I may check in occasionally, but regular posting will resume later next week.  Happy trails, and I hope you all get some vacationing in before your summer ends.

(Historiann will provide equal time for la Fleur-de-Lys later this month.)

I’ve seen this duck before–ze’s an odd little farm duck who apparently isn’t welcome among the other birds down at the park.  (Most of them are very cool Mallards and Canada Geese who are busy raising their little families this time of year.)  This duck seems to be very comfortable with humans–ze let my neighbor pet hir, and quacked in protest when I went back inside.  Ze might be flight impaired–I’ve never seen hir fly, and believe that ze must have walked down the street to our yards!  Poor thing.

As most of you know, this blog is only lightly pseudonymous.  Anyone who clicks on “About Historiann” and has the Google can find a wealth of information about my non-virtual professional life.  Other academic bloggers make different decisions, but I thought it was best that people know who they are dealing with, since my posts are informed by my academic training and fields of expertise.  You are all free to be pseudonymous here if you choose, but because this blog is linked to my life in the “straight world,” I prefer to keep everything on the up and up here: 

1. Historiann is my blog.  This seems obvious to me, but apparently it’s not to some people.  Please note the tag line in the header above:  “History and sexual politics, 1492-present.”  When you comment here, you’re a guest.  I try to make everyone feel welcome, but I am not obligated to comment extensively on issues that are important to you, and you have no right to demand that I do so here.
2. This is a feminist/womanist blog.  Non-feminists are free to comment so long as you follow the rules, but please note that when I post about bias against women, people of color, and GLBTQ people, it’s more than a little obnoxious to start out a comment by saying, “well, as a white man, I’ve been discriminated against too.”  I’m sure there are blogs out there that are all about the problems of the downtrodden white man, so please share your concerns there.  This is not the place for you.
3. Please keep your comments relatively brief and on topic.  400-500 word essays are for the op-ed pages or posts on your blog.  They’re not appropriate for the comments on my blog.  Some exceptions will apply occasionally, but pay attention as to how your comments are recieved by other commenters and by me.  If you’re not generating a lot of discussion about your ideas, posting an even longer and more belligerent comment demanding that we respond to you is probably not the way to go.  (I’m just sayin’.)  UPDATE:  See Dance’s comment below.  If you find that you’re repeating yourself, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the discussion has run aground. 
4. Be respectful of the other commenters and me.  Pointed questions, challenges, and spirited debate are welcome, but attacks on people’s integrity, reading comprehension, and intellectual capacity will get you a one-way ticket to my spam filter.

One last thing:  I love my commenters–some of you are friends, some of you I know only through blogs and comments, while others of you are enigmas whose identities are complete mysteries to me.  I’ve enjoyed and learned a lot from you and from some of the conversations we’ve had in the comments here (and on your blogs too.)  I’m sorry if this post seems like a wet blanket–let’s shake this thing out and let it dry at the beach, since it’s Memorial Day Weekend, m’kay? 

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Same thing, different univeristy, and different book.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Drink coffee
2. Read the Denver Post
3. Tidy Up
4. Answer e-mail
5. (I’m doin’ it now.)

3) Snacks I enjoy:

What is this, preschool?  (Sorry, James–that’s just silly.)

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Drink coffee someone else makes for me.
2. Read the Denver Post someone else brings to me.
3. Tell someone else to tidy up.
4. Answer e-mail using only LOLCat-speak, just to annoy people, and just because I could  (U no U wud ansr me if I hd $1B!)
5. Hire someone else to mow my damn grass.

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. My triathlalon times are so incredible they’re intimidating my workout buddies.
2. I haven’t had time to bake homemade bread to give to the Food Bank since I’ve been volunteering so many hours with Save the Children.
3. The terrible mess on my desk has cost me numberless offers of endowed chairs at prestigious universities because I keep losing the contracts.

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Philadelphia
2. Baltimore
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Somerville/Cambridge, Mass.
5. Oxford, Ohio

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Produce department clerk in a supermarket
2. Evening/weekend receptionist at an inn on a college campus
3. “Fly Girl” dancer on the TV show In Living Color (1989-1991)
4. Dry mount press operator at a frame shop
5. Historian

But, instead of passing this along to other bloggers, I’d like to invite my commenters to answer one or more of the questions above, either on their own blogs or in the comments.  Have at it, friends!

Why not?  Isn’t creating a “hostile work environment” part and parcel of being an a**hole?  (I wouldn’t have minded working with a**holes so much if they left it at home.)  Tenured Radical posted last year about a book by Robert I. Sutton that argues that keeping a**holes out is an important precondition to creating a healthy and happy work environment.  She writes, “What is great about The No A**hole Rule is that Sutton’s examples help identify the a**hole behavior that is particular to one’s own workplace, how to identify it in oneself, and how to resist it. He also demonstrates the damage caused by a**holes, several of which seem particularly relevant to academic institutions, in my experience. One is that a**hole behavior is contagious: if effective interventions are not made, people who are not certified a**holes become more prone to temporary a**hole behaviors as they try to resist domination and seizures of power.”  (By the way, go ahead and type in the esses if you’re looking for Sutton’s book–Historiann doesn’t like to work blue.)

Prof. Zero makes a related point about abusive environments in her recent post, I Object, in which she meditates on domestic violence and victim-blaming.  She writes, “I find it very interesting that [women] are expected to escape physical abuse and are heavily criticized if we do not, but [we are expected] to absorb verbal and emotional abuse. We are to say it is happening because we have a ‘communication problem.’ Had we phrased things just right, we would have avoided ‘misunderstandings’ and would not have been abused. Now that we have been, we must be quiet and wait for the next episode. In the meantime we must still function at a high level.”  She’s absolutely right–why do we blame the victims if they don’t leave after being physically abused, and then blame victims again if they don’t just shut up and take it when being bullied and abused emotionally?  If we accept that victims of physical violence have no control over their abusers’ behavior, why do we tell people who are being bullied that they should “try to get to know people better,” and suggest that if they took people out to lunch more often, the harrassment would end?

Finally, Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Profs has put together some useful links in Data on Women and Men in Academia.  Note in particular the link to “Women, Work, and the Academy:  Strategies for Responding to ‘Post-Civil Rights Era’ Gender Discrimination,” a report by Alison Wylie, Janet R. Jakobsen and Gisela Fosado at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Whew.  Historiann has got quite a few stables to muck out now, doesn’t she?  Giddyup.

Courtesy of all of the fine kittehs at icanhascheezburger.com

(From icanhascheezburger.com, the best timewasting website of 2008!)

You won’t believe it, but my grandmother died Monday morning, so it’s back to the ancestral homelands again with me.  My grandmother was, for less than a month, the widow of the grandfather who died in February.  They were each other’s second spouses–both had been widowed–but were married 33 years, which is a pretty good run for a first marriage, even.  Many older couples slip away in close succession, especially in cases where one may have been holding on in order to take care of the other.  She had a good death (praise be to Morpheus).  She really enjoyed seeing her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren again at Grampa’s funeral last month.  She’s my last grandparent to go, so it’s an end to an era of family life.  Back next week.