Happy Halloween!

I've had more work than time lately, but everyone needs a little procrastination now and again. In that spirit, here are a few spooky internet things for Halloween...


A virtual video of Edgar Allen Poe reciting "The Raven":

Edgar Allan Poe "The Raven" Poem Animation Movie
by Poetrylad

A choose-your-own-adventure zombie movie:

http://www.survivetheoutbreak.com/


And, most terrifying of all:

Between I and Thou

In a class this week someone mentioned Martin Buber in the context of a discussion on the responsibility of an editor. Since I'd never heard of this fellow before, I started doing some informal research to see what he was all about. So here's me thinking out loud about what I found...

One of the ideas Buber is most known for is the "I/thou" and "I/it" perspective on religion (and, by expansion, relationships of many kinds). "Between I and Thou there is no purpose, no greed and no anticipation," he wrote (I and Thou). Real living is composed of I/thou encounters, spaces in which each participant exists unreservedly in the presence of the other. There must be two because they affirm one another.

I/it occurs when the I is imposed, as it almost always must be at some point, by preconception, assumption, or objectification, onto the other, taking away its independent existence by conceiving it as a construction in the mind of the I.

If we think of the editor of a text as the I, then we can think of the original author(s), previous editors, potential readers, and the text itself as the thous. And I have to wonder if its possible for an editor to maintain any of these I/thou relationships and still perform her/his function, which is, essentially, about making assumptions and impositions. Is it something to strive for anyway? I want to say yes, because I think my approach as an editor (in different kinds of situations) has generally been grounded in an essential respect for the text and its creator(s). It doesn't have to be-you don't have to be-what I expect/assume/want you to be.

It very quickly begins to sound very vague and touchy-feely, but that's not what I mean at all. It's not that the I/thou encounter takes away the power of the participants; rather, it enhances their power because it is a relationship in which no one takes anything away from the other. In a relationship with a thou, I am not asked to be less than I am by another's expectations. It's something we experience in the best kinds of friendships, with people who know us better than we know ourselves, people from whom we don't need to hide anything.

"I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me."

"I think no human being can give more than this. Making life possible for the other, if only for a moment."

Martin Buber.

And, in a similar vein, here's a really charming book cover I stumbled across (via)(check the link for an interview with the designer:

Hello Fellow Academics...

Are we still alive out there?

We're halfway through
the
semester.

And, I
repeat:

are we still alive out there?

Hello Fellow Academics...

Important Academic and Life Concerning Announcement:

Today (Sunday, September 28, 2008)
is the first day in
two
straight
weeks
that I don't have to
grade a
single
paper.



I feel a breath of life returning; let the 24 hour celebration begin before receiving more papers on Monday!

What am I Doing on a Saturday Night?

Ladies, we've been tagged.

Tina at The Bigger They Get (who is, by the way, the top Google result for ["George Clooney" "chocolate pants"]) got us. She says, "Okay, I’m going to tag some of my favorite academic chickies who need to do something unrelated to things like composition and rhetoric and literature and literary criticism and textual theory and thinking up assignments and grading papers and attending classes and, and, and…well, they NEED a distraction. So, Lady Audley, Rhetorical Twist, Teacher Poet and DocHoc, spill…" The rules:

Meme Terms and Conditions

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. List six unspectacular things about you. [As if there's *anything* about us that isn't spectacular...].
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

So, six unspectacular things about Lady Audley:

1. My favorite bookmark at the moment is a small piece of paper with the William Carlos Williams poem, "This is just to say" on it.

2. I have bed sheets with fish on them, which I love because they remind me of Mrs. Dalloway: "For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping" (p.161, Harvest Books 1990 edition).

3. I am a sucker for steampunk. Like these guys:

And this.

4. I know I'm an English nerd, but I really like geometry.

5. The first book I remembering thinking of as my favorite was The Neverending Story.

6. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a footnote give away a plot point. Things like, "the author's use of water images foreshadows [character's] drowning."

And I'm tagging whichever of our readers feels so inclined. (Leave a comment with a link to your blog, or post your answers as a comment).

Thinking is not part of your DNA...or is it?

Are you a born conservative (or liberal)?
A new study suggests that your political attitudes are wired in from the beginning.

By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2008

Oh, please! I'm just thankful the end of the article pointed out how one could make a case for interpreting fear as making one pro/con gun control. Otherwise, I would be very disappointed with the Los Angeles Times.