Talking past each other

The campus has been fidgety for the last few days. A group of pro-lifers descended upon the town and settled themselves in front of HSS. They brought surreal graphic pictures and glaring black and orange signs. "Warning," the signs read, "Genocide photos ahead." And people got mad.

We had a warning email from the president a week before. He reminded us of the right to free speech and also reminded us that we were allowed to hold protests, should we choose. But still, I heard the complaints all week: "I shouldn't have to see this," said one girl. "It seems sort of disrespectful," said another. And all week, my co-worker and his wife (a professor at the university) responded to the irate emails and posts of faculty colleagues.

We were talking about it this morning while I worked on some pre-cataloguing tasks. "It's funny," he said, "but I just spent all week defending a group that I don't even fully agree with."

"Oh?"

"People don't like it," he explained. "There have been claims of incivility, discourtesy. They want these people off our campus. They want to know why we even allowed them to come. But this," he said, "I mean--this is the place for it. This is a university. This is a community of ideas and viewpoints and dialogue. This is where it belongs. Even if we don't agree with it. And even if we don't like it." He paused. "They've accomplished something though, you know? Coming here. There has been more discussion and debate and argumentation about this complicated issue this week than I've ever heard here before. People are talking. Oh, they're mad. But they're talking. And that's what we need to do."

"Talking among students?" I asked.

"Among faculty," he said.

But I know it's happening among students too. They're making up their minds, realizing that there's an ideological commitment to be made. In the coffee shop, on the street . . . in front of HSS. Students are talking about abortion and choice and freedom of speech. They're seeing the pictures and talking to pro-life representatives.

Some of them are protesting. Yesterday afternoon a group of students collected behind HSS, then moved in rough formation to the front of the building. They were yelling, call-and-response at first: "WHAT DO WE WANT?" "FREEDOM!" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" "NOW!" They crossed the street: "MY BODY. MY CHOICE. MY BODY. MY CHOICE." Through campus: "ABORT NOW!" Across from them, in the shadow of HSS, the pro-lifers watched stolidly, quietly. The protesting students were shown up. Their strident calls sounded oddly, grotesquely egocentric bouncing off of the voiceless display across the street.

When it comes to convincing people, I am not enthusiastic about visual assaults. But after the protest, I felt better about it. The shouting--that hideous, selfish shouting--was far more insulting than the display I'd been walking past for two days.

I know why the faculty were upset. The pro-lifers hijacked some of their causes. Next to the pictures of aborted babies were old photographs of lynchings, malnourished and abused children, victims of the Holocaust. The posters said it was genocide.

Hijacked, but rightfully so.

Because, you know, there is personhood involved. There is another identity besides the woman's. I hate to be trite, but it really isn't all about me. Of course, we talk past each other. One side talks about the rights of the baby; the other about the rights of the mother. They say the burden of proof is on the side of life. Prove that that fetus is a human being. I reject that burden. It's not my job. Prove that the baby isn't a human being. You first, after you.

Today the displays were gone and so were the scowls. But maybe the debate will live on. It has to live on. There was some good work done these last few days.

And still, I'm a little disappointed. I'm disappointed that the right of these people to meet on our campus would even be questioned. I'm disappointed that the very people who proclaim the virtues of tolerance and the right to free speech on our campus and in our community and country would complain about the repercussions of that tolerance and freedom; that they would suggest curtailing those rights just because the people making use of them have a different point of view. It's a mockery of everything that the good liberal is supposed to stand for. And I'm disappointed. I expected better of them.

No, I'm not dead - or lost. I haven't abandoned anyone - not for good, that is. But I have been busy. It's almost dead week and almost finals week; and with sunny skies and warm days, it's been more than a little hard to keep myself focused. This means that everything takes longer. Longer to think about, longer to write. Just longer. And because I've arrived precipitously at the end of the term, there's much, much more to take longer with (and that's not a good thing!)

I'll be back. It's just going to take me awhile.

Seven papers to go. Two weeks left.

I'll be back. Someday.

The theatrical experience

On the way home someone asked me how I would rank the plays. And I said I couldn't. "But you have to," he said. "Impossible," I said.

It's true. Each of the plays that we saw was entirely its own; there was no comparison. Gem of the Ocean felt epic in its proportions. The actors embodied the characters who, in turn, embodied the world. Everyone became something else. They weren't so much individuals as they were universal symbols. Rabbit Hole, in contrast, was intimate and individual. The actors became their characters and stayed there, refusing to transcend these boundaries. As You Like It was, well, Shakespeare. Shakespeare in all its glory (setting the play in the 1930s was an inspired move). The emphasis was on the clever artifice of the language and plot, the sheer joy of the words and the wisdom of the knavery.

No one told me it would be this good. The times between plays were spent wandering around Ashland, visiting dress shops and book shops and ice cream shops, finding the best restaurants, and strolling in the park. It was sunny and hot(!) both days, and I had good companions (and good conversation) and a comfortable place to sleep. What more could I ask for?

Watching the plays reminded me, again, what it is I love about the arts (whether literary or performing or visual). At their best they are meta-narratives: pieces of ourselves, reflections of the world we have made, stories of our stories. Theater, with its technical complexity and its shifting frames of reference (audience, actors, characters, plot), is especially adept at this reflecting. Its very artifice - its brazen, open storytelling - somehow draws us into our own lives even as it reminds us (through the stage and the actors and the carefully scripted words) that it is itself a construct, a telling shadow of our own reality.

But, "All the world's a stage," Shakespeare said. Perhaps he was reminding us that our reality as we know it is itself another sort of shadow. Like Narnia within Narnia. Like the Platonic forms and the Good. This play too, with its artifices and dialogues and characters, is a reflection of something more.

Anecdotes II

In metaphysics today, our professor had already begun his lecture. We're still on determinism vs. free will. He came down rather heavily on the deterministic side. Ten minutes in, he glanced over to the side of the room.

"What on EARTH are you doing?"

The student under scrutiny grinned sheepishly and didn't reply. The class turned to stare. His desk was piled with fluffy, fuzzy, stuffed animals. Fluffy, fuzzy, stuffed WALRUSES to be exact. Walruses of all shapes and sizes. We rolled our eyes, exchanged covert glances, laughed a little; he kept pulling walruses from his backpack. The lecture resumed. Bemusedly. Stuffed walruses.

Walruses?

Anecdotes

It was a day for anecdotes. All of them were amusing. Some were funnier than others. The linguistics one took the cake.

In linguistics we were discussing semantics and connotation. Our professor showed us two sentences: "You are a real lady" and "You are a real woman." "Which would you rather have someone tell you?" She asked. The class pondered. One of the students suggested that while "real woman" might have had negative connotations "back in the day" advertising has changed that somewhat. "It's not really derogatory anymore," she added. "We've reclaimed the word."

Another student raised her hand. "I don't really think I would mind either way," she said. "I wouldn't be offended." Pause. Then, thoughtfully, "Unless they were surprised that I was a woman."

Compatibilistic sunny days

The skies are blue today, and the temperature is giving our Oregon themometers a run for their money. Campus has broken out with a rash of tees, shorts and flip-flops. Students are abandoning homework in droves to head for the tennis courts, the Grove, the track, or the patio in front of Werner.

In metaphysics, we tried to convince our professor to move the class out of doors. "The natural world goes so well with metaphysics," we assured him, and he rolled his eyes. "Please," we said. "I'm going to jump out the window," one of the students threatened. "It's just not right to be inside on such a glorious day!"

He hemmed and hawed, and rolled his eyes some more, and then told us that he had to use the chalk board. So, no. We stayed inside to talk about truth. There are four theories of truth: the correspondence, pragmatist, deflationary and coherence theories of truth. I'd like a little of each please, but heavy on the correspondence. Not so much deflationary. Ah. Just right. I must be a compatabilist at heart.

We are miserably behind on the syllabus in that class. Weeks and weeks behind. But we still keep plugging away. We've started our little book of essays on freedom and determinism. I just read an excellent one on determinism. Almost enough to convince me, although the determinist view point always strikes me as being mildly counter-intuitive. I'm probably a compatibilist here too. Anyone surprised?

So, yes, sunshine and short sleeves. I'm looking forward to a walk later this afternoon, and then an evening of hard work on the Frege paper (which is not written yet and which is due on Thursday morning). Life is beginning to look up and the new house is wonderful. Like I said: wide spaces, lots of light. It wasn't too much to ask for after all.

Light on wood

We could see that there were lights on as we crested the hill. The house, empty but finished, was twinkling above valley. The window panes glowed a little in the misty rain.

The youngers had brought blankets with them, to curl up with on their bedroom floor; blankets, and a book that MamaBlogger had promised to read aloud. LavenderGirl had stowed a laptop into her satchel. The Jabberwock had tucked a book under his arm (he ordered it from the library back in February and it finally arrived today). Dad and BrotherBlogger were occupied with setting up the new speakers. I lugged along linguistics homework and that metaphysics reader.

Inside, the bare floors gleamed, long stripes of reddish gold under the soft lamp light. It's one of the things I love about this new home of ours: the way the light catches at the wood, pooling over it, spreading out in lazy rectangles to lap at the low windowsills or the baseboards.

That said, it was cold this evening when we first arrived. I spread my books out on a carpeted stair landing, and wished that I had thought to bring socks. And while my feet slowly chilled, I watched the fog and rain settle into the fields beyond the window.

Hard to believe it's already May 1. Especially when it was cloudy all day and the sun didn't bother to show his face. I could imagine better May Days.

Hard to believe, too, that it's week five of the term already. Week five, and I've barely started any of my projects. This is not because I'm procrastinating. Half of them are unstartable until after I go to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival (week after next!).

Hard to believe, actually, that by this time next week I'll be writing from home. From a home that lets in light and savors it. From a home with wide spaces and tall ceilings. From a home in which I'm going to have to work, seriously, steadily and not a little frantically, for large portions of the coming month.