I went to the big island last weekend and spent a day at Volcano National Park. It is an awesome place, although I didn't get to see any lava flows. Plenty of hot air though! There was a lot of seismic activity and there was so much sulfur dioxide being emitted from the Kilauea volcano that the park service closed the park's HQ office for the first time ever. I also saw a pod of humpback whales go by while standing on a lava-flow cliff overlooking the Pacific. I wish that I could say that these kinds of experiences somehow contribute to my research, but I have to confess that they don't directly relate! I do think however, that it is an important part of what a sabbatical is all about.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24194207@N05/sets/72157604001571377/show/
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Life on Sabbatical
I’m in Honolulu now, staying with a friend, who is a professor here and lives in an apartment for faculty in the U. of Hawaii education system. I'm on sabbatical this semester, spending two months as a visiting scholar at the East-West Center, U. of Hawaii. I'm working on Chinese nationalism and Sino-Japanese relations, and how memories of WWII atrocities in China still shape Chinese perceptions of Japan. In March, we (N & E and I) will be heading off to Nanjing for 3 months, where I will be interviewing school teachers and looking at the school curriculum on how the Nanjing massacre is taught and received in middle and high schools. I'll also be looking at representations in popular culture (films etc.), and public monuments (especially the Nanjing Massacre Memorial), elite speeches and party documents etc. on these issues. It is wonderful to be able to read and think without having to prepare for classes every day!
E is going to finish her spring semester classes via correspondence with her teachers, although I'm not sure what she will do for industrial arts or music or p.e. or social life. Anyway, she has mixed feelings about missing most of the spring semester, but I'm hoping she will learn a lot that will be more useful to her in the long run than what she gets from going to school five days a week in the Slippery Rock Area Middle School.
My reading these days is dominated by books and articles on nationalism, Sino-Japanese relations etc., but for fun, I'm reading science fiction. I found some Philip K Dick books in a second-hand bookshop here, and have been going through them. He is wildly imaginative and in his best work succeeds in creating (usually paranoid) alternative realities, although his work is also uneven. I've also read in the past three weeks some books by Orson Scott Card (Ender series), which are sort of interesting, or even very good for the genre. Much of his series involves the difficulties of encountering alien intelligent species in a sympathetic way and in ways that are certainly outside of the cosmological framework of what I would think of as the usual "earthnocentric" Judeo-Christian worldview.
I've also been checking out lots of movies from the Wong film library here at UH, and watch almost one per evening. Some have been a bust, but some have been very interesting. I just watched one by a Taiwanese director (Hou Hsiao-hsien or Hou Xiaoxian depending on how you romanize it) called "three times" that I liked quite a bit. No dialog for the first 10 minutes. Anyway, watching these movies is a good way to bring Chinese back into the active part of my brain, and I'm finding that my listening comprehension is improving and that I can understand most of what goes on in the films, assuming that they are speaking mandarin of course. The Cantonese and Taiwanese dialog films might as well be German or Japanese, for all the good it does me, but I still enjoy them.
I've also been to the beach a couple of times (OK, quite a few more than that), and bought an old bike and have been using that to get out and about here. It is beautiful here, but I wish someone would get rid of the Waikiki abomination and just leave the beach to people who really appreciate it. It has been great having the bike to get around, except that there are too many cars and not enough bike lanes. But it has been great to get out on the bicycle and enjoy the sunshine.
Here are some sunset pictures taken at Ala Moana Beach. It is a great place to wind up an afternoon, relaxing on the sand and watching the sun sink into the ocean...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24194207@N05/sets/72157604099059528/show/
E is going to finish her spring semester classes via correspondence with her teachers, although I'm not sure what she will do for industrial arts or music or p.e. or social life. Anyway, she has mixed feelings about missing most of the spring semester, but I'm hoping she will learn a lot that will be more useful to her in the long run than what she gets from going to school five days a week in the Slippery Rock Area Middle School.
My reading these days is dominated by books and articles on nationalism, Sino-Japanese relations etc., but for fun, I'm reading science fiction. I found some Philip K Dick books in a second-hand bookshop here, and have been going through them. He is wildly imaginative and in his best work succeeds in creating (usually paranoid) alternative realities, although his work is also uneven. I've also read in the past three weeks some books by Orson Scott Card (Ender series), which are sort of interesting, or even very good for the genre. Much of his series involves the difficulties of encountering alien intelligent species in a sympathetic way and in ways that are certainly outside of the cosmological framework of what I would think of as the usual "earthnocentric" Judeo-Christian worldview.
I've also been checking out lots of movies from the Wong film library here at UH, and watch almost one per evening. Some have been a bust, but some have been very interesting. I just watched one by a Taiwanese director (Hou Hsiao-hsien or Hou Xiaoxian depending on how you romanize it) called "three times" that I liked quite a bit. No dialog for the first 10 minutes. Anyway, watching these movies is a good way to bring Chinese back into the active part of my brain, and I'm finding that my listening comprehension is improving and that I can understand most of what goes on in the films, assuming that they are speaking mandarin of course. The Cantonese and Taiwanese dialog films might as well be German or Japanese, for all the good it does me, but I still enjoy them.
I've also been to the beach a couple of times (OK, quite a few more than that), and bought an old bike and have been using that to get out and about here. It is beautiful here, but I wish someone would get rid of the Waikiki abomination and just leave the beach to people who really appreciate it. It has been great having the bike to get around, except that there are too many cars and not enough bike lanes. But it has been great to get out on the bicycle and enjoy the sunshine.
Here are some sunset pictures taken at Ala Moana Beach. It is a great place to wind up an afternoon, relaxing on the sand and watching the sun sink into the ocean...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24194207@N05/sets/72157604099059528/show/
Monday, February 18, 2008
Obscure Slippery Rock
Obscure: 1 a : dark dim b : shrouded in or hidden by darkness c : not cl
early seen or easily distinguished : faint ‹~ markings›
2 : not readily understood or clearly expressed ; also: mysterious
3 : relatively unknown: as a : remote secluded ‹an ~ village› b : not prominent or famous ‹an ~ poet›
4: withdrawn from the main centers of human activity ‹was exiled to an obscure Siberian village› (Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus)
Slippery: 1 a : causing or tending to cause something to slide or fall ‹~ roads› b : tending to slip from the grasp ‹a ~ fish›
2 a : not firmly fixed : unstable b : not precise or fixed in meaning : ambiguous elusive
Rock: vb 1 : to move back and forth in or as if in a cradle
2 a : to cause to sway back and forth ‹a boat ~ed by the waves› b (1): to cause to shake violently (2): to daze with or as if with a vigorous blow ‹a hard right ~ed the contender› (3): to astonish or disturb greatly ‹the scandal ~ed the community›
3 : to rouse to excitement (as by performing rock music) ‹~ed the crowd›
n 1 : a large mass of stone forming a cliff, promontory, or peak
2 : a concreted mass of stony material ; also: broken pieces of such masses
3 : consolidated or unconsolidated solid mineral matter ; also: a particular mass of it
4 a : something like a rock in firmness: (1): foundation support (2): refuge ‹a ~ of independent thought…in an ocean of parochialism —Thomas Molnar›
Slippery Rock is a borough in Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 3,068 at the 2000 census. It is home to the Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. As of the census[2] of 2000, there were 3,068 people, 977 households, and 387 families residing in the borough. The population density was 1,820.4 people per square mile (700.9/km²). There were 1,039 housing units at an average density of 616.5/sq mi (237.4/km²). The racial makeup of the borough was 91.30% White, 3.26% African American, 0.20% Native American, 3.29% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 0.68% from other races, and 1.21% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.11% of the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_Rock,_Pennsylvania
Which is the "real" Slippery Rock? Take your pick...
early seen or easily distinguished : faint ‹~ markings› 2 : not readily understood or clearly expressed ; also: mysterious
3 : relatively unknown: as a : remote secluded ‹an ~ village› b : not prominent or famous ‹an ~ poet›
4: withdrawn from the main centers of human activity ‹was exiled to an obscure Siberian village› (Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus)
Slippery: 1 a : causing or tending to cause something to slide or fall ‹~ roads› b : tending to slip from the grasp ‹a ~ fish›
2 a : not firmly fixed : unstable b : not precise or fixed in meaning : ambiguous elusive
Rock: vb 1 : to move back and forth in or as if in a cradle
2 a : to cause to sway back and forth ‹a boat ~ed by the waves› b (1): to cause to shake violently (2): to daze with or as if with a vigorous blow ‹a hard right ~ed the contender› (3): to astonish or disturb greatly ‹the scandal ~ed the community›
3 : to rouse to excitement (as by performing rock music) ‹~ed the crowd›
n 1 : a large mass of stone forming a cliff, promontory, or peak
2 : a concreted mass of stony material ; also: broken pieces of such masses
3 : consolidated or unconsolidated solid mineral matter ; also: a particular mass of it
4 a : something like a rock in firmness: (1): foundation support (2): refuge ‹a ~ of independent thought…in an ocean of parochialism —Thomas Molnar›
Slippery Rock is a borough in Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 3,068 at the 2000 census. It is home to the Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. As of the census[2] of 2000, there were 3,068 people, 977 households, and 387 families residing in the borough. The population density was 1,820.4 people per square mile (700.9/km²). There were 1,039 housing units at an average density of 616.5/sq mi (237.4/km²). The racial makeup of the borough was 91.30% White, 3.26% African American, 0.20% Native American, 3.29% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 0.68% from other races, and 1.21% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.11% of the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_Rock,_Pennsylvania
Which is the "real" Slippery Rock? Take your pick...
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