meta-narration

Happy Birthday to my Dad! I listened to Rascal Flatts' "My Wish" in his honor (he gave my brother and me the CD last fall because that song made him think of us, so sweet). It's an apt song for a time of transition...

Thanks to Laura's encouraging words and a long walk today when all I could write was page after page of dialogue (do these people never shut up?!?), I have developed a narrative structure to allow for the characters' place-based po-mo fluidity. Scarily enough, it involves drawing on some po-mo theory of identity/subjectivity/narrative...which will work wonderfully with a *surprise* meta-narrative device that fell into the story last week. And, Lily's (heroine) Mom happens to be a professor, so this structure can work into the existing character pool and plot...now, if I can only correctly remember the aforementioned po-mo theory from my grad school days when it was de rigueur...

Last night I cooked my first meal of the season using exclusively local produce! Well, not local by locavore standards, but from the greater Holland area where I bought my fruits and veggies at the outstanding farmer's market. I'm reading *The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter* by Peter Singer and Jim Mason and thinking about the many implications, personal and political (which are inseperable, yes?), of what we choose to consume. I'll have a whole post on that soon enough. Anyway, the book is as transformative a read as Michael Pollan's *The Omnivore's Dilemma* was last year. Whereas Pollan made me more emotionally connected, Singer and Mason engage a much more complex, analytical perspective. They resist simple platitudes, like the "local, sustainable, organic" mantra, by exploring the multi-faceted ethical quandries such decisions pose.

Finally, my excitement grows for my scouting trip to WI this weekend. Serendipitously, my future colleagues are having a party so I'll have a chance to meet everyone again, this time without the pressure of an 11 hour interview. Yes, 11 hours. (I hope to convince my PhD Friends to blog with me about the insane rigors of The Academic Job Search, in which the full story of that day might be revealed, but I'm afraid our potential blogging will get bogged down in the act of naming. I'm fond of MLAgirl, but know that would only engender a discussion of girl v. woman v. womyn v. grrrl. I miss such debates!)