The Milkman of Human Kindness

Sunday, March 22, 2009

I just realized that my last two posts both referred to Humpty Dumpty (now make that three). Ha.

Posted by AYH at 10:24 PM

AYH: Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, Canada; I'm an independent scholar. Or maybe a public intellectual. I'm not sure which mantle is more correct, but both refer to the fact that I'm a Ph.D. who has chosen, for the time being, not to seek a tenure-track institutional affiliation. I am an historian focusing on the 20th-century United States with specializations in African American, southern, women's and gender history, and memory studies. I work as a sessional instructor at a local university, and a senior policy researcher for the government. I've decided it's worth sacrificing academic prestige and my full earning potential in order to live where I want and raise my kids (two girls, ages two and twelve) in a way that lets me sleep well at night. (I say this figuratively: having a 2-year old actually means I never sleep well at night.) For fun, I teach aerobics and spend as much time as I can at the gym or running, which is a lot less than I'd like it to be. I'm passionate about a lot of stuff and like to rant about it: I used to get in a lot of trouble for saying inadvisable things at inopportune times. I miss those days. Hence this blog.