Tuesday night was rough, which meant Wednesday was rough too. I got done teaching my evening class at 9:30, then drove for about 10 minutes of my hour-long trip home while thinking I heard some kind of bug rustling around. I pulled into a gas station, and lo and behold, found a cockroach on the floor of my car behind the driver's seat!
I completely freaked out and spent an hour rooting around my car with a car vac until I got to the point where I just had to go home. Then, when I got home at nearly midnight, there was a TV news meltdown happening over the idiot president's most recent speech.
So, on Wednesday, instead of meeting my usual 80 page goal, I read only about 30 pages. I started in the morning with Teresa Caldeira's City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paolo. This is really a wonderfully thoughtful and well-researched enthography about the impact of neoliberal transformation in Brazil on the lives of individuals, with an emphasis on walled-in housing and people's constant "talk of crime." It's a very empathic and yet critical study of every-day dynamics that contribute to segregation and criminalization. I'm reading this both as general support for my teaching this semester, and for my 2017 academic reading challenge, in the category, "read about a subject you study, but in a different country from the one that you usually study." Later in the day, I read another 20 pages or so of The Russian Debutante's Handbook.
I completely freaked out and spent an hour rooting around my car with a car vac until I got to the point where I just had to go home. Then, when I got home at nearly midnight, there was a TV news meltdown happening over the idiot president's most recent speech.
So, on Wednesday, instead of meeting my usual 80 page goal, I read only about 30 pages. I started in the morning with Teresa Caldeira's City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paolo. This is really a wonderfully thoughtful and well-researched enthography about the impact of neoliberal transformation in Brazil on the lives of individuals, with an emphasis on walled-in housing and people's constant "talk of crime." It's a very empathic and yet critical study of every-day dynamics that contribute to segregation and criminalization. I'm reading this both as general support for my teaching this semester, and for my 2017 academic reading challenge, in the category, "read about a subject you study, but in a different country from the one that you usually study." Later in the day, I read another 20 pages or so of The Russian Debutante's Handbook.
I had a spider hop into my car on the driver's seat one time when I had to get back to work. Couldn't find it but was freaking out since I couldn't wait and keep looking
ReplyDeleteack! that sounds terrifying.
Deletelooks like you had a rough day, hoping all gets better tomorrow, and hopefully, life won't get in the way of reading, really cockroaches should know this is boutofbooks week! How dare they!
ReplyDeletefor real - though the main obstacle has been my job. If you're a professor, the first few weeks of classes are a terrible time for doing anything.
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