Changes

When this blog was launched nearly six long years ago, it was a Seattle-based blog, as all three 'founders' were graduate students in the political science department at the University of Washington. Shortly thereafter my two founding co-bloggers headed east to take tenure track positions in New York and Kentucky. I remained in Seattle, and spent the next several years adjuncting all over town and not finishing my dissertation. Eventually, in 2007 and 2008 respectively, I managed to get a full time non-tenure track lecturer position and finish my dissertation. These two accomplishments were a tremendous relief, emotionally and financially. However, the funding for my position has been increasingly difficult for my department to sustain, and it became clear it would not be renewed forever.

In the Fall of 2010, this blog will lose its last connection to the city of its founding. I will leave the persistent and urgent uncertainty of my career to date behind (at least for six years) as I will make the increasingly and distressingly rare leap to the ranks of tenure track faculty. I will be taking up this position at the University of Dayton in Ohio, where I will teach a range of political theory courses as well as an introductory course in comparative politics and a course on comparative democratization. Academically, this is an improbably ideal step for my career; the teaching/research mix and general intellectual environment at UD is just about perfect for my tastes and talents, and I'm remarkably fortunate, and given how many talented, sharp and accomplished people in my field who remain un- and under-employed, humbled to have been offered this job.

The difficulty, though, is leaving Seattle, a place that is very much my home. I have never lived outside Western Washington, and the city and region have become constituitive of my identity to no small degree. With the exception of my whirlwind 36 hours of a campus interview, my only experience with the state of Ohio has been a couple of hours on a layover in the Cleveland airport, and my only experience with the midwest has been a handful of visits to Chicago. So I'll be heading east this summer with some trepidation. So, people of the internets: the purpose of this thread is to solicit advice, suggestions, warnings, and endorsements regarding any and all aspects of life and living in Dayton, SW Ohio, and the midwest more generally.

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The Medium Rare Rant

Time for an unjustifiably general rant against the people of an entire region of the United States:

The Midwest of the United States appears utterly incapable of properly cooking a steak. To be specific, the terms "rare" and "medium rare" have no meaning in the Midwest. As far as I can tell, both "rare" and "medium rare" are interpreted as "medium," while "medium" is interpreted as "well done." The blame for this problem lies with the people of those states of the Midwest; I do not hold the restauranteers responsible. After hearing 531 complaints about underdone steaks after some idiot ordered "medium rare" when he meant "well done," I'd stop trying, too. Last year at the Precinct, one of the best steakhouses in Cincinnati, the wife (seven months pregnant at the time) ordered a medium rare steak. The steak came back at what can charitably be termed medium well. Upon complaint, the waiter (apparently believing that pregnant women randomly go insane, and that dealing with crazy people was above his paygrade) summoned the manager, who immediately and with all sincerity promised to take the steak back to the kitchen in order to COOK IT LONGER. It didn't even enter the manager's imagination that someone might want a steak that was actually medium rare; no one, apparently, had ever expressed unhappiness about an OVERDONE steak. The wife politely declined the manager's offer, and proceeded to eat as much of the charcoal as she could choke down.

I mention this today because the "rare side of medium rare" steak that I ordered at a Michigan steakhouse came back the medium side of medium well. Our server confirmed the extraordinarily unusual nature of my complaint; no one, it appears, ever complains about a steak that is overdone. I observed that an underdone steak could be fixed, while an overdone one could not, but this logic gained no apparent traction. It's a ridiculous situation; you can get medium rare in Seattle, in New York, in Washington, and even (depending on where you go) in Lexington, but you can't get it anywhere in the state of Ohio.

Midwesterners need to stop being idiots.

*sigh*

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Mean Jean a Birther

"Mean" Jean Schmidt, who "represents" me in Congress, is apparently a Birther:

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) spoke at the Voice of America tea party this Labor Day weekend outside of Cincinnati, OH. Following a tense Q&A session — during which, the congresswoman was booed for acknowledging that the Constitution is a living document — Schmidt engaged in a heated conversation with a birther off-stage. At the conclusion of their exchange, Schmidt whispered to the birther, “I agree with you, but the courts don’t.”

It's strange. Cincinnati isn't liberal for a major metropolitan area, and I count several Republicans among my acquaintances. I have never met anyone who thinks that Jean Schmidt is anything but an embarrassment to Cincinnati and to Ohio. I suppose that this isn't terribly uncommon, given the structure of American Congressional representation; Republicans may not love Schmidt, but they understand that the district is marginal enough that without the advantage of incumbency it might tip. I suspect that the blogosphere and the accelerated internet news cycle will make critters like Schmidt (and Michelle Bachmann) somewhat less common, however. It's bad enough knowing that your Representative is a howlingly insane idiot, but infinitely worse when everyone else in the country knows it. Perhaps the next Democratic challenger should hammer on the idea that Mean Jean is an embarrassment to Cincinnati, regardless of how well her political positions fit with the Cincy old money set.

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