Sabbaticals are good.  But, like, really no-kidding good.  I spent the early part of yesterday in my pajamas, in front of the computer, working on the new project.  And then I pulled myself together that afternoon and went grocery shopping, laying in all of the basic supplies such that I don’t have to leave the house if I don’t want to.  Cooked a simple but good dinner last night.  Hung out and chatted with R.  Did some reading, and went to sleep.

And I get to do it again today.  Without the grocery shopping.

My library access here is still in process, but once it’s available, I’m going to go spend a couple of days digging through various special collections.  And then there will be more days in my pajamas, in front of the computer.

I’m writing.  I’m eating well.  I’m exercising.

This, I think, is what balance feels like.  It’s only a shame that it takes a sabbatical in order to find it.

The trip to SoCal to gather the last of my stuff, cram it in my car, and turn the condo over to my tenant (which concept weirds me out a bit) passed in a bit of a blur.  There was something surreal about finding myself back in California after what seemed like months away, but that could have been nothing more than exhaustion.  I landed at ONT at 7.30 pm Tuesday last, which was something on the order of 4.30 am Paris time, which my body most definitely still thought I was on.  A pal picked me up and dropped my delirious self off at the condo, where I said hello to the cats, opened the mail, and completely collapsed.  36 hours later, I rolled back out of town, driving to Louisiana.  And four days later, here I am, back in the town I grew up in.

Here is my impersonation of the MapQuest directions for getting from Claremont to Baton Rouge, for those interested:

1.  Start out going SOUTH on INDIAN HILL BLVD.  (1.2 miles)

2.  Merge onto I-10 E via the ramp on the LEFT toward SAN BERNARDINO.  (1787.4 miles)

3.  Take the COLLEGE DR exit - EXIT 158.  (0.1 miles)

And it’s a thrilling drive, needless to say.  Today has been spent unpacking and settling in.  Most of that is done, and I’m hopeful that actual work will begin tomorrow.

Yesterday:

– 4-hour train ride from Paris to Amsterdam

– 3-hour layover in Amsterdam

– 11-hour flight from Amsterdam to Houston

– 3-hour layover in Houston

– 1-hour flight from Houston to Baton Rouge

Today:

– 1-hour flight from Baton Rouge to Houston

– 1-hour layover in Houston

– 3-hour flight from Houston to Ontario

9 time zones; 27 hours on the road.  When am I?

Tomorrow, cleaning and packing.  Thursday, driving east.  More soon.

A bibliography-in-progress, bringing together resources and discussions on electronic scholarly publishing, as well as other links useful to particular issues in the ElectraPress project.

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Site design conversion in progress.  Things are likely to be wonky for an hour or so, and then just… different.  Change is good, folks.  It’s long past time.

(Or, Remaking the Academy, One Electronic Text at a Time)

cross-posted from The Valve:

Inside Higher Ed reported a few days back on the work thus far done by an MLA task force on the evaluation of scholarship for tenure and promotion, and on the multiple recommendations thus far made by the panel, whose members include current MLA president Domna C. Stanton, Donald E. Hall, Sean Latham, Leonard Cassuto, and our blogging friend Michael Bérubé.

What follows is a lengthy consideration and extension of one of the recommendations made by this panel, as well as a sketch of one possible future, presented in the hopes of opening up a larger conversation about where academic publishing ought to go, and how we might best take it there.

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detail from painting
Originally uploaded by KF.

It’s funny the things your old friends will remind you of.  Like the embarrassing things you said in college.  Or like the funny haircuts you used to think looked good.

Or, say, like you said months ago that you were going to post more pictures of the condo since you moved in, including (ahem) pictures of the painting you bought from me.

Without further ado, more pictures of the condo since I moved in, including the fabulous painting I bought from Marcus’s show this summer.

Thank you for your patience.  Carry on.

I’ve been having this series of moments of late that can only be adequately described using R.’s wonderful phrase, “light dawns over Marblehead,” the moment at which the utterly obvious becomes glaringly apparent.  Perhaps it’s a function of travel, being removed from the quotidian details of my daily life and plunked into a series of relatively new places, or perhaps it’s just ceasing to be so bloody busy that I actually get to notice what’s going on around me.  But I’m having repeated aha! moments in which the aha! is produced by something that’s embarrassingly evident only seconds later.

To wit:  yesterday, in a restaurant.  A French waitress delivering drinks to a table of young Italians.  There is some confusion about the mineral water—was there meant to be one or two?  There is a clear moment of miscommunication, and then one of the Italian kids says “only one.  For me” in English.  And all is clarified.

Now, the only languages I’ve studied are Romance languages—a fair bit of French, a lesser amount of Italian, a mere smattering of Spanish—and it was my distinct impression prior to this moment that French and Italian were sufficiently close in vocabulary and structure that, spoken slowly enough, and with an understanding of the differences in pronunciation, a native speaker of one could understand the other, at least well enough to figure out who had ordered the mineral water.  But apparently not, or at least not always.  And so, it suddenly occurs to me, English has become a kind of lingua franca, in which those who cannot make themselves understood in one another’s languages can negotiate.

As I say, light dawns over Marblehead.

We took an early morning train from Amsterdam to Paris yesterday and, after checking into our pretty over-the-top wonderful hotel here, wandered down to the Arc de Triomphe.  One thing I’ll say so far:  it’s a radically different experience being in Paris with someone who has studied military history, and can tell me what all the names engraved on the various monuments signify.  Today, I think, will be Invalides and Napoleon’s tomb.

Last night, we had a fabulous drink and dinner with Marcus, who is one of those rare people with whom I never really fall out of contact, even when we haven’t spoken in months; we can always pretty much pick up where we left off.  And I’m not just saying that because he’s reading this.

The hefty post I was working on has morphed into an essay, which I may or may not get to finish this morning.  It’s coming, though; stay tuned.

I’m hard at work this morning on a hefty post that I’ll hope to publish soon.  In the meantime, a quick Happy New Year to you all, and a wish that all your projects take flight in the coming days.