Archive for the ‘My life’ Category

Chair-ridden

December 14, 2025

I’ve been sick for some time — a terrible sinus infection that makes sleeping lying down mostly impossible, so I’ve been sleeping, immense amounts of time, sitting up in the comfy chair in my living room — sleeping fitfully, with unpleasant waking moments, for long times (9 to 11 hours) at night and then with desperately needed hour-long naps during the day. (I also have attacks of the itchies — once mostly in my crotch, which was dreadful — and crippling arthritis clawing up my right hand, but those are side issues.)

The sinus infection isn’t contagious, and I don’t run a fever, But it’s fiercely painful, produces prodigious amounts of disgusting junk I cough up constantly, and is, alas, not much affected by nasal saline sprays. Mostly, it’s unbelievably tiring. Hence, my being chair-ridden (the analogue of bed-ridden). I still need to order in food and do some basic household work, and until today have been able to produce at least some small posting each day, to show that I’m not dead yet.

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Today’s consumer quiz

December 11, 2025

According to the label on the can, it

contains product from [in alphabetical order] Bolivia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, U.S.A, Vietnam

It’s high in iron, vitamin E, niacin, magnesium, zinc, copper, and manganese; also in dietary fiber and saturated fat, but with no cholesterol. It has no salt, very low sugars, and a fair amount of (plant-based) protein. It’s crunchy.

What is it?

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The angel of the Lord came down

December 2, 2025

… And glory shone all around

So I sang this afternoon, immersed in the joy of the Christmas season, weeping with pleasure at being able to sing again (and exercise my lungs; my singing is supposed to be both pleasurable and therapeutic), after many weeks of being laid low. And so I write about the hymn tune Sherburne paired with the text of the Christmas carol “While shepherds watched their flocks”, from which comes the angel descending in a shimmer of glory.

Not what I intended to post about today — but the Ernie Kovacs Nairobi Trio comic routine has turned out to be vastly more complex than I originally thought, so I’m going for the fire-bright Christmas angel. Stay tuned for something later about three people in gorilla suits.

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Social value

December 1, 2025

🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate the month of December and to begin a new work week

Another lesson from a visit a little while back from an old friend and colleague in linguistics in which three meals (deliveries from local restaurants) were a stand-out feature. I quietly insisted on doing the ordering, so as to offer my guest an array of pleasant surprises. I have since realized that what I was doing was displaying an ability of social value; in earlier years, I would have cooked the meals (I was genuinely good at that), but I’m long past being able to cook, and now (for complex reasons) I’m also unable to take guests out to dinner — but I can still play the role of host, by foraging takeout skillfully.

In a similar vein, though I can’t cook, I can produce new meals in my kitchen, using takeout, household staples, and a microwave [I realize this sounds like the description of a MacGyver episode, with our hero, oh, escaping from a prison using only leftover lasagna, plastic cutlery, and a thimble]; I can still play the role of cook, through my skill at assembling new dishes. As a boast: I Am the Great Assembler. (Totally over-the-top theme music here: Freddy Mercury singing “The Great Pretender”, in this YouTube video.)

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Service record

November 25, 2025

The background, from my 11/24 posting “Work weeks”:

Back when I still had an academic life, 60 hours a week was the absolutely standard work week, combining teaching, teaching prep, research, publication, preparing and delivering public lectures (see the alarming record of these in yesterday’s posting “Scholarly communication”), and extensive service to the university and the profession.

This is about that extensive service to the university and the profession. Which is chronicled in my giant c.v., along with the teaching and public lectures; once again, the record of enormous amounts of real work, especially reviewing applications for grants from the NSF, NEH, and the Fulbright Program:

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Work weeks

November 24, 2025

Briefly noted. Lynneguist on Facebook today tracked her work weeks: typically 45 hours, rising to 60 at this point in the fall. I reported:

Back when I still had an academic life, 60 hours a week was the absolutely standard work week, combining teaching, teaching prep, research, publication, preparing and delivering public lectures (see the alarming record of these in yesterday’s posting “Scholarly communication”), and extensive service to the university and the profession. My man Jacques took on himself the burdens of seeing that I kept close to the 60-hour week; of preventing me from allowing commitments to take me towards 70- and 80-hour weeks (which he viewed, probably correctly, as dangerous to my health); and of acting as my helpful assistant. That was a great gift of love, offered in the gentlest way — but with an iron fist inside that velvet glove.

 

Scholarly communication

November 22, 2025

In an old NCIS episode (“Bikini Wax”, S2 E15, 3/29/05), the chief medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard (played by David McCallum) recollects that he’d considered a career in teaching but didn’t find the idea of lecturing on esoteric subjects attractive. Chacun a son goût and all that, but (resisting every digression beckoning me to another profession) I happily signed up to do just that when I was a graduate student at MIT, and went on to appointments at three universities (UIUC, OSU, and Stanford), with visiting teaching gigs at dozens of other institutions over the years.

With the responsibility of teaching, my positions came with a parallel responsibility to engage in research — and to report on that research, not only in writing but also in public presentations, where work in progress can gather useful critiques, and where completed work can be broadcast to new audiences. Face-to-face interaction, in a classroom or in a lecture room, is irreplaceable for scholarly communication, because it’s interactive and can be adjusted on the spot to fit the needs of the moment.

For years now, these interactions haven’t been available to me, so I’ve had to find interactive forms of scholarly communication in different modes: blogging on the internet (inviting commentary) and using social media. More popular and less esoteric, but still in their own ways pedagogical.

Thanks to Ducky Mallard for spurring me to go back to my great big c.v. that has everything in it, to look at the summary of what I did by way of scholarly communication in my previous life. I find it incredibly hard to believe that I was that person, but here’s the evidence.

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A gyro bowl from Nick the Greek

November 20, 2025

Another chapter in foraging for food by restaurant delivery. I had a desire for some gyros, an old favorite in the wide world of demotic cuisines, in this case Greek: from Merriam-Webster online (considerably amended):

noun gyro (plural gyros): /jíro/ [North American] a sandwich especially of lamb and beef [roasted on a spit and sliced], tomato, onion, and yogurt sauce [tzatziki] on pita bread [AZ: the name comes originally from Greek, but has been thoroughly Anglicized, so that the phonology and morphology of the Greek name are no longer relevant to the American name]

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Koi Palace takeout

November 18, 2025

Today’s food adventure was to satisfy a yen for Chinese dumplings, at which point I discovered Koi Palace, which is apparently a local dim sum institution, with restaurants in Daly City, Dublin, Milpitas, and Cupertino, plus a takeout site in Redwood City, only a couple of miles from my house. You get to the takeout site via DoorDash on-line, and then pick up your order or (if you are me) have it delivered by DoorDash.

(I have a local wild-favorite dim sum restaurant, Tai Pan in Palo Alto (with previous mentions on this blog), but its dinner service times are uncongenial to my current daily schedule (though they do now deliver by DoorDash), so I thought I’d try something new.)

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Pressure Drops and Itchy Spots

November 17, 2025

Yesterday’s set-up (“Two afflictions”) for today’s more detailed report:

I have largely lost the last few days to afflictions

…. One of [them] comes with rapid descents into very low barometric pressures [pressure drops] (as has happened twice in the last three days, as sea storms sweep through coastal California). The other is a mystery ailment that has variously annoyed and plagued me for many years: intensely itchy spots over most of my body, but especially my limbs, sometimes maturing into actual pustules; I have taken to referring to this condition as the itchies. On the night of the 14th/15th, I had the worst attack of the itchies in my life

So today I bring you a report on the Days of Pressure Drops and the Itchies. You hope for days of milk and honey, cakes and ale, wine and roses, beer and skittles, but sometimes you get days of pressure drops and the itchies. Both of which hurt, both of which exhaust you.

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