pyrsandponies | update and a quote (Reply)

free wrote 4 pages this am already. YAY! Very little of it will ultimately be usable, but I was thinking through some useful ideas. I have been struggling with the connections between my theoretical and methodological approaches, and a lot of it comes down to one big whopping issue: I keep wanting this diss to matter. TO make real statements about the real world, and to potentially change things. And barring that, I REALLY seem to want to make value judgments about the guidebooks I am analyzing. My evidence for this is the fact that I keep making value statements, or at least thinking them. I am, for better or for worse, biased in favor of the Lonely PLanet guidebooks (and now, maybe the Moon handbooks), because they raise environmental and social issues, and my inner liberal likes that. aside, let's not tell Dad I am no longer in any way, shape or form the rabid conservative he thought he raised. I am not anti-free-market economy, but I would like it to be used for GOOD, dammit. /rant. Back to our regularly scheduled diss babble ;) . But I am not supposed to be JUDGING these guidebooks, I am supposed to be ANALYZING them. So, I am struggling to figure out exactly how to do this, and I think the writing I did this morning is a good start to doing this. I have lots of ideas, but I need to codify them. Ah well, I will get there! I am going to do a bit more free writing this morning related to another author. And this afternoon, I am GOING TO DO SOME FILING and other administrivia that I keep putting off. I fele guilty not working on the diss, but this stuff MUST. BE. DONE.

On another note, I have been wanting to post this quote since I read it a few days ago:

She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under the tutorship of a more than extraordinary teacher -- B.B., which is her pet name for Buffalo Bill. She pronounces it beeby. He has not only taught her seventeen ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-two ways of avoiding it. He has infused into her the best and surest protection of a horseman -- confidence. He did it gradually, systematically, little by little a step at a time, and each step made sure before the next was essayed. And so he inched her along through terrors that had been discounted by training before she reached them, and therefore were not recognizable as terrors when she got to them. Well, she is a daring little rider now, and is perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. By and by she will know the art like a West Point cadet, and will exercise it as fearlessly. She doesn't know anything about sidesaddles. Does that distress you? And she is a fine performer, without any saddle at all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she is not in any danger, I give you my word.

Mark Twain, A Horse's Tale
Quoted in She Flies Without Wings: How Horses Touch a Woman's Soul

I read that and I wish I had a teacher like that -- in many things. In riding, in diss writing, in life. But then I think: "maybe I do." The riding instructor that I want to become my mentor is exactly like this. I think my diss advisor tries to be -- and perhaps what I have presented as her failings are really reflections of my own stubbornness. The writing guide I am reading certainly seems to follow this model. And I think Mom and Dad have very much followed this type of training in my life. So, on reflection, I must say I am blessed beyond measure. I hope some day I can be a mere shadow of this kind of teacher, this kind of guide, to another.