To say I like my new bike is an understatement. It makes me very happy. It makes places in the area that are too far away to walk easily accessible--without a car. I feel like a part of my community now, when I can ride around and wave at people and say "hello" instead of being sealed up in my little pod. How much do I love my bike? Well, consider how I acted last Friday, when I went to work with my bike mounted on the back of my car so I could take it with me to Yosemite when I left straight from work:
1. When some idiot swerved into the lane behind me within less than a yard of my bumper, my first thought was, "Oh no! Don't hit my bike!!" Never mind that the cost of the damage he would do to my car by just denting it would be significantly more than the replacement value of my bike.
2. I drove when I went out to lunch with friends from work. Rather than leave my bike locked to my car rack in the parking lot, I brought it *into the restaurant* (well, okay, onto the patio where you can eat just outside the restaurant). Maybe some of you who live in crunchy bike-towns wouldn't think anything of that, but I've never seen anyone do that around here. Ever.
3. When the waiter commented on what a great bike I have, my first thought was, "See, it's a good thing I brought my bike in with me. Otherwise, this guy would be out in the parking lot right now stealing my awesome bike."
Don't touch my bike.
I have been cleaning off my shelves, and while some of my books may catch a decent price on Amazon, some aren't worth the effort to sell. Even though I am trying to get rid of them, I am still a little too attached to want to give them to Goodwill, where I doubt the clientele will appreciate the books I don't want any more. So, if you see something you like in the list below, post a comment saying which book(s) you want. I will then correspond with you by email to get your address (if I don't have it already), and ship it to you via media mail ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE! That's right. I want good homes for my books enough that I am willing to pay the $1.50 it costs to ship them. I am NOT going to ship overseas. Too expensive.
Get them while you can! In two weeks, I will give them to Josh to set out in a box somewhere on the Claremont campus with a sign that says, "Kittens--FREE!". Here's the list:
Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak Hardcover!
Patricia McKillip, Song for the Basilisk
Francisco Garcia Pavon, El carnaval
Addison, Essays in Criticism and Literary Theory
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (Norton Critical Edition)
Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays
Warren G. Bennis and Philip E. Slater, The Temporary Society
Morris H. Philipson, An Outline of Jungian Aesthetics
Thornton Wilder, Our Town
Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy Hardcover!
Ed. Ann Oakley and Juliet Mitchell, Who's Afraid of Feminism? (Complete with my juvenile writing on the cover page with the definition of "misogyny" for my own reference.)
Deborah Knucky, Conscious Spending for Couples
Peter McWilliams, Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society
Arthur Miller, Echose Down the Corridor (Collected Essays)
Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
Voltaire, Zadig/L'Ingenu (in French)
The Oxford Annotated Bible (Hardcover)
John Bayley, Elegy for Iris
F. E. Adcock, The Roman Art of War Under the Republic
Josh is out of town for awhile (okay, he's exactly halfway across the planet for two weeks), so I'm taking the opportunity to enjoy some quality time with myself. And to clean like a madwoman. I decided to go through a giant crate of notebooks from college and grad school to see whether I could clear the way for our new bike gear in the closet. I was not looking forward to the task. I was looking forward to being done with it, however, and having a place to put my helmet other than the couch, so I set to with a bowl of fruit to munch on and a glass of gewurtztraminer to fortify me for the work ahead.
What I didn't expect were all of the pleasant surprises awaiting me--letters from friends stuck in with my class notes, my travel notebook from the crazy summer I spent travelling from Hillsdale to Colorado to Arizona to France to Ohio and then back to Hillsdale, and the surprising amount of material I still remember from the classes I took 4-9 years ago. There were unpleasant surprises, too, like how bad my French language skills have become. (Okay, who uses words like "gouffre" anyway? I'm guessing no one other than 19th century poets.) All in all, though, it's been a pleasant evening, and I've come away with a few satisfying realizations. Permit my self-indulgence while I describe what I've rediscovered about my pre-marriage, pre-California, pre-job life:
1. I have always been (and I still am) glad that I went to Hillsdale. Going through my notes just reminded me of that all over again. It's an odd place, and the professors certainly aren't the top scholars in their fields (at least not for the things I was studying). But the instructors are dedicated to developing young minds, not just indoctrinating them with correct political ideals, in spite of the strong political messages that come out of the school's fundraising efforts. I've come to learn that that's pretty unusual now. They're good at it, too. From Dr. Sundahl's novel-like syllabi and fierce grading habits that include McDonald's employment applications to Dr. Holmes giving "cleos" to the good students and "public shame" to the bad, I came away with a good grounding in the liberal arts that I wouldn't trade for a degree from Harvard or Princeton.
More than anything, though, I am glad I met and made the friends that I did. We've gone from being goofy freshman giggling over and judiciously recording our double entendres to almost mature adults with jobs, families, and ever-deepening love for one another. Not least among these is my husband. I wouldn't trade him for the world. I'm so glad I got a Hillsdale man. :)
2. In spite of huge chunks of my monthly salary going to pay student loans from grad school, I have never regretted going to U Chicago for a moment. Not only do we have cool alumni events like the hike I'm going on tomorrow, but the experience of working with world-class scholars, living on my own in Chicago, and taking my studies to the next level were invaluable. Grad school rounded out my education in a way that Hillsdale never could. Hillsdale taught me to be a good thinker; Chicago tested that by teaching me to encounter the intellectual mores of my own time both inside and outside of the classroom. Hillsdale taught me to fortify my beliefs through mental discipline, Chicago strengthened them by trying to blast them away. It was a hard year in so many respects. One thing I learned was how to work like a dog from the moment I got up until the second my head hit the pillow at night. (Even then, I literally dreamed more than one essay into existence during the night.) More importantly, the year took me from excitement over the intellectual stimulation provided by the likes of Derrida and Lacan to an understanding of the real implications of sentences like, "It is the world of words which creates the world of things." It was at Chicago where I learned to see the God-shaped hole in even the most intricate intellectual writings.
3. I don't want to go back. Ever since I left grad school, I've toyed with the idea of returning, some times much more seriously than others. I loved studying literature, and I was really good at it, but I just can't see myself writing a paper comparing "longing" in Russian and French poetry any more. (I'm sure in a few years I will probably feel the same way about sending out giant yellow and green catalogs and writing about nanotechnology.) I read my notes and realized that the work I was doing wasn't any more difficult or challenging than what I am doing now, and my work now is much more rewarding in many ways. Grad school was perfect for me when I was 22 and still grasping for ways to define and identify with the human condition. I still love literature, but I am so much more grounded in biblical teaching that a lot of what used to fascinate me now with its intellectual puzzles and intricacies just stands out as really missing the mark. At least I understand what I'm disagreeing with, though, and how deeply it impacts the spirit of the day. Comparative literature scholars are pretty self-indulgent, too, and I'm not sure how much I could put up with that now, having spent four years in the more pragmatic world of "business". Grad school was an irreplaceable experience, but it was an episode in my life that I don't really need to relive.
What a satisfying thing to be able to look back and see that, while a lot of the major decisions I've made about my life have been haphazard or misinformed or just naive, God has been using them to mold me into a mature adult and draw me closer to Him. He has given me what He knew I needed whether I understood it fully or not. He has worked through my weaknesses and made them my strengths for His glory. Whether I strive for it as much as I should or not, Soli Deo Gloria. Thank you, Lord.
I am not attending homecoming in Hillsdale this year, but if any of you are thinking of travelling from near Boston, you may want to check out this $8 flight from Boston to Detroit.