Catching-up things

* The persistent cough I had a while back seems to have abated, which makes me wonder if I either had a very low-level summer cold, or if there was something I was particularly allergic to that stopped flowering. It's a relief to have it gone, though.

* I've been swapping out (what little energy I have in evenings for knitting) between trying to finish up the Grasse Matinee and working on the back of the Augusta cardigan. (Maybe I do an in-progress photo of that this weekend). It's a little tougher though with feeling the need to go to bed earlier, and with trying to fit in piano practice in and around cooking and cleaning-type tasks.

* Last weekend I finally watched "The King's Speech" all the way through. I enjoyed the movie a lot. I like movies set in that era partly because even if the story isn't compelling (but this one is), there are interesting things to look at in re: the differences in clothing and interiors and the like. Lots of great knitwear in this one (a lot of British movies set in that era seem to have it; I suppose in those days people wore it more, what with less central heating in houses and with wool being the real "high performance" fabric - synthetics largely not having been developed yet. Also I wonder if the UK has more of a knitwear tradition than the US does. Though it could be climate; here, there are only a couple months out of the year it's cool enough to wear it, and also, I tend to feel like people overheat spaces  in the winter - I know some of our classrooms are far too warm for my comfort)

But I did enjoy the movie. Part of it is, I just like the "person overcoming adversity and doing what they need to do" type of story; I find that cheering.

For those of you who don't know: the man who became George VI (His given name was Albert and apparently his close ones called him "Bertie," but as he was preparing to ascend to the throne, that name was deemed "Too Germanic" for the 1930s...) was not eager or prepared to be king. He had halting speech and a pronounced stammer (a bit of history I did not know until this movie came out).

The way Colin Firth* played him, he almost gags on what he's supposed to say some times. I don't totally know how stammers work, but it did seem in this case it was largely a psychological thing

(*I think I once said I disliked Colin Firth as an actor. I think I had him briefly confused with Hugh Grant. Colin Firth is fine - he's actually one of those actors who can kind of disappear into a role (sort of like Dustin Hoffman, on this side of the Atlantic) and Hugh Grant is the one where, whenever I see him in something, I am like, "Oh, it's Hugh Grant again")

It turned out the failed-actor-turned-voice-coach who worked with him discovered that (a) he could speak just fine when he had to really concentrate (reading Shakespeare aloud while loud music is played in his ears) or (b) he could speak fine when singing (I think I read that James Earl Jones - who also had a stammer as a child, amazingly enough - overcame his this way) or (c) when in the grip of strong emotion or cursing.

Which is where the R rating of the movie comes in. Really, except for the swearing (and perhaps a bit of salty talk about what his brother David - the man who WAS going to be King, but abdicated - was doing with his American girlfriend) are the only things that might be objectionable in the movie.

I would probably not have qualms showing the movie to a young teen (provided they possessed the basic maturity to understand that the swearing there was a part of the story, and not put in to titillate, nor is it something that should be imitated in front of class at school). I think the swearing needs to stay in and not be euphemised because that's the POINT there, that saying those....words....was how George VI managed to work himself up to actually speak. (Well, he also tried singing part of the speech in rehearsal).

I will say the swearing is *slightly* comical - part of it is, at least for someone like me, the mild shock of "someone like that" saying "those words." But also just the stream of them that comes out eventually. (Confession: as I said on Twitter, in the rare occasions when I break down and use some of ....those words....it does sound a bit like "Bertie's" swearing - just an unconnected, un-thought-out stream of things.)

As I said, I enjoyed the movie. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about the idea of a story of someone overcoming adversity and doing something they MUST do for the good of others (leading the country) even though they do not want to and feel they are not equipped to do it. Perhaps it's because it's the opposite of what I seem to see a lot in daily life - either people who THINK they'll be great at something and aren't (and continue to think they're great despite evidence to the otherwise), or people managing to slough off doing something they should do. I do tend to think one of the things our culture suffers from - though this may be more in the "what you see on the news/in tv" side of it than in the "this is really what goes on out in the middle of the country" side of it - is that people DON'T step up to do what needs to be done, that there isn't that grace under pressure and rising to the occasion any more.

Maybe that's it: I like stories about people rising to the occasion. Because it gives me hope that if I'm called on to do something really hard at some point I will be able to do that, too.

* I really want to stay home this weekend and relax but think I better put in a couple hours either updating my intro bio stuff, or doing the name-checking in this paper I've been called on to edit. I'm counting this afternoon a washout, because there will be an hour or two of fieldwork and then I think I need to mow.

(And I will need to be careful: I see the fringed-ladies'-tresses orchids have their flowering stalks up; I will have to carefully mow around them. I might even get out a couple of surveyor's flag-stakes that I have for fieldwork and mark them so I don't hit them if I have to mow next week - which is likely, seeing as we are probably going to get whatever rain is left in Harvey once it tracks out of Texas)

* I've been seeing a female ruby-throated hummingbird at the Turk's Cap hibiscus nearly every day I'm home over the early afternoon hours. I figure the thing must be producing a fair amount of nectar if she keeps coming back. This morning. I think I saw her fly up out of the abelia bush - I don't know if she overnights in it or if maybe she has a nest somewhere nearby.

One of my eventual goals is to clear out part of the garden area and plant a bunch of "nectar producing perennials" to try to attract more butterflies and hummingbirds and bees to my yard. I don't know if this has been a bad year for butterflies but I have seen far fewer, and that concerns me a bit. I would hate to see butterfly species start to go extinct. (Hopefully it's just there are better nectar sources elsewhere).

* There's yet another article making the rounds exhorting professors to be "kind" and "considerate" of their students, noting that "many students have jobs and families to juggle" (and yes, don't I know that).

I don't know. I have very conflicted feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, I feel as if I am being exhorted to do something I have ALREADY been doing my entire career (How many times have I altered my schedule/changed my plans to accommodate someone who needed to make up an exam on short notice, or who wanted tutoring to make up for days they missed because of an emergency) and I confess it annoys me slightly to hear people picking up on doing something I have ALWAYS done, because I know they will get praised for having started it, whereas I am not noticed for having always done it. This is true of several things lately:

- "economize by taking a lunch to work instead of eating at a restaurant!"
- "2017 should be the Year of Kindness and Consideration!"
- the exhortations to get daily exercise, which I have been doing for half my life, but no one cares/no one believes me because I'm not a size 2 and I don't do "extreme sports" or marathon.
- also, to a lesser extent, the lionization some men get if they knit or quilt, when I'm a woman in the sciences - granted, a less-male-dominated one - and no one has ever seemed to give much of a flip about that.

The other thing that frustrates me slightly about these calls (and the similar one on my campus about "going the extra mile for students") is that it feels very asymmetrical: it seems to ignore the fact that sometimes profs/staff need kindness and consideration - that sometimes we hurt, or feel burnt out, or have emotional things in our lives we are dealing with (or, I dare add: some profs/staff probably have "side hustles" they have to try to juggle with their main careers). And it does feel like we're being told, "Well, you're the 'adults' so you should be able to 100% cope with things" or "You're earning good money, so you should have no problems/your problems are not worth being concerned about" and that is not true.

I dunno. I get tired of all the extra emotional labor I feel like we get called upon to do sometimes. A few years back I had a very fragile student who used to do things like say "I'm going to have a panic attack!" when a due date was looming or something wasn't going well in lab, and I never knew what to say. Yes, maybe this person really did have anxiety issues, but....sometimes it felt a little blackmaily to me that they would come to me and tell me how they couldn't possibly cope and so I had to accept late work, or less work, from them. And I tried to be kind but more than once I gently brought up the issue that we have a counseling center, and if someone has a problem that they want to change, it requires work....and I admit I wondered at times if the student used what was going on as a way of getting attention or avoiding doing things they didn't want to. And maybe I was wrong about that, but it did make me tired, because honestly? It put more of the work and the burden on me, and there's only so much I can carry.

So I don't know. Yes, I'm sure there are still crusty old Professor Kingsfield types who need to be kinder and more adaptable, but to me, it feels like the "be kind, be kind, be kind" articles are telling me to do ever more, and to ignore my own tiredness and emotional needs, and that quickly becomes unsustainable.

(Also, where is the kindness towards professors? Yes, we receive a paycheck but where I'm at, the paychecks are not so very, very wonderful compared to some places, and so a little non-monetary consideration would go a long way, too)