Well, the offers are in, negotiations have occurred, and we have a decision. We are moving to Maryland next year! I am crossing my fingers that this will be a permanent move for us and we can really put some roots down. Now the fun of arranging a multi-state move begins. Luckily we know the area really well so house hunting is much easier than it ever has been with our other moves.
Cora's excited to go back to Maryland and get back to the beach. Scott is excited to get back to fresh crab cakes. I am excited to get back somewhere less flat, more scenic, and closer to water. Schatzi is excited to get back to Lake Artemesia and riding shotgun all over town. Daphne has no clue what is going on, but she is a total fish so I imagine she'll enjoy the beach and the great UMD pools as well. Also, I love DC so getting back to the city will be great.
Cora's all signed up for school next year and I started the ball rolling on setting up a Daisy Scout troop for her class. Now I need to start looking for a little part-time library work, but I think I have something that is a good possibility there too. All in all, things really couldn't have ended up much better for me and the girls. I'm hoping the job ends up being really good for Scott too.
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Spring Cleaning
It looks like Spring may be arriving in Champaign. I think we may hit 60 today, though the gale force winds are kind of putting a damper on enjoying the weather. Scott is in College Park interviewing with CASL (cross fingers) and I am longing for the DC area, which is quite possibly the most beautiful place on earth in Spring. Right now they are predicting peak bloom for the cherry blossoms from April 3-9. This picture doesn't do it justice. It looks like the world is covered in cotton candy and snow but it is actually flowers everywhere. Anyways, I miss Maryland and I'm hopeful...
South Africa is sending the contract documents via courier, so we should know better what we are dealing with in terms of that offer very soon. I hope we will know where we are heading in the next couple of weeks. It will be good just to know.
I just finished reading Roberto Bolano's 2666. I'm not done processing yet, but this is an important book. How important is what I'm having a hard time judging. I am fairly confident it is the best novel I've read that's been written after 1980. That may not sound like it is saying a lot if you know about my distaste for most recent literature, but there have been some bright points in the last 3 decades, so it isn't a hollow compliment. By best I mean it is best as judged by a combination of writing and importance, not that it has been my favorite read. It is not a happy or light read at all, though it does read really fast for being roughly the same size as War and Peace.
Most of the critical reviews I've seen have been almost fawning. I think this is partly due to the author being dead. I think the tone might be a little more measured if the author was living. The book isn't without flaws, though I suppose that gets mitigated by the fact that this work was in draft when Bolano died.
My trouble in judging the book is coming from a combination of the style of the book itself and the author's death. So the book is actually 5 books revolving around a central location, Santa Teresa (which is a thinly veiled Ciudad Juarez). The place unifies the work, but the place itself is not really the point. While the book seems pretty place-driven, much like Under the Volcano and One Hundred Years of Solitude, which really seem to be the parents of 2666 in many ways, I don't really think the place is much other than a stand in for what the author is really focusing on. Bolano doesn't attack his central theme directly, nor does he ever explicitly articulate it. Reading the books is like examining from a distance the concentric circles that ripple in water after an object is thrown in. Part of my dilemma in judging this book is that all we have are the circles so we have to guess what it was that was thrown in. That is easy enough -- death. But I'm not positive whether it was death as a boulder and the ripples are tsunami sized or whether it was death as a pebble. I think most of the reviews I've read have taken it on faith that Bolano threw a boulder here, but I think that is because of some assumed insight or intimacy with the topic because he was dying as he wrote. I'm not really sure the book itself bears that out. I'm struggling to see what is new here, what is different, what is unique and important about whatever it was Bolano threw in. I'm not sure I'm there yet. The book bears rereading and regardless of whether it was a boulder or a pebble, this book is masterfully done and important in the canon of great works I think. I haven't decided whether it goes in my top 100 ever though. Still on the fence on that one. At any rate, I recommend it. And I'd love to chat about it with anyone else who reads it.
South Africa is sending the contract documents via courier, so we should know better what we are dealing with in terms of that offer very soon. I hope we will know where we are heading in the next couple of weeks. It will be good just to know.
I just finished reading Roberto Bolano's 2666. I'm not done processing yet, but this is an important book. How important is what I'm having a hard time judging. I am fairly confident it is the best novel I've read that's been written after 1980. That may not sound like it is saying a lot if you know about my distaste for most recent literature, but there have been some bright points in the last 3 decades, so it isn't a hollow compliment. By best I mean it is best as judged by a combination of writing and importance, not that it has been my favorite read. It is not a happy or light read at all, though it does read really fast for being roughly the same size as War and Peace.
Most of the critical reviews I've seen have been almost fawning. I think this is partly due to the author being dead. I think the tone might be a little more measured if the author was living. The book isn't without flaws, though I suppose that gets mitigated by the fact that this work was in draft when Bolano died.
My trouble in judging the book is coming from a combination of the style of the book itself and the author's death. So the book is actually 5 books revolving around a central location, Santa Teresa (which is a thinly veiled Ciudad Juarez). The place unifies the work, but the place itself is not really the point. While the book seems pretty place-driven, much like Under the Volcano and One Hundred Years of Solitude, which really seem to be the parents of 2666 in many ways, I don't really think the place is much other than a stand in for what the author is really focusing on. Bolano doesn't attack his central theme directly, nor does he ever explicitly articulate it. Reading the books is like examining from a distance the concentric circles that ripple in water after an object is thrown in. Part of my dilemma in judging this book is that all we have are the circles so we have to guess what it was that was thrown in. That is easy enough -- death. But I'm not positive whether it was death as a boulder and the ripples are tsunami sized or whether it was death as a pebble. I think most of the reviews I've read have taken it on faith that Bolano threw a boulder here, but I think that is because of some assumed insight or intimacy with the topic because he was dying as he wrote. I'm not really sure the book itself bears that out. I'm struggling to see what is new here, what is different, what is unique and important about whatever it was Bolano threw in. I'm not sure I'm there yet. The book bears rereading and regardless of whether it was a boulder or a pebble, this book is masterfully done and important in the canon of great works I think. I haven't decided whether it goes in my top 100 ever though. Still on the fence on that one. At any rate, I recommend it. And I'd love to chat about it with anyone else who reads it.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Initial trepidations
So I am joining the blogosphere. I don't know how frequently I'll post, but I thought starting a blog now was a good idea for a couple of reasons, namely:
1) we do not know where we will land next year but it may be on another continent and this seems like a decent way of keeping up with people
2) being the wife of an academic in the current job market is more than a little stressful and likely to get more so with the economy as it is and this seemed like a decent place for my fellow academe spouses to commiserate/vent/speculate/sympathize
Not sure how to kick this sucker off, but laying out the current situation seems as good a start as any. Currently Scott has a tenure track offer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He has a job talk at CASL (University of Maryland affiliated) in 2 weeks. He has funding for 1 more year of a post-doc here at UIUC as well. He's short-listed for a TT in Konstanz, Germany, but they won't pick until summer. A few other applications are still up in the air but it seems like these are going to be the major players in the decision making.
The South Africa job is both really intriguing and somewhat terrifying. It is very remote, which makes it much safer than someplace like Joburg or Cape Town, but also means it would take 2 full days to get to from the States. There is a very good prep school there for the girls, but it is the South African system which may make coming back to the States hard for them educationally if that was to happen. We have not gotten the package offer from HR yet but we are anticipating the salary will be very low by US standards. That wouldn't be a problem as the cost of living is quite low in South Africa, but the cost of travel back to the States would then be prohibitively expensive and we'd likely only get back once a year tops and it would be very hard for family to come to us. South Africa appears to be at a tipping point right now as far as the future goes and it is really hard to predict where the country is going long-term. If they survive the current growing pains it could be a very exciting place to be permanently. It also seems equally possible that the current instability there could get much worse and things could go the way of Zimbabwe. Hard to know. There is rampant poverty, an AIDS epidemic, residual systemic economic and educational disparities by race, and pretty rampant crime. Those things are all pretty big negatives. However, Grahamstown is fairly isolated from the violent crime and the other problems seem to present really compelling opportunities for us to really engage in humanitarian work as a family. I think making service as a family a priority would be a wonderful thing for all of us long term.
So that is where we are now. We did hear that Cora was admitted to Holy Redeemer in College Park, so at least we have that school option lined up if CASL makes an offer. For now we're in limbo, but being a compulsive planner I'm trying to wrap my head around all the options and have plans lined up for how we respond to any combination of circumstances that pan out. In no way would we have guessed that these would have been the options we were considering if you had asked a few years ago, but a bad economy makes for tough choices. Any feedback or thoughts on the whole process would be welcome. Next year looks to be exciting wherever we end up and at this point I feel lucky to have the security of a guaranteed paycheck come summer. That puts us in better shape than many and I am acutely aware of that.
1) we do not know where we will land next year but it may be on another continent and this seems like a decent way of keeping up with people
2) being the wife of an academic in the current job market is more than a little stressful and likely to get more so with the economy as it is and this seemed like a decent place for my fellow academe spouses to commiserate/vent/speculate/sympathize
Not sure how to kick this sucker off, but laying out the current situation seems as good a start as any. Currently Scott has a tenure track offer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He has a job talk at CASL (University of Maryland affiliated) in 2 weeks. He has funding for 1 more year of a post-doc here at UIUC as well. He's short-listed for a TT in Konstanz, Germany, but they won't pick until summer. A few other applications are still up in the air but it seems like these are going to be the major players in the decision making.
The South Africa job is both really intriguing and somewhat terrifying. It is very remote, which makes it much safer than someplace like Joburg or Cape Town, but also means it would take 2 full days to get to from the States. There is a very good prep school there for the girls, but it is the South African system which may make coming back to the States hard for them educationally if that was to happen. We have not gotten the package offer from HR yet but we are anticipating the salary will be very low by US standards. That wouldn't be a problem as the cost of living is quite low in South Africa, but the cost of travel back to the States would then be prohibitively expensive and we'd likely only get back once a year tops and it would be very hard for family to come to us. South Africa appears to be at a tipping point right now as far as the future goes and it is really hard to predict where the country is going long-term. If they survive the current growing pains it could be a very exciting place to be permanently. It also seems equally possible that the current instability there could get much worse and things could go the way of Zimbabwe. Hard to know. There is rampant poverty, an AIDS epidemic, residual systemic economic and educational disparities by race, and pretty rampant crime. Those things are all pretty big negatives. However, Grahamstown is fairly isolated from the violent crime and the other problems seem to present really compelling opportunities for us to really engage in humanitarian work as a family. I think making service as a family a priority would be a wonderful thing for all of us long term.
So that is where we are now. We did hear that Cora was admitted to Holy Redeemer in College Park, so at least we have that school option lined up if CASL makes an offer. For now we're in limbo, but being a compulsive planner I'm trying to wrap my head around all the options and have plans lined up for how we respond to any combination of circumstances that pan out. In no way would we have guessed that these would have been the options we were considering if you had asked a few years ago, but a bad economy makes for tough choices. Any feedback or thoughts on the whole process would be welcome. Next year looks to be exciting wherever we end up and at this point I feel lucky to have the security of a guaranteed paycheck come summer. That puts us in better shape than many and I am acutely aware of that.
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