The Economics of Academia: Getting By with Ridiculous Gas Prices

I filled up my gas tank today, hitting $30 and nearly had a heart attack. I drive a 2000 Honda Civic with a small tank (10 gallons, I believe) and never thought I would see the day where I broke $25 filling up. I remember the days (here's where I get to sound like my grandparents, reminiscing of the good ol' days) when gas prices were $1, and then $1.05. That was the summer of my junior year in high school, 2001. At that time I had a 1986 Firebird Trans Am, which only cost $15-20 to fill, and I thought nothing of driving to New Hampshire every week to visit some friends.

Now, I grimace every time I have to make a trip outside my normal routine.

What's a student to do?

All of us in academics can truthfully say we do not do it for the money. This rings even more true for students, and in light of the rising gas prices, I did a sort of experiment to try and stretch our gas dollar even further. I hope it helps you in some way.

At about 55 mph, your engine is running at its most efficient level, giving you the most mileage out of each gallon of gas. Anything over this (or under, as is the case for city driving) and you lose efficiency. Obviously, one cannot go 55 mph down South Main unless one wants to attract unwanted attention and a hefty speeding ticket. But on the highway, it is feasible to cruise at 55-60 mph in the right hand lane, and it's actually worth it.

Every week I have the same travel routine, and so two weeks ago I put this to a test. When I was on the highway, I kept my speed at about 70-75, which is still considered "slow" in Massachusetts. By the end of the week, I had logged 296 miles on my tank of gas. Considering that my car is estimated at achieving 33-35 mpg with a ten gallon tank, this is less than optimal. I'm not great at math, but that sounds like I only got about 29mpg for that week.

Last week, I had the same travel routine, but kept my speed at 60 mph on the highway, and stayed in the right hand lane. That week, I got 356 miles to my tank of gas, making my mileage at about 35 mpg.

What's the big picture? What are the gains or losses? Well, if we go under the assumption that I should be getting 33mpg, and we take the difference in mileage for the two weeks (296 vs 356), the picture becomes clearer. The first week's mileage was 60 miles less than the second week, and using 33mpg as our base figure, that means that on the first week, about two gallons of fuel was wasted. At $3.25 a gallon, I wasted $6.50. What did I gain from the higher speed on the first week? About 5-7 minutes on my commute. For me, that's simply not worth $6.50.

Some other things we can do besides this to stretch our gas dollar are the following:
-Change your oil every 3000-5000 miles
-Change your air filter twice a year, or every 12,000 miles if you do a lot of driving.
-Change your fuel filter every 30,000 miles (if you don't have your car manual), or the increment specified by your car manual.
-Keep your tires inflated at the recommended psi (you can find this on the sticker posted inside the door frame, on the latching side)

If you are mechanically inclined (or are willing to learn some of the basics to save more money), most of these maintenance things you can do yourself. Here are a few online articles to get you started, if you are interested.
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/43786/article.html (Air Filter)
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/43788/article.html (Change Oil)
http://autorepair.about.com/od/regularmaintenance/ss/fuel_filter.htm (Fuel Filter)

Even if you do not intend to do any of these maintenance procedures yourself, make sure they get done. Try the experiment I did and see what your results are. I think you will be surprised.

Cheers,
Steve

The View from Chawton: Chawton Cottage

I made the pilgrimage to Jane Austen’s home—the home in Chawton village, where Austen lived from 1809-1817 and completed her novels spanning from Sense and Sensibility to Sanditon, the work left unfinished at her death. This cottage, tiny and unassuming, stands as a testimony to Austen’s paradoxical position as a writer.  

Austen was forced to rely on the charity of her brother Edward to provide her with this cottage since, initially, her writing had brought her no income--she bore the publishing costs herself for her first novel Sense and Sensibility. In this cottage’s inauspicious front parlor, Austen penned some of the greatest fiction of the Regency period. Ironically, she chose this room for its large picture window and squeaky door that presaged visitors, so she could hide any evidence of her writing from others. In these novels, she brings to a brilliant pitch the technique of free indirect discourse, introducing a vivid interiority in her heroines, and speaks directly and poignantly to contemporary issues, such as the lack of education and vocation for women. 

Yet, Austen’s gravestone in Winchester Cathedral, like her home, small and unassuming, alludes only obliquely to her writing, mainly speaking of her piety and charity: “The benevolence of her [Austen’s] heart, 
the sweetness of her temper, and 
the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.”

Betsy's Thirty Seconds of Fame

Has is been a month since the last entry? Whew! I guess it has. Spring break is now a distant memory; Honors students are busily finishing up their theses before the early April deadline; a new supply of odious viral thingees has been transported from myriad homes back to the confines of our campus to wreak their havoc; and many students are trying to devote more time to their studies to push up those mid-term marks. We're past the back stretch, and the finish seems to be only on the horizon--but it will be here more quickly than we realize.

The occasion for this post is, in a sense, political. Many of you are aware of--and perhaps heard--Barack Obama's speech on race at Philadelphia yesterday morning, a speech that has garnered some pretty fantastic reviews across the country. Here's a sampling from Dailykos. But Channel 4 (WBZ) from Boston trumps the editorials with a quick commentary from the English Department's Betsy Huang in their feature "Religious Leaders Respond" during the 6:00 news hour on the 18th. Here's the linky. You have to search for "Barack Obama Speech" and click on the video link above "Religious Leaders Respond." She said that the crew must have chatted with her for half and hour in her office in order to get this tidbit. It's amazing how much is discarded to catch just the perfect interview line! (I know, from the few times I've mumbled through video for Clark, that it's strange to see how little makes it into the final cut.)

On another front, I talked with Claudia, and I realized that to publish her poem "Jakarta" could likely violate the copyright of the journal, so I haven't included it yet. Soon: after it's published; then we can take a look at it with the proper citation to the journal.

Finally, congratulations to all the English Writing Contest Winners! Here they are:


Announcing the Winners of the
2008 English DepartmentWriting Contests


Prentiss Cheney Hoyt Poetry Contest
First Place: Mary (Rosie) O’Sullivan
Second Place: Charity Forrester
Third Place: Robin Barron


Betty ‘79 and Stanley Sultan Short Story Contest
First Place: Tali Sachs
Second Place: Charity Forrester
Third Place: Danielle Coles

The English Department would like to thank everyone who submitted an entry. We appreciate your interest in creative writing and your willingness to share your work with us. We also would like you to know that we had a large pool of many fine entries to consider.
--Jay

Poetic News from Claudia McQuistion

I just got an e-mail from Claudia McQuistion, an English Major who graduated last May. Some of you may remember her as the first-place finisher in last spring's Poetry Contest, and it seems appropriate to pass on this news just as the entries for this year's competition have piled up in the English Office. One of the prize-winning poems--"Jakarta Office Hit By Blast"--along with another, "Seeking Passion," has been accepted for publication by the bi-annual literary magazine Fifth Wednesday Journal. (Link here) Quite a coup for our McQuistion! I'll let you know when the journal hits the newsstands. She's living in Seattle now, and promises to send me more information about her doin's later. I'll ask her if I can add the text of "Jarkata" later.

--Jay

The View from Chawton

[Lisa Kasmer, currently on sabbatical, is a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library, U.K.]

I am writing as your foreign correspondent from Chawton, U.K., where I'm completing research for my book project on British women writing history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The collection at Chawton House Library focuses on early editions, many of which are rare, of women's writing from 1600-1830.  At the library, I'm carrying out a survey of historical fiction by women in the nineteenth century, a genre that was exceptionally popular.  My reading here so far has brought some insights and real surprises--this is what I love most about this kind of research:  Who knew that Ann Yearsley, a Romantic poet, wrote a historical play, which is really quite radical both politically and generically?

In addition to its collection, Chawton House offers an unusual "textual experience."  The building in which the collection is housed is part of an estate that was once owned by Charles Knight, Jane Austen's brother.  In actually working in this historical home, I am often viscerally reminded of moments in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel.  Each weekday, I come up the path of the estate's spacious grounds with shire horses grazing.  I then walk up the massive main staircase and through narrow passageways to the main reading room, a stately drawing room with bookshelves holding some of the main collection.  Throughout my day, I may remember descriptions of Clarissa's troubling imprisonment; Lizzy Bennet's breathtaking visit to Pemberley; or Jane Eyre's secret rambles through Thornfield Hall.

For All You Sports Enthusiasts. . . .

As a change of pace, I'd like to introduce you to Bill Cobb's latest venture, the clark sports blog. He and his writers post some fine stories about the latest Cougar ventures in various venues. Check it out if you're interested. . . .
--Jay

Betsy Huang's Review

Given that race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and other categories of identity have emerged as key issues of debate in the current presidential election process, I thought I'd offer up my review of the graphic novel series, Eagle: The Making of an Asian American President, as a way to start a discussion about minority representation (political, cultural, literary).

Kaiji Kawaguchi. Eagle: The Making of an Asian American President. English Adaptation by Carl Gustav Horn. Translated by Yuji Oniki. Vol. 1-5. San Francisco: Viz Comics, 2000-2002.

(Originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.)

In his now famous keynote speech for the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama has said that an election is about our decision to participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope, and that hope, to him, is represented by “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.” With aspirations for the presidency himself, the implicit suggestion of Obama’s remark is his hope that America would prove itself enlightened enough to elect someone “with a funny name” to the nation’s highest office. Kaiji Kawaguchi’s manga series, Eagle: The Making of an Asian American President, seems to have been conceived with these sentiments in mind. Eagle follows the fictional election campaign of Kenneth Yamaoka, a third-generation Japanese American seeking to become the 43rd president of the United States. Told primarily from the perspective of Takashi Jo, a Japanese journalist who is also Yamaoka’s illegitimate son, Eagle offers an entertaining and at times critically astute dramatization of U.S. electoral politics, covering everything from campaign debates and speeches to the melodrama of the candidate’s private life.

Despite the fact that Eagle was roundly praised by comics reviewers and awarded several Eisner Awards (the top prize in comics art), the series did not find a large audience in the U.S. market. And while it ostensibly foregrounds ethnicity as the organizing narrative theme, it has escaped the critical radar of ethnic literature scholars. This is, I suspect, in part because American comics readers find the story’s premise—an Asian American presidential hopeful—somewhat outlandish, and in part because academics have been slow to accept comics as a genre worthy of scholarly examination. But there is much about Eagle that warrants a closer look by virtue of the provocative hypothetical question it poses. As one character in the series so efficiently puts it, “How far will the first Japanese American candidate to enter a presidential election go?” (Vol I:68).

Very far, it turns out—at least in Kawaguchi’s optimistic view of the American political process. Eagle is, in many ways, a superhero romance disguised as a political thriller. The hero, Yamaoka, is endowed with superior intelligence, verbal eloquence, and loads of charisma.. A staunch defender of immigrant and workers’ rights and a supporter of liberal values, Yamaoka is a posterboy for the promises of the American Dream. We watch with incredulity, and perhaps with some glee, as he gives rousing speeches, wins debates, shores up support in droves, and smooths every wrinkle on his way to the presidency. We shake our heads with disbelief when Yamaoka lays out his platform of pipe dreams (financing Mexico’s economic stability in order to solve the immigration crisis, shutting down all U.S. military bases abroad, among others) and still climb steadily in the polls. In one particularly astonishing episode, he even manages to convince a group of Texan ranchers to support his call for tighter gun control! Indeed, reading Eagle often feels like an exercise in wish fulfillment. Wouldn’t it be uplifting if America has overcome its racist hang-ups and proved itself enlightened enough to put a non-white president—and one who espouses leftist politics to boot— in the White House?

Eagle, however, is not just a saccharine story about American optimism. Kawaguchi exposes the dark side of politics as well, particularly the ethically questionable sub-rosa machinations of the parties involved, the persisting symptoms of racial intolerance in American society that circumscribe ethnic political representation, and most significantly, the Anglo model of Americanness that high government offices are still expected to represent. As one character in Eagle points out, “‘Eisenhower’ is about as funny-sounding as [the names of presidents] have ever got. No ‘skis’. . . no ‘steins’ . . . let alone anything like ‘Yamaoka.’ Two hundred years since George Washington and in all that time there’s been exactly one president who wasn’t a white Anglo-Saxon protestant. And look what happened to him” (Vol. IV:197). Other scenes, such as the hate speech graffitied on Yamaoka’s home and the two assassination attempts at a campaign stop, effectively (if at times melodramatically) capture the potential for deep-seated racism to find open expression when ethnics gain visibility in institutions of power.

Beyond these merits, however, Eagle fails to provide a nuanced examination of the complexities of ethnic subjectivities and conflicts. For example, Yamaoka’s Japanese ancestry seems merely incidental. His Japanese ancestry is inscribed simply as an accident of skin color; it plays no part in his subject formation, nor does it serve as the basis for meaningful ties to particular ethnic constituencies. He may be an Asian American candidate, but he does not represent the specific interests of Japanese Americans nor any other ethnic group. Rather, he represents a broad-based pro-immigration stance modeled ostensibly on the “nation of immigrants” creed of John F. Kennedy, with whom Kawaguchi carefully associates Yamaoka throughout the novel as a means to universalize (that is, de-racialize) Yamaoka’s appeal.

Graphic representations of Yamaoka and other ethnic or mixed-race characters also look more Caucasian than Asian. For instance, the Hispanicity of Yamaoka’s adopted daughter, Rachel, is revealed through dialogue and not through visual cues. It should be noted that, as many manga aficionados have pointed out, this testifies more to the aesthetic tradition of manga art and Kawaguchi’s artistic conventionality rather than his failure to render Japanese physical features more convincingly. While this raises the difficult question of how race and ethnicity should be represented visually in the comics medium, it is nevertheless disconcerting for readers to be unable to visually distinguish between characters of different races in a graphic novel that foregrounds ethnoracial politics as its principle subject matter.

Yamaoka’s whiteness, however, is coded less through the way his features are drawn, and more through Kawaguchi’s erasure of his Japanese ethnicity in favor of an all-American personal history. There is, in fact, little that is ethnic about Yamaoka with the exception of his name. Grandson of model-minority Japanese immigrants, Yale graduate, college football star, decorated Vietnam War veteran, New York Senator, and ex-New York District Attorney, Yamaoka’s profile is a composite of American heroic archetypes. His transformation from an “ethnic” to an “American” is made complete by his marriage to the daughter of a powerful New England family, the Hamptons, an alliance that effectively replaces his immigrant family history with a patrician, Anglo-American one. Kawaguchi makes little mention of the history of Japanese in America, and no mention at all of Japanese internment camps—an elision that seems all the more egregious and ironic when we note that Kawaguchi has modeled Yamaoka’s New Deal-like social policies on Franklin D. Roosevelt, the very president who signed the executive order that authorized the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.

Equally problematic is Kawaguchi’s association of the ethnic with female characters who threaten to spoil Yamaoka’s otherwise pristine, all-American profile. Yamaoka’s brief romance in Okinawa with Jo’s mother, Tomiko (whom he likens to “the South Pacific, something immutable” [Vol V:441]), and his alleged romance with Rachel’s biological mother, Maria, a Cuban American woman from the barrio, pose the most serious threats to his political reputation. These “illegitimate” ethnic women are pitted against Yamaoka’s legitimate white wife, Patricia, whom Yamaoka regards as a fitting partner because she is, in his words, “a soldier, someone with whom [he] could speak of dreams” (Vol. V:442). An opposition is thus established between the wealthy white woman who could empower him and the ethnic women who would cripple him—a formulation that betrays the masculinist and imperialist perspectives that undergird Kawaguchi’s representations of ethnic women.

If Eagle fails to provide a sophisticated critique of U.S. identity politics, it might be because Kawaguchi is a Japanese national who has never lived in the U.S. and who spent only a few weeks in various regions of the U.S. “scouting location” and researching political processes. Nevertheless, the level of detail about U.S. electoral politics that Kawaguchi manages to provide is quite impressive. Eagle also exemplifies in many ways a perfect marriage between genre and subject matter; after all, both comics and election campaigns are, in essence, a series of carefully “framed” spectacles for public consumption. Kawaguchi deserves high praise for his expert storytelling; the sensationalist plotlines (is Yamaoka responsible for Tomiko’s mysterious death? Is Rachel really his biological daughter?) are quite entertaining, and the roman-à-clef elements of the series, particularly the references to Al Gore and the Clintons (thinly disguised as “Al Noah” and “Bill and Ellery”) will no doubt elicit knowing smiles—or sneers—from the reader. Ultimately, a dialogic quality persists throughout the series, so that one is never quite sure if Kawaguchi is reinforcing or demystifying the powerful mythologies of the American Dream. This is what makes Eagle an interesting text; it can be read either as Kawaguchi’s realistic rendering of the limitations that still exist for Asian American political representation, or his capitulation to the notion that ethnic types are palatable only if they are refashioned into familiar American archetypes.

- Betsy