ranunculus and the squid

a haphazard search and rescue for my personal aesthetic

[ranuncusquid-blog]

Spring 2014, let's do this.

[chronicleofhighered]

From our Adjunct Voices series. Video by Greg Kahn for The Chronicle of Higher Education

Joe Fruscione has been trying for years to land a tenure-track faculty job, without success. Now he’s on the verge of giving up. “Enough is gonna be enough when I realize that my chances are sort of dried up to get a full-time position, and that’s when I know I’m done.” The promise and challenges of a new career outside academe are exciting, he says. But he’ll always wonder if all the years he has spent chasing a dream have been wasted.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

june 26

The day J & I picked up our marriage license, almost five years ago, the San Francisco courthouse was filled with people getting married. It was right as same-sex marriage was made legal (the first time). There were two women, both dressed in 1920s vintage gowns, walking down the main staircase having just tied the knot. Their daughter was with them--she was maybe seven--and she tossed flowers all around them.

I am happy for so many people today, and I am happy for the past 18 hours' worth of sensible legal and legislative events, but I keep thinking about that beautiful, madly in love couple, and I am still so happy for them. 

[roxanegay]

On a fury scale from 1-10, I’d give the bizarre literary media conversation this week about the optimal number of children to writing success ratio for women writers a 25. WTF? Do you even hear yourselves, people starting these conversations? Do you? No one ever worries about male writers and...

[powells]

Bibliotherapy

An expressive therapy that uses an individual’s relationship to the content of books and poetry as therapy.

[nprfreshair]

Maureen Corrigan on Gail Godwin’s new novel, Flora:

“Children are like bombs that will one day go off.” That’s a line that Gail Godwin says also served as inspiration for her novel, Flora. Godwin wrote the line in one of her journals, which she started keeping at the age of 12. Godwin is still writing in her journals and drawing upon them to explore the more out-of-the-way reaches of women’s interior lives.

When I read that line about children as unexploded bombs, this iconic Sally Mann (my favorite photographer) popped immediately to mind, so I couldn’t not post it here.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

WHOA.  flashback to college, when i had the pleasure of getting to know the flesh-and-blood young woman this little girl had become. i can only imagine what it is like to be in your late 20s/early 30s, and still be captured in this iconic print.  (insert something about multiple selves, souls, the two VW golfs on the road earlier today.)

the end of the semester has gotten to me.  i'll form a coherent thought about that stuff at some point.  anyhow, i love this photo.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

The loss of a friend upon whom the heart was fixed, to whom every wish and endeavour tended, is a state of dreary desolation in which the mind looks abroad impatient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and horror.

-samuel johnson, “death,” 1759

[ranuncusquid-blog]

2 down, 1 to go

[professor-anonymous-deactivated]

When I try to upgrade my wardrobe to look more professorly.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

i rejected this years ago.

[professor-anonymous-deactivated]

When I tell a dumb personal story in class.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

i'm sure all of my students will agree.... and now i'm just going to re-post everything from this tumblr.

[professor-anonymous-deactivated]

Sometimes I have to wonder what it would have been like to take a course from me when I was still a student.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

nice.

[janedzisiewski]

Apparently Sir Joseph Paxton’s structural ideas for the Crystal Palace came from plants - and more specifically the Victoria Regia Lily pictured, which were later cultivated inside the palace.

This image comes from Delamotte’s Crystal Palace: A Victorian Pleasure Dome Revealed by Ian Leith.

[nybg]

Victoria amazonica has been a long-running inspiration even beyond its botanical “wow” factor, not only for its structure but for its instant recognizability. Read more on it here, and check out the NYBG in summer when ours will be on display! —MN

[ranuncusquid-blog]

HEY FALL 2012 UC-ers!  remember discover dc?

we should have a reunion at the kenilworth aquatic gardens next fall when the giant lilies bloom next!

[octavineillustration]

[nprfreshair]

Morning everyone!

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s still feeling gloomy and cold over here on the east coast. Here’s to keeping our spirits up and our minds on warmer and drier days.

- Heidi

Marco Pece, “Umbrella.”

[ranuncusquid-blog]

love this! 

[ranuncusquid-blog]

Most goals in life show a direct correlation between valuation and achievement. Studies have found, for example, that students who value good grades tend to have higher grades than those who don’t value them. Happiness is an exception. The study came to a disturbing conclusion: "Valuing happiness is not necessarily linked to greater happiness. In fact, under certain conditions, the opposite is true. Under conditions of low (but not high) life stress, the more people valued happiness, the lower were their hedonic balance, psychological well-being, and life satisfaction, and the higher their depression symptoms." The more you try to be happy, the less happy you are. Sophocles made roughly the same point.

from stephen marche's "is facebook making us lonely?"

[politicsprose]

Reading Back Words Our booksellers’ recommendations on what you should read right now.

Ginkgo, by Peter Crane

Ginkgo. Yes, the beautiful tree with the awful smell (though the smell is really just the butyric acid in the fruit). There’’s much more to the ginkgo than this, and Peter Crane combines science, culture, and history to tell this tree’’s fascinating life story, a story that began some 200 million years ago in the Early Triassic period. Following the fossil record, Crane traces the ginkgo’’s ancestors back in time and around the world; some images of the ancient leaves are remarkably well preserved (Crane explains why) and immediately recognizable as ginkgo. In addition to the perseverance that earned it the status of a “living fossil,” the species is also capable of growing for over 2,000 years, reaching heights of nearly 200 feet and surviving atomic bombs. Possibly extinct in the wild but found almost everywhere thanks to human cultivation, the ginkgo flourishes in cities and parks and, in the East, graces shrines and temples, —partaking of the sacred, if not actually endowing these sites with it.

- recommended by Laurie

[ranuncusquid-blog]

OMG GINKGOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i like them more than ranunculus (ranunculi?) and cephalopods combined.  buying. now.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

WAT!? Squid are so awesome.

[writingwtf]

When my favorite professor goes on sabbatical during my thesis year.

[ranuncusquid-blog]

whoa.  story of my life.