blog comments here and there as the months go by.

*This isn't really a fair claim; it's not like I've taken a survey. Just off the top of my head, Crooked Timber has Chris Bertram and Harry Brighouse, and John Holbo often wanders into political philosophy territory also. (CT has Micah Schwartzman as well, though law school keeps him too busy to blog.) Then there's Chris Brooke and Norm Geras. There are others I'm missing, of course. But I'll still maintain Jacob's was a particularly valuable voice when it came to applying the insights of theory to political matters; we'll be poorer without it.

I See Bloggers

Like Laura said, this APSA conference was, among other things, a chance to put a lot of faces and voices with names. The panel on "The Power and Politics of Blogs" was about as well attended as any APSA panel could ever expect to be--there were probably close to 100 people in the room--and there were more than a few heavyweights present. (Andrew Sullivan wasn't there, unfortunately. I say unfortunate, because Wonkette was, and that could have been one hell of a bitch-slap fight.)

There were a few bloggers whom I had the chance to meet and speak with some. What do they look and sound like, you ask?

Laura McKenna? Think Kate Pierson of the B-52s, only with a more reasonable hairdo and better dressed, wearing a pair of those retro-cool glasses that Andrea Martin's Edith Prickley always wore. Crooked Timber's Harry Brighouse? A dapper, slender guy, forever carrying two heavy knapsacks and dressed in a well-worn suit that gave him just the right hint of Alfie-era Michael Caine casual. Harry's CT companion Henry Farrell? A giant! (Seriously, he practically had to crouch to avoid banging his head against the ceiling when he was presenting his paper.) A towering figure of erudition, with (I note enviously) perfect Richard Gere hair. The Volokh Conspiracy's Jacob T. Levy? A small man with the finest speaking voice I've ever had the pleasure to listen to at APSA, with diction as sharp as his suit and a tone equal to that of an Oxford don or an Old Testament prophet, as appropriate (not one of the fire-and-brimstone ones; one of the more reflective and poetic ones, like Ezra).

There were numerous others that I saw or heard or met briefly: Daniel Drezner, Chris Lawrence, Eszter Hargittai, Alfredo Perez (of Political Theory Daily Review), Steven Clemons, and many more. Every last one of them came off just as engaging, elegant, attractive, charismatic, intelligent and friendly as you might imagine.

(Me? I'm a misanthropic peg-legged hunchback with running sores.)

Off to APSA

The original idea behind my break in blogging was to get a lot of research and writing finished this summer. That didn't turn out the way it planned, and along the way a lot of other things changed as well. But at the very least, I got a few things done, and found myself thinking differently about a lot of my life as well.

For now, I'm off to the American Political Science Association's annual meeting, this year in Chicago. I'm presenting a couple of papers, the drafts of which you can read here and here (note: both are PDF documents). I'll be talking about cross-cultural discourse, human rights, Confucianism, Puritanism, models of community, globalization, liberalism, ontology, and much more.

I like conferences; they jazz me up, get me enthused about the discipline and who is doing what and how I can contribute. I realize that many long-time academics get entirely burned out on the conference-going scene, but for me, the rejuvenating effect remains as strong as it was when I attended my first professional conference as a graduate student. I hope that doesn't change anytime soon.

Plus, an added bonus: a crazy, near all-blogger panel, on the "Power and Politics of Blogs." Finally, my chance to get Henry Farrell's autograph.

A State Education

Classes began here at Arkansas State last week. My oldest daughter began her third grade year at Hillcrest Elementary the Thursday previously. Her teacher is Mrs. Vanpelt, and as it turns out, one of her children is taking Introduction to American Government from me this semester. It's a cozy community, here in Jonesboro. Mrs. Vanpelt told her class that she doesn't hand out homework on Wednesdays, because that's Bible study night for so many of her pupils. Similarly, here at ASU, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry was the very first organization I saw with flyers up announcing activities, beating the local fraternities and other clubs by several days. You have to like a place and a local population that knows what it's all about.

I'm an agent of the state here, as my daughter is in the hands of one. There are many who look down on that choice, for many good reasons. As the years have gone by, my siblings and their families have become more and more non-traditional in their approach to education; most of them are outright dissenters from the public school system, and home school their children. My mother actually planted the seeds of this dissent, having long complained about how I was treated at school (justifiably, I think; I was a miserable kid), and not long after I graduated from high school taking the plunge and pulling my remaining brothers and sisters out. It didn't stick; Mom tried numerous different home schooling programs and experiments, and my younger siblings drifted in and out of the school system. At the time, my home state of Washington had pretty loose laws regarding home schooling, so this wasn't hard to pull off (things have since changed). It's hard to measure what the consequences of this scramble find alternatives to public schooling were, except that it must of been received well by most of them, because so far out of the seven Fox children who have children of their own of school age, only one puts them in the public schools--me. Everyone else makes use of home schooling, private schools, or some mix thereof. As for college, the sense that children should receive an education that primarily prepares them to earn high test scores, get into top-notch universities, and generally go forward in their highly-structured social-advancement oriented lives, is thankfully absent from my siblings' families, as far as I can tell. So in many, many ways, Melissa's and my choices, and my occupation, sets our family very much apart. But they let us attend family reunions anyway.

For the most part, they haven't become dissenters from the contemporary schooling regime and its expectations because they think they can improve upon it, or because they want to be part of the conservative religious counter-culture (which Harry Brighouse eloquently reflected upon a long time ago), or any such specific complaint. (Though given that they all are pretty consistent social conservatives, that possibility can't be discounted.) They all agree that schools aren't what they used to be, though like Timothy Burke they probably can't come up with a definitive accounting of that change. Basically, like my Mom, I think they just want to have their kids around them more, being more involved in their children's lives, have greater capacity to establish the bounds their children operate within, thus paradoxically allowing their children to live with, in some ways, in even less structure and more freedom. I'm completely sympathetic to that attitude, and so is Melissa, which begs the question as to why we aren't turning away from relying on and/or making use of the state in educating our kids as well. Part of it is, of course, simply a matter of time and temperament. But I think that even if we could organize our lives in such a way as to home school our children, we wouldn't. Why not?

Part of it is where we live. With the exception of my older sister, all of my siblings with kids live in relatively large metropolitan areas (Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; Las Vegas); even my sister, who still lives in Spokane where my parents do, is confronted with a far larger and different school system than our admittedly parochial one here in Arkansas. This is not to say that if Melissa and I moved our family to a larger city that our thinking would automatically change; it's only that at the present moment, we don't feel as though the public school system, that the state educational regime, is such a monolith that one must either embrace it or reject it wholly. For us, it's not impossible to meet with teachers, attend school meetings, volunteer and be part of the whole general project in education--not to say it's necessarily impossible anywhere, but it definitely isn't impossible here. Not when simply by living in one's community you already share so much space with one another. (Melissa and I used to bump into Megan's kindergarten teacher and chat with her all the time at Wal-Mart. Yes, everyone shops at Wal-Mart here, but that's a different post.) It makes for a mixed approach, a shading of possibilities and perspectives on education, that frankly we've both come to appreciate very much.

Of course, one could theoretically have all this and more if one simply privatized education completely, so where does that leave our justification? Sharing room with another one, as the case may be. I like the idea of the state being a (partial) agent of education; insofar as the state is the reflection of the collective interest we all have in promoting and sharing certain civic goods with one another, especially the poor and marginalized, then it is an agency worth supporting. Not unthinkingly: the controversies surrounding the best way to administer and make accountable the performance of this responsibility are huge and likely never-ending. (Melissa and I are partial to various charter-school and school-choice innovations, which would preserve the collective civic investment in education but open up and diversify both its curricula and the available modes of participation, though obviously the case for such reforms is far from conclusive.) Jonathan Alter, back in 1995, wrote an essay titled "Cop-Out on Class," which thoughtfully compared the abandonment of the public school ideal with other class-derived gulfs in our society, such as the gap between those who serve in the military and those who don't. He wrote (and he was targeting private schools, but the basic concept applies across the board):

Children should not have to sacrifice their education to their parents' principles. If the public schools in our area fail--either generally or for out particular children--we'll be gone. But in the meantime we should stay awhile a fight....The single biggest reason for the decline of American public education is that so many capable and committed parents have opted out. That in itself is a bad lesson for their children.

I don't mean to criticize my siblings, because it's not at all hard to imagine myself in their shoes--and someday Melissa and I may well be. But for now, in the midst of a variety of sometimes conflicting needs, hopes, capabilities and desires, Megan's state education seems to be serving her and our family well. I hope it will remain so. Every system will have its weak points, its hang-ups, its own little advantages and quirks and limitations and opportunities, and Arkansas has plenty. None that overcome the basic legitimacy and worthiness of the project though. And to that degree, our assessment isn't too different from the assessment made by practically everyone who takes advantage of the public schools, which I suppose is exactly the (egalitarian) point.

As for after Megan completes her schooling...who knows? Perhaps by then, social and cultural and class divisions in American society will have become so entrenched that wholly separate educational and vocation ruts will have permanently worn into our civic fabric, so much so that someone who attends Jonesboro High School will be all but legally forbidden from even contemplating attending an elite institution, those having been long since reserved for the lucky genetically-proven few graduates of the finest pre-schools and prep schools of the nation. Perhaps, when that time comes, I'll see no other option left except to join the revolution. For the moment, fortunately, I don't see any reason to prize such a future for my kids over any number of comparable ones. I mean, if all else fails, she could attend Arkansas State, join all her middle- and lower-class classmates in receiving a solid education courtesy of the admittedly somewhat restricted and unimaginative but nonetheless responsive state, and go on from there. She could even take Introduction to American Government from me. I bet she'd get a good grade.

Pottermania, a Few Years Late

This post is pretty much only for fans of the series. You've been warned.

Pottermania hit the U.S. back around 1999; when we returned from Germany that summer, everyone in Melissa's book group was talking about J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and soon we owned the first three volumes. I only paged through them enough to catch the gist of the story; Melissa, by contrast, read them all the way through. She enjoyed them enough that I got caught up in her excitement; when the fourth and fifth books came out I bought a copy as soon as they were available, and even managed to read them before she did. (She let me; I'm a faster reader.) And then there were the movies; we both thought the first was a crummy, by-the-numbers bit of storytelling, but when we finally saw the second on cable we were pleasantly surprised. And then came the third this summer...but I need to back up a bit here.

Last May, I was casting about for something to read to Megan, our (now!) eight-year-old in the evenings. We've done a lot of classics over the years: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Pippi Longstocking, etc., and I wanted to continue in that vein. Megan has many cousins, however, that are huge Harry Potter fans--dressing up like characters from the books at Halloween, and so forth. She knew a little bit about the books and movies, having overheard Melissa and I talking and having seen clips at friends' homes over the years. But when she heard what some of her cousins were planning for the opening day of Prisoner of Azkaban (going to the movie in full costume, after having transformed Grandma's house into Hogwarts for the weekend, complete with classrooms and books of spells), her desire to learn what the phenomenon was all about reached new heights, and Melissa agreed that she was probably ready for Harry Potter. So we started with Sorcerer's Stone...and very quickly, things got completely out of control.

Megan has a wonderful imagination, so much so that she has a hard time keeping herself separate from the story. When poor Sara Crewe in A Little Princess was locked up in the attic, Megan just bawled; she said it "hurt her" to think about such things. Well, increase that by a factor of fifty. Sorcerer's Stone, and then Chamber of Secrets, and finally Prisoner of Azkaban, made her laugh, scream, cry, hide under the bed and in the closet, bury her face in her pillow and dance around the room, all while desperately urging me to keep reading, however scared or embarrassed or worried she may have been. She found herself captivated by and craving these characters like no other fiction she'd ever before encountered. I was amazed. She stayed up all hours reading (after finishing each book we let her buy herself a paperback copy of the completed volume, to keep her from tearing apart our own), she recited lines from memory, she taught the books to her little sister Caitlyn (who was only too happy to share yet another make-believe realm with her sister), she obsessively pestered us with searching questions. I suppose it isn't anything particularly unusual, but still: as a father, I was so heartened and surprised to see my child discover in herself, over a period of months, such an emotional range, such a mature sense of storytelling, and such imaginative resources. She guessed plot points, traced character arcs, engaged in the creative recreation of favorite scenes, cross-checked stray comments from the books, ranked the books (Chamber of Secrets is her least favorite, though all her copies are already thoroughly trashed), bought fan magazines and put up posters all over her room, and in the meantime came up with her own side adventures. Overall, this summer she grew into a much older girl, and Harry Potter's adventures and loves and failures and fears were a part of that growing. She became a passionate fan, and an experience with passion at that age is wonderful thing to have and behold.

Though Megan begs me to continue on with Goblet of Fire, Melissa and I have agreed to forbid that one, at least for the time being; as everyone familiar with the series know, once you read that one you have to read Order of the Phoenix, and the increasing darkness and death in those books is something we think Megan will better be able to handle when she's 10 or 11 or so. (Most of those cousins which inspire her are also older than her, in the 11-14 range.) We agreed to take her to see Prisoner of Azkaban (a much better film than either of two earlier ones, by the way), and she did manage to watch it, though she was hiding under a blanket she brought about half the time. A nice benefit of this wonderful, Potter-crazy summer of 2004 is that I finally managed to read the first three books all the way through...which led me to re-read the fourth and fifth, which inspired Melissa to do the same, and then there was a matter of re-watching the first two movies in preparation for the third (also: Megan received a dvd of Sorcerer's Stone for her birthday last week)...so, to make a long story short, Melissa and I have frequently found ourselves arguing over the minutiae of Harry Potter's world this summer. Which finally leads to the fan-boy portion of this post (warning--spoilers ahead!): what on earth is Rowling going to do with Slytherin House?

Ever since I read Order of the Phoenix, which ends with Voldemort publicly revealed and numerous Death Eaters imprisoned or at least identified, I've been convinced that the next book simply must be some kind of "Battle for Hogwarts"-type story. Lucius Malfoy is a known follower of Voldemort, and Draco has made it clear he favors Voldemort's agenda, which he now has no reason to hide: how can Hogwarts function when one of its houses is the home base for a bunch aspiring (if not already actual) servants of the Dark Lord? Exactly how could Rowling make us believe that another year could go by, with Draco and Co. occasionally attempting to kill Harry, or at least being suspected of such, without everything coming to some sort of crisis? I can't see how she could do it; for Rowling to put off some sort of internal Gryffindor/Potter/Slytherin/Malfoy showdown (with Snape playing a fascinating, unclear role) until the seventh volume would be untrue to her overall story, to say the least. Since I'm hoping the quality of this series continues, I was nervous about what Rowling was planning.

Thankfully, I think my hopes for Rowling are going to be fulfilled. She's given several intriguing clues about the future direction of the series; she's given us the title of the sixth book (The Half Blood Prince), assured us that the title character is neither Harry nor Voldemort, and told us that the story in that book springs from events described back in Chamber of Secrets. Now this getting us somewhere. In Chamber of Secrets we learned about Salazar Slytherin, his obsession with pureblood wizardry, and his "heir." So obviously Half Blood Prince is going to, in some manner or another, address some aspect of (perhaps the destiny of!) Slytherin's line, the house he founded, and perhaps Voldemort's relationship to such. The memory/magical imprint of Tom Riddle is relevant here; Rowling has implied that the youthful Voldemort had/has something or some quality of great significance. Moreover, given that Snape is Head of Slytherin House, Half Blood Prince will give Rowling the perfect opportunity to make his standing clear once and for all. (He's obviously engaged in some serious behind-the-scenes magic; on the one hand, he is presumably the rebellious Death Eater which Voldemort at the end of book four said must be destroyed; on the other hand, he apparently still, as of book five, is held in high esteem by current Death Eater Lucius Malfoy. Curious...) And of course, it will allow Rowling the opportunity to explore how and why Dumbledore continues to tolerate dangerous Slytherins like Draco and his ilk. A further clue in his regard can be found in some comments Rowling made here (a transcript of comments she made at the Edinburgh Book Festival; read the whole thing, as there are many more hints there besides the one below):

"If you want to speculate on anything, you should speculate on these two things, which will point you in the right direction. The first question that I have never been asked--it has probably been asked in a chatroom but no one has ever asked me--is, 'Why didn't Voldemort die?' Not, 'Why did Harry live?' but, 'Why didn't Voldemort die?' The killing curse rebounded, so he should have died. Why didn't he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the steps that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die--I will put it that way. I don't think that it is guessable. It may be--someone could guess it--but you should be asking yourself that question, particularly now that you know about the prophesy. I'd better stop there or I will really incriminate myself. The other question that I am surprised no one has asked me since Phoenix came out--I thought that people would--is why Dumbledore did not kill or try to kill Voldemort in the scene in the ministry."

My guess? I think Voldemort has magically tied his life to the survival on a particular person, family, or line; as long as they or it survives, he cannot die, though his body be completely destroyed. Similarly, if Voldemort should die, the other person/family/line would also, instantly. That's why Dumbledore doesn't want to kill his former student: because if he did so, someone or several someones would also die, and he doesn't want that to happen (yet?). Of course, this fits in with my belief that there must be something big regarding Slytherin House coming down the pike; to go completely out on a limb, I think the "half blood prince" will be turn out to be the person which Voldemort (himself Muggle-born!) has linked his life to. Could it be Snape? We know nothing of his background? Draco Malfoy? As Melissa reminded me yesterday, we only actually know that his mother's family are purebloods; we don't know about Lucius. And what about Salazer Slytherin himself? Could Voldemort have locked himself into the survival of a historical figure, the death of whom would result in the deaths of thousands of others over the generations? The mind boggles.

Anyway, Pottermania indeed. And why not? I mean, the only thing a true Tolkien geek like myself has left is to wait for the the release of The Return of the King Extended Edition dvd. Something has to fill the vacuum, right?

[Update 7/15/05: see a follow-up to this post here.]

Time Is On Our Side

Melissa and I have been married for eleven years today. We were married on a Friday the 13th, back in 1993, and so to us that date has always been a fortunate and lucky one, rather than otherwise. The fact that this year August 13 is a Friday makes this anniversary all the more fun. I have no idea what we're going to do--Jonesboro isn't exactly jumping with entertainment options, and Alison is too small and needy to allow us a serious anniversary journey. So our babysitter will come over this evening after Alison is in bed and the other girls are getting ready, and in all likelihood all we'll do hit a local coffeeshop, maybe do some shopping (shopping without children--why, it's been years!), and talk.

Eleven years isn't that long, of course, but it's getting there. Melissa's mom says that it was when she realized that she'd been married longer than she'd been single that the passage of time really hit her. We'll need another eleven years before that's the case for Melissa; a little longer for me. But I can see it coming. Our oldest girl, Megan, turned eight this week, an important age for Mormon children (that's the usual age for receiving baptism in our church). Caitlyn is four. It's been three years since I earned my Ph.D. And so forth, and so on.

Megan received a touching birthday card from my mother's mother this week; in her shaky handwriting (which included the sad line, "I'm sorry; my eyes are getting so weak"), she told Megan how proud she was of her great-granddaughter (one of many). We saw Grandma Jolley out in Utah last year, and it might be the last time we see her or Grandpa Jolley alive; both are declining fast. They've had a long life and are surrounded by family: three of their sons and their families are there in Vernal, a little town in northeastern Utah, near the Uintah Mountains, and extended family are nearby as well. And they have children buried there too. Neither are very ill, but time is taking its toll, and will probably overwhelm them soon. Then I won't have any grandparents left, my father's parents having passed away after many years together as well. Grandma Fox outlived her husband by a few years, but she was never the same after he died; her mind focused more and more on her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, until she couldn't care for herself any longer. Uncle Chuck, my father's little brother, moved his family into Grandma's old house, and tended her full-time almost until the end. She would write us letters and birthday cards, as Grandma Jolley does today, and they became sweetly incoherent: sentence fragments, repeated questions, lines from hymns she'd learned in Sunday School eighty years earlier. I'm sure, somewhere in her mind, she missed Grandpa Fox until the end, and hoped that time would overcome her soon as well.

It'll do the same to Melissa and I too, sooner or later. But that doesn't worry me. Partly it's my specific religious beliefs about marriage which prevent me from feeling much concern about Melissa's and my fate, but mostly it's a broader conviction that tomorrow isn't really my concern. We're in the midst of ordinary things here: baptisms and birthdays and anniversaries among them. That's sufficient to make the time worthwhile, and worth being grateful for.

In Praise of My Position (and the People I've Met Here)

Alison is sleeping a lot better than she used to, but she still has rough nights here and there, which means that there are still the occasional mornings when she's awake and fussy, but Melissa needs at little more sleep. This was one of those mornings, and so at 6am, rather than try to keep Alison quiet, I put her in her stroller and took her for an early morning walk around the campus of my place of employment, Arkansas State University. I've taken a stroll around ASU quite a few mornings this summer, usually very early (I taught a 7:30am summer class this July, and so was often taking my walk around sunrise). It's a walk I've come to enjoy, and didn't mind Alison's company one bit.

One of the reasons I've liked it is that, as my third year teaching here approached, I found myself able to see the size and growth and potential and role of this university through more and more appropriate eyes. Part of this is simply that there is more to see: a lot of long-delayed construction projects around campus have, over the last few months, rapidly come into shape, and the results are very nice. Perhaps it's a small thing, but I like seeing the new lawns, new sidewalks, new buildings; it gives a feeling of substantiality to the place, and reminds me that despite all the financial wrangling and bureaucratic infighting and budget robbing, ASU is a pretty solid place. It's not going to dry up and blow away. But that connects to the larger part of why I've liked these quiet morning walks around the campus--the fact that I think I know this place better, and feel better about it, than I ever have before.

I've struggled in the past with figuring out--personally, politically, and philosophically (like the blog title says)--what I'm doing here, and why I'm doing it. Arkansas State is relatively small, second-tier state school (at best); it serves a mostly lower and lower-middle class rural population, the sons and daughters of farmers and factory and service workers mostly, in this little corner of the midsouth (northeastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, and the bootheel of Missouri). It doesn't attract the best students, or even a lot of very good ones; there are plenty of other options, for ambitious young people and the children of better-off professionals, in Memphis or Little Rock or St. Louis. A lot of the assumptions which lay behind the education of academics, assumptions about employment and teaching and research and the life of the mind which I embraced whole-heartedly as a graduate student, simply aren't relevant to what needs to be done, or what can be done, at an aspiring but limited, fairly provincial place like ASU.

So what is relevant? I'll tell you what's relevant: Julie Sorrell, that's who. Julie is...well, you can check out her blog here. Julie has taken three classes from me over the last year, will soon take another, and I've never had a student impress me more. Not because she's brilliant (though she sometimes is), or because she's going to go out and change the world (she's much too much a realist about the obstacles in her way to indulge in those sorts of fantasies), but because she's a woman who one morning woke up and knew, in her heart, that she had to go back to school, had to learn more about the world around her, had to reach out and reach in, figure out what she believed and find out how to share what she believed with others. Her passion for politics, like the passion of many, was first ignited by 9/11, but she's extended far beyond that now; she's reading up on Islamic philosophy and international events, she's thinking about how people should be governed and whether wars are justified and a hundred other things. I have no illusions about my indispensability to her; she has so much determination that I'm sure she would have found a way to overcome the huge obstacles of family, time, money and distance, and get herself a more advanced education regardless of whether I was here or not. But I was here, and Arkansas State University was here, and that's what she needed. Not the best education in the world, and certainly not the most connected or best funded! But a start, a place to find her feet and grab onto one small tail end of the world of scholarship and ideas, to find out what kind of intellectual tigers are out there and maybe even get a little bit of practice in riding them. For your average upper or upper-middle class white American university student today, figuring out all this--finding a major, discovering a passion, developing some skills, aiming for a job--is something that comes easy; they've been prepped for it (as Melissa and I, in a thousand conscious and unconscious ways, are preparing our own children for it) since they were little. For someone with economic or social or cultural or demographic strikes against them, however, it's by no means easy or obvious. For someone like that, for someone like Julie, Arkansas State University (with all its limitations) is a necessary first step; for some of them, coming off the farms or out of poverty and onto this (in their experience) big campus, with its (relatively) big buildings and (comparatively) big library...it's a monumental step. And what teacher worth her or his salt wouldn't feel pleased and humbled to be made part of someone else's monument, however simple its beginnings?

So I walk around ASU with Alison, where I'm still (for the third time!) on a one-year contract, wondering if the department will finally be able to swing a real job search for this slot this year, sending out applications in the meantime, hoping for the best. I've plenty I could complain about (like how my teaching load has just been raised because of budget cuts, and the travel money is threatening to disappear too), and no doubt I'll do so every once in a while. But for the moment, I find myself feeling my roots in this small, second-tier, state university--in its buildings, its faculty, and especially in the often rough and usually unprepared and overwhelmed students it serves. Yes, too often the disconnect between the world they know and will probably return to, and the world I'm paid to introduce them to (the world of political arguments and ideologies and history and thought), is so great as to be ludicrous. But not always; there are diamonds out there in that rough. Diamonds not of my making, to be sure. But it's great to know I was there when they started to shine.

Preparatory

If you've come here from my old blog, welcome. You can read about the reasoning behind this new (or renewed) venture of mine into blogging in my last post at the old place. I'll probably be blogging before the end of the week; in the meantime, thanks for looking me up.