You Light Up My Life

(Photo Credit: Moose, 7/3/12, South Haven, MI)

Happy Fourth of July, darlings. The Moms and Ms. Ruby are in Michigan, fortunately, where there is electricity and air conditioning and unspoiled food and a really big, pretty lake. Which is good, because back home, five days after the epic (what the heck is a) derecho (anyway) that struck the DC area, the house still does not have power!

We'll spare you the anti-Pepco rant for now. (But if you really want one, go here.) It's a holiday, and we've got a parade to get to. Ms. Ruby and cousin Scooter will be sporting patriotic dog gear. What will you be wearing? Wherever you are, we hope you have power today. And fun. Lots and lots of fun. Peace out.

Smith Mountain Breakdown

I know, I know. You're sick to death of blog silence or "posts" comprised of little more than iPhone snaps cheaply gussied up through CameraBag or Instagram, accompanied by sheepish apologies and promises to do more and better blogging soon.

But, hey, this $hit is still free, right, and what if the pictures are really, REALLY cute? Or boozy? You like that, don't you? Deal with it, peeps. We love you, but you'll just have to take what we've got to give these days. For now, that means a couple of pics that say, "Welcome, Summer 2012!" The Moms and Ms. Ruby spent Memorial Day weekend at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, enjoying the hospitality of the Carolina Moosians. The fun included boat rides and Moose's pathetic attempts to balance herself on assorted objects being dragged through water at high rates of speed. (Why do people do that, I wonder? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the lord did not intend for humans to get around that way. Exhibit A: The bruises and pulled muscles Moose always gets when she tries to ski. Exhibit B: Sea legs. Still.)

Ruby enjoyed boating as much as I did when I visited SML in the fall of 2003. (That's where Moose snapped the noble profile shot of me that still graces the top of this blog's right sidebar.) Unlike me, the new embodied dog of Roxie's World also likes to get in the water. She took a couple of spirited dips in the lake, which Goose captured on video. By the way, Ruby didn't actually wear the cobalt blue goggles featured in the photo below, but Moose couldn't resist putting them on her. It's a look, kiddo. Work it.

Goose concocted the festive beverages pictured below, which Moose named the Smith Mountain Breakdown (in honor of this glorious Earl Scruggs tune). They were the bestest cocktails ever, or, you know, the bestest cocktails since the ones Goose had whipped up the night before. It was a weekend for blender drinks. This one included fresh peaches, a banana, and unknown quantities of vodka, peach schnapps, and lime juice. Add ice and blend the fucke outte of itte, as our good friend PhysioProf might say. Deelish, the crowd declared!

(Photo Credits: Moose, Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, 5/26//12 and 5/27/12.)

Gotta run, kids. The Moms head out again early tomorrow morning for a conference and a few days of visiting with various and sundry Goosians in the Lone Star State. Who knows? Maybe we'll post a margarita pic or three over the next few days. Stay tuned, dammit, and rest assured we adore you. Mean it! Peace out.

New Tools, Old Rules

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Moose's new iPad, which she got today, not because she camped out for three days but because she quite uncharacteristically planned ahead. She even got the taxpayers of Maryland to buy it for her as an early birthday present. Yep, no money for raises, but plenty for toys essential research tools. We'll let you know soon what she really thinks of it, though so far she's pretty impressed. She's been fiddling around while watching hoops this evening during the Night of a Thousand Upsets. (Poor Duke. Not!)

The Moms head over to the Comcastle early in the a.m. to catch the red hot Lady Terps in first-round action against Navy in the women's tournament. Maybe we'll do some b-ball posting over the weekend, on a machine that's really built for blogging. (Full disclosure: This post was drafted on the iPad but finished on the computer, because Moose couldn't figure out how to embed links or upload photos to Blogger on her fancy new toy tool.) Meantime, here's a sample of what the highly touted camera on the new iPad can do, even in crummy light:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 3/16/12)

Not bad for a stale shamrock cookie from the co-op, eh? Remember, Goose is only half Irish-ish, so we don't really celebrate. If you do, we hope you have a swell, safe time. Peace out, my little leprechauns, and don't cry if your brackets are busted. Everybody's are, but all that matters is Duke is out (of the non-lady tournament), which means all is half-right in the world. We'll see what happens to the Blue Devils in the women's tournament, though we have a hard time seeing them get past Stanford in the Elite 8. Just remember House Rule #1 of Roxie's World, sports fans: We hate Duke so much that if Duke were playing the Taliban, we would root for the Taliban. Therefore, any team playing Duke is known as the Taliban, and we sit on the couch screaming, "Go, Taliban, go!"

Got it? Go forth and cheer.

Please Pass the, Um, Wite-Out?

(Photo Credit: Nikki Kahn, Washington Post, via)

Happy MLK Day, you lovely fighters for justice and accuracy in stone carving. We celebrate the occasion by noting that the department of the Interior recently announced that the badly truncated quotation chiseled into the side of the Martin Luther King memorial is going to be corrected. That is excellent news, because it suggests that some things actually are sacred and that government still can do -- and re-do -- big things when the occasion demands it. And, really, fixing a quotation so radically decontextualized that it made one of history's more modest men sound like "an arrogant twit," as Maya Angelou put it, is a big thing definitely worth doing. Raise the debt ceiling again if you have to, but please don't let generations of pilgrims to Washington walk away with the impression that Martin Luther King was a braggart.

Strike up the band, kids. On this day, let us all be drum majors for the exercise of bureaucratic common sense and the sanctity of public words. Here's to public history done -- or re-done -- right.

The Quiet Season

Or, Things We Did While Not Attending MLA 2012

Dr. Crazy went and so did Undine, but for the first time since 1995 neither of the English profs of Roxie's World attended the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, which concluded yesterday in the highly caffeinated city of Seattle. We're huge fans of the organization and its annual shindig but opted out this year because we weren't giving papers or shopping book manuscripts or serving on search committees and therefore couldn't quite justify the time and expense of a cross-country trip. So, what'd we do instead?

We burrowed in. Hunkered down. Laid low.

We decluttered. Depilated. Decompressed.

We ran a little. Walked a little. Finally tried Zumba. (Verdict? Not sure yet. Further research will be necessary, but Moose is not convinced her cardiovascular health requires quite that much hip action. She also recalls, however, that she felt similarly skeptical after her first aerobics class, once upon a time in the 80s.)

We toiled happily away on the kind of work that is hard to do when classes are in session and the calendar is a multicolored vortex of obligations. Goose had a 2-day team meeting for one of her electronic projects. Moose shifted into cruise-director mode to hammer out the details for the upcoming celebrations of her queer studies program's tenth anniversary. (I know: ten years of queering the turtle! Can you stand it? Click here for some of the scoop on what's in store. Details coming soon.)

Oh, and we watched us some basketball, because our fifth-ranked Lady Terps needed us to make sure they got through the weekend with their perfect record in tact. Fine, sophomore forward Alyssa Thomas helped, too, with her 24 points in Friday's heart-stopping comeback against Georgia Tech and her buzzer-beater that put Sunday's road game against Carolina into overtime, but we know that our passionate devotion helped carry the mighty women of Maryland to 16-0. 16-0!!!

After the haircut (the aforementioned depilation), Moose was hungry and so took herself to lunch. She had tapas. And a glass of white wine. It was Friday. She had gone for a run. Tapas is the perfect way for Lifestyle Adjusters to dine well without having to declare PointsPlus bankruptcy. She had a shredded cod salad, because a friend whose judgment she trusts says that if cod is on the menu you should always order it. She was not disappointed.

Then she went to a museum, because it was there. And there is a Gertrude Stein show she's been meaning to see for months but hadn't yet and now it's about to leave town, so she finally popped in. It's not the bestest exhibit ever, despite the forthright documenting of Stein's sexuality and her relationship with Alice B. Toklas and some marvelous images of the two women and their dog Basket, but it's well worth seeing. Moose was pleased to be able to snatch a pic of Jo Davidson's massive terra cotta sculpture of Stein, which she likes to think of as the precursor to the bronze Thinking Woman she brought home with her from New Mexico a couple of years ago.

What else did we do while not schmoozing, boozing, and cruising at the MLA? We watched Homeland, all 12 white-knuckle, Claire Danes-ilicious episodes. The show strains credulity in precisely the ways our pal Jill Dolan blogged about in November (before the season had ended) and its finale is vexing in all the ways David Haglund and June Thomas discuss in Slate. Nonetheless, the writing (if not the plotting) and the performances make Homeland riveting to watch. It's a fraught and fascinating piece of post-9/11 cultural work that deftly probes the psychic costs of living with and in the massive state (in)security apparatus that took hold in the United States in the wake of the fall 2001 attacks. Danes plays Carrie Mathison, a CIA officer haunted by the feeling that she missed something on 9/11 that might have thwarted the attacks. Damian Lewis plays Nicholas Brody, a Marine sergeant who was held captive by Al-Qaeda for eight years and has just been released and returned home. Carrie believes he was turned while in captivity and is now part of a plot to attack the U. S. Much of the thrill of this taut, smart thriller is in watching the dynamics of the Mathison-Brody relationship and trying to figure out who is manipulating whom and to what end. How much of what happens between them is personal and how much is a matter of each working to advance the goals of their competing missions? We don't want to give anything away. Go watch the show if you can. Then come back here prepared to discuss Homeland's complex racial/sexual/religious politics and the burning question of whether Claire's electroshock therapy will erase the crucial piece of evidence she recognized in that last moment before the big buzz jolted her brain. Hurry! We are dying to have this conversation with you!

One more thing we did while not attending the MLA? Moose took a lot of pictures with her new iPhone 4S, which is, as the hype suggests, equipped with a camera so good you might be tempted to stuff all your old point-and-shoots in the back of some closet. Both photos above were taken with her fun new toy, as was the one below, which we offer by way of returning to the theme of quietness and winter rest with which this post began. Here's hoping you've found such time at the beginning of this brave new year. Peace out, my pretties, and, again, a very happy new year to you and yours.

2012: One Slate Wiped Clean

Here is how the refrigerator door in Roxie's World looked on New Year's Eve:

And here is how it looked on New Year's Day:

Why? The Moms decided some de-cluttering was in order. Fear not, friends. Every item taken down was lovingly saved for posterity -- all the magnets, all the Hillary-porn, all the artwork and school photos in what Moose lovingly called the galerie des garçons. It may all enjoy a new life in some other location, but for now the Moms are grooving on the pleasing emptiness of the blank slate that greets them every time they catch a glimpse of the fridge. It's calming somehow and vaguely encouraging, which is a nice way to feel in the first week of a brand new year.

We hope 2012 is off to a calm, happy start for you and yours. We look forward to reconnecting with everybody soon. In the meantime, here's a pic of the yummy lobster-artichoke casserole the Moms served for a gathering of friends on New Year's Eve:

Goose (the chef/artist traditionally tasked with writing out the number of the new year in mashed potatoes on top of the casserole) got a little overly zealous with the paprika, which is why the dish has kind of a rusty look, but it was tasty as heck and supplied the touch of decadence that Moose believes New Year's Eve deserves. And, yes, the resident poster girl for health and fitness got up the next morning and went for the first run of the new year, a sweet little three-miler that knocked the champagne out of her system and left her with a smile on her face. Apparently, the virtue binge will continue in 2012.

Wevs, kids. Happy New Year!

2011: A Brief, Backward Glance

Want a proper End of Year List? Go elsewhere, darlings. A humble dog blog cannot be expected to wrap its paws around a year as epic in scale as 2011 turned out to be. Our focus this year has been largely personal and our productivity has been significantly lower than in years past. (This is just our 89th post of the year, making 2011 our lightest year of blogging since RW's barbaric yawp was first heard in 2006. We would apologize for slacking, but, hey, you get this stuff for free, so, you know, deal with it. We love you, but we gotta pay the bills somehow.)

Anyhoo, here, in no particular order, is an unabashedly partial and idiosyncratic list of some of what mattered to us this year. We invite you to share your highlights and lowlights in comments as a way of preparing for the transition into 2012. Retrospection is good for the soul, especially as we move into the unpredictability and intensity of a Year of the Dragon.

Number of the Year:

 -- That's the number of pounds Moose lost on the Lifestyle Adjustment Program she began in January. Which just goes to show you that sometimes New Year's resolutions work. Also: You can teach old dogs new tricks. Oh: And self-improvement arises not from self-loathing but from compassion. Just saying. Finally: It's possible to eat well and lose weight. Go here and here  for recipes and inspiration.

Happiest Day of the Year: March 6 -- That's the day Ms. Ruby arrived in Roxie's World to assume the role of Embodied Dog. It was a cold, dark, rainy day that became sunny and bright the moment the good people of American Fox Terrier Rescue brought the sweetest critter on dog's earth across the threshold.

Photo of the Year: Pepper-Spraying Cop -- The image that launched one of the best memes ever and, more importantly, briefly focused attention not only on funding crisis in higher education but on the overly zealous policing of nonviolent student protest on campuses throughout the country. One of our major hopes for 2012 is that "Occupy Education" becomes a sustained and viable challenge to the way of doing business in higher ed.

Best Art We Saw: The Steins Collect, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Thrilling.

Best TV We Saw: The Good Wife, but that may only be because we missed Homeland. We started watching it on the penultimate day of 2011 and are impressed. Good lord, Claire Danes can act!

Most Hyper-Inflated Ticket Price We Didn't Mind Paying: For The Book of Mormon on Broadway in September. Oh, sweet-voiced boys in short-sleeved shirts, you truly had us at "Hello!"

Most Culinary Fun We Had in the DC Area This Year: The several times we dined at José Andrés' delightful pop-up restaurant, America Eats. We blogged about this rollicking good tour through the culinary history of the United States after Moose first visited it in July. It has held up well through several repeat visits. Go. Now. Before it disappears!

Losses That Stung/Struck Us: Death, as usual, had a banner year in 2011. Of the biggies, the death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs in October particularly struck us, but we were more personally touched by the deaths of Texas music impresario Joe Gracey, poet Ruth Stone, and retired teacher Ida Pinkney, our next-door neighbor for 17 years who literally died laughing on the day before Thanksgiving. Ida was talking on the phone with a dear friend and suffered a massive heart attack. The Moms were terribly sad to lose someone who taught them so much of what it meant to be a good neighbor -- the exchange of pleasantries across the driveways, the check-in phone calls during snowstorms and other local dramas -- but they also kind of love the idea that a woman with Ida's gift for friendship and immense joie de vivre left the world laughing. Some endings, though sad, are fitting. Dogspeed, Ida.

Best Posts We Managed to Get Up in This Not Especially Bloggy Year: We'll choose two, one in the category of Meditations on Social Media and the other in the category of Inter-Species Romance. For the first, we'll award our post-MLA post, "The Great Untweeted," which set records in Roxie's World for volume of traffic and number of comments. We're proud of that one and thinks its reflections on what does and does not get tweeted at academic conferences hold up pretty well. For the second category, we are willing to pat ourselves on the back for "The Day I Became a Dog," the September post in which readers heard Ms. Ruby's voice for the first time. We agonized over that one for ages and were pleased that readers seemed to enjoy it so much when we finally pressed publish.

Thanks to all of you for hanging out with us for another wacky year in the blogosphere. We promise to try to be a little more prolific in 2012, as the presidential campaign heats up and the Republican ship of fools sails on. In the meantime, we wish you all a safe and happy new year. Peace out, my pretties, and may none of your dear acquaintances ever be forgot.

Ruby's First Christmas

'Tis the season for making a fool out of oneself by publicly sharing low-rent videos made by techno-challenged iMovie illiterates. Pardon the indulgence, kids, but there are at least two good reasons to give Moose's latest film a click: It features the jazzy piano song that simply is Christmas for several generations of Peanuts-raised Americans, and it stars a really cute dog appearing in her first non-major motion picture. Yes, Santa found Ms. Ruby all the way out in chilly Michigan and brought her some presents. Plus, her cousin Scooter proved to be remarkably generous in sharing his presents and his astonishingly large stash of toys. Like spoiled children everywhere, Ms. Ruby now believes that every day should be Christmas. 

She has a point, of course. Gather 'round the laptop for this heartwarming holiday non-classic, while we pack up and get ready to head back to Roxie's World tomorrow. See you soon, my pretties. Whatever you are celebrating this season, we hope you are feeling nurtured in body and spirit and that some sweet soul is genially sharing his or her toys with you. Peace out.

Respite and Rescue

The Moms and sweet Ruby-doo are about to hit the road for a brief holiday visit to the Land of the Moosians (Motor City division). Grades are done. The car is tuned up. Not one single gift has been purchased, but, hey, Republicans caved on the payroll tax cut extension, so at least we'll have more moolah to shop with after Christmas. We hope that you, too, are gearing up for some quality time with loved ones.

Here's the image that festooned the front page of WaPo this morning, by way of reminding readers that, with yesterday's winter solstice, light is finding its way back to the national capital region. (That news will disappoint the Dark Ages caucus of the GOP, but they are accustomed to disappointment.)

(Photo Credit: Bill O'Leary, Washington Post. WaPo caption: "The Capitol and its Christmas tree gleam amid first light Thursday as the sun rises after the longest night of the year; the winter solstice was marked at 12:30 a.m. This HDR [high dynamic range] composite image was created by software that combines several images of the same scene to enhance clarity and color saturation.")

Meanwhile, here's a little image Moose snapped at dinner the other night that captures the spirit of the season in Roxie's World:

Finally, if you need a heartwarming animal story to lift your holiday spirits, Ms. Ruby urges you to click over to this tale of 100 dogs who arrived at the Washington Animal Rescue League just in time for Christmas. They were rescued from an Arkansas puppy mill. There's a whole set of ridiculously adorable photos of the survivors up on flickr, but unless your heart is made of stone you'd better be prepared to adopt a dog before you subject yourselves to images like, uh, this:

(Photo Credit: Washington Animal Rescue League)

Happy holidays, darlings. May you find refuge in love this season. Be warm, be kind, be rescued.

OMG SHOEZ (Encore)!

Everyone is doing post-Thanksgiving posts to announce that they survived the holiday and are back on the grid. Here's ours.

The Moms and the Carolina branch of the Moosians avoided the malls by watching movies yesterday. They caught a late-afternoon showing of George Clooney's new Hawaii-is-not-paradise-because-there-are-people-in-it flick, The Descendants, which you should totally see because Clooney does middle-aged learning through suffering better than anybody. The rest of the cast is splendiferous, too. Later, after a supper of yummy leftovers, the crew collapsed on the couch to watch (or re-watch) The Devil Wears Prada, because no holiday is complete without a Meryl Streep film, is it?

Anyway, you may recall that The Devil Wears Prada co-stars a lot of fairly impressive footwear. We mention this detail because today the Moms and the Older Sister of the Moosians went downtown to catch the lovely Degas show at the Phillips Collection (which we highly recommend for DC-area readers and visitors). Afterward, at Moose's behest, they popped over to Dupont Circle to do a little -- you guessed it! -- shoe shopping. Oh, dear. We think it may not have been fiscally prudent to turn Moose loose in a shoe store with visions of Miranda Priestly's contemptuous stare still dancing in her impressionable head. She came out with a pair of little black boots that are, by a long, long shot, the most expensive shoes she has ever owned. And yet, she tells herself, they are expensive, pretty, sensible shoes that I will wear for decades with pleasure and in comfort.

Of course you will, Moose. And you will be at the gym at sun up tomorrow, burning off all that pecan pie and the half dozen of your grandmother's glorious olives you couldn't resist over the course of the holiday. Whatever, Moose. A girl is entitled to her illusions. And every woman needs at least one pair of truly decadent little black boots in her life. Don't you agree, my pretties? Don't you and your inner Miranda Priestly emphatically agree?

(Photo Credit: Goose, 11/26/11)

[For previous shoe-related posts, go here and here. Yes, we know that shoe-blogging probably means we will never end up in The Chronicle of Higher Education blog network, but, well, we don't see too many dead dog blogs in that network anyway. Screw them, darlings -- We are here for you! Peace out.]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Everyone in Roxie's World wishes you and yours the happiest Thanksgiving ever. This year, we are calling Thanksgiving "the Feast of the Liberation" to celebrate the fact that it was just about a year ago (November 30, 2010) that sweet little Ruby, the embodied dog of Roxie's World, was delivered from bondage in a puppy mill in Missouri and embarked on the course that would eventually lead to a posh, happy life with a couple of dog-crazy English profs. We've got a lot to be grateful for -- like you, for example! -- but this year, we are especially grateful to be dogg-ed again.

May your feasting be fabulous and not interrupted by waddling, pepper-spray-wielding cops. May you run out of fingers before all your blessings are counted. May you successfully avoid traffic and bad weather and the verb to shop in all its forms. May you dine on something as sumptuous as this and as sensible yet yummy as this.

Peace out, darlings. Enjoy your day. And don't take your -- or anyone's -- liberation for granted.

Seasonal Musings

Are all gourds merely decorative, mother f_ckers? We ask, knowing full well that a butternut squash is not, technically speaking, a gourd, but, well, still, gourds and squashes are in the same family, according to noted botanical expert Wik E. Pedia, and we've had this butternut squash sitting out on the counter for weeks now, and Moose chortles to herself every time she catches a glimpse of it because it seems not terribly useful from a culinary standpoint, its thin neck not offering much in the way of squashy stuff, yet not entirely useless from other possible standpoints that one might imagine if, say, one's brain had been warped by overexposure to psychoanalytic theory in the course of one's training as a professional reader of texts -- or if one happened, on some long ago and probably drunken evening, to have heard a hilarious parody of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" that culminated in the declaration that, "A thing's a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide, / As the id goes marching on!" (Melanie performs it here. Go on. We'll wait for you to listen.)

Anyhoo, darlings, it's the Friday before Thanksgiving, which means that my typist has a scholarly article to finish and 37 tabs open in her browser as she cruises the interwebs in search of just the right combination of decadence and point value for this year's Lifestyle-Adjusted holiday table. We'll close, therefore, by wishing you well on your own holiday planning, inviting you to let us know what you will be serving up this year, and showing you a picture of the aforementioned butternut squash so that you can help us to answer the burning question with which this post began:

Are all gourds merely decorative, mother f_ckers? Inquiring minds want to know. Peace out, and have a, um, stimulating Friday.

(Photo Credit: Moose, 11/18/11)

Ruby's First Halloween

Miss Ruby tries on her hand-me-down wizard costume in preparation for her first night of greeting trick or treaters in Roxie's World:

Fits perfectly, don't you think? She has studied previous Halloween posts to get a sense of what this peculiar holiday is all about and why it requires her to cover up her pretty new haircut with a long cape that she will inevitably step on or wag off with her tail in the excitement of meeting throngs of young chocolate-seeking zombies and ghosts. She has taken my words to heart, though, and is ready to play her part in the festivities. "I love the little princesses and the animals and the girls with fangs and the one who explains she is 'the spirit of music,'" I declared in 2008, the last Halloween I was physically able to greet visitors. I went on to explain:

I love a festival of pretending to be something other than what you "are." I think that is a healthy exercise in stepping outside the usual order of things. I think it is good to try to know oneself in one's apart-ment, as Dickinson might have said.

As it was then, so it is now and ever shall be. Happy Halloween, darlings. Enjoy the dark side. Revel in your apart-ment. Just don't let your dogs eat chocolate. We'll be back soon with a blockbuster post on the theme of Excellence Without Money, but my typist, like all the other profs in the blogosphere, has a mountain of papers to grade and letters to write at the moment. Pray for her, please, as she endeavors to rid the world of comma-splices and mushy prose. Peace out.

The Fireworks Are Hailing . . .

. . . over a Little Eden slightly west of Jersey last night. Greetings from South Haven, Michigan, darlings, where the Moms and Ms. Ruby are celebrating the birth of the nation with the Baby Sister of the Moosians and several guitar-playing, shaggy-haired adolescent sweet peas. The sky is clear and the breeze is soft. We hope your particular corner of the world is as pretty as this one is today.

All photos by Moose, lying on her back on the beach, looking up through the lens of Goose's iPhone, her heart full of joy and the memories of summers past in this ever lovely place. Peace out, my pretties, and remember: It's your country, too. Make something of it.

Love, Virtually

Today is Goose's birthday. She is spending it, as people tend to do these days, sitting at her computer being swept up in a tidal wave of greetings and good wishes from friends all over the planet by way of Facebook. It's an amazing thing, really. Every time you look at the screen, someone else has tapped out a quick huzzah, a kind thought, a slightly bawdy bon mot -- pals, colleagues, students, nephews, long-lost classmates still deep in the heart of Texas. You bask in it. You respond as you can, happily wearing your fingers out in the effort to acknowledge acknowledgment.

Meanwhile, in Nebraska, a friend has euthanized a beloved dog today, which we also learned through Facebook. Moose paused in the birthday doings to tap out a brief but heartfelt condolence message, knowing how much such messages have meant to her on certain difficult days in the recent past. Birth, death, love, loss, celebration, sorrow: The meaningful moments and events of our real lives are now habitually shared and extended into the virtual spaces of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger (when it's working), and other social networks. Is this a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing -- a fact of life, like weather and furloughs?

So much of the analysis of the social effects of new media technologies seems to fall on an emotional continuum from mild alarm to flat-out panic. As in: Uh oh, kids like robots. What if they start preferring them to the company of humans? Or: OMG, the computers are taking over! Someday soon, there'll be no need for humans at all! And of course: Holy crap! We are all going to be unemployable because eventually every single one of us will have been photographed drunk in a pirate costume and we will never -- NEVER! -- be able to get those photos down off the Intertoobz!

Meanwhile, down in Durham, geek gal (and Facebook friend) Cathy Davidson went to the farmer's market this morning, took a photo of a garden shed being turned into a tea house, posted the photo to Facebook -- and then wrote a lovely little blog post that inspired the thoughts in this here little post. Davidson muses on the question of whether life has a become a reality show, what with all this techno-mediated sharing, all this instant narrativization, the steady -- incessant! -- stream of call and response. Davidson decides that, on the whole, the sociality of Facebook, despite valid concerns about privacy and the marketing of data, is a good rather than a bad thing, a satisfying and genuine way of connecting. She relishes the snippets she gets of friends' lives and the opportunities to share emotions and experiences across distance. We love that, too -- the ranting and the raving, the silliness and the sorrow, the photos of animals and food and parties and trips and kids and projects and flowers and funny signs and departed loved ones. It's crazy, yes, but it is also glorious, and we love it as Clarissa Dalloway loved "the triumph and the jingle" of a busy London street on a fresh morning in June.

That may seem an extravagant comparison, but what the heck. It's a holiday in Roxie's World, so extravagance is the order of the day. Have a spectacular weekend, actually and virtually. And here, for the Facebook haters among you, is a photograph, already shared via FB, of the astonishing cake Goose's students made to honor her birthday. Yep, that is a chocolate cake in the shape of a Lady Terp, and the number 21 suggests it's forward Tianna Hawkins, though we are not sure the cake makers were aware of that. Wevs, kids -- I'd have to say this ranks as one of the more impressive efforts at paper-writing avoidance in the history of grad school, dontcha think?

Happy birthday, Goose! And remember, lovelies: For every drunken pirate photo floating around in cyberspace, there is at least one tea house-in-the-making and one truly astonishing cake. Don't let the odd ugly tree blind you to the beauty of the forest. Peace out.

Believing in Spring When You Can't See It

(Photo Credit: Moose, 4/20/11)

Whatever rite of spring you celebrate, may it be joyous and renewing and full of light.

Even if, at this very moment, it is 43 degrees, pouring rain, and pitch dark. Even now, you know the grand old azalea is just outside the door, hugging the front corner of the house, ready to strut its day-glo stuff with the first hint of sunshine. Which will return, darlings. Soon. Honor bright. Can't you feel it? Can't you? Ah, well, never mind. Sleep tonight. Sun tomorrow. I promise. Peace out.

Now We Are Five

Er, I mean, this here little blog is five -- Yep, count 'em, five years old today! -- and in blog years that's, like, ancient. But, you know, the Forever Young'uns of Roxie's World have decided to honor the occasion by reconnecting with the happy spirit of this bright-eyed West Texas girl, who celebrated her fifth birthday a long, l-l-l-l-long time ago out where the deer and the antelope play:

(Photo Credit: Most likely, the Mother of the Goosians, 5/14/??)

Thanks for coming to the party, kids. And thanks for all the love and fun and righteous anger, not to mention the clicks and the links and the laughs and the determination to keep the glasses at least half full. Thanks, in short, for all you do to inspire us to keep on blogging, come hell, high water, hard times, and happy ones. We couldn't do it without you. Or, well, we could, but why the heck would we bother? You are the most wonderful critters on dog's beautiful if messed up earth, and we love having the chance to hang out with you. Thanks, above all else, for stopping by.

Every party needs a song. Here, not surprisingly, is ours for today. May your hearts always be joyful, darlings, even after, you know, they've stopped beating. Peace out.



(Previous blogiversary posts: fourth, third, second, first.)

Rose-Colored Glasses

(Photo Credit: Moose, back in Roxie's World, 12/29/10)

The Department of Tropes and Leisure pointed out in a recent memo that glass and glasses have emerged as something of a theme this year in Roxie's World. Perhaps you noticed, too, close readers that you are: blue glasses, party glasses, half-full glasses, beach glass, window glass. Why? Who knows, darlings. The methods behind the creative madness around here are obscure, even to us. We like to think some desperate grad student will figure it all out fifty years from now when she stumbles upon this happy little place while doing research for her dissertation, Blogging: What the Hell Was That All About? Pretty to think so, isn't it?

Anyhoo, today's contribution to the theme offers a digitally enhanced (through the new desktop version of CameraBag Moose downloaded as a holiday treat for herself) photo of a family heirloom that made its way to Roxie's World from the Land of the Moosians just yesterday. These ruby red glasses graced the table of every special occasion meal of Moose's misspent Midwestern youth and childhood. They were as important to any feast as green bean casserole and the cheap lambrusco Moose's uncle would let her swig on the sly. Moose is delighted to have them and looks forward to filling them way more than half full for many years to come.

We'll get back to regular blogalicious programming soon, kids, as soon as we've resolved the annual dilemma of how to wrap up the whole damn year in a single post. Stay tuned. You won't want to miss it. Meantime, we hope you are enjoying not being at MLA 2010, the conference that time forgot. We hope to see some of you next week in La La Land, for MLA 2011, the conference that hopefully won't get mucked up by an epic weather event. Peace out.

And So This Is Christmas . . .

. . . in our neck of the woods. What does it look like in yours?

(Photo Credits: Moose, in the Land of the Moosians, 12/24/10)

Peace out, my pretties. May all your Christmas dreams come true. Here is your musical thought for the day:

In Lieu of a Post . . .

. . . we offer a poem, my pretties, which is in no way holiday-related except that it expresses Moose's wish that Santa existed so that he could bring her a puppy for Christmas so that she could have a furry companion to go along with the human companion who walks with her on the long, arduous, lovely trail called life. The poem, by the Australian poet Petra White, was brought to our attention by our beloved Candy Man, our personal authority on all things Australian and many things poetic. Thank you, kind sir, for a beautiful poem and so much more.

And thanks to all of you for being such excellent furry and non-furry companions to all of us in Roxie's World. If you are traveling this holiday season, may your journeys be safe and joyous. If you are not, well, lucky you. The moms hit the road bright and early tomorrow morning for a few days in the Land of the Moosians. Details as time and circumstances allow. Meanwhile, the poem (which we found here):

Woman and Dog

A woman and a dog walked all day
beside the non-moving canal.
People who walk dogs displace themselves:

the dog sniffs and leads, harnesses
a human soul, spirit and flesh
willing or not. Its human-dog eyes

cradle the walkable world – a happy place –
a brimming here-and-yet. The canal
neither followed nor lagged behind.

There was the simplified world, on either side, green
fields and red houses. There was the little pub
they always got to.

So long they trudged, two bodies and one
soul, so many miles,
the paws began to bleed.

Little flecks of ruby blood glittered the black
rubbery pads, as if the dog was inking out
all the sadness of the woman.

And the woman, being just strong enough,
gathered up the dog (not a small one)
and carried it all the way home, wherever that was.

© Petra White

Don't you love that line, There was the simplified world? Let's take a long walk in the new year, darlings, and see if we can find it. Peace out.