Wasting time

The Good Dr. Fledermaus and I have been considering What To Do With The Books. We are, after all, Bats of Very Little Means (well, of means not enough to construct a handsome two-story library addition onto the time-honored halls of our current residence), and so we ponder: continue the overshelving of the hallway as library? How to have stacks (that don't call to the dust like a magnet to an iron filing)?

And how do our electronic resources fit into all this? What To Do With All The Learning is, after all, a professional consideration of mine--ours--and so it was with interest that I read Alex Halavais' piece, "The New University Press." This is a pre-release version of a talk Halavais gave at last week's American Association of University Presses annual meeting, and it's a good set of insights into what academic publishers actually do, and do well. And it's good and provocative advice about how to do it better.

But I'm going to leave aside Halavais' main points and focus on some of the more homey aspects of what he says, since he talks a good deal about his own relationship to books. I sympathize with his desire to keep the library after the birth of his child, and stash the kid in a closet (Bat Jr.'s bed, I hasten to add, is only half in the closet. And it is a very nice closet, I assure you). And there's a certain intellectual satisfaction to be had, I'm sure, in destructively scanning one's books, and taking responsibility for fairly using the electronic versions he's created.

But the most significant passage, I think, is this: "I would suggest if you want to remain undistracted, a traditional library is perhaps the worst place to be. I’ve wasted hours at libraries and bookstores—wasted them enjoyably, but wasted them nonetheless." This is the mark of literacy and, I think, a turning point--or a demarcation--between book culture, TV culture, and internet culture. Leaving aside the questions of what any of these are doing to our brains our attention spans, , our political sensibilities, which are all questions about the results of "media use," let's pause and think about the non-results, the time wasted.

This may sound obvious, since most of us (in the U.S.) stopped wasting time in books a generation or two ago, and started wasting it on TV, but it's not what you use for work, whether you're in an academic or other research-based job, it's what you do for fun. And not just fun, but lose-track-of-time, holy-mackerel-I'm-late-and-Mom's-gonna-be-pissed-of time wasted.

Now that we've gotten here (and I've wasted a half-hour of my lunch, in some sense, writing this), what's the upshot? Clearly I think books and libraries are worthwhile. The ability to lose oneself in a book for three hours will certainly serve a kid well, when it comes time for him to analyze The time has definitely come for a Slow Information Movement. Perhaps I'll just wrap up by pointing the educators and the policy-makers and the pundits to worry a little less about how we and our kids are spending time, and think rather about wasting our time well.

Someone should write an opera...

In brief: the Fausto Coppi-Gino Bartali rivalry of the pre- and post-WWII years was defining for a generation of Italians, probably for a generation of Europeans, and certainly for a generation of racing bicyclists. You were a coppiano or a bartaliano, and it was as much an urban/rural or class division as a sporting one. The fact that those two were so often so much better than others, and so often only challenged by each other, reflected and provided an opportunity to sublimate serious social differences.

Jeff MacGregor said it well: "So in a time when the very words have been debased by overuse, a truly great sporting rivalry -- an "epic rivalry" -- is a rare and precious thing. One made possible only by athletes or teams who define and then expand not just each others' limits, but the limits of the age in which they compete. Opponents at the very peak of their powers, equals, who transform one another. Always at great cost. Which is why "Ali/Frazier" remains the standard measure of a modern American epic, and speaks to the needs of our culture as fully as "Gilgamesh" or "Beowulf" spoke to the needs of theirs." (Hat tip to LC for the quote.)

Coppi didn't stop cycling until his death at the age of 41; Bartali, the conservative and (relatively) clean-living of the duo, lived to be 85. But, and here is my service to you, readers (are there any librettists and composers amongst you?), shortly after Coppi's death, Bartali wrote a brief memoir, "Coppi and me," for the French Magazine Le Miroir des sports. Belgium Knee Warmers has now published the article in four parts: Here is a link to the first.

It's heartbreaking to read, and so easy to translate Bartali into a mirror of Peter Shaffer's Salieri, knowing greatness--and trying so hard to best it, to destroy it, even. And to be sentenced to live long enough to see greatness achieve immortality, and one's own near-greatness forgotten.

Friday grab-bag (2 items)

Ari Davidow, Hebrew Typesetter Extraordinaire and someone who blogs less regularly than I do. But the links there could waste two or three days of my life.

Tandems aren't just political props. See what they can do for your
marriage!

Cool thing of the day

Illusion Sciences. "This aspect of the effect can be quite mesmerizing, so be careful."

Reading Material

I'm too busy to read stuff (let alone write), so you'll have to. New additions to the "Chicago Links" there on the right:
I Hate My Developer--required reading for anyone thinking about buying into a condo conversion, and really sharp observations about life on the South Side.

General Carlessness--bike riding and editing; sound familiar? But with more content of public interest than I usually muster. (I've been utterly remiss in not linking here sooner!)

Those two are both excellent and full of stories of life in the neighborhoods I straddle (I claim Woodlawn, living and working south of the midway, but I'm in University-occupied territory, which makes for overlapping geographical identities).

Chicagoist--news, events, and observations about the city. Chicagoist's borealic focus may lead to its removal from my blogroll, but the writing's good and the topics interesting. Whether a few weeks of things I'll not see around town gets to me or not is to be determined.


The following may or may not make the blogroll; after I have some time to devote to reading them, they'll appear there or not. But you may find them interesting now.
District 299 blog. about Chicago Public Schools ChiKat and Swim and Glitter are the personal blogs of a couple of (white) south siders. Interesting observations and all, but they might prove too personal. Yochicago is another recent discovery, and seems to focus entirely on real estate.

Wednesday catch-all

All the news that fits in a 5-minute post (warning--all bike content):
Tuesday night ride report: good fun, but 'urban singletrack' (that's the rut in the park full of mud, grass, chunks of asphalt, and sand) would be more fun with company. Yes, I'll advertise again for next time. (We don't quite have the momentum for going without, yet, I guess.)

Read this. It will give you goosebumps. Hat tip to Surlyblog whose Ms. Bloggins it made cry.

My old rear wheel died last week. Time to build up that new set of wheels for next winter, a bit ahead of the planned schedule. Owen at Blackstone Bikes set me up with a SRAM three-speed internally geared hub, and it's sitting on a shelf in the living room where I can gaze fondly at it until I pick up my rims and start making a wheel. Further updates on this adventure in wheelbuilding as events warrant.

Since the demise of the geared rear, I put my fixed wheel on the Surly. The only gearing that worked without shortening my only 1/8" chain is 36x18. There's a coffee out there called 53x11; they're bikers, of course, and they, inter alia, support a cycling team. I'm thinking the coffee must be really strong. After riding 7 miles on Monday with a 25 mph tailwind, I'm thinking that they should make a supercaffeinated blend called "36x18." I was spinning like mad to keep up with myself. But I could pull the trailer without feeling like my knees would fall off.

Newly discovered

Via the blog of a photographer we're working with, Guido Daniele's hand paintings. Way cool.