There's a light at the end of the tunnel... ...and I'm pretty sure it's not an oncoming train. Chicken and I blew through the entire comparative canon in one fourteen-hour shot yesterday, which I think was a pretty awesome strategy in the end. It really forced us to take a very broad view of the whole field in all of its awesome, fearsome absurdity, and that was actually exactly what I needed, and I suspect also what this ridiculous exercise is really about. I'm closing in on finishing my focus field, too...by tonight I should be through most everything except the "global civil society" stuff, which, let's face it, is basically a footnote in the literature anyway. At some point I need to give myself a few hours to blitz extremely superficially through theory, and come up with a couple of random thoughts on the environmental justice/democratic citizenship-type questions that I anticipate being asked. And then...hope and pray that I don't embarrass myself too profoundly in front of three people I hope to have on my dissertation committee, one of whom has already hired me to teach in the fall (that means he can't fail me, right?)

For the moment, I'm off to refill my coffee mug, and then I'm quite looking forward to spending the afternoon settling in with a long-anticipated pile of the most interesting stuff from my focus field list--the stuff that actually makes it my focus field, and not just another lousy tour through Civil Society and Putnamia. But I'm just an asshole like that.  ¶ 11:30 AM