Under Construction: TOMU #482
Jan. 17th, 2011 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinStarted: 1/16/2011, 5:00 PM
Status: Begun (6:00 PM)
Word Count: ~1850
Hours Writing: 1.5
1.5 hours in:
Professor Hart was talking to Keri La Belle when we got to the class room. Class didn't appear to have actually started yet, fortunately.
"Actually, we're going to do our best to put the recent past behind us and put our focus where it should be, on the less recent past," he was saying. He sounded weary, or worn down in some way. He looked it, too... like something had happened to diminish him somehow in the time between Wednesday and today. "I know recent events have left a somewhat unsettled feeling in many people's minds, and that even after the press conference... well, it may have been unsatisfying in some ways. But we're going to do our best to soldier on."
"I don't understand," La Belle said.
"What part?" he asked. Maybe it was just the prospect of one more day teaching a La Belle that had got to him.
"Are we going to get to watch TV again?" she asked
"No," Hart said. "We're going to be continuing with the class as scheduled."
"But we could watch the school channel again," she said. "That's, like, official. It should count for the class."
"If you want to watch the university station, you can do it on your own time," Hart said. "It doesn't actually have anything to do with early Republican history, so no, it doesn't 'count' for the class."
"But it did last week."
"That wasn't actually part of the class, it was an unavoidable interruption," he said.
"Then can we do the thing with miniatures again?" she asked. "That's all historical and stuff."
"If you really want to see more miniature war re-enactments, you could join my club," Hart said.
"Would that get me out of class? Like, to go to meetings or games or whatever you have?"
"I actually try to schedule activities for outside normal class hours," he said. "If there were a conflict, you'd have to take it up with your professor, who would certainly have his own policies for dealing with absences. Extracurricular activities don't give you carte blanche to miss classes."
"But you're my professor," she said.
"I mean the professor who's class you'd be missing."
"Yeah," she said.
"You're asking me if you could skip my class to go to meetings for a club that I run?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "That seems fair. I mean, it's your class and your club, so... same difference, right?"
"I can't hold a meeting at the same time I'm teaching class," he said. As La Belle started to voice her next objection, he quickly added, "And it looks like our last few stragglers are here, so we're going to go ahead and begin."
She turned around to look at Steff and me, coming down the aisle towards our usual seats.
"Y'all should have taken your time," she said.
"It's actually time to begin the class regardless," Hart said. "They're just lucky to have happened to made it right in time. Hurry up and take your seats, we're a day behind now so we've got a lot of ground to cover. I want to start by talking about the subject of religion in the colonies. The old empire was officially Khersian, with the Unnameable Emperor acting as Pontifex Maximus of the Mother Temple. The establishment of a state religion separate from the Universal Temple was controversial at the time, but within the empire it was seen as a necessary bulwark against the Kharolinian influence from Merovia. The Merovians, of course, had a well-established presence to the west and south of the colonies founded by..."
It seemed that Hart was serious about making up for lost time. He was spitting all this information out at a much faster clip and with fewer pauses for reactions and interactions than normal. Once he got going, he did a better than usual job of shutting down La Belle's interruptions than usual, if only because she seemed to have exhausted his patience... but the emphasis really was on "exhausted". For all that he was keeping things rolling, he really did seem to be quite tired.
I knew in an abstract sort of way that professors had to have lives outside of the classroom, and that some of them even had families. It was possible that Hart was married, though he'd never worn a wedding ring that I'd noticed... okay, the most I could really say was that he wasn't wearing a ring at that particular moment. I'd never looked before, and wouldn't have noticed without specifically checking.
But married men weren't the only ones with families or personal lives. I really didn't know anything about my instructors beyond the personalities they put forward in their classrooms. If it came right down to it, I probably knew Callahan better than any of the others, because she was so open and in-your-face about everything, and because I knew at least a little bit about her personal life via Steff, even if I really strongly preferred not to think about it. Bohd had offered us a glimpse of what was undoubtedly private information, but could hardly be called part of her private life.
"Now, it would be a mistake to think of the Old Empire as being a monolith, religiously speaking," Hart was continuing. "Or the environment of post-revolutionary Magisteria as being a promised land of religious tolerance. The real difference isn't in the number of religions that were present, or even the specific faiths. Rather, it's in the proportions. Approximately half of the human Magisterians were Metros. As many as a third were Universalists or Kharlonians. There was a small but significant population living in Druidic enclaves in the northeast. Unifying the newly-freed provinces into a single empire would have required either another, even more bloody war... one of conquest, rather than rebellion... or a different approach to religion and its relationship with the state. Obviously, the newly-minted emperor went with the latter. Let's talk about the consequences of that."
It was kind of an abrupt shift, from lecturing at a breakneck speed to calling for discussion, and I think it through a lot of us off because there was a pause where no one really did anything, and then there was a bit of shuffling all around the room.
Though I'd never thought of it in those particular terms, my mind went back to the conversation I'd had with Sooni, about the veneration of emperors. I recalled that it had actually been a hot topic of debate during the founding of the Imperium, whether people would accept an emperor who didn't wield spiritual power and who wasn't deified. Magisterion had ultimately decreed that no emperor could be deified until a century after his death, and then it would be up to the senate.
The senate governed under the consent of the living emperor, not the one who had died a hundred years before. When the hundredth anniversary of Magisterion I's death came around, the once-alarming spectre of mortal rule had lost a lot of its impact and so while the senate decreed a day of celebration and remembrance in honor of the great general, there was no series talk of deification.
No emperor since had been as universally well-regarded or respected as Magisterion I, and so while the senate still technically had the power to deify, the question never came up again.
It seemed to me like this all tied together... if there was no state-established temple, the living emperor couldn't act as a spiritual leader, and if he wasn't a spiritual leader in life, it was that much harder to expect him to intercede in prayer in death.
On the other hand, the most recent two Unnameable Emperors had really sort of blurred the lines there, and I wasn't entirely clear on whether all the preceding ones had waited until death to have themselves declared divine.
I was trying to figure out how to frame this insight for the class when Hart's gaze fell over me. I froze up, feeling utterly unprepared... but though he could obviously tell I had something on my mind, his eyes moved on.
"Well, then," he said. "Let's start with the Bill of Prohibitions. Obviously the Third Prohibition is a big one. 'No Emperor nor Officer of the Imperium shall effect an establishment of religion.'"
"What actually stops emperors from ignoring the prohibitions?" La Belle asked.
"Nothing," Hart said. "Or the weight of tradition and the fear of backlash. They haven't all been followed perfectly by each and every emperor and senate throughout our history. But the establishment clause of the Third ranks is seen as pretty unassailable. There's always going to be some argument about what does or does not constitute an imperial officer effecting an establishment, but in over two hundred years of Imperial Republican history, no one's ever come close to actually declaring a state religion."
"Could it have something to do with the fact that we don't venerate or deify our emperors?" I found myself saying. "Or the other way around, I mean... could the diverse religions have led to that, or helped lead to it, in some way?"
"That's a good point to raise," Hart said. "There's more going on there than the lack of a clear religious hegemony, of course. The popular story is that Magisterians wouldn't accept an emperor who was even symbolically immortal, and I think it would be a mistake to dismiss that out of hand. As we've discussed before, it was some time before elves were allowed to serve openly in the higher offices, and there are still laws governing things like degree of dragonhood allowed for public servants."
"And the mandatory retirement age of a hundred and eighty," one of the students said.
"Yes, though I think you'll find it's gone up to one-ninety-six," Hart said, nodding. "The point is that we don't trust immortals to rule us, at least not down here on earth. But it's perhaps too simple to say that this was the only factor in play. At the very least, we can see that conditions weren't ripe for a god-emperor. If things had been otherwise, who can say how things might have turned out?"
"Are you sure this conversation's not treasonous?" La Belle asked.
"It's not," Hart said. "Anybody who teaches imperial history at any level takes treason workshops as part of our certification."
"It's just, it sounds like you're saying Magisterion would have declared himself a god, if he could have," she said. "And that doesn't sound right to me."
"I'm saying I wouldn't deign to put limits on what our illustrious founder might have done, had he the opportunity," Hart said. "It's a respectful position, and as Magisterion I is neither living, nor divine, nor the current emperor, it's about as far from treason as I could get."
"Oh," La Belle said. "It still doesn't seem right to me."
"Well, by all means, don't participate in the conversation if it bothers you," Hart said.
Progress at one hour:
Professor Hart was talking to Keri La Belle when we got to the class room. Class didn't appear to have actually started yet, fortunately.
"Actually, we're going to do our best to put the recent past behind us and put our focus where it should be, on the less recent past," he was saying. He sounded weary, or worn down in some way. He looked it, too... like something had happened to diminish him somehow in the time between Wednesday and today. "I know recent events have left a somewhat unsettled feeling in many people's minds, and that even after the press conference... well, it may have been unsatisfying in some ways. But we're going to do our best to soldier on."
"I don't understand," La Belle said.
"What part?" he asked. Maybe it was just the prospect of one more day teaching a La Belle that had got to him.
"Are we going to get to watch TV again?" she asked
"No," Hart said. "We're going to be continuing with the class as scheduled."
"But we could watch the school channel again," she said. "That's, like, official. It should count for the class."
"If you want to watch the university station, you can do it on your own time," Hart said. "It doesn't actually have anything to do with early Republican history, so no, it doesn't 'count' for the class."
"But it did last week."
"That wasn't actually part of the class, it was an unavoidable interruption," he said.
"Then can we do the thing with miniatures again?" she asked. "That's all historical and stuff."
"If you really want to see more miniature war re-enactments, you could join my club," Hart said.
"Would that get me out of class? Like, to go to meetings or games or whatever you have?"
"I actually try to schedule activities for outside normal class hours," he said. "If there were a conflict, you'd have to take it up with your professor, who would certainly have his own policies for dealing with absences. Extracurricular activities don't give you carte blanche to miss classes."
"But you're my professor," she said.
"I mean the professor who's class you'd be missing."
"Yeah," she said.
"You're asking me if you could skip my class to go to meetings for a club that I run?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "That seems fair. I mean, it's your class and your club, so... same difference, right?"
"I can't hold a meeting at the same time I'm teaching class," he said. As La Belle started to voice her next objection, he quickly added, "And it looks like our last few stragglers are here, so we're going to go ahead and begin."
She turned around to look at Steff and me, coming down the aisle towards our usual seats.
"Y'all should have taken your time," she said.
"It's actually time to begin the class regardless," Hart said. "They're just lucky to have happened to made it right in time. Hurry up and take your seats, we're a day behind now so we've got a lot of ground to cover."
Once he got going, he did a better than usual job of shutting down La Belle's interruptions than usual, if only because she seemed to have exhausted his patience... but the emphasis really was on "exhausted". He really did seem to be quite tired. I knew that professors had to have lives outside of the classroom. It was possible that Hart was married, though he'd never worn a wedding ring that I'd noticed... okay, the most I could really say was that he wasn't wearing a ring at that particular moment. I'd never looked before, and wouldn't have noticed without specifically checking.
But married men weren't the only ones with families or personal lives. I really didn't know anything about my instructors beyond the personalities they put forward in their classrooms. If it came right down to it, I probably knew Callahan better than any of the others, because she was so open and in-your-face about everything. Bohd had offered us a glimpse of what was undoubtedly private information, but could hardly be called part of her private life.
Status: Begun (6:00 PM)
Word Count: ~1850
Hours Writing: 1.5
1.5 hours in:
Professor Hart was talking to Keri La Belle when we got to the class room. Class didn't appear to have actually started yet, fortunately.
"Actually, we're going to do our best to put the recent past behind us and put our focus where it should be, on the less recent past," he was saying. He sounded weary, or worn down in some way. He looked it, too... like something had happened to diminish him somehow in the time between Wednesday and today. "I know recent events have left a somewhat unsettled feeling in many people's minds, and that even after the press conference... well, it may have been unsatisfying in some ways. But we're going to do our best to soldier on."
"I don't understand," La Belle said.
"What part?" he asked. Maybe it was just the prospect of one more day teaching a La Belle that had got to him.
"Are we going to get to watch TV again?" she asked
"No," Hart said. "We're going to be continuing with the class as scheduled."
"But we could watch the school channel again," she said. "That's, like, official. It should count for the class."
"If you want to watch the university station, you can do it on your own time," Hart said. "It doesn't actually have anything to do with early Republican history, so no, it doesn't 'count' for the class."
"But it did last week."
"That wasn't actually part of the class, it was an unavoidable interruption," he said.
"Then can we do the thing with miniatures again?" she asked. "That's all historical and stuff."
"If you really want to see more miniature war re-enactments, you could join my club," Hart said.
"Would that get me out of class? Like, to go to meetings or games or whatever you have?"
"I actually try to schedule activities for outside normal class hours," he said. "If there were a conflict, you'd have to take it up with your professor, who would certainly have his own policies for dealing with absences. Extracurricular activities don't give you carte blanche to miss classes."
"But you're my professor," she said.
"I mean the professor who's class you'd be missing."
"Yeah," she said.
"You're asking me if you could skip my class to go to meetings for a club that I run?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "That seems fair. I mean, it's your class and your club, so... same difference, right?"
"I can't hold a meeting at the same time I'm teaching class," he said. As La Belle started to voice her next objection, he quickly added, "And it looks like our last few stragglers are here, so we're going to go ahead and begin."
She turned around to look at Steff and me, coming down the aisle towards our usual seats.
"Y'all should have taken your time," she said.
"It's actually time to begin the class regardless," Hart said. "They're just lucky to have happened to made it right in time. Hurry up and take your seats, we're a day behind now so we've got a lot of ground to cover. I want to start by talking about the subject of religion in the colonies. The old empire was officially Khersian, with the Unnameable Emperor acting as Pontifex Maximus of the Mother Temple. The establishment of a state religion separate from the Universal Temple was controversial at the time, but within the empire it was seen as a necessary bulwark against the Kharolinian influence from Merovia. The Merovians, of course, had a well-established presence to the west and south of the colonies founded by..."
It seemed that Hart was serious about making up for lost time. He was spitting all this information out at a much faster clip and with fewer pauses for reactions and interactions than normal. Once he got going, he did a better than usual job of shutting down La Belle's interruptions than usual, if only because she seemed to have exhausted his patience... but the emphasis really was on "exhausted". For all that he was keeping things rolling, he really did seem to be quite tired.
I knew in an abstract sort of way that professors had to have lives outside of the classroom, and that some of them even had families. It was possible that Hart was married, though he'd never worn a wedding ring that I'd noticed... okay, the most I could really say was that he wasn't wearing a ring at that particular moment. I'd never looked before, and wouldn't have noticed without specifically checking.
But married men weren't the only ones with families or personal lives. I really didn't know anything about my instructors beyond the personalities they put forward in their classrooms. If it came right down to it, I probably knew Callahan better than any of the others, because she was so open and in-your-face about everything, and because I knew at least a little bit about her personal life via Steff, even if I really strongly preferred not to think about it. Bohd had offered us a glimpse of what was undoubtedly private information, but could hardly be called part of her private life.
"Now, it would be a mistake to think of the Old Empire as being a monolith, religiously speaking," Hart was continuing. "Or the environment of post-revolutionary Magisteria as being a promised land of religious tolerance. The real difference isn't in the number of religions that were present, or even the specific faiths. Rather, it's in the proportions. Approximately half of the human Magisterians were Metros. As many as a third were Universalists or Kharlonians. There was a small but significant population living in Druidic enclaves in the northeast. Unifying the newly-freed provinces into a single empire would have required either another, even more bloody war... one of conquest, rather than rebellion... or a different approach to religion and its relationship with the state. Obviously, the newly-minted emperor went with the latter. Let's talk about the consequences of that."
It was kind of an abrupt shift, from lecturing at a breakneck speed to calling for discussion, and I think it through a lot of us off because there was a pause where no one really did anything, and then there was a bit of shuffling all around the room.
Though I'd never thought of it in those particular terms, my mind went back to the conversation I'd had with Sooni, about the veneration of emperors. I recalled that it had actually been a hot topic of debate during the founding of the Imperium, whether people would accept an emperor who didn't wield spiritual power and who wasn't deified. Magisterion had ultimately decreed that no emperor could be deified until a century after his death, and then it would be up to the senate.
The senate governed under the consent of the living emperor, not the one who had died a hundred years before. When the hundredth anniversary of Magisterion I's death came around, the once-alarming spectre of mortal rule had lost a lot of its impact and so while the senate decreed a day of celebration and remembrance in honor of the great general, there was no series talk of deification.
No emperor since had been as universally well-regarded or respected as Magisterion I, and so while the senate still technically had the power to deify, the question never came up again.
It seemed to me like this all tied together... if there was no state-established temple, the living emperor couldn't act as a spiritual leader, and if he wasn't a spiritual leader in life, it was that much harder to expect him to intercede in prayer in death.
On the other hand, the most recent two Unnameable Emperors had really sort of blurred the lines there, and I wasn't entirely clear on whether all the preceding ones had waited until death to have themselves declared divine.
I was trying to figure out how to frame this insight for the class when Hart's gaze fell over me. I froze up, feeling utterly unprepared... but though he could obviously tell I had something on my mind, his eyes moved on.
"Well, then," he said. "Let's start with the Bill of Prohibitions. Obviously the Third Prohibition is a big one. 'No Emperor nor Officer of the Imperium shall effect an establishment of religion.'"
"What actually stops emperors from ignoring the prohibitions?" La Belle asked.
"Nothing," Hart said. "Or the weight of tradition and the fear of backlash. They haven't all been followed perfectly by each and every emperor and senate throughout our history. But the establishment clause of the Third ranks is seen as pretty unassailable. There's always going to be some argument about what does or does not constitute an imperial officer effecting an establishment, but in over two hundred years of Imperial Republican history, no one's ever come close to actually declaring a state religion."
"Could it have something to do with the fact that we don't venerate or deify our emperors?" I found myself saying. "Or the other way around, I mean... could the diverse religions have led to that, or helped lead to it, in some way?"
"That's a good point to raise," Hart said. "There's more going on there than the lack of a clear religious hegemony, of course. The popular story is that Magisterians wouldn't accept an emperor who was even symbolically immortal, and I think it would be a mistake to dismiss that out of hand. As we've discussed before, it was some time before elves were allowed to serve openly in the higher offices, and there are still laws governing things like degree of dragonhood allowed for public servants."
"And the mandatory retirement age of a hundred and eighty," one of the students said.
"Yes, though I think you'll find it's gone up to one-ninety-six," Hart said, nodding. "The point is that we don't trust immortals to rule us, at least not down here on earth. But it's perhaps too simple to say that this was the only factor in play. At the very least, we can see that conditions weren't ripe for a god-emperor. If things had been otherwise, who can say how things might have turned out?"
"Are you sure this conversation's not treasonous?" La Belle asked.
"It's not," Hart said. "Anybody who teaches imperial history at any level takes treason workshops as part of our certification."
"It's just, it sounds like you're saying Magisterion would have declared himself a god, if he could have," she said. "And that doesn't sound right to me."
"I'm saying I wouldn't deign to put limits on what our illustrious founder might have done, had he the opportunity," Hart said. "It's a respectful position, and as Magisterion I is neither living, nor divine, nor the current emperor, it's about as far from treason as I could get."
"Oh," La Belle said. "It still doesn't seem right to me."
"Well, by all means, don't participate in the conversation if it bothers you," Hart said.
Progress at one hour:
Professor Hart was talking to Keri La Belle when we got to the class room. Class didn't appear to have actually started yet, fortunately.
"Actually, we're going to do our best to put the recent past behind us and put our focus where it should be, on the less recent past," he was saying. He sounded weary, or worn down in some way. He looked it, too... like something had happened to diminish him somehow in the time between Wednesday and today. "I know recent events have left a somewhat unsettled feeling in many people's minds, and that even after the press conference... well, it may have been unsatisfying in some ways. But we're going to do our best to soldier on."
"I don't understand," La Belle said.
"What part?" he asked. Maybe it was just the prospect of one more day teaching a La Belle that had got to him.
"Are we going to get to watch TV again?" she asked
"No," Hart said. "We're going to be continuing with the class as scheduled."
"But we could watch the school channel again," she said. "That's, like, official. It should count for the class."
"If you want to watch the university station, you can do it on your own time," Hart said. "It doesn't actually have anything to do with early Republican history, so no, it doesn't 'count' for the class."
"But it did last week."
"That wasn't actually part of the class, it was an unavoidable interruption," he said.
"Then can we do the thing with miniatures again?" she asked. "That's all historical and stuff."
"If you really want to see more miniature war re-enactments, you could join my club," Hart said.
"Would that get me out of class? Like, to go to meetings or games or whatever you have?"
"I actually try to schedule activities for outside normal class hours," he said. "If there were a conflict, you'd have to take it up with your professor, who would certainly have his own policies for dealing with absences. Extracurricular activities don't give you carte blanche to miss classes."
"But you're my professor," she said.
"I mean the professor who's class you'd be missing."
"Yeah," she said.
"You're asking me if you could skip my class to go to meetings for a club that I run?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "That seems fair. I mean, it's your class and your club, so... same difference, right?"
"I can't hold a meeting at the same time I'm teaching class," he said. As La Belle started to voice her next objection, he quickly added, "And it looks like our last few stragglers are here, so we're going to go ahead and begin."
She turned around to look at Steff and me, coming down the aisle towards our usual seats.
"Y'all should have taken your time," she said.
"It's actually time to begin the class regardless," Hart said. "They're just lucky to have happened to made it right in time. Hurry up and take your seats, we're a day behind now so we've got a lot of ground to cover."
Once he got going, he did a better than usual job of shutting down La Belle's interruptions than usual, if only because she seemed to have exhausted his patience... but the emphasis really was on "exhausted". He really did seem to be quite tired. I knew that professors had to have lives outside of the classroom. It was possible that Hart was married, though he'd never worn a wedding ring that I'd noticed... okay, the most I could really say was that he wasn't wearing a ring at that particular moment. I'd never looked before, and wouldn't have noticed without specifically checking.
But married men weren't the only ones with families or personal lives. I really didn't know anything about my instructors beyond the personalities they put forward in their classrooms. If it came right down to it, I probably knew Callahan better than any of the others, because she was so open and in-your-face about everything. Bohd had offered us a glimpse of what was undoubtedly private information, but could hardly be called part of her private life.