Expect the normal mix of personal, political, academic and off-the-wall postings. Plus pictures. And I’ll restore a flavourful header and appropriate links as I manage to find the time.

• Ancarett: me, a forty-something professor of European history, teaching at a mid-sized university, a lovely mostly undergraduate institution with some delusions of grandeur (i.e. a few doctoral programs and a newly minted med school). I am a second generation professor who was born in the states but came to Canada twenty years ago.
• Mike: my long-suffering husband who followed me to the small, provincial town wherein can be found my institution. That is a sacrifice, indeed, when you remember that, before this, he never lived in a city with less than a few million residents. Mike shares my obsession with history and has fed my teaching expertise with recommendations of good books on ancient and military history.
• Eldest: talkative, precocious preteen daughter who intends to be a vet. She loves animals, art and spending time with her many friends.
• Youngest: anime-obsessed not-quite preteen child who works to overcome the challenges of her autism. She is a champion reader but prefers books with lots of pictures.
• The dogs: Goldie, our Shetland Sheepdog who thinks she’s an enormous, scary creature and Ozzie, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier who gets beaten up by the Sheltie on a regular basis. Don’t waste too much pity on him: she has almost no teeth.

As an aside, 182 students now registered in the three fall term classes. Eek!

And I’m up far too late considering all I have to do tomorrow. And there are even more students sneaking enrolling in my classes. Thirty-one, maybe thirty-two, in my senior seminar? Eek! The overall numbers are creeping closer to two hundred every time I look.

And, amidst all that, is it shallow that I’m thinking about what I’m going to wear to the office tomorrow? (Rather like 1B* but without the organized polling options.) Hoping to start the term off on a professional-seeming, if totally sleep-deprived note. . . .

I choose to put my teaching first not in mere commitment of time but in well-defined ways that will improve my student’s experience and my own sense of course management. I will let go of my perfectionism, recognizing that panicked micro-management doesn’t really make for a better course, in the end.

I will keep up with my academic writing maybe not every day but certainly many hours each week. Wednesday will be my research and writing day where no classes or meetings should intrude. I will use that day wisely as well as allot time for the same every Monday and Friday. And I will not apologize for my research interests to anyone!

Mens sana, corpora sana is more than a nifty tag line. I know, from personal experience, how much better I feel and how less likely I am to succumb to illness, if I exercise regularly. I vow to do so at least three if not four times each week.

Martyrs are generally unpleasant people and I don’t want to be one. So while I know I have the heaviest teaching load in the department, I don’t want to waste my term whining and moping around the department. I will neither abandon myself to endless unmentioned hours of coursework nor waste my time complaining to colleagues. I will get it done and make sure that I get all the support I deserve.

It wasn’t my first priority since we had two-thirds of a tank, but I’m still pleased I managed to find a short enough line at the really cheap station attached to the grocery store and fill up. CAN$1.04 9/10 per litre.

How’s the gas situation in your area?

Women’s rights are in fact key to the evolution of democracy, as well as to long-term peace and stability. Although a direct correlation between increased rights for women and decreased conflict is hard to establish because so many other factors are involved, the trend is clear. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (passed in October 2000) recognizes the important role women play in preventing conflict, encouraging reconciliation and helping to rebuild conflict-ridden societies. Countries that early on gave women the right to vote — such as New Zealand (1893), Finland (1906) and Norway (1913) — have been among the most stable democracies. What’s more, the U.N. Development Program’s groundbreaking Arab Human Development Report found that “society as a whole suffers when a huge proportion of its productive potential is stifled.”

A democracy consists not only of the checks and balances against tyranny instituted by our Founding Fathers (but not Founding Mothers) but of the right of all citizens to decide the rules by which they intend to live. But women’s equal rights alone do not ensure a democracy. For instance, in many former Soviet bloc countries, women had equal rights, but the population as a whole was denied access to decision-making processes. And while in most Arab countries (except Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) women have the right to vote, in none of them do women enjoy equal rights or opportunities with men. As the UNDP report noted, the “utilization of Arab women’s capabilities through political and economic participation remains the lowest in the world in quantitative terms, as evidenced by the very low share of women in parliaments, cabinets, and the work force, and in the trend toward the feminization of the unemployed.” Thus, for democracy to succeed in Iraq, there must be both strong democratic institutions and full protection of the rights of women. In Iraq, both are now at risk.

I’m concluding this post with a repost of something I’d written March 8, 2004, about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the early steps towards drafting this Iraqi constitution. It’s sad that it seems as relevant today as it did then. . . .

Votes for Women, Votes for Donkeys, Votes for Dogs. That was the summary of a set of Victorian documents against extending the franchise to British women. As I read about Afghan President Hamid Kharzai’s International Women’s Day speech, wherein he urged Afghani men to accept their wives’ right to vote with the consoling knowledge that they could tell them how to vote, I’m minded of those Victorian screeds against women voters, horribly scary, dangerous and irrational things that they were seen to be.

Bah! Should I take heart from the knowledge that women’s suffrage is pretty widely accepted today in the West, so that maybe we can hope that a few generations of perspective will do the same for Afghanistan, Iraq and other nascent democracies?

Speaking of Iraq, I find it ironic that the interim constitution includes this clause: “All Iraqis are equal in their rights and without regard to gender, nationality, religion, or ethnic origin and they are equal before the law.” The language and ideals are eerily familiar to this historian. Given the torturous road to this current constitutional signing and the prospect of more wrangling before a final constitution is prepared, I look upon the current situation in Iraq as something akin to Revolutionary France circa 1791 as the nation teetered between peaceful change and collapse.

It’s a staple question on Western civ exams “Was the Terror the inevitable result of the French Revolution?” wherein we hope to provoke students to think about the consequences of radical change in a political system. The ideals of Enlightenment philosophes were framed into an impossible new system which was shoehorned into the fractured nation’s government with predictable results. With outside antagonism and internal dispute, is it such a surprise that violent ideologues such as Robespierre took over? I only hope that the situation of Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority doesn’t become another such staple of history exams for a future generation.

Add to that the suddened, horrified realization that three of our new graduate students will need to cross-register in a single fourth-year seminar each (they’re pursuing an essay-option thesis which requires one extra class). With so little room to maneuver, I’m forced to wonder if we’re going to have to mount an additional course — unpaid of course! — or shoehorn them into the overcrowded seminars we’re already bemoaning.

Youngest spent an hour watching The Demented Cartoon Movie which seems to involve enormous amounts of stick figure decapitation and death. Vastly amusing, I was told.

School starts for them all next Tuesday. We’ve bought all the supplies and are ready to go — just a few more days to entertain them before routine settles back in.

It is disgraceful that not a single relief agency has any presence on the ground as far as those of us who are here can see. No Red Cross, no federal emergency administrators, no medical teams, no shelter officials, no angels of mercy.

That is why, beneath the damp and dank, New Orleans is seething.

That — and not rampant greed — is why there has been so much looting in recent days, to the extent that police and troops have been taken away from critical rescue operations and assigned to watch the inmates, or outcasts, who are being treated like vagrants.

And that’s all they do: Watch. Patrolling up and down the main arteries, in their armoured personnel carriers — as if this were Baghdad — automatic weapons hoisted on their shoulders, never stopping to assist fragile citizens in wheelchairs and walkers or mothers with ailing, wailing infants.

I’ve seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo.

She’s been to all of those places in the wake of catastrophe. She knows. It’s not just New Orleans. Friends of mine in Biloxi got out, but I don’t know what they have to return to. Other friends in the south have families driving supplies into the affected area or are housing refugees. Let’s not waste time apportioning blame, right now, for the failure to respond promptly. Let’s help. If you haven’t donated already:

• The Red Cross Canada is sending aid
• The Humane Society of the United States is rescuing domestic and farm animals
• The Mennonite Disaster Service was one of the first groups to mobilize