education, higher

I was reading one of my favorite bloggers today. He's a wonderful writer, clever and thoughtful, who does the best poetry parodies. But he wrote something about feeling less than people who have BAs. This makes no sense, but isn't all that rare. I know other people who are accomplished, polished, but who still feel the lack of a diploma. I know I felt it when I went back to get a degree, a step that resulted in graduate school and teaching at my old job, but I realized yesterday that as much as I loved learning new stuff and much about being in school, the deference given to a degree, particularly an advanced one is nuts.

I write this as someone who has a PhD.

Alongside the real pleasure I take in discovering and understanding the new, I had a feeling that entering academia was entering this elite level of intellectual thought, of sophisticated conversation, of nuanced understanding. This wasn't the case where I used to teach, which was rife with careerism, narrow-mindedness, and, well, just garden variety humanity. The sort of world I thought I was going to join does exist to some extent in elite institutions and some small liberal arts colleges, but it's far from commonplace. Academia can give people the time (and money) to do the sort of thinking I envisioned, but its not a necessary condition for it to happen. The necessary conditions are curiosity, discipline, and some intellectual ability. That's it And people get BAs, BSs, MSs, MAs, and PhDs everyday without any of the three.

Ok, well they have to have discipline.

Still none of these things tell you much about the person who's earned it and don't constitute evidence of intelligence, skill, or ability. But we're conditioned to think that they do and that's a huge mistake. Worse, it makes us underestimate the real talents of people without them including, sometimes, ourselves.

rhinebeck, ny

Every year since 1998, on the third weekend in October, there's the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival. It's one of several fiber related festivals, conferences, what have you that go on every year. I've been knitting for about four years now and I've been to the California Sheep and Wool Festival at least twice and to the Stitches events three or four times. The Stitches events tend to be more knitter oriented, while the Sheep and Wool ones cover the ground from the sheep (auctions of the woolly beasts themselves and their fleece) to the finished products (lots of very beautiful yarn, clothing, and other things made from stuff that once grew out of an animal that turned grass into fleece and chops).

The other thing that I like about this festival is the crowd mix. There were a lot of people with kids. (This was advertised as a family-friendly event in papers across the tri-state region.) There were a lot of farmers and producers, people with hard-working, callused hands. There were some of the young, "knitting is hip" representatives from the blogosphere, but they were a much smaller proportion of the crowd than they are at Stitches. There were several people of color there, particularly as the afternoon drew on and people made the two or so hour drive up from NYC.

It was beautiful, especially on Saturday when the sky was a clear, cold blue. But even on Sunday when the day became overcast and grey, the turning leaves glowed against the fleecy sky.

We stayed at a B&B in Rhinebeck itself. The town was packed with people (mainly women) for the festival and a bunch of Jungians who were having a conference there. I didn't get to see much of the town, walking around one night to find a wine store (easy enough) and an ATM (also easy). All of Saturday and Sunday (we got there Friday night) were spent at the festival with a bunch of women, most of whom had come to Rhinebeck before. I don't know why, but knitters seem to be the kindliest, friendliest bunch of women you'd ever want to know. They get excited when they add a new convert. They'll share tips, tricks, equipment, you name it. And they make great dinner companions. We went out to the Culinary Institute of America on Friday night and had pizza (not your usual pie, the pear, goat cheese, and arugula was completely devoured) on Saturday.

I had the best weekend and don't know how to describe it. It was a combination of the weather (fall, but not cold), the event (lots to look at, including sheepdog trials), the company, and some ineffable quality that I can't seem to come close to analyzing or bringing into words. I'm leaving out the silly jokes, the beautiful yarns, the sherry at the B&B, the lack of sleep, the eventual rain, the seven-year old son of a friend, lighting sparklers on the roof of an apartment on the westernmost edge of Harlem, and the tasty oddness that is Irish Black Pudding.

Oh and I bought a spinning wheel.