Thanksgiving Leftovers

THESE leftovers pass the smell test, though you my readers might think differently. But they'll have to do for the moment: for the rest of this week and the one to come, I'll be immersed in a world called Finals Week, so my presence "here" will be infrequent, if at all. Maybe here, among the pickings and leavings, there might be something of interest for you.
*I am slowly working my way through the "Philosophy" chapter of Spivak's A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (see the "Current Reading" column on the right of this page). The working is slow because she's been writing about Kant's and Hegel's respective accounting for an entity she calls the Native Informant (very roughly, a subject from the pre-colonized world (read: non-European)). The quick summary of their accountings: they didn't. Now that she's gotten to Marx, the going is easier in a relative sense, but she's keeping track, in this part, of various strains of Marxism, and this non-initiate feels the need for a scorecard ("Ye can't tell yer Jamesonian from yer Eagletonite widout yer program!"). Many of the subtleties of this chapter are lost on me, but the upshot is clear: even Marx, that champion of the proletariat, is not a proper Godhead for discussing the postcolonial subject except, perhaps, in terms of the usual Communism-Capitalism dialectic as regards labor. But since Marx clearly is analyzing and addressing an industrialized Europe, the developing world isn't accounted for in his philosophy either, as Spivak reads him.
I have learned some things, but as is usual with me, I find I need to see how the theoretical stuff can be brought to bear on literary texts. As it happens, the next chapter is called "Literature," so I am hopeful.
*Since returning from my Thanksgiving break, Mrs. Meridian and I have been walking our dog Scruffy in the neighborhood. Our little slice of suburbia is fairly humdrum: mostly well-maintained houses built in the '70s (a surprising number of which are split-levels), with a block-sized park a couple of blocks away from us. We walk him at about sunset, which these days comes about 5:00. Because of these walks, I've become intrigued by the winter flocking habits of crows. At sunset, thousands of crows fly over the neighborhood, heading toward the setting sun, cawing as they go; as the article I've linked to reports, though, this flocking that I witness, astounding as it is, is very small potatoes. Mrs. Meridian, Kansas girl that she is, tells me she's never noticed this phenomenon; but she, by her own admission, tends not to notice such things anyway. On the other hand, I grew up too far south in Texas to have ever witnessed this, and so I'm wide-eyed with wonder.
I find them beautiful to watch--now. But the first evening I noticed them, I was reminded of unpleasant moving images from my childhood.
*Music I took on my Thanksgiving trip that's worth mentioning: Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus (along with Live at Fillmore East, perhaps the best live album made by a '70s American band); Love, Forever Changes (sounds a whole lot like early Moody Blues to me, but far preferable; Yes, House of Yes: Live from House of Blues (I know it's about as spontaneous musically as a Thomas Kinkade painting, but they really DO, on this record, sound like a rock band. And after all these years, the old stuff still gives me chills.).
*I often wonder if any of my readers visit any of the sites I provide links for. On the off chance that you don't, and if you're cruising the blogosphere and looking for smart (if occasionally long-winded) stuff to read, I can recommend the following sites, all of which I've also linked to on the right side of this page: Crooked Timber (approximately moderate to left, very academically-oriented, very smart); Left2Right (a brand-new blog with some heavyweight left-leaning philosophers and political scientists that seeks to engage right-leaners in thoughtful discussion); Washington Monthly (a moderate-to-left blog that, so far as I can determine, is very good on complicated issues such as the upcoming tax reform and Social Security debates that'll be coming up, as well as more philosophical debates such as "Whither the Democratic Party?"); Andrew Sullivan (a traditional--that is, small-government, fiscally-responsible, believer-in-the-spread-of-democracy--Republican who is also openly gay AND a practicing Catholic and so is, to my mind, something less than a knee-jerk Bushie. A very intriguing observer of Things Republican, in other words); and Oxblog (moderate-to-conservative smart guys).
That's all for now. I'll be back in something like full blogging mode week after next.