Accommodatingly

I’m working at home today, and the phone just rang with a Portland, OR number, 541-956-8822. I answered.

Me: “Hello?”

Random caller: “Hello, is this, uh, Ms. Bennett?”

Me: “Yes”

RC: “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I’ve been trying to get in touch with (name withheld) who lives out on Trowbridge St. Is she one of your neighbors?”

Me: “We haven’t lived here long, so I don’t know who that is.”

Which is true. I’ve never heard of this person.

RC: “I’m sorry, I’m just down here in Texas”– huh? I thought the number said Portland? –”and I’ve been trying to get in touch with her.”

Me: “Sorry, I can’t help you. I really don’t know who she is.”

After a few more questions about my neighbor, whom I really don’t know, she thanked me for my time and said have a nice day.

Now, I’m a suspicious sort. I know about nasty tactics utilized by collection agencies to find people, and my radar really went up given the discrepancy between where the number was apparently originated and where the caller said she was. A quick Google search for the phone number turned up a few facts and some interesting stories: this is a debt collection service, they use disingenuous tactics to find people, and what they do is totally legal. From the FCC website:

If you have an attorney, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you do not have an attorney, a collector may contact other people, but only to find out where you live, what your phone number is, and where you work. [emphasis mine] Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting such third parties more than once. In most cases, the collector may not tell anyone other than you and your attorney that you owe money.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our financial system, in part because of some great books Beacon has out (The Missing Class, co-author Victor Tan Chen recently posted something on BB) and on the horizon (Not Keeping Up With Our Parents by Nan Mooney in May, and a terrifying book about student loan debt in the fall). Our reliance on debt provides us with many things we couldn’t otherwise have–fun stuff like vacations and major electronics, but also education, health care, and other necessities. It’s as if because we have access to all this credit–which companies willingly give out because it’s such good business, especially when people screw up and have to pay late charges and accelerated interest rates–prices for the big stuff continue to rise. Why not raise tuition at your college? Students will continue to pay, they’ll just have to borrow more to do so. Of course it’s all tied in to health care, the cost of which keeps skyrocketing.

But back to the phone call… It struck me as very strange, and symbolic of the societal illness of systemic debt, that someone’s job is to call people and make up random stories in order to find out information about someone. What an odd way to make a living–lying to strangers. At least it’s more legitimate than out and out fraud.

I’m a successful male teen wrestler as well! My Googlegangers are a wily bunch!

Nathan is remarkably resistant to sleep lately. I am resistant to the idea that nice o’clock is a good bedtime for a two-year-old, although that’s when he’s been getting to sleep every night (although it’s 8:59 now and he’s still chattering away), in spite of shutting off the light a little after 8pm. What to do with a toddler who thinks he’s nocturnal?

Jessica Bennett is now the second female wrestler in Connecticut history to win a state-level medal; her coach credits “technique, vision and dedication.” More technique, vision, and dedication, as always, at Beacon Broadside, where– among recent posts– I was especially struck by this one, which begins: “It’s an interesting historical moment to be a white mother of a Black child.”

New work by Steve online in the last few weeks: on Robert Creeley, on DC history (thanks, Zach!), on science-fictional poetry, on several poems (with two poems of my own) in the brand-new Drunken Boat, on poetry in general (up since December). I’m also in the new Pleiades, though not online, and I’m coaching high school swimming in Winona, and rowing in New Zealand. I don’t know where I find the time. (The things you learn when you sign up for Google Alerts.) UPDATE: I’m also in the current issue of Modern Philology, though you may need to sign in through certain academic websites in order to see the articles there.

Alison Frank, whom I knew in grade school, and whom we see all the time at Nathan’s school (because she has a child there too), appears as a reviewer on H-Net, more than once, and as the author of a book reviewed. Go Alison!

And finally– I should have linked to this blog months ago, but better late than ruined by inappropriate ethics rules: if you are at all interested in the taking of oral histories, the conduct of research in history, folklore and the social sciences, and the weird rules that threaten all those things, you ought to be reading Zach’s Institutional Review Blog. I know I will be.

I woke up one morning and found myself responsible for a short article in the forthcoming revision of this famous book: it’s the article on the word “refrain.” While the first edition of that book covered poetry in European languages, the current edition looks all over the globe, at least some of the time, and the next one ought to do so more thoroughly, which means that not even Auerbach read all the languages the volume should cover. And certainly I’m no Auerbach.

So: if you know anything about refrains (chorus, “burdens,” substantial repetitions of other kinds) in the poetry of non-Western languages– most of all, but not only, in South Asian writing– please let me know what you know, briefly, and fast. I’m not depending on blogging for such information– but I do like help from friends.

In other matters: we’ve been having fun but too busy to post, what with Jessie’s Beacon blog and with my other blogging gig (where my term has expired, though I’ll continue to post there and then). In fact, I’ve been too busy to post much at our other other blogging gig, a busyness which would distress me a lot were it permanent (fortunately Helen Wheelock is on the case). Coming up here sometime in the next ten days: lots of links to new writing by me (some of it online), and maybe an announcement about a CD– and, of course, more on Nathan’s burgeoning musical career.