Perserverance Pays Off

Skylar was awarded her patch today in her martial arts class. It's the first step in the rankings for the school of jujitsu she's learning. And she earned it through her determination.

Accolades for her art and poetry come easily. But she's especially proud of the patch, because she considered giving up at times, yet stayed the course.

Construction Temporarily Halted Pending Environmental Impact Study

I'm suffering through a strange form of doubt. For many years, I've championed attempts to bridge the gap between the academy and the public sphere. My decision to start blogging, for example, originated in a desire to experiment in the construction of a space "in between" scholarly discourse, journalism and personal correspondence. Lately, though, I've been having a hard time fighting back the the urge to pull back from the fray. To give one example, I've spent the past two weeks pondering how to respond to an exchange here on LJ that seems important to me from the standpoint of ideological back-and-forth. But there's something inside me, its voice mounting steadily in volume, asking why I should spend so much of my time seeking to build bridges that my interlocutors are unprepared or unwilling to cross. And I recognize, too, the aggression latent in such efforts, however well-meaning they appear on the surface. The bonds bridge-building is intended to create don't simply function to funnel good feeling from one side to the other. They are just as good for transporting troops -- and tropes -- across the roiling waters far below.