Time away and reinventing oneself

Sunday, December 5, 2016

When I was thirteen, my parents and I took a sabbatical to Paris. It was the spring semester of 1983, and my Dad was a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. We were due to stay a little over six months. I was adamantly against the idea.

A semester of eighth grade at an American junior high school in the early 1980s--who could possibly want to miss out on that? As it was, I had hardly any friends. I'd grown apart from most of my friends from elementary school, which ended after eighth grade, and hadn't made many new ones in my first year of junior high. Nevertheless, the prospect of going to France terrified me. For months before our departure in early January, every time my parents started talking about our trip at the dinner table, I always said the same thing: why not just stay in Ann Arbor?  My bitching and moaning continued after our arrival. The first couple of weeks we stayed with friends in Meudon while my parents trudged into Paris every day to meet with real estate agents and look at apartments. I'd brought one book with me, and finished it within ten days. It was called "Successful Investing," and my parents had given it to me for Christmas a few weeks earlier. In those days, I was very interested in the stock market. 

Getting Settled In Moscow

Saturday, October 22, 2016

I've been in Russia ten days so far. After leaving Bozeman at the beginning of September I was in Amsterdam for ten days, then spent a month in Istanbul. I then went back to Amsterdam for a couple of days before flying here last week. 

Sabbatical kickoff: Amsterdam-Istanbul-Amsterdam

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

It's been a busy five weeks since I left Bozeman. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm on sabbatical for this academic year, and I'll be spending most of my time in Russia. Prior to heading to Russia, though, I spent about ten days in Amsterdam and a month in Istanbul. 

Reflections on a summer and the past seven years

Sunday, September 25, 2016

I wake up at around 6 and glance out the window. Through the cracks in the blinds I see that the sun is up, barely. Nevertheless, once I actually get out of bed thirty minutes later, the interior of my apartment is coldish. The windows were all left open a couple of inches the night before, but with the temperatures dipping into the low forties at night that's enough to make things chilly.  

Summer vacation had a snowy start

What we saw this weekend

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

At first it seemed like a joke. What do you mean, the Turkish military couldn't pull off a coup? Since when? It's like when the Big 3 in Detroit started turning out lemons or when Team USA lost in men's basketball in the 2004 Olympics. What is the world coming to when the Turkish military is no longer capable of executing a successful military intervention? 

Was this the Ford Pinto of military coups?

But then the humor lost force pretty quickly in the face of what we all were watching. I was glued to my computer, watching live streams of people's television sets in Istanbul. Of course, it always looks worse from outside. I was in Istanbul during the earthquake of August 1999 and the Gezi protests, and I knew that certain striking images taken in often remote locales could quickly become generalized to form a sort of intellectual shorthand for people. But if you're there, you can see that in many ways life carried on as always. In America, we just proved this point by hosting yet another mass shooting. Everything's getting back to normal, right?

Turkish coup attempt: my hot take

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Yesterday was a typically beautiful example of Bozeman in the summertime. It was gorgeous out. Cool, clear, nice and dry. I'd worked at home in the morning and then met up with a friend for beers in the afternoon. 

I'd left my phone at home, but by the time I'd returned I could tell that something weird was going on. There were a bunch of cryptic messages in my email and on Facebook, as well as a number of calls from friends. All of them were just asking: have you heard the news in Turkey? 

Blechsit: the Breakup of Britain?

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Wow. Just wow. 

I have to admit, even as I was listening to news reports saying the vote was going to be close, I didn’t imagine that this would happen. And with the markets all crashing worldwide--now I understand why they held the vote on a Thursday. 

Is there any chance that this could all just be a New Coke-style promotion and they'll start rolling out the EU Classic now? 

UK to world: Just burn it all down

More than anything, I think, all of this is starting to feel like 1989 in reverse. 

News and Propaganda: Snowy Summer Fun Edition

Sunday, May 15, 2016

It's been a while since we've had an N & P, but I couldn't help doing so this week amid all of the...free time that I seem to have now. 

Hang on a second, something seems somehow different these days? What is it? Oh wait--now I remember: school's out.

Things change in Bozeman pretty quickly in the wake of graduation and the end of the school year. There's still a fair bit going on downtown, but the area around the university (which is on  the opposite side of a large residential area) is so quiet these days. There's hardly any traffic, so the biking is a lot easier. That is, it's a lot easier to bike these days so long as you're not pedaling in the midst of a snowstorm. 

The "Obama Doctrine," part II

Friday, March 18, 2016

Whoa! Three JMB posts in one week? I guess it must be spring break at the Borderlands Lodge. 

The snow has been a tad light up here lately

Earlier this week I put up a post detailing what I see as the bright side of the "Obama Doctrine" discussed in a recent article in the Atlantic. In this post, by contrast, I'd like to discuss some of the disadvantages of Obama's approach to foreign policy. 

As was discussed a fair bit in the Atlantic piece, Obama is seeking to disengage--as much as possible--from the Middle East. And frankly, I think that this could end up being good for the region. At the same time, however, I think that relative US disengagement from the region has also contributed to some issues which, over the long term, may end up being more problematic for both the US and the region more generally.  

Looking at the Bright Side of the "Obama Doctrine"

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Like a lot of people, I was interested to read the Atlantic piece on President Obama's emerging approach to foreign policy. 

While I have often been critical of some aspects of Obama's foreign policy, the Atlantic piece serves as a reminder, I think, of how much worse things would like be now had voters made different choices during the elections--both primary and general--of 2008. In particular, I liked the manner in which he usually avoided the sort of empty and counter-productive bluster that American politicians are often so fond of. 

So here are some of the occasions references by the article in which I think that Obama's words and/or actions have made sense to me. If I get the chance, I hope to put up a second part to this post later on this week in which I explore some of the disadvantages that I associate with Obama's approach to foreign policy. 

N & P: Musings of a Montana State University Story Highbrow

Friday, March 11, 2016

Things have been pretty spectacular lately up here at the Borderlands Lodge, and I hope the same has been the case for you. Over winter break I was in Bozeman, mostly, and the spring semester began at MSU in mid-January. 

This semester I'm teaching an upper-division class in Soviet History as well as the senior capstone seminar, and much of the rest of my time has been spent reading, writing, and submitting grant applications for a new research project that I'm proposing.