the eastern question

now that i've got five potential courses picked out, i'll just have to wait for my payment to be recognized by SIMS, and for some kind professors to sign me into courses that are surely full by now. three courses come from my newest favourite part of the world, and two from my base of power.

hist 421 is greece, from 1864 to 1940. this would cover the twilight of the ottoman empire, the reorganization of the balkans, the greece/turkey population transfer, the second world war, and the ensuing civil war. hist 350 is the early-middle ottoman empire. hist 486 is the end of the ottoman empire and the direct origins of the modern turkish state. i think that the end of the ottoman empire may hold much portent for the former soviet republics, particularily those in central asia. what i know about this time period has intrigued me, and, most importantly, reminded me of how capable i am of synthesizing new information. four months ago, i knew nothing, and nopw i know more than most people i know, which is still barely anything. i want to know more.

hist 391 is the history of the north american west, and hist 436 is the history of british columbia. this is my comfort zone. i know this stuff, and am quite interested in further specializing my knowledge. hist 436 would be rote, but enjoyable, and would force me to do a lot of self-reflection, i expect, in terms of my role both at the citizens assembly and, since then, in getting someone elected to the legislature. hist 391 would allow me to continue working on george melnyk and sharon butala, and would also give me an excuse to read unnamed country: the struggle for a canadian prairie fiction(1977) by dick harrison and prairie politics and society: regionalism in decline(1980), by roger gibbins, now head of the canada-west foundation. it would also give me a chance to indulge in my old favourite hobby of comparative politics and regional identity betwen canada and the united states.

i expect that i'll take hist 391 for sure, because it is the only one with space right now, and one of the three 'eastern question' courses. i'll only two courses, but i will try to prioritize them over my job, and try hard to keep my job at work and out of the rest of my life. i like the public service more than the politics.

i believe that if quebec separated from canada, the maritime provinces would become north america's 'eastern question'.

there is a book of essays on the west wing which i would love to read. i hope that someone covers the show's habit of ignoring events in favour of their leadup and fallout. major speeches are dealt with in flashback: we see the post-event reactions, which segue into recollections of the event preparations, but we rarely, if ever, see the actual speech. if we do see a glimpse of the speech, we are led to focus on everything except for the actual substance of the speech. it is how people react to that substance and how that reaction is cultivated in the lead-up that matters.
it's an ongoing lesson on postmoderism and historiograophy: the event is irrelevant; the interpretation is significant.

i'm having trouble with alice munro, and may put the progress of love aside in favour of a helen macinnes tale of international espionage and intrigue. i lose steam at the end of each story. i've developed a pattern, whereby i stop reading four pages into a story, only to pick up again, blast through the story and halfheartedly get througfh the start of the next story before putting it down for a few days. i'd like to go trackdown eden robinson's traplines, but i know that i should go through the unread books on my shelf before adding to the piles that are accumulating on the floor.

by writing foxbase alpha, i fear that i am developing my abilities at writing in the 'confessional' genre at the expense of other, more credible styles.