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The Cambridge Chronicles |
The photo is of the author (the one on the left) and his dog, Cassady. You can find more pictures of Cassady here. Some people think she's a very beautiful dog. Who am I to disagree!
Recent Writing...
From time to time people write about about problems with the Art Deadlines List. Here's a recent message which includes my responses, indented:
To whom it may concern,
That would probably be me.
On 2 occasions I emailed you in reference to accountability of your
advertisers.
On one occasion I responded to say the announcement
in question was not an advertiser.
You have failed to address this issue,
As the French would say: ses la-vivee
thus have put your own accountability in question.
I guess I'll just have to live with that horror.
In what intended to be a simple question has turned out to be a
learning experience for myself and my students.
FINALLY, you and your students get to learn something!
Our original intent was to recommend that our students subscribe to
artdeadlinelist as a supplement to their field experiences in art and
writing.
At least you had one smart idea.
Instead, your failure to address a simple question has put serious
doubts upon your business.
Yeah, one of the consequences of life in an Enron world.
Therefore, I cannot in good conscience
How do I know you aren't a Turing Machine and thus
without a conscience?
recommend artdeadlinelist to my students. Competing for shows and
contests is hard enough.
I see you are determined to make it harder for your students.
College students generally do not have money to throw around to
potential scams.
I'll just have to try and snooker them when they are
older, more adult, and have more money.
They work hard and put their heart and souls into their creativity.
God knows that's hard enough even without a character
like you standing in their way.
As I said before, accountability and reliability are paramount, and
your non-response speaks volumes.
You should hear me holler, if you think that was loud
and voluminous.
Now, instead of having dozens of new subscribers,
Dang!
word is spreading that artdeadlinelist may be unreliable,
Oh NO!
and is certainly unaccountable for both its advertisers and for
itself.
Perhaps just a consequence of life in a
capricious universe?
I am sincerely disappointed in your lack of response
We all have our burdens to bare.
and suggest that you show some accountability and integrity for
yourself.
Frankly I am much too lazy to EVER indulge in
something like that.
If you chose to ignore this final email,
Gotcha in a bind, don't I?
I, my students, the university and all of our contacts will be
officially notified to stay away from your site.
OH PULEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEE tell your students, staff,
and university faculty to stay away from my site:
http://artdeadlineslist.com
You will promise me that, now, won't you?
WHY WOULD YOU HAVE SUCH A SITE AND IGNORE THE CONCERNS OF POTENTIAL
SUBSCRIBERS?
1) maybe you aren't a real perfesser--no .EDU address
2) I'm already filthy rich
3) the previously mentioned lazy
4) you probably never intended to subscribe anyway
5) you are nothing more than an amateur troublemaker,
and, obviously, no match for me
6) maybe you are a competitor intent on taking up
all my time and causing me to neglect my site
7) finally, as an open minded person, you have to give
serious consideration to the proposition that you are an idiot
October 30, 2002
Regarding your recent column:
Significant others
I love my other and my lover.
He loves his wife and me.
Can this all work out?
http://salon.com/sex/col/tenn/2002/10/30/sya_wed/index.html
and your doubts that it can all work out:
Here's a thought experiment:
1) make a list of all the couples you know (or limit
it to 1000, for simplicities sake)
2) make a second list of each member of the couple
(or limit it to 2000, for simplicities sake)
3) looking at each person on your second list you
note that EVERY SINGLE RELATIONSHIP they
participated in, before their current relationship,
FAILED (discounting those where one partner may
have died, or where it was the very first relationship
for that particular person)
4) going back to our original list of 1000 couples,
we can wait a year and discover... some of those
FAILED
5) waiting 5 years, and going back to our original
list, we find that even more of them FAILED
6) waiting 10 years, etc...
Don't think me an advocate of the polyamorous lifestyle for presenting
the above thought experiment.
Don't think me against it because it doesn't "work". Who is to say
with any certainty that the fixed couple relationship "works" when you
consider that real life is nearly exactly reflected by the above
thought experiment. One or the other may "work" for any given couple
for some length of time.
Then there is the argument that "I know a couple where the two people
involved had only one love their entire life". Don't get me started
on that, but my experience is that they solve the need for "more" with
some combination of lying and cheating during parts of their lives
together. I have yet to find a couple, including my grandparents,
about whom lifetime fidelity is a certainty.
Let me say this about the problem of the fixed couple relationship
(apologies for the purloined prose):
"My opinion of such crystalline formations is that they are inherently
unstable, given the way stresses multiply in the interstices, and how
the supports are not reinforced by the structure but, on the contrary,
tend to be weakened and stretched even thinner. There will be crucial
moments of stress, such as that moment when your other needs you
urgently and" you discover yourself unable to meet their needs at that
moment--and you have FAILED them. At that moment you find yourselves
"realizing that the grass" WAS "greener on the other other's side of
the street," in some areas "and tears appear in the fabric of the
face." And both partners begin rethinking the value of their current
relationship and whether they should split--and find somebody new,
stay together as a monogamous couple, or look around for someone to
fill that unfilled need--even if it has to be done on the sly.
Sounds just like real life, doesn't it.
The likely reason for all this
life-as-a-bunch-of-clothes-in-a-clothesdryer tumbling is that nature
found this to be a way of diversifying our genes to find better
combinations of immune systems.
As an absolute reductionist I can live with that--but I'd still like
to have more sexual experiences.
Enjoy your column. Read it all the time.
My writing, a month at a time:
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