Middle Cove

It occurred to me that it has been a very, very long time since I've had anything to or show about this blog's original raison d'etre, i.e. life in Newfoundland.

I will attempt to correct that as the summer progresses and we (fingers crossed) have better weather for landscape shots.

Today has been absolutely beautiful, so we went for a hike along the northern part of the East Coast Trail. The following pictures are from the Silver Mine Head Path, going north from the beautiful Middle Cove:

Middle Cove Beach, seen from the trail.

Newfoundland is a hiker's paradise, doubly so because you don't have to travel far at all. Middle Cove is just a fifteen to twenty minute drive from our house. I'll post more pictures when the capelin run.

New graduate English blog

Oh, and as long as I'm posting ...

We recently just launched the new blog for the graduate program in English at Memorial. Check it out, and if you're feeling so inclined, link to it -- we want to spread it as far and wide as possible!

Oh, Danny boy ... the pipes, the pipes are calling ...

My televisual guilty pleasure for the last while has been the reboot of Hawaii Five-O. It's fun, and funny, and pretty and shiny. It also stars Daniel Dae Kim, formerly of Lost and Angel, on whom I have a serious man-crush. And Grace Park, late of Battlestar Galactica, on whom I have a, well, regular crush . But the show also has a recurring fun moment for Newfoundlanders, whenever Steve McGarrett introduces himself and then says, "And his is my partner ... Danny Williams."

I'm not sure what the news coverage of Danny's resignation as premier is like in the rest of the country, but here in Newfoundland it's pretty much all anyone can talk about. Which I suppose is fair enough—in a province that breeds big personalities, Danny has been one of the biggest. And he has a stratospheric popularity that most politicians only attain in their fevered imaginations. In response to speculation that his resignation was prompted in part by his approval rating "plummeting" to sixty-seven percent, one caller on CBC radio this morning drily reminded us that Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest are currently at sixteen and fourteen percent, respectively. Sixty-seven percent approval is what passes for public condemnation for Danny, who has spent the better part of his reign comfortably in the eighties.

That popularity does not however really reflect Danny Williams' deeply controversial nature: the flip side of his fearlessness, passion and determination to do right by Newfoundland is his reputation for being thin-skinned, autocratic, and vindictive. It is perhaps telling that the people who are most critical of him have tended to be those who have actually had to deal with him, and who have found themselves at the unpleasant end of his ire. But that, to hear testimonials on the news of late, is in fact a rather small minority.

I should probably offer the caveat here that I am not particularly well-versed in provincial politics, and hence cannot speak to the particulars and specifics of Danny's time in office. Anyone wanting a very incisive analysis of Newfoundland politics should check out Ed Hollett's blog, The Sir Robert Bond Papers. His post-mortem on Danny's resignation is particularly worth reading, as he offers a good breakdown of the appearances and realities of Danny's time in office.

I am myself more interested to see what happens next. When I read the Globe and Mail's article reporting on Danny's resignation, the most intriguing part was the comments section. A lot of Newfoundlanders posted, almost universally praising the departing premier. But the comments from people across the rest of the country were similarly glowing: one might have thought that the memory of Danny taking down Canadian flags at all government buildings five years ago would have stuck in people's craws still, but that event is either forgotten or has been eclipsed by the following years. Mainly, people praised him as a courageous politician with the cojones to stand up to Ottawa. Tellingly, some of the most frequently repeated comments were from people in B.C. or Ontario inviting Danny to come and run those provinces, favourably contrasting his efficacy against the incompetence of Gordon Campbell and Dalton McGuinty.

The second most common comment encouraged Danny to make the move into federal politics, usually framed in the sentiment that "we need more politicians like Danny in Ottawa!" I would dearly love to see him do this, but think it unlikely, for very similar reasons.

To be clear: it is not so much that I want Danny Williams as a player in Ottawa, as that I would be utterly fascinated to see how he fared. Really, it's a question of context: Danny could be as powerful and flamboyant as he has been, could in fact build his rather singular cult of personality, specifically because of where he is. One of the major reasons for his enormous popularity is that he essentially flipped the script for Newfoundland, and gave voice to the bone-deep pride its people have for their province, all the while being seen to stand up to the powers that be in Ottawa. He was fortunate in his adversary: his passionate advocacy for Newfoundland was best expressed in opposition to a cold, despotically indifferent Canada, and Stephen Harper obliged him by playing that role perfectly ... to the point where Danny had almost as broad a fan base outside Newfoundland as within.

The reason the prospect of Danny Williams entering federal politics fascinates me—and the reason why I think it's highly unlikely he will—is it would be interesting to see how he changed. On the larger stage, absent of his veritably Manichaean stance opposite Ottawa, he would lose much of the traction he had at home. Which is not to say he would not necessarily be a good politician—just that he would lose much of what made him "Danny" here in Newfoundland.

Of course, there is also the fact that he is hardly likely to receive a warm reception from the federal Tories, considering his relentless battles with Harper, whose apogee was undoubtedly his campaign during the last election to shut the Conservatives out of Newfoundland. Considering that Stephen Harper is even pettier and more vindictive than Danny himself, I would count the likelihood of him welcoming Danny to Ottawa at somewhere beneath absolute zero.

Ah, Danny—we hardly knew ye. Thanks for making politics interesting, if nothing else.

ADD, Terry Pratchett, and the noble Burton Pond Eagle

Sorry about the brief hiatus—I've been trying to do some writing, and made the reasonable assumption that perhaps I should give the blogging a pass while I did so. However, based on my abject failure to produce anything of substance these past four days, I am brought back to a fairly elemental truth about myself: that I'm more productive when I'm always stepping sideways, as it were, from one bit of writing to another. So I come back to the blog today on a break from other stuff.

I sometimes think I have a mild form of attention deficit disorder. Actually, I'm fairly certain I do. Anyway, I—Oooh! Shiny!

[three hours later] ... OK, where was I? Oh, right. Blogging, etc.

I'll be back to the vampire cage matches tomorrow. The next fight is a fun but difficult one to write—the batshit insane Drusilla of Buffy and the well nigh feral Marlow of Thirty Days of Night. Not sure how to call that one.

Today's topic du jour is Carpe Jugulum, one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, which I just finished reading and which is possibly the funniest one I have yet read. Given that Pratchett is generally one of the funniest writers I have encountered and this is the seventeenth Discworld novel I have read (out of thirty-seven!), that is saying a lot.

I'm not going to embark on a lengthy critique of the novel; I just want to share, over the course of two posts, some of the parts that tickled me the most. The funniest running joke I will leave for part two. Today I want to take use a moment in the novel as an excuse to post some pictures I've been meaning to get to for a while.

One of the best secondary characters in Carpe Jugulum is the royal falconer, an unfortunate soul named Hodgesaargh—whose name proceeds from the fact that the birds of prey he is always training are always attacking him:

[Agnes had] seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise.

King Henry, in case you're wondering, is the name of the King's eagle. Which is as good a segue as any to mention the noble Burton Pond eagle, a rather impressive bird that hangs out in the vicinity of Memorial's student residences in the winter and keeps the duck population under control. A former student of mine, who has dubbed him "Lord Talonforth I," snapped some pictures of him some time ago and posted them to Facebook.

To come back to Hodgesaargh, who would almost certainly be victimized by Lord Talonforth, the following passage is a great example of Pratchettian humour for the uninitiated. The fledgling witch Agnes Nitt runs into Hodgesaargh at a royal banquet, who introduces her to his buzzard William:

"This is William. She's a buzzard. But she thinks she's a chicken. She can't fly. I'm having to teach her how to hunt."
Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled figure on Hodgesaargh's arm brought her gaze back down again.
"How?" she said.
"She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death."

For reasons unclear at the time, I found this passage unutterably hilarious and had to put the book down while I laughed. And then I remembered one of the other pictures of Lord Talonforth, in which he is very determinedly walking towards some ducks, looking for all the world as if he's about to kick the crap out of them.

As Pratchett intuits in Hodgesaargh's comment, there is something inherently comical about birds choosing bipedal locomotion over flight. It's why we laugh at penguins.

So there you have it—the merger of wildlife journalism and literary criticism. Next up: Pratchett hangs Braveheart out to dry.

Regatta Day

Yesterday was the annual St. John's Regatta, a sculling competition--or series of competitions--that takes place every year on the first Wednesday in August. Or if it's raining, the first Thursday. Basically, everyone looks out their window on Wednesday morning, and if the weather is too rainy and/or windy, they go to work. If not, holiday! And somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifty thousand people descend on Quidi Vidi Lake to drink beer, eat from the many food kiosks set up for the day, and socialize. Oh, and watch some rowing.


Regatta day also has the added element, for me, of being something of an anniversary. Four years ago on August 2 I arrived in St. John's to start a new life as a tenure-track professor at Memorial. The next day was Regatta. The annual August holiday inevitably brings back strong memories of that move, with all the accompanying excitement, fear and anxiety.

Four years. It seems almost unbelievable that it has been that long. When I reflect on the change, on my move, and my job, I offer up thanks to whatever gods might be listening. It could have easily been miserable and disastrous. But it hasn't been.

A lot of my happiness here has to do with what an amazing city St. John's has turned out to be. But even more has to do with my job. It is in the people I find myself working with that I have to wonder at my unbelievable good fortune.

Academic life has a great potential for discord. No one can hold a grudge like professors, and tenured life can lead to long-term enmities. There is probably more career mobility now than at any time previously, but it is still nothing like the business world, where people make moves all the time. So there is a tendency for a certain longevity in the university world, which, coupled with the fact that getting professors to stand in a line is like herding cats, exacerbates the normal political and personal bullshit one finds in any job environment. I have heard, and experienced, many, many horror stories about inter-departmental warfare. As has been said, academics take themselves so very seriously because so little is at stake.

One nice thing about the job is that it is possible to put one's head down, stay out of the fray, and simply do your own thing, ignoring as much as possible the spats and skirmishes. But that isolationist type of academia is really not why I got into this. I like, and to a certain extent need the interaction that comes with sharing research and ideas, shaping curriculum, navigating a course for the department.

One of the things I loved about my department here at MUN from the outset was the knowledge that not only was this kind of inetraction going to be possible here, but that as new faculty I would be more or less obligated to be involved.

Which itself could have made for a miserable situation, but I found myself in the midst of an amazing group of people, supportive and serious, many of whom had themselves lived through an extended departmental civil war in the 1980s and early 90s--and were generally unwilling to ever go through it again.

The other thing has been the departmental renewal that has happened in the last five or six years. I was one of the first new people hired, but since around 2003 we have brought in nine new professors. And what's astounding, even a little bizarre from the perspective of academia, is how well we all get along. I ruminated over this the other day with one of my pre-tenure colleagues, and we both commented on how unusual and unlikely in our experience such a lack of backbiting, grudge-bearing, and professional jealousy is. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Perhaps we're not actually unusual, my colleague speculated. Part of our common ground as new faculty is a general impatience with that kind of behaviour, an impatience we learned in part from observing it during our long graduate apprenticeships. Perhaps this is something the new generation of academics have in common?

That seems a bit utopian to me, but it serves as good an explanation as any for the time being.

Right now, apropos of my fourth anniversary of coming to Newfoundland and Memorial, I'm just grateful to have landed where I did, with the people I did.

Sometimes, it really is just magical

One of the things I’ve really come to love about living in St. John’s is the way this city, and in particular the landscape, finds new ways to stop me in my tracks with an unexpected vista. It happens fairly frequently: I’ll be driving, lost in my thoughts, and turn a corner to see that the sun, the snow, the fog, the rain, the sea, or whatever combination of elements are tag-teaming it that day, have transformed the landscape into something approaching the sublime.

This weekend it has been the fog—thick, living fog that has settled on Signal Hill and the Narrows and which sends twisting shreds on the wind up the length of the harbour. I spent yesterday afternoon reading at Atlantic Place, looking out through its huge harbourside windows at this amorphous, shifting wall of white rolling up and down Signal Hill. I kicked myself for not having my camera on me, but my mother—who daily checks St. John’s weathercams and is more conversant in the local weather than I am—sent me the above image, and I thought I’d share it with all you.

The half-dozen or so of you who still check up on this humble blog in the hopes I might overcome my laziness and start posting again, anyway. Sorry about that. I let these long patches without posting pass, and in the last two months I’ve given thought to discontinuing it, especially considering that it’s my browser homepage and so every time I fire up the internets I’m reminded of my laziness of late.

I’ve decided to keep on, however, even though I probably have a rather tiny readership at this point. I would miss the blog .... and besides which, I use it as my portal for the sites I read on a regular basis.

So I’ll be back, and I’ll try not to let so much time lapse again.

Puttering about on a stormy Wednesday

Well, we're being hit with our first major storm of the winter, and the Avalon Penninsula is closed. Everything! I've been listening to the CBC all day so far, and they keep reading off these ridiculously long lists of closures. I suppose they are obliged to be specific, otherwise it would make more sense to simply say what isn't closed. Which is, apparently, nothing. The airport is effectively shut down, all our ferry services are suspended, and they've been clocking gusts of up to 100km/hr.

So, I have had the pleasure of a snow day mitigated by the looming task of digging my car out. That, I will be addressing once I complete this blog post. I've been putting it off in the hope that the wind dies down a little ... which doesn't seem about to happen. Sigh.

In the meantime, I've been puttering around the house. After a year and a half of living here, I finally got itchy to start improving my new place. I don't have the capital to take on the tasks I really want to do (i.e. hire a contractor to gut my kitchen and put in an island and tile floors, or remake my sunroom--currently essentially a storage space--into an actual pleasant breakfast nook).

Hence, I'm starting modestly. Of the three upstairs bedrooms, the rear two have been unused space--mostly, I've just been storing my books in boxes, lacking the shelf space for them. Shortly after Christmas, I retasked the middle bedroom as a workout room and invested in weights and a bench (moving all the boxes into the rear bedroom).



And then, after several frustrating visits to Home Depot in which their panel saw was out of order and therefore unable to provide me with the cut plywood I needed, I finally was able to buy my supplies and build the shelves that will help turn the rear bedroom into a study / reading room / guest room.

Now, I should point out that to say I'm not particularly handy is like saying that Dick Cheney bears a mild antipathy to liberals. So I'm quite pleased with what I've managed to assemble:







These do not, it should be noted, bear a close inspection--I lack as a carpenter the kind of eerie perfection that someone like my father brings to these kind of projects, where every line is plumb and the entire thing knocks together almost without a need for glue or nails. There was a lot of spackling and cutting little shims to plug of the shortfalls in my measurements (measure one, cut twice is my motto). Fortunately, my time working as a painter through summers in my undergrad gave me, if nothing else, a talent for making imperfections if not go away, at least hide pretty well.

In addition to now having an upper floor of my house that I am quite pleased with, and will use now for more than sleeping, this process was quite fun. It took place in increments, a couple of hours after work over about two weeks. Plus, it gives me the confidence this summer to rip up my grotty deck and rebuild it.

Autumn in St. John's

News items from the Rock

The Fog Devils are moving to Quebec, so St. John's has lost its hockey team. AGAIN.

A motorist spotted Premier Danny Williams talking on his cell phone while driving, which is illegal in Newfoundland, and reported him to the police. Danny copped to the charge, offering to pay whatever fine is levied. Equal and opposite outcries of "Obey the law, Danny!" and "Stop picking on Danny!" can be heard across the province. I personally want an investigation into why our millionaire premier, who presumably spends a significant amount of time on the phone, has not been introduced to bluetooth technology.

Temperature in St. John's went from -15 on Tuesday to +3 and rainy yesterday with a new dump of snow in between. It was back down to -5 this morning, which meant that my street was effectively a slushy ice rink with an incline.

Lazy Sunday

The saga of the backhoe

One of the greatest changes wrought in my daily life in moving from an apartment into my own house has been the banishment of television to the fringes of my day. Instead of putting the television set in the living room downstairs, I put it in the third bedroom upstairs. The upshot of this rather simple shift is that I watch far less television, simply by dint of the fact that it is no longer the center of my principal living space.

In both the two-bedroom condo I rented for my first two years here in St. John's and the one-bedroom apartment I lived in for my last few years in London, I had open-concept kitchens and a living space that centered around the living room. Not being someone fond of silence while making dinner or otherwise puttering around the apartment, the TV tended to be on a lot -- not necessarily something I was focused on or even paying more than passing attention, but still an inescapable presence. It was particularly bad at my condo on LeMarchant here in St. John's, especially after the busier parts of the semester when I'd get home and become one with my couch.

Since moving into the house and banishing the TV to the upstairs, I have replaced the drone of the tube with CBC Radio One ... and let me tell you, I don't think I have had more entertainment from any medium than when I have taken days to work at home and followed the various building news stories from across Newfoundland -- the most recent of which was the saga of the ATM robbery that recently occurred just outside St. John's by Paddy's Pond, in which the entire machine was lifted and carted off.

The hourly news updates kept me posted as the day went on, from the initial report of the missing ATM as I had my morning coffee, to speculations an hour later on how an ATM could be stolen, with various theories being advanced. One report noted that there had been a backhoe stolen somewhere on Kenmount Road ... could there be a connection? And then! Some time just before lunch, it was reported that a backhoe had been discovered partially submerged in the Manuels River. The RNC (Royal Newfoundland Constabulary) acknowledged that it might be the backhoe stolen from Kenmount Road, and might well also be the tool used to steal the ATM ... but the spokesman demurred any further speculation, stating firmly that at the present moment, there was no solid evidence to connect the abandoned backhoe to either theft.

See, this is why we need a CSI: Newfoundland. I suggest Rick Mercer in the Gil Grissom role, with Mary Walsh as his Number Two and Shaun Majumder as the geeky put-upon lab tech. But only if it could air on CBC Radio One.

Adventures in the local cuisine

It's been a comfort food type of weekend here in St. John's, with a grey and rainy saturday and a bright but cold sunday, the kind of weekend where I spend more time in my pyjamas than not. And while in an ideal situation that entails sitting in front of a fireplace with a favourite book, I alas have no fireplace and instead have a mountain of essays to grade. It is probably good that I do not have the former when I have the latter. (To any of my students stumbling across this blog entry: that was a joke. I hardly, hardly EVER think about burning essays. Hardly.)

Still, it is very pleasant to lounge around the house on a chilly sunday when dinner is cooking away in the crock pot over a slow nine hours. I love my slow cooker. I camped out at the dining room table all day with the aforementioned stack of grading and multiple pots of tea while the stew I prepared at ten o'clock this morning filled the house with its savoury, peppery fragrance (I like pepper in my stews).



The above picture, alas, doesn't do my stew justice ... in fact, it looks a little gross. I need smell-o-vision.

At seven pm the buzzer went off and I ladled out a bowl of one of my favourite comfort foods for a cold evening, beef stew. And to get just the exact measure of comfort, it must be served on top of a slice of white bread (the kind that's really bad for you -- I'm talking wonderbread here), with a second slice put aside to sop up the juices after.

But the carb level in this stew was somewhat higher than usual, thanks to the addition of a local ingredient I bought recently on a whim and have been since stumped as to how to use it. I'm referring here to hard bread, or "brewis," a staple of the traditional Newfoundland cuisine left over from the days before refridgeration.

Now, I have to explain something: I have now read a respectable number of novels of Newfoundland historical fiction, and one of the recurrent meals mentioned is "salt fish and brewis." I think it's one of those things you have to include (a lot) if you want to be seen as writing authentic historical fiction about Newfoundland. And when I walk past Velma's Restaurant on Water Street, a homey little eatery specializing in traditional Newfoundland fare, "fish and brewis" is there on the menu (alongside the cod tongues, jigs dinner, lassy mogs and figgy duff ... no, don't ask).

The trouble is, I've never had any frickin' clue what "brewis" is, and I certainly never connected it with the bright red bags labelled "Purity Hard Bread" that are ubiquitous in all the grocery stores here.* That was, until I bought a bag out of sheer curiosity.



Now let's be clear on something: to call this product "hard bread" is misleading. Really, to be accurate, it should be named "rock bread" or "titanium bread" and come with warnings that this product should never never be used as a weapon, for it might cause serious harm.



I've read enough C.S. Forester novels to know that the British Navy subsisted on hard biscuit that they would have to dip in water to make them even gnaw-on-able, but my first attempt to nibble on a piece of Purity hard bread probably would have led to an emergency dentist's visit had I persisted. Happily, the instructions are pretty clearly and neatly laid out on the bag: break up bread into smaller chunks (I have, fortunately, a very serviceable cleaver), and soak overnight (at least) in water. Keeping them in the soaking water, bring them to a near boil -- but stopping short of an actual boil. Salt and pepper to taste.

See, here's the thing: they were kind of yummy. I was pleasantly surprised. Even after sixteen hours of soaking and then being nearly boiled, there was substance enough to the bread to be al dente, and while bland in and of themselves, a little salt and pepper -- and, I discovered, a few dashes of white vinegar -- made for a nice snack. Now, the full preparation as described on the bag called for the preparation of scrunchions, another traditional Newfoundland dish -- fried pieces of pork fat -- along with a gravy made from the drippings, plus the requisite salt fish.

I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. The pork fat gravy, maybe, but my preferred way to eat salt cod is fried in a fish cake or in a fish chowder.

HOWEVER ... While preparing the stew this morning, it occurred to me that hard bread, broken up sufficiently small, might make for a nice addition to the stew's broth -- sort of like dumplings, but with a bit more substance. And what do you know? Nine hours of simmering sped up the soaking process, and the bread absorbed the broth to become very flavourful ... it almost made my requisite slices of white bread redundant. Almost.

Sometimes when I think of my alternative academic paths, I imagine I might have become a military history. On days like today, I think perhaps a food anthropologist ... like so much else here in Newfoundland, the traditional cuisine speaks more powerfully to a concrete, lived history than almost anywhere else I have ever been. Hard bread, or "hard tack" as it's also called, is of course a holdover from the days when baking aboard ship was simply impossible. Brewis (which gets its name from the process of breaking it up for soaking, or "bruising" the bread) would not spoil for weeks, indeed months. And in a place of deep, isolating winters, a large stock of hard bread would keep a family in good stead for a very long time. That it is still so ubiquitous in massive corporate grocery chains here makes me happy.

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*A note for mainlanders: "Purity" is a traditional Newfoundland company specializing in baked goods, of which hard bread is merely one of many offerings. Walking into a Dominion Superstore here is pretty much like walking into one anywhere in Canada, which is why I'm always cheered when, upon walking down the cookies & crackers aisle, I am presented with a wide span of shelves all in the trademark deep red of the Purity products, such as the "Jam-Jams" and their quite excellent cream crackers. It is the grocery store equivalent of walking into a liquor store here and seeing an entire wall given over to Lamb's Rum. Seriously.

Autumn in St. John's

Today was one of those brilliant St. John's autumn days that approaches the sublime, where the air is crisp yet oddly warm (for November), the sky is perfectly clear and the air itself energizes you. Autumn in this city is infinitely changeable (had it gone from brilliant sunlight to fog and rain in the space of a half-hour it would be par for the course), but capable of truly stunning beauty. I think autumn here is our trade-off for the pretty uniformly springs we get ... I keep getting warned that winter can make its first appearance by late October, but thankfully my time here hasn't seen that happen yet -- thankfully I've seen these amazing autumns stretch into December, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that to happen a third year in a row.

Today's weather was made that much nicer by the fact that I now have a backyard. The view from my office window:

Of icebergs and glacial writing

I'm sitting in my office, looking out the window at a thick bank of fog that has rolled down the hill over the houses in the distance. Now, I love fog -- but I've got to ask, in some exasperation, What happened to our summer?? The past week, and this weekend especially, was beautiful: twenty to twenty-five degrees, sun, a light breeze ... giving way to misty rain, fog, and sub-10 degree temperatures (though it still manages to be stiflingly muggy inside -- I open and close my window about every twenty minutes, alternating between clammy cold and sweltering humidity). I complain, but am met with stoic smiles: "Ah, that's Newfoundland in June."

My comfort is that this weather can at least turn on a dime. Summer came on us with startling suddenness. Everyone had told me that summer happens all at once ... and they weren't lying! About two weeks ago, over a twenty-four hour period, we went from temperatures below ten to over twenty, but more startling was the fact that the trees went from winter-barren to being totally in bloom in the same period of time.

Anyway, I'm whining about the weather because I'm taking a break from what has become, for me, an agonizing writing process. I think nostalgically of the days when I could whip off a twenty-five page paper in a day or two ... you'd think the writing process would get easier the farther up the academic food chain you move, but not so much. I'm still working on my Congress paper -- the plan being to turn it into an article for publication, which means doubling its length and inserting all the theoretical context and critical history that you leave out of conference papers. And I'm doing what I always do with these things: that is to say, TOO MUCH. I hit critical mass yesterday, and am actually making some progress today -- because today I'm returning slowly to sanity, trimming the fat and streamlining what was threatening balloon into thirty-plus pages into something more manageable.

In more entertaining news, we've had our first icebergs of the year -- I walked up Signal Hill on Saturday and snapped some pictures. It's really quite amazing the first time you see them; even though these ones were relatively small, there's a majesty to them that's quite profound.