À la recherche du locus amoenus perdu.

A picture of my great-grandmother unearthed and posted by an aunt today to commemorate her birthday sent me on a quest to find the photos of my great-grandmother that I thought would be of some delight to the extended family. That sent me on a trip down memory lane a bit...even found this (I almost didn't recognize who it was!):

Then, I found a picture that I took in Corcieux that instantly made me think of the mythical picture of my fantastic locus amoenus, which I think I took farther up the line from the photo I found. Those of you who at some point in your life were steeped in Curtius' European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages know: that idealized place of safety and comfort that you brush up against which forever changes you, and which you may or may not get to visit ever again. Now, this is the classic type of which I speak: trees, grass, and water. As happenstance would have it I brushed up against it once, took a priceless photo, and that is the only souvenir I have of it...I have not returned, and given that I was caught up in the moment when it was unfolding, I will likely never be able to rediscover it. It may very well be lost to me forever. 

Of course, I believe that we all have a few loci amoeni...they may come in the form of loved ones, cherished memories from childhood as pedestrian as central air or a fireplace in the early hours of a winter morning that we can simulate as needed to take us — we all have our madeleines...even Axl Rose and Sheryl Crow.

But it's always the one that eludes you that fascinates you the most. AND...I now can't seem to even find the picture! So, expect to see musings about some of the pictures I find along my odyssey to find THAT picture.

And the Karma Train strikes the Asylum!

I hope that ma chérie amour won't mind my purloining a bit of her Canfield composition today...The amount of coincidence involved in the buildup that led to an armed officer  doing a sweep of my home today (with gun drawn, mind you) is absolutely not coincidental... I should probably go buy a lottery ticket today.

The younger of the twins (we'll call him Simon) is quite the talker and gadget hound… Always sneaking away with an iPod touch or an iPad and playing some games  we play together. He has called about everyone on my wife's cell phone. On several occasions. With abandon.  Finally put a lock  on the cell phone. I found out today that 911 is not included in such locks!


 So… the twins (we'll call them Simon and Levi)  were caught red-handed dismantling their closet AND/OR dumping chemicals on the carpet that  have no business being on the carpet AND/OR  orchestrating general mayhem in their room, at which point they were grounded to sit on their beds while my wife took a shower. Simon must have thought that she went to lie down ( I got tired just hearing the story!)  and decided to see who he could call to gripe about his "incarceration" with the contraband cell phone he managed to smuggle in ...please enjoy the following  dramatic transcription of one of his 6 calls to the 911 call center:  


"911, what is your emergency?"  
Response: heavy breathing.  
"Hello?  This is 911.  What is your emergency?"  
Simon:  "My Mom is not talking to me.  She's tired."  
Operator: "Why is she tired?  Is she sick?  Is she hurt?"  
Simon:  "She tired.  Of me.  She's sleeping."  
"Can you wake her up?"  
Simon:  "No, she not talking".  
Operator:  "I'm sending a unit.  Can you tell me your address, Honey?"  
Simon:  "Wee-vi and I make a mess in our room.  We in trouble".  
Operator: "Honey, where do you live?"  
Simon:  "My neighbor is building a swim pool".   (of course… Simon can't remember his address… but notices out his window that the neighbor is building a swimming pool… Makes perfect sense, doesn't it ?)


Going on just that information, Officer Krupky does a sweep of the neighborhood until he hears the blood-curdling screams of the "incarcerated" Simon and Levi, and proceeds to enter the home. Fortunately, my wife managed to finish showering and dressing at this point, but I can't imagine that assuaged her much as she met an armed officer on the stairs who didn't know whether she was a victim, suspect, or person of interest at that point.



Needless to say, Simon had the riot act read to him today...and he's mulling the "wait till your father gets home" soundbite over and over, I'm sure.


Simon...you in trouble all right...but I think the mess in the room is the least of your worries!!! 

The Day the Left Bank Died....

Waxing nostalgic....I LOVE this video:




It has the flavor of "American Pie" (with all of the embedded cultural references) with  French twist, of course.  Watching the imagined draining of the Seine still brings a tear to the eye. I used to offer this song up as the "road to an automatic A" if a student could identify and explain all of the hidden cultural references. They worked like gangbusters for a week or two, then figured it was easier to just do their homework. But they would hound me about it semesters after the course was over.

Somehow, I don't think Alain needs to worry as much anymore about US, given how impuissant we've become....

Cloud, meet Atlas. Atlas, meet Cloud.

Somebody with two similar Windoze machines running atlas.ti needs to try something for me…

Theoretically, if one were to put one's hermeneutical unit within a folder in Dropbox, along with all associated files, one should be able to call all of that up on two separate computers running atlas.ti, non?

 Well, I've poked at least one hole in that theory…

  I can open up the hermeneutical unit… no problems. However, the primary documents do not appear, as they cannot be found. The problem seems to be the fact that atlas.ti links PDs to the HU using * absolute  pathways*!! And since pathways on a Mac running Windoze  are not absolutely identical to the pathways on a PeeCee running Windoze... you see the problem.

 Dear Atlas.ti: * relative pathways*...learn them, use them. And while you're at it, port your program to MacOS already!!

 Dear rich fat-cat with two PeeCees running Atlas.ti:  will you please try this experiment with your computers and report your results here?  I'm dying to know if this works between oranges and oranges, since it obviously doesn't work between Apples and oranges.

 I'm sorry,  I meant to say lemons...Apples and lemons....

A bit of situational levity in the midst of EOS chaos

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=908

While other places have ponies, or parrots... we have dragons.

I am in transcription hell.  I would have quit well over an hour ago were it not for the lovely and talented Dragon.

Looking at a multimodal transcript after-the-fact is pretty fun, but, just like sausage, no one should ever have to see it made. It's not pretty. How "not pretty" is it, you ask? Let me tell you...I'd rather take the GRE over and over... how's that for you?

At least my fingers are not throbbing and popping... love the Dragon... feed the Dragon...

In my scholarly meanderings this week, I came across an interesting article that I started to read ( I probably should be reading the stuff I should be reading, but I couldn't resist the shiny PDF), not because I really believe in it, but it's helping me to separate a ( flavor?) of DASP from other flavors and from other theories:

 de Rosa, A. (2006).  The “boomerang” effect of radicalism in Discursive Psychology: A critical overview of the controversy with the Social Representations Theory.  Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 36:2, 161–201.

It offers itself up as a critical overview of the catfight between radicalized DASP and this "SRT", but it does a really good job of giving you the range of  DASP stances and some theories, affinities, and battles on the margins. Or so it seems so far.

bof...

Participant observation this week...not looking forward to transcription. JT comes to mind this week...(Well, JT channeling GJ...actually, AG does a nice version):

"Well, I'm just a researcher, and I don't like my work...but I don't mind the data at all...."

Fortunately, I don't feel like this often. I guess if I ever get to the point where I have "translated" the entire song, I need to pack it in and content myself with praxis and anecdote...

Potter/Edwards/Hepburn...burn...burn...burn Sacks...

Did you know that the 1200 pages of the Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning was insufficient? That there is a second volume of similar magnitude?

This week, I pine for the simpler days....