Just went through this whole blog--I am collecting hobbies

I used to write more and better than I do today. Being Chair for the department set me back. That is an excuse. I don't know what else to say, though--it feels like the truth. But I think I am back where I started. I know I need to write more. This is as good a place to do it as any. My first post states that not many will read this and I am curious to see who will discover it. Almost 15 years later I post again at a time when almost no one I know keeps a blog, and noone I know goes to blogspot. I wondered at the time who would read my posts. I wonder that again. Once again I will be taking students to Germany--for the first time since the covid pandemic hit. Maybe I can spend time writing there like I did in the past. I need to reflect more. I need to scroll less. Once again I am writing about Peter Handke. He is problematic. He is unpopular with many. He makes me think. I think he is not who others think he is. We will see where that gets me. This blog missed my bowyer phase. I haven't given it up, but I haven't done much with it. Here is a picture to see if I can upload images.

Here is a link of me but I can't get it to format the way I want it to. If I write a whole bunch of nonsense here it might move the video down a bit so it doesn't overlap with the other image. The bow, the arrows and the quiver (as well as the target off screen) are all made by me. shooting to see if that works too. Here is another airplane video also

and a video of me playing the piano that has nothing to do with any of my earlier posts. I seem to collect hobbies. Did I mention also got a lathe recently? The bowls on the piano were turned by me (as well as the lamp--but in the 8th grade).

The Moment of Impact, or, what I remember from breaking my arms

 I haven't used this blog in a very long time.  I wonder what will happen if I start writing here again.  It is on a little-used google account, but it also says 36 people have looked at my posts in the last month.  I need to start writing again. Do I want to do it in a semi-public way?

On October 21st, 2021 I was riding my bike up the trail in Provo Canyon when a kid from Arkansas came down the other way on a rented E-bike. He was going way too fast for his skill level, and he was on the wrong side of the trail. I came around a corner onto the bridge at canyon glenn park, looked up just in time to see him come barreling through me. I remember the collision, but I do not remember impacting the ground. There was not a single scratch on my helmet, but when I looked at my left arm, I knew right away that it was broken. The radius snapped, and my wrist was forced into an awkward position by the dislocation of the bones. I rolled over on the ground and looked at the teen-aged kid and yelled, “what the hell were you doing?” and then the pain really kicked in. The thing is, I have vivid memories of some of what happened, but not of other things. I have created and retold the story countless times and I KNOW that is how it happened. But I wonder if it really did happen that way. I remember seeing blood on the ground from the scrape in my knee. I remember trying to pick up my phone so I could call for help, but I don’t remember if my phone was on the ground or still in my backpack. As I grasped the phone and felt the pain in my right thumb and I knew then that it was broken too. (When the nurse at the ER saw that both arms were out of commission, he said “You broke them both? Oh, man, I am so sorry. This is going to really suck.”–He was right, but the sinking feeling that gave me at the time was the first real clue as to how bad it was going to be.) Like I said, with the memory, I keep wondering if I have it right. Did I maybe swing a little wide into the oncoming biker’s path? Do I bear any responsibility? My fitness tracker–Strava–says I was doing about 10 mph just before the crash. That fits well with what would be normal for me at that point in the trail. I had just come around the rockfall, and I was just getting ready to make my final acceleration up the straightaway past the bridge–the same straightaway the kid had just come down–a good half-mile of downhill where you can finally get up to full speed if you want. All the damage on my bike (and my body) was on the left side. My wheel was taco-ed in that direction, with clear impact signs on the left side of the rim. So clearly my impulse was to move further right in the last split second before impact. Doesn’t that mean I was on the right and trying to move further to that side? A week or two ago, when I could finally drive agin, I went to the site of the accident. I couldn’t make the scene fit that moment. The fence was too far from where it had to be. The curve was too far back the other way. The kid had to have seen me coming for a while. I should have been able to see him. I had a split second. It felt so much longer. Long enough to have complex thoughts. I remember thinking-‘well I’ve not had an accident in 20 years. It is about time I got it over with now.’ Did I think that all in the split second, or did that thought come later? Did I also think ‘what is he doing on my side of the trail?’ I thought ‘there is no way for me to avoid this.’ I felt his soft, overweight, dough-like body impact with me, go through my location and send me –what? Flying over his head? Sideways into the fence? Just over my own handlebars? The fact that I don’t remember hitting the ground bothers me. That hole in my recollection calls the rest of it into question. The titanium plate in my arm and the six screws and the two scars all testify that to the reality–but in a way it all seems still unreal. Handke writes several scenes that all happen in an Augenblick in the moment of the jetzt. It is the only moment that exists for sure, and the fact that I cannot access that one ‘now’ among the several ‘nows’ that still feel present every time I look at my scars undermines the whole of the experience. I don’t know where to go with this. I don’t know that what I am writing right now is how I feel about it. November was a dark and horrible month of helplessness and frustration and anger. December was nearly as bad. In that moment right before impact–and this sounds so cliche to me–but time slowed way down and I remember so many things. I remember the state of my legs and my feet in the pedals. I remember his feet leaving the pedals. I remember the smell of the autumn air and the gold of the sunlight about an hour from setting. I remember the time–4:45 exactly–time to turn and head home. Just another 100 yards to the end of the park and then homeward and dinner and then an evening finishing the turning of a wood bowl on the lathe. All of it in that threshold instant. And then I’m on the ground wondering ‘what the hell!’ I want to remember the kid in overalls because he was from Arkansas, and certainly a redneck who should never be on a bike. But I don’t remember that. I want to trust my memories, but I can’t remember hitting the ground. Fortsetzung folgt.

A bird in the hand. . .

Peter Handke in his collection of essays "Noch einmal für Thukydides" (once again for Thucydides) writes about short Geschichten. In German the word Geschichte means both"history" and "story." Thycydides is of course the great classical historian of the Peloponnesian war and the father of modern historical writing. Handke's Stories treat small happenings and observations of daily life as if they were as importants as the great wars and events that we normally think of as History. And indeed as he describes it, the butterfly in his garden or the hour between the last Swallow and the first bat in the evening are the actuall great events that, in the end, will have more influence on us if we let them than the presidential campaigns, the battles in far-off lands, or the lives of the "great and powerful" men and women in the news.

One of the things I was looking forward to most about coming back to Berlin was the food--especially the Bread. the rolls here-Brötchen--are a thing of majesty and wonder. The first one I ate last Thursday made the whole flight over here worth the price. One the morning of my first full day in Berlin I awoke very early, still affected by jet-lag. From a brief workshop through the Study abroad office on photography, I knew thea sunrise was the "golden hour" for taking pictures, and, since it was an unusually sunny (for Berlin) morning, I left my apartment with my camera in hand to pass the time before the bakery opened and I could enjoy my first German breakfast in seven years. Out the door and to the left. One block down past the British embasy and then to the left again and you will stand on Pariser Platz right in front of Berlin's Propylaea, the Brandenburger Tor. Its four-horse Quadriga, placed on top the gate by Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1791, and which was promply looted by Napoleon when he invaded Berlin in 1806-and consequently replaced upon Napoleon's defeat in 1814, is a central icon of the city. If you stand directly in front of the Gate, one sees Victoria atop the Siegesäule--the victory column-- at the center of the Tiergarten. Both the gate and the column remind the Berliner of their superiority over the French. From this point John F. Kennedy stood in front of the Berlin Wall and eloquenty declared to all the world affinity for the people of Berlin and his love for Jelly-Filled Pasteries.

Through the gates and again to the left one comes to a field filled with row upon row of concrete blocks, all the same size but each of a different height, none precisely erect. When one walks between the perfectly-aligned rows, precise in typical German fashion, the ground below falls away, first to one side, and then to the other. Between the blocks it is both completely open and utterly confining at the same time. It is the new Holocaust memorial, and the early-morning shadows create a contrast of dark and light that parallels this memorial with the Gate and the tower that reminds me of the two sides of German culture that interest me so much. Both reflect opposite sides of the Hubris and glory, the neo-classic past and the stark post-modern present that give rise to the complexity of Berlin and Germany and make it worth exploring.

One more left turn and the sun is directly in ones face. A long sidewalk, trees along the road and, to the other side, an East German Plattenbau–the prefabricated apartment buildings that arose in the GDR in the 60s and 70s. These too have been rebuilt and sanitized of their socialist past until they are as invisible as the now-absent wall. Turning my back to the sun, my shadow creates an A-frame silhouette, long legs and short torso. I like the image the shadow makes so I include the Selbstporträt with the other photos.

One last turn to the left and the bakery is finally open. One Vollkornbrötchen, a Semmel, and a Sesambrötchen and my breakfast is ready. Atop the trash can is yesterday’s paper with an essay from a journalist who spent November 9th, 1989 doing tango at a Tanzabend as the wall was coming down. At my feet is a finch, which hops closer and closer, hoping that some of my breakfast will fall. I throw a piece down to her, which she snatches, and ungratefully flies away. The journalist wanted to study ecology in Mozamique before the wall fell. Instead he travels, and describes the most beautiful morning of his life in the Himalayas. The bird comes back. This time landing on the bench next to me. I hold out my hand with another piece to her. This time she bounces hesitantly forward and takes it directly from my hand.








In the tradition of Handke, this is my history of the first Brötchen in Berlin.

So what am I doing with my life?

So I get this magazine from time to time called Deutschland. When you are a German professor, the publisher just sends it to you. When I thumbed through it the other night I noticed an article on up-and-coming young German authors. At the top of the list was Daniel Kehlmann and his Vermessung der Welt, the guy I am giving a presentation on next fall. But under his picture there was another one from Thomas von Steinaecker. I looked at the picture and thought, wait a minute, I know that guy. Thomas spent a year at the University of Cincinnati getting his master's degree (it took me three years at BYU). The guy even went to church with me once. At first I was surprised that he was a writer, and then I was happy for him that his first book has landed on the German best-seller list. But then I read that he wrote it at the same time he was finishing up his dissertation.

I barely survived writing my dissertation.

Sometimes I wonder how I manage to accomplish so little and what it is that is keeping me from becoming a writer like I have dreamed of doing since I was old enough to read books. So far it has always been and probably will continue to be "one of these days."

How to spend a summer

Starting in about 2 weeks, I will be on summer vacation. Since the Study Abroad thing didn't work out, it will be the first time in about ten years that I have not either moved or taught a class, or both, during the summer. I have been thinking about how I want to spend it. I am afraid it will be all too easy to either A) waste the whole time, or B) set up so many projects that it feels like I never took any time off at all. Here are some of the things I could do with my time.

1. Write my RMMLA paper.
2. Prepare two previous RMMLA papers on Handke for publication.
3. Fly my plane more.
4. Finish repairs to my Mustang and fly it
5. Loose 10-15 pounds.
6. Ride at least 100 miles a week. (See above)
7. Swim twice or three times a week.
8. If I were to do the above two, why not train for a mini-triathalon?
9. Have my head examined for even thinking about a triathalon.
10. Read more books and less internet.
11. Sleep.
12. Prepare a better and more effective study abroad
13. Compose a viable proposal for getting myself to Germany next summer even if Study Abroad bonks out again.
14. Get a summer construction job to pay for a new garage.
15. Re-tile the basement bathroom.
16. Develop a tenure plan and a plan for the growth of the German Program at UVU.
17. Hang out in my sweats and mock my children as they still have to get up early and go to school. (at least through May).

I could do any or all of these but the best plans seldom all come about. If I were to do all of these, I think my summer would be a lot shorter. I do know that I plan on doing that last one though--at least a couple of mornings.

Progress

Not a lot has been made on papers. But: My RMMLA proposal on Daniel Kehlmann was accepted. Now all I have to do is write it. Good thing I just finished all of the curriculum work on the new integrated studies Program in German. Now I can go back to concentrating on teaching, preparing Study Abroad again for next year, concurrent enrollment coordination with the high schools, internships, and writing a paper or two. Nice to know my plate is that much less full today than it was yesterday.

In other news, it looks like progress is finally being made in my article in Colloquia Germanica. Ted Fiedler replied to my e-mail today and has done some actual editing. Maybe I will see it in print before I am up for tenure.

a new paper proposal

I want all of my readers out there to comment on the idea I am working on for a new conference proposal. I recently read a book by Daniel Kehlmann called Die Vermessung der Welt. It is a novel about the natural scientist/ explorer Alexander von Humboldt and Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß. The book takes a somewhat satirical or humorous look at the lives of these two Gentlemen, and the ways in which their lives intersect.

Compared to many works of German literature, Die Vermessung der Welt is refreshingly open and positive, while it avoids being frivolous or "fluffy." In other words, I think it is successful in appealing to a wide audience--i.e. casual readers as well as those who are more literary minded. This is unusual in the bulk of what is considered literature in Germany. Much of the high modern and post-modern and hermeneutic works still have a great deal to offer if you are interested in philosophy, literary theory, politics or other specialized topics, but it isn't what I would call entertaining. (Recent nobel winner Elfride Jelinek being an exeption--her work has neither entertainment nor intellectual value for me.) Peter Handke, for example, is not very entertaining, even though I find his works both challenging and stimulating intellectually.

Mind you, I think the best stuff is able to transcend the typical German stodginess. Today I introduced my class to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe entitled Grenzen der Menschheit:

Wenn der uralte
Heilige Vater
Mit gelassener Hand
Aus rollenden Wolken
Segnende Blitze
Über die Erde sät.
Küss´ich den letzten
Saum seines Kleides,
Kindliche Schauer
Treu in der Brust.

Denn mit Göttern
Soll sich nicht messen
Irgend ein Mensch.
Hebt er sich aufwärts
Und berührt
Mit dem Scheitel die Sterne,
Nirgends haften dann
Die unsichern Sohlen,
Und mit ihm spielen
Wolken und Winde.

Steht er mit festen,
Markigen Knochen
Auf der wohlgegründeten
Dauernden Erde,
Reicht er nicht auf,
Nur mit der Eiche
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.

Was unterscheidet
Götter von Menschen?
Daß viele Wellen
Vor jenen wandeln, ein ewiger Strom:
Uns hebt die Welle,
Verschlingt die Welle,
Und wir versinken.

Ein kleiner Ring
Begrenzt unser Leben,
Und viele Geschlechter
Reihen sie dauernd
An ihres Daseins
Unendliche Kette.

And now the translation, since I can't manage to print them both in two columns:

The Limits of Humanity

When the age-old
Holy Father
With a tranquil hand
Sows blessed lightning
Over the Earth
From rolling clouds.
I kiss the last
Hem of his gown,
A child-like thrill
Staunch in the breast.

For with the gods
Should not be measured
Any man.
If he lifts himself upwards
and touches
The stars with his head,
Then nowhere hold fast
his uncertain soles,
And with him play
Clouds and wind.

If he stands with firm
Marrowed bones
On the well-grounded
Abiding Earth,
It is enough to compare
himself only
with the oak
or the vine.

What distinguishes
The gods from man?
That the countless waves
Continue before Them, an eternal stream:
Us the waves lift,
They swallow us,
And we sink away.

An insignificant ring
Delimits our life,
And many generations
Link continually
To the existence of its
Unending chain.

Maybe not a very good translation, but I think fairly accurate. I really like this poem. It is very humanistic and beautifully captures the relationship between the mortal and the immortal without really devaluing either of them. We mortals have our own version of eternity in which we participate every day. It is just that we have a different perspective than the gods, and we should appreciate where we are at the present time. I do not think this poem contradicts what I believe as a latter-day saint--that I have a potential for eternal progression and may one day participate in godhood. The unending chain reminds me very much of our concept of eternal families bound one to the other throughout the ages. This realization allows me, like the poet to wonder at the greatness of God's creation, even though I don't comprehend even a fraction of it.

But I have gotten off track. My interest in the moment is Kehlmann's novel. Perhaps not completely off track, however. Denn mit Göttern /Soll sich nicht messen/ Irgend ein Mensch reverberates not only in the Vermessung of the title of Kehlmann's novel, but throughout the text as well. Kehlmann describes a time when greatness walked the earth. Looking back it seems impossible to turn around in Germany at the end of the 18th century without running into one genius or the other: Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Gauß, von Humboldt, and others were making discoveries and expressing ideas that still affect us today. It was a time when it was still thought possible to know all there was to know, to be truly and comprehensively educated. Theirs was a time of the pioneering discoveries, we are left with the mere task of filling in the minor details.

The irony is, of course, that we are expanding humanities knowledge at a pace beyond the comprehension of the explorers and thinkers of the 18th century. The further irony is that today's discoveries would not be possible if we were not standing on the shoulders of the accomplishments of the earlier generations (another link in Goethe's chain, perhaps?). The third irony is (also of course,) that Kehlmann's description of Germany's golden age and his representative heroes is a work of fiction. It gives the impression of historical veracity while flagrantly inventing and reinventing characters and events to suit the needs of the story. Daniel Kehlmann is aware of and exploits all of these ironies in his book. He readily admits sacrificing reality for the sake of his definition of truth. It is clear that the author is aware of the irony as he invites the reader in numerous literary winks to join him in the joke.

My interest in this book centers ongoing interest in Germany in the classic period and with the apparent fascination with the cult of the genius. Obviously, the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century marks the German Blütezeit, its golden age, and it is natural that The Germans as a people would look to that time with a certain degree of nostalgia. What Die Vermessung der Welt reveals, I think, is that the modern desire to connect to this era, which appears from our perspective to be a time of giants, runs deeper than one might have expected.

In my paper, I explore the manner in which Daniel Kehlmann describes Germany's golden age and the cult of genius. I also trace the German fascination with greatness through Nietzsche, Mann and others up to the present as I examine how Kehlmann taps into the modern reader's desire to link one's self to past greatness and the irony involved in the process of doing so.