San Diego State University Emerging Trends Blogs

I'm sure this is just part of being 45 and wondering what it's all about. Getting older. Last night I caught Sharon Stone on Dateline. I've thought she's hot from the get go. I think so more because she's 48 and still looks hot AND she says she's 48. I just now caught Debbie Harry performing, you know from Blondie, she's 60. Carol King just produced a live album, she's 62. I guess I'm still just getting used to the idea of getting older and how that fits into some bigger picture of people being 70 and people being 10. It's an orientation thing too. And a contextual thing. I don't have a day to day existence surrounded by generations. My grandmother doesn't live down the street; I don't have children. I wonder if Debbie Harry has grandchildren. What an odd thought on the one hand, on the other, she's Debbie Harry to me, singer of Blondie. Maybe the thing is the roles we play and the ones we don't.

I just came across this site, memeorandum

About it:
Online news is changing. Increasingly, stories are broken and analyzed in near real-time and away from established news sites. memeorandum offers you a window into this new world of news, focusing primarily on U.S. politics and current affairs.It auto-generates a news summary every 5 minutes, drawing on experts and pundits, insiders and outsiders, media professionals and amateur bloggers.

Autogenerating, I'm guessing is another word for an RSS feed. What's interesting about this site is that you get various perspectives on a topic. This is part of what's called Web 2. Here's an insightful article on Web 2 for teaching and learning. I think it's interesting that they've actually distinguished between amateur and professional bloggers. At blog conferences, (yes they exist) that's nothing new. I believe it started around the Tsunami, when "amateurs" started being quotes and linked to in the press.
I'm on the fence about the underlying issue. It's not new to me personally. As a "professional" musician/songwriter, (meaning actually got paid repeatedly for my work) I did and do distinguish myself from a)people who play for their friends and b)studio musicians and trained concert performers. I was always uncomfortable with the ambiguity and qualified myself as soon as it was appropriate. And from knowing other writers/artists/musicians over the years, I still take the same stance. In the end it's about quality for me. And expectations. I think it's great that anyone can blog, paint or write a song. I like reading "amateur" blogs that are well written. Most of those I read are just that. Ok most of them are informational and knowledge sharing kind of blogs, but if they were poorly written, it's uncomfortable. And I get a lot of pleasure from the work of amateur photographers on Flickr. No disrespect to those with expertise, but you don't need years of training to produce a well composed digital photo. In fact because you can snap endless-free photos, the practice-factor can be reduced significantly. Music is another story, but not entirely. Particularly in pop-music. You need modest training. Basic musicianship cuts it when you're playing with Itunes, but that's it. Performing for an audience....?
The underlying belief I suppose is that anyone can be a star and everyone is special. Isn't the concept an oxymoron? I think it's difficult to convey that to young people here, now; they're so innundated with the notion.
One of the first of many rude awakenings I had in this realm occurred when I was 21. Smack-dab in the beginnings of my singer/songwriter "career," a roommate and musician himself, told me that I couldn't write an original song. It just didn't exist. A debate resulted and in the end I got it. A second was 2 years later, in Red Tape, the first cover band I was in. We thought we were really good. Our singer could do Pat Benatar songs with ease, our guitar player had a degree in guitar. We auditioned for a local club and got a lukewarm, basically you're not ready, no thankyou response. I was devastated. But I got it.

Volvo to start Chinese production

Dell to double Indian workforce

Walmart to hire 150,000 Chinese

not too obvious...something's going on.

about how much time I spend with "work-related" stuff outside of work. It's an odd relationship and it has everything to do with this culture. When colleagues put in 50+ hours a week as the rule, even when there is no expectation that you do, I wonder if there is? I might be shooting myself in the foot for a future job by saying publicly that such a climate is unproductive, unhealthy personally and societally, and as as a result unsustainable. An organization that relies on unpaid "labor" in the form of unaccounted overtime cannot be well-run. If it can't properly staff, its books can't really be balanced because it can't accurately account for the cost of producing its widgets. What is it that drives people to work for free and get fat and ulcered doing it? I really don't get it, although I can guess. Ambition? Joy? A sense of pride in a job well done? I rarely work for free, as much as I think I could sometimes. I can't. Something in me clicks; it's like the Get Smart doors that clamp shut behind me from every direction. It's an ENOUGH feeling which when not acknowledged becomes a resentment so fierce, it blemishes everything I do. That's not to say I won't put in 12 hour days...but endlessly? then in the end to feel guilty for wanting to take 3 weeks holiday. Give me a break. Let's be fair. I am.
Fortunately, my work environment isn't so ruthless. Staff by and large, do their job and go home at a decent hour to have dinner with their kids. Faculty, like business owners are another breed. Even if I were to be compensated for 50 hours, I'd only rarely rise to the occassion and probably only out of necessity.

Among my personal list of “most overrated books� is Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I regularly force myself to teach those poems; they’re very popular, for whatever reason, with my students. I dislike Sylvia Plath's poetry; her poems are full of self pity and full of accusation at that poor father who “abandoned� her so selfishly by dying on her. So much blame. And so much of today’s poetry is the same. Every year I read the latest award winners--the Breadloaf Prize, the Whitman Prize--and every year I gag at what I read. I don’t want to hear about some guy’s adulterous wife. I don’t want to know what her nipples looked like. I don’t care if she left him for his best friend. These are things you don't want to discuss with people, if, say, you’ve just met them at a neighborhood party. Too Much Information, you shriek! But if it’s a poet, then hey! All that personal garbage is right out there for everyone to wallow in.

I recall one instance in a certain well-known MFA school--the name of which, of course, will remain a secret--in which some poor instructor tried to turn the tide: a female student came in with an Ariel-like poem lamenting the “three lost pearls� which somewhat leadenly symbolized her three lost babies, lost through her three abortions. “Three abortions!� the instructor scoffed. “What idiot could have so little self control as to need three abortions? It’s not even believable!�

Even as he spoke students in the class were gesturing wildly to him to stop, to no avail. The would-be poet’s eyes filled with tears. She refused to speak further. It was all so true, don’t you know.

And this is why I loathe contemporary poetry. Whatever happened to imagination? To art, for god’s sake?

And it's all Sylvia Plath's fault.

Do these things happen in real life?

I spent this past weekend in Salt Lake City, attending an academic conference. I’ve never been to Salt Lake before. I’ve never had any desire to go, either. But now that I’ve been there, I have to say there’s something to the place.

I’d taken a bus the last few blocks to the conference buildings, having managed to walk most of the way from my hotel. And then, in that brief space of time, I managed to leave my bag on it—the bag with the paper I was supposed to deliver in less than two hours (not to mention my iPod, the loss of which grieved me, if possible, even more). I didn’t miss the bag until about a half hour later, when I was sitting in a panel. I panicked, visions of half-assed explanations to my disapproving audience frolicking through my brain. Isn’t a lost paper the equivalent of, “The dog ate my homework?� And stupidly, I’d brought no other copy.

I left mid-panel, returned to the reception area, and called the bus’s lost and found. They were very polite: the woman there told me she’d contact the busses and try to figure out which one I’d left my bag on….I hadn’t even noted the number of the bus or the route. It could have been any of three. Things didn’t look good.

So I went back outside to the bus stop, thinking I’d just flag down the busses as they came by and hope for the best. What else was there to do? Maybe mine would circle back again.

I crossed the street; a bus was coming my way even at that moment. The driver pulled up. It was the same driver—the nice man who hadn’t even charged for my ride the first time. He leaned out the door without my asking and said, “I was hoping you’d remember.� He handed me my bag and drove away.

I had been waiting hardly thirty seconds.

The one Aesop’s fable I come back to again and again is the one about the frog and the scorpion (which I understand might not even be genuine Aesop, but whatever):

________
The Scorpion and the Frog (from the Aesop’s Fables page):

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
_____________

It just explains so much.

You can find things like:
"During World War II, the United States Government financed its own newsreel for overseas viewers, entitled THE UNITED NEWSREEL. This is selection of government produced newsreels, deposited in the National Archives, was produced by the Office of War Information and financed by ..."

I'm going to check out Outdoors in the Garden State produced by the Department of Interior. 1937 video of New Jersey, where I spent my childhood, 30 years later after the buffalo left.

During World War II, the United States Government financed its own newsreel for overseas viewers, entitled THE UNITED NEWSREEL. This is selection of government produced newsreels, deposited in the National Archives, was produced by the Office of War Information and financed by the U. S. government. A typical newsreel issue, shown in U.S. theaters and abroad, averaged 10 minutes in length and consisted of several short stories concerning allied military operations in the various theatres of war, as well as stories of events taking place on the U. S. home front. The extent of the coverage and the quality of the combat photography was excellent in most cases as culled from footage shot by military combat photographers. Designed as a counter-propaganda medium, this newsreel series totaling 267 issues was reportedly released in sixteen languages and was distributed in friendly and neutral countries, but was also dropped behind enemy lines in a German language version.

Every once in a while I become completely disgusted with my inability to find anything, and I spend a morning completely organizing, alphabetizing, and discarding. I think I’ve even read a few books on how to do this, and all those books are full of assurances on how great it is to be able to find that book you need right there on the shelf where it’s supposed to be, those car keys right on the table where they always go, etc. Being organized is the key to efficiency, they say. It’s the key to maximizing your time. It’s the key to zen-like peace and serenity as you wave goodbye to the frustration of lost shoes when you’re already ten minutes late and trying to get out the door.

So I’ll begin.

And then, once I start, I realize how truly wonderful it is to be disorganized. Because then, at the moment when you suddenly take yourself in hand, you get to have the pleasure of discovering lost stuff. You experience serendipity.

Isn’t serendipity a lovely word? I think this may be one of my favorites in the English language. And it’s a word you’ll never really get unless you’ve actually experienced it for yourself….like the word “ticklish.� Serendipity is a delightfully satisfying word--the word that alone in our capacious vocabulary embodies that feeling of possibility and renewed chances. Serendipity is that lovely surprised feeling you get when you find all sorts of stuff you’d entirely forgotten about--all those projects that I meant to do that seemed so brilliant or inspired at the moment, but alas! No time. So into the inbox they went….never to be thought of again.

All these ideas resurface when I organize. So I find them and remember, and I feel invigorated and motivated and as if life is a full and surprising thing as I clean out, thinking about how great it’s going to be to actually do these things once I have all that extra time, because I’ll be so organized.

Unfortunately, after that there’s the next day--the organized day. The day when there’s nothing lying around to surprise me. Nothing to think about but efficiency and work.

And then I get depressed.

Anyway....

So in the 99cent store on the corner of 30th and University, I found this kid's identity card thing. $1.69. I can even shove my earphones and credit cards in its back pocket. Kinda stylish AND multifunctional.


Then onto my favorite thrift store, the one with sales and discounts. This one is my Nano winter sock. The lanyard I got at NP Hardware. I think this one might be my favorite.


This one is my summer Nano sock. Oh I just noticed that's a tractor not a train.

Well as you can imagine, both pairs of teeny-tiny infant socks, brand new, were on sale. Marked down from 49cents to 30cents a pair.
So let's see. I've got 4 Nano socks to cover 2 seasons, and a Nano multifunctional case, 5 choices for the incredibe price of $4.50. And to boot, I had a lot of fun doing it.

fact or fiction?

Look who's calling the kettle discredited. The gall of the US to utter any rebuttal to criticism on activities at Guantanamo Bay.
Read about it

I'm collaborating on the creating a course on global awareness/global citizendry. My greater task is going to be turning down the fire on my critique of the US and Americans so that I can gently and cleverly turn up the fire on those very same issues in a more constructive way. I won't meet with resistance I don't think. What can happen is a kind of 'eyes glaze over' efffect, with colleagues and students. It happens when you challenge someone's belief system. And I think it happens in particular to people who blindly believe. It's the stuff of how governments, political and religious regimes control "the masses." Our particular problem is that we're so hung up on and distracted by individual-freedom rhetoric, we fail to see how that's also manipulating. Case in point: I just got an Ipod. It's taken me some time to load my music on to it, after figuring out I need to compress the files so they'd all fit. I took me some time to find a decent pair of earbuds for it too. Now, I could spend another 10 hours of my life or more, considering what kind of Ipod skin/cover/protector/accessory I want and need.
How utterly inane and embarrassing.
We've created and continue to create a reality show in which no-one really knows who's doing the editing. Who's behind or in front of the camera. To truly put oneself in another's shoes, to begin to be aware of how others might perceive the world, you've got to leave the show completely. And then shut up, and look and listen. And then ask questions that are framed by a curiosity that doesn't immediately relate back to one's self. Leave these statements in your nightstand: "Back home we ..." "Where I come from ...".
From here, the world is so very far away, and for many just a by product of our lives. To understand multiculturalism within our borders is very different than in a global context. And when we don't bring a desire to understand power relationships into the conversation, then we our time might be better spent at the local Apple Store.

Graduate students, as everyone knows, are completely paranoid. They worry about everything: whether they can compete against others at better institutions; whether their professors think them worthy; whether they'll ever get a job; whether their colleagues appreciate how truly witty they are in comparison with the rest of the mundane world. And in between, they phantasize about the life of a professor--a life filled, they think, with free time, with ingenious ideas about literature, with intellectual conversations and inspired drinks with friends.

And so. It was with the full knowledge of all these hopes and fears, I freely confess, that I embarked upon what was probably the best practical joke of my life.

What happened was that, long ago, as a graduate student, I observed that an up-and-coming hot grad student, J., had recently befriended my office mate. And together, indulging in all those phantasies about professorhood, they had conspired to smuggle a small bottle of fine whisky into the office, which--in flagrant disregard of school rules but in utter fulfilment of the professor-phantasy they held in their minds--they would periodically drink together, while I, meanwhile, studiously advised my students and plotted my revenge.

What I did was compose a brief memo that looked and sounded very much like the memos we were accustomed to receiving from the nazi-director then supervising our work. I risographed the memo on cheap pink paper, using the very machine that all our memos were printed from, and I mimicked the tone of our director to the best of my abilities. The resulting memo said something like this:
______

To All TAs:

It has come to our attention that certain TAs have been drinking alcohol in their offices. The consumption of alcohol on campus is in direct violation of code 10A5094P. Any teaching assistants with information about this violation should come to our office directly for the purpose of snitching.

Signed,

Senior Nazi Supervisor, Ph.D.
_____________

Despite the header "To All TAs," I put the memo only in my office mate and friend's mailboxes. I knew it was certain to inspire panic--graduate students are a paranoid bunch, after all--but I thought that last line about snitching would certainly give away the gag.

But I was most satisfyingly wrong.

J., upon reading the memo, went into the immediate hysteria I'd expected. She promptly assumed the memo was about her, and went around querying her friends about whether they'd heard anything.

And what she found out, of course, was that no one had received the memo but she.

When I returned to my office by about 4 pm that afternoon, she was in a complete panic, desecrating the said supervisor, calling him a liar for attempting to draw her out by such means, and consulting the university Ombudsman at periodic intervals about her future as a Graduate Student Abruptly Thrown Out of Her Program for a Drinking Problem.

I was rather horrified at the damage my gag had accomplished--and in such short order, too. Although I must admit to a certain feeling of gratification....a feeling, indeed, which lingers still?

I did eventually confess the prank. I confessed at the point at which J. had decided that her best recourse was talking to the Nazi Director in person to explain her lapse.

I must admit her willingness to confront the situation scared me: what if our supervisor discovered that someone had been forging official-looking memos in his name?

But it all ended well. We're best friends now. Seriously. J. is probably my best friend on the planet.

And it all started with that memo.

Thomas Foster, in his How To Read Literature Like a Professor, has a funny point to make about literature: it's all about sex, unless, of course, it is about sex, in which case it's about something else.

Take Yeats' "Leda and the Swan," a rather dangerously erotic poem about Zeus's rape of Leda in, well, the guise of a swan. Yes, it depicts a rape. But it's not really about the rape; it's about the devastation of entire civilizations that can result from a single act of indifference. In other words, it's a poem that describes a sex act, but it ain't about sex.

But....sigh. There are only so many arguments you can win in a lit class.

I had a student a year or so back, who came into every office hour I had so that he could assiduously study the meaning of each line of poetry. He was a nice kid. But sometimes I wondered.

“So what about this line,� said D., pointing to the second stanza--the one that describes the rape. “The part where it says, 'How can body, laid in that white rush / But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?’�

“Um, yeah,� I said cautiously. Seemed straightforward enough to me...does a line like that need unpacking?

“The white rush. What is that?�

“Well, that’s like the rush of the white feathers of the swan, smothering the girl.�

“Huh,� said D., looking at me speculatively. I hate it when they get that look. It means things are getting out of control. “Could the white rush be something else?�

“Like what?� I asked.

“Well, I think that’s kind of a climactic moment. And when I see those words, I think they might be like...� he paused. “How do I put this. You know, the money shot.�

“The money shot?�

I'd never heard of a money shot. But it sounded bad.

“You don’t know what a money shot is?� D. asked incredulously. “Oh wow. How can you not know what that is!�

I gaped at him.

“Okay, so there’s this guy in my frat who’s really into porn. And he told me there’s this one star who’s really famous for his money shot. It’s like when...�

“Ooooooh,� I said, blanching. “Okay.�

Yes, okay. Stop already. There's D. sitting there grinning at me--it's so much fun to make your professor uncomfortable! And at this point I'm thinking, dude, you have just crossed my Line of Inappropriateness: the Boundary Which No Student Shall Ever Transgress.

I opted for the direct, no-nonsense approach.

“Semen,� I said knowledgeably, sounding, I hoped, as unfazed as a medical professional, undeterred by direct references to human fluids or acts. (You know we professors have many ways of talking around these objects. We prefer not to refer to them point blank at all, if possible; instead we talk vaguely about "the phallus" or "the patriarchal other.")

D., however, was not to be deterred. He proceeded to describe his knowledge of this arcane term in some detail, and, even though the door was open (it always is) and other students were milling about outside, I was powerless to stop it. It was way more information that I wanted or needed.

Besides, what if he was on to something?

“Well,� I said, raising my eyebrows. “I guess you learn something every day.�

Over the years I've found myself sometimes entrapped by student requests that somehow were never made of me, but instead assumed: recommendation letters I perplexedly found myself writing, Masters Theses I inexplicably supervised, etc. I'm a sucker for a good manipulator.

But I've learned to be a bit smarter about this lately. Now when things seem to be going unsaid, I rudely say them.

Example:

Student: So I just wanted to talk to you about my Masters Thesis....(fifteen minute explanation of goals and aspirations ensues).

Me: That all sounds very nice. So, who did you say is directing your thesis?

Student (wide-eyed): Well, YOU are, Dr. Amtower!

Me: Really! Well, that's quite interesting. Yes.

(Pause.)

Me: So. Did I actually agree to this request?

Ouch!

Yes, it's harsh. But I had a grad student a few years back who tried this exact approach....first she wanted to just "talk" about the process of writing theses; next she started talking about all the people who were on her committee--one of whom turned out to be me. Okay, this was already all wrong, but I don't mind being ON a grammatically-challenged person's thesis committee; I just don't want to DIRECT it. Because directing in such cases does not mean supervising so much as it means actually writing the project for the student. And I've got problems of my own, thank you very much.

Anyway, soon after this the said student appeared with the great news that she'd been accepted into a Ph.D. program, but this really put her under pressure because now she needed to get that thesis done very quickly.

And here's the manipulative part: it was at this point she handed over the paperwork for me to sign, and I realized, with horror, that I was listed as the supervisor of the project.

Now, understand that this student had been accepted into her Ph.D. program already under the guise of writing a Masters Thesis under my supervision. Which meant that if I now said, "Hey, wait a minute!", her entire future was going to flush right down the toilet. So there I was, feeling entirely trapped, with this student sitting there looking at me expectantly.

And it only got worse from there, believe me.

To be fair, from the student's perspective, asking a professor to supervise your project must be rather like asking someone out on a date. There's such potential for rejection. It's so much easier to pretend you're not REALLY asking for a date...the nerve! Who would suggest such a thing! It's only COFFEE, fer cryin' out loud. My goodness, what an ego you must have, thinking something like that.

But I can't afford these kinds of dances....I get stuck in them way too often. So now I go ahead and jump the gun prematurely, if that's what it takes. When weak-ish students come to me asking for "advice" about their projects, I ask them outright whom they're thinking of asking to be on their committee. It's no good sitting there hoping they won't have you in mind, or wishfully thinking that perhaps they won't quite get up the nerve to ask; it's better to face the pain now.

And most of the time it's all right...I've got some very strong students, and I'm more than happy to work with them. For those students, too, it's better for me to know right now what's expected.

Just say it already.

I use recommendations/reviews of products quite often when I'm buying stuff on the internet. I've only written one. I should do more but I haven't picked up the habit. I just bought some music in Itunes and I wasn't quite as open to the reviews, I noticed. Music, more than headphones and telephones, is about taste. But I thought I'd give it a whirl, interact with the Net in yet another way. I really wasn't sure where to begin. What to pay attention to. I was looking for more music by Bjork, so I was looking for tips and hints. I ended up picking the best of album because of the way it had been compiled. Bjork asked her fans what songs to put on it. Who better to ask. Even if I had had the time, I wouldn't have had access to this info in a music store. I'm in the process of moving all my music (CDs) to an Ipod/Itunes and not buying anymore. What's the point? I get everything I need and more on the net.

I was sitting towards the back of the bus today, in the raised seats, above those in front. About 10 minutes into the 17 minute ride, I began noticing the shapes of the backs of people's heads and how and where their ears attached. Mostly on the men. Because of their short hair. It was easier to see. The ears of the older men were huge and in comparison much more interesting to look at than the younger ones. It's true your ears keep growing till you die. I wonder how big their ears were 20 years ago. I really wanted to take a phone photo, but I thought the people sitting behind me might not understand and I didn't want to explain or draw attention to myself. So I just kept looking at those backs of heads with ears attached up and down the sides. I guess that's the kind of stuff that excites geneticists.

Once, many years ago, my dentist had a very strange patient, a woman, who'd asked many personal questions that had made her quite uncomfortable. The interrogation apparently ended when the woman began licking my dentist's fingers as she worked in her mouth.

Yick!

I laughed so hard upon hearing this that I think my poor dentist was a little insulted. I can't help it. It just cracks me up.

Is there some sort of faun fad going on with young men these days? Perhaps it's just because I watched The Chronicles of Narnia and so am in the right frame of mind to notice, but I swear I'm seeing these effects everywhere as I walk through campus: curly hair, little goatees, slightly slanted eyes, and--I swear it!--pointy ears.

How are they doing it?

"According to the Sleep Foundation, 73% of people have competition which interferes with their sleep." ~ Doubleups for Beds.

Sheet stealers?
Tuck in/Tuck outs?
Hot/Colds?
Sleep with pets?
Kids and friends?
Read more

Amanita tagged this one random "via strange new products"
I agree.

On the same page though she's got How products are Made.
That's kinda cool.

" . . . explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step by step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams) Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc."

Some days are just jinxed. Every project fails; things that were once working begin to break; it rains; etc.

I had one of these yesterday. I didn't realize at first it was a jinxed day. I had great plans and ideas. But it all went wrong pretty much immediately, beginning with my accidental smashing of a large (expensive) Tuscan vase when I decided it would look better in the bathroom than the dining room.

Yikes.

My husband called from the other room, "Please tell me you didn't just drop that vase."

Well, I did.

After that things just continued in the same vein. My husband quickly realized that I was jinxed, and so wisely forbade me from undertaking anything that might have serious consequences (like, say, painting the livingroom walls red, which was another early idea). So I just jinxed little annoying things instead. I bought some long-needed necessities in the wrong colors and sizes; I had to make returns when I hate returning things; I shattered a water glass; daughter got an earache; I spilled red wine on a pair of white cargo pants.

And the final act of the day? I threw the white cargo pants into the laundry, without looking to see what else might be in there first.

And now they're pink.

One mutated gene decides.

There’s a psychologist seated in the bookstore coffee shop. He eyes me speculatively behind his client’s head as I check out the magazines, which bugs me. I duck out of sight, but I can now hear his conversation with the timid man sitting opposite him. Why does he speak so loudly? Why position yourself in the middle of a restaurant to give your “session� at all? Everyone in the area can hear him, and there are more than a few. The projected voice seems for our benefit, as if the psychologist wants me and the others aimlessly taking their coffee to admire his advice, his ability to see through people, his control over the minor problems and irritations that plague the rest of us in our lives. Perhaps he wants us to stop by and ask for his card, so that we can then pay him to look up to him, too. We can hear him giving the standard advice, the condescension about “controlling your energy.� His slightly bored tone indicates he’s heard it all before, seen it all before, why can’t you, my idiot client, see it too instead of drowning in your own problems. He reminds the man opposite him—balding with a faint curliqued tonsure rimming his round face--of his continuing failings, the “problems with your sister and brother-in-law, your boss.� The man protests slightly…I can hear the edge of that’s-not-fair in his voice, though I can’t hear the exact words. Surely all life’s difficulties don’t stem from our own inabilities to handle annoying people? Surely not all stress will disappear once we learn to control the energy around us? But the shrink will hear nothing of it. His authority merges into browbeating, distilling further his client’s self-esteem. Leave this man, I want tell to the sad client opposite. Shave your head. Get a new hat. Tattoo a large heart on your upper arm. Anything that’s yours—just don’t give your life to that man.

my "nice/positive things about the United States" post. To make up, publicly, because I'm not weak-kneed...I'll tell this incredible story.
I recently received a letter from Bluecross, my former healthcare insurer, asking me if I cared to have materials sent to me in other languages. Below were listed about 15 different languages. There's more. The rest of the letter, including the back, (Note that they printed 2-sided) was filled with I'm guessing the same information, written in the characters of 3- 4 Asian languages. I don't think that happens very many other places on the planet. I was so impressed, I tried to take a phone photo of it, to post. It didn't work.
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I'm not sure how I feel about 2nd hand cigarette smoke being classified as a toxic pollutant. Sure I hate cigarette smoke in California; it seems utterly out of place. It doesn't bother me nearly as much in Europe. Why is that? I feel sorry for smokers in California. I do. I'm glad none of my friends smoke though. I had 2 overnight (hardcore, longtime smoker) visitors recently. My place is very small; they smoked outside. Still, I was amazed at how everything about them reeked of smoke, new and old. I never noticed that before because I've either seen them at their smoked houses or out and about. Still, toxic pollutant? Like aerosol sprays, and DDT? Isn't there another term?

I’ve been reading a book on “soft addictions.� These are the harmless little things we do during the day to take up time: things, the author avers, that suck the life blood out of our souls and relegate us to a life of materialistic unmeaning and unthinking.

There is something to what she says, of course. Hours can be spent browsing the internet for everyone’s opinions on just the right fragrance, just the right book, just the right car. So much better to be certain before one buys, you tell yourself. But then of course the browsing is a time-filler, just as the materialism itself and the consumerism that such browsing implies are also time-fillers (i.e., soul suckers).

But there are many diversions the author would insist be cancelled out. Anything, in fact, that one enjoys to the point that the task becomes, perhaps, mindless. She lists all of these things as bad: video-game playing, reading “the same genre,� drinking (of course), but even fantasizing. Too much sex--definitely a soft addiction, she says. At what point does the pleasurable thing become something compulsive that must be weaned out of one’s life?

I can’t help but think there’s a certain amount of puritanicalism at stake here. I can see our author’s point: If one’s soul-sucking time-waster is preventing one from doing something meaningful, then of course that’s a problem. But must all fantasizing go? All drinking? Even if the drinking is done, as the author purports, to “take the edge off the day?� Taking the edge off is so very pleasant. And so very noticeable and present, too. It’s not as if the day disappears magically. It’s the pain that lessens. Is that really so bad?

Which takes me to the importance of downtime–the invaluable time we should probably all be giving ourselves-–the time we don’t have to think. At times this has meant for me setting aside ten minutes or half an hour for a drink (cosmos are nice). I have a feeling our author would say this type of thing is very bad. The fact that I look forward to it probably makes it even worse.

But I think she has it all wrong. There is already too much insistence these days placed on the absolute importance of making certain of every hour, every minute. There was an interview out recently on that financial advisor, Suze Ormond (what kind of pretentious idiot spells her name Suze), about her drive--how she never multitasks; how she always insists when she hires someone that they put aside weeks of their time for no other project but hers; how her singlemindedness has led to her "success." She has no family, admits to spending little time with friends; I'll bet she drinks(!) but I doubt very much she drones out in front of a TV set. Ouch--who wants that? It's just part of this culture out there that insists on the unrelenting speed of our days and the amount we must cram into each of them.

Some of it is necessary, of course: There are children to pick up, classes to teach, books to read and courses to prepare. Meetings to stew about, minutes to write up afterward. Problems to discuss. With so much to do, few of us can afford, I suppose, to idly browse away a few hours on the internet.

And yet how important it is to be mindless. I remember way back when I was still playing the piano (I suppose I could take this back up again if I put my mind to it) that playing itself was mindless. For most other people, of course, it is not–playing demands absolute being in the moment. But I was never there. I was always floating around freestyle while my fingers moved about. That was the joy of playing–it meant downtime.

Now, instead of the piano, I have drinking and--occasionally--smoking (which I understand is apparently linked to depression...this explains a lot). Of course one must be careful with these little vices. They can get to be too much. But one of the things that makes them so effective, I'll bet, is their very vice-ness–the knowledge that they must be done alone, that anyone in my circle would violently disapprove if they knew what I were doing. So that I can’t even confide what I have done to them afterward. All of this makes the time spent particularly mine and mine alone.

If only I could manage to do it guilt free?

Waiting for my daughter, I hover in the shadow of the stucco building, away from the other parents. The children begin to appear, all with tiny backpacks strapped to their backs. They wear them importantly, their signal that they are schoolchildren and old enough now to learn. Madeleine doesn’t have a backpack. She comes out with her Hello Kitty red lunch box instead. She stands out from the other children with their ponytails, sneakers, and plans. “It’s time for gymnastics,� she says importantly, like a little girl who has appointments to be kept. She marches me over to a far gate, where children are lining up.

I feel a stab through my chest. I delay, looking at the other children, then back down at Madeleine’s expectant face. “We’re not signed up for gymnastics, honey,� I tell her.

As always when I let her down, Madeleine’s flash of disappointment is only momentary. She looks down at the ground for a moment, digesting what I’ve said, then she looks up at me.

“Okay, let’s go home,� she says.

Hahaha! Revenge is sweet.

I was very taken with this story about the snake who was given a hamster to eat, but decided to make friends with it instead. Ever since then I've been thinking about what might have been going on in the snake's head. Did it actually like the hamster? Was it lonely? Or was it one of those things where the hamster just looked overly fluffy and perhaps thus too big, intimidating the snake until he forgot that the hamster was also food? Does it bother the hamster when it watches its pal inevitably swallowing down other rodents whole?

Perhaps it was the hamster's inately bad temper. I've had hamsters before; I know about this first hand. Or perhaps it's their smell. Hamsters really don't smell all that good. Not nearly so good as, say, mice.

Not that I'd know what smells appetizing, not being overly given to eating rodents of any ilk. I'm just trying to imagine.

Anyway, these unlikely friendships do seem to occur among animals. I've been much impressed with the friendship between my rowdy little corgi and my bad tempered elderly cat. The cat has always been a loner; when we tried to introduce other cats into the mix, for example, she'd nastily chase them up and down the hall and then box their ears for them. When I met my husband, my bad-tempered cat was obliged to live in harmony with his sweet (though powerfully empty-minded) old Persian. My cat lived upstairs in the closet for two whole years while we had that Persian, coming downstairs only to use her catbox, glower at the other cat, and then return to her hidey-hole.

I regret to say that the day of the Persian's death (from old age) was one of the happiest of my cat's life. She came downstairs in her usual sulky way, paused at the bottom of the steps, took a good sniff and had a look around, and chirked up immediately.

"Wowwow," she said.

And she never returned to that closet again.

But she's quite fond of the corgi. I don't get this. They sit cozily next to each other on the sofa; they jostle comfortably against each other as they walk down the hall; the corgi even periodically washes my cats ears for her. I really don't get it. Sometimes my grouchy cat even purrs for the corgi.

Of course, it's clear in this relationship who's boss. Maybe that's the secret.

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies. LATimes

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I begin to suspect that there really is such a thing as luck. Some people are lucky. I'm not talking about people who make good choices and seem to lead charmed lives. I'm talking about people who, say, buy a raffle ticket and then win a sofa. Or go to Las Vegas and come home with $500 in their pockets. The people who actually win lotteries--those kinds of people.

I think it's safe to say that I've never won a raffle in my entire life. However, I have a friend who always wins prizes in raffles. I remember sitting in the audience of some fundraising project or another, waiting for the raffle prize announcements, and her boyfriend told me she would win something, because she just always does. And sure enough, she did. She won a big glossy book. She's just one of those people who wins things.

So what's up with that? I read an article a while back--your typical "there-is-a-rational-explanation-for-everything" scientific article--which claimed that there is no such thing as luck. It's just that some people consider themselves lucky, and so, even though they have no greater or lesser chance of winning something than anybody else, they tend to overvalue the wins as opposed to the losses.

That sounds so rational. But it just doesn't quite explain the situation of my friend. After all, I would consider myself a pretty lucky person in the grand scheme of things: nice opportunities have come my way, I'm not dodging bullets in a war ravaged nation, etc. But I don't win anything. Does that have to do with my perceptions of myself? Or is it simply a bald fact that if I buy a raffle ticket, I can be reasonably certain that my name won't be drawn, because this is what experience has taught me? Whereas my friend sits there, confidently expecting to win a TV set, a trip to the Caribbean, whatever. And then she does.

Yep, I think there may very well be such a thing as luck.

It's difficult to judge the point at which you should be concerned about BigBrother spying. With a 60% chance of having an FBI file, I'm more concerned on principle that the adminstration wants access to Google searches. They're refusing to give it. MSN and AOL complied however. No surprise. I know that the everything I do online at work is monitored. I don't care really. It's too easy slide into dystopia when it comes to this kind of stuff. As long as there are organizations like Google setting precedents, I'm satisfied.

I have decided to combat the government's request for all Google search data--a request I find frankly offensive--by conducting at least one silly Google search per day. Today's search: "Do dogs have belly buttons?"

Ok. I'd rather live here than Russia because there are more kinds of jobs I think I'd enjoy. It's also nice that you can walk on the grass and nobody cares. It's nice too that the supermarket aisles are so wide, you never feel boxed in. I also like that the cars are clean and shiny. They're nicer to look at than dirty cars. I especially like knowing that I could go grocery shopping at 3am if I wanted to. But because the aisles are so wide, I rarely have the desire to. And I like it that you can have green hair and nobody cares. Finally, I like the movie popcorn here better than in Germany, where it's sweetened.

that "I choose (fill-in-your infinitive)" has come to garnish so much of our oral speak; I just now read it in a colleague's write-up of a technology project. Eek. In writing it's worse, sitting there, taking up precious real estate and mental resources and giving nothing in return except an insight into someone's psychological state or better yet TV habits. Did it start with Oprah? NLP? Does Dr. Phil do it?

"I chose to eat a hamburger for lunch today."
"I chose to go to the mall today."
"I chose to be nicer to my annoying neighbor."

Does saying you made a choice do something to it? Am I, the listener, suppose to respond in a particular way like, " Great! Isn't it wonderful having choices and making them."
Is it one of the I love being an American things I missed out on while abroad?
You'll never hear a recovering alcoholic say "I choose not to drink today."
And I never heard a Dutch, German or French person say it in those languages either.

I may be ascribing a history to the phrase that's incorrect and I'll apologize for that. On the other hand, if it's not sacharrined empowerment speak, then I'm baffled and I may have to ask the next time I hear it.

I'm sitting on a hard and cramped wooden bench in a smelly historical building, listening to a group of teenagers tell me about their summer raising pigs and goats. This is not what I came for (well, obviously....would anyone volunteer to listen to teenagers for two hours?). I am here to register my 7-year-old for the 4H Club. Except that these teenagers recognize they have a captive audience, and they are not going to let us go as easily as that. First we have to listen to THEM.

In fact, when we get fidgety (the room is full of parents with small children), the teenagers huff and roll their eyes. The president pouts purposefully and refuses to continue; then, when she finds herself still ignored (some people never do take a hint), begins banging her gavel. Her mother glares at her across the room. A mother-daughter spat ensues, in front of fifty irritated onlookers, who really just want to sign their kids up for goat camp and go home. It is clear that if we do not hold our tongues and suffer willingly, the torture will continue indefinitely.

I can't stand it when someone wastes my time. Why is it that so many meetings are like this? Here are a gaggle of sixteen and seventeen year olds, primed already for a lifetime of board meetings designed specifically to ensure that work never gets done.

View and listen to commentary on Lewis Carol's orginal Alice, Jane Austin's early works, sketches by De Vinci and more at Turning pages.

true it is. and there's a cyclopic goat too.

If there isn't a golden rule I'd like to suggest it be "Delete it." Delete regularly. It's cathartic for me, like throwing stuff out or "moving in on."

I also use folders and rules and programs like Outlook or Entourage.
I've been using Entourage, the Mac version of Outlook. It creates projects and categories to which I can associates files, mails, notes and tasks.
I love the Tasks function. I can cross them out when they're done and feel good about myself. Here's my list since the beginning of November. I'm just now thinking about when I'm going to delete those done-tasks. Or maybe I already have and have forgot.
The tricky thing about data management is your naming conventions. You've got to put some thought into it to make the whole thing work. I don't have a system per se, but I do think about it.
Some people naturally enjoy doing this kind of stuff, some abhore it. I get satisfaction from getting things done so I can have time to explore and meander. An overly organized world confines me as much as an overly kaotic one.

I had an encounter with an alpha mom yesterday. Usually I have a pretty good radar for these people, but this woman caught me by surprise.

"What are you reading?" she asked me. I showed her my book: part III of the Bartimaeus Trilogy (and a most worthy read it was, too).

"Oh yes," she says. "My daughter and I read that one."

Really? I ask, surprised. After all, it only just came out this weekend. But, unsuspecting, I nevertheless rhapsodize about the book, and ask her about how her daughter has handled the reading. I mean, this isn't a friendly book. It's cynical and nasty, with lots of scatalogical humor. Not to mention all the scary demons. Just my kind of thing....but maybe not my daughter's?

"Oh, well, MY daughter read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when she was six. So she can pretty much handle anything."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Yeah, so your kid can read the words, so what. Do you really want her reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when she's six years old?

I begin to suspect this woman.

"OH, well she's already earned her black belt in karate, of course." (Careless laughter ensues.) "It's not like anything fazes HER. Hah! Hah! Hah!"

I am saved (saved!) by the approach of another mom. This one looks more normal, and asks in a friendly voice how Alpha Mom's holiday went.

"WELL! We took our daughter skiing. She went right up to the highest hill right away, even though she's never been skiing before. On the way down she stopped to tell another girl, in Spanish, how to slow down!!!"

By now I am wondering if I'm somehow wandered onto the set of Desperate Housewives. Do people really act like this? The other mom pretends she has spotted her child and drifts away. Alpha Mom is unfazed by the defection and keeps going. Too bad I'm sitting. She's got a captive audience.

"THEN we made these Christmas cookies and there I was, wrapping them all up in these elaborate cellophane decorations, and I'm looking around for the rest of them, and my daughter points out I've already done them all! Hah! Hah! How would you ever believe I made it through Law School?"

I decide Alpha Mom is schizophrenic and begin to edge away nervously. Perhaps this is one of her personalities...the dysfunctional, compete-with-people-you-don't-even-know personality. Whatever it is, it isn't an enjoyable personality, and I've had enough. I, too, pretend to spot my daughter (heck, it worked for that other woman), and wave gaily goodbye.

And already I am plotting what I will write in my blog about her.

Today's words of wisdom: "'Professors often say that students need to learn how to use feedback more effectively,' [Stephanie Pitts] writes. They also seem to view feedback as a bureaucratic exercise, 'with perhaps the implication that giving feedback is an administrative task, rather than a teaching task,' she says. But, she asserts, 'teaching, learning, and assessment are intricately linked.'

"Professors need to go beyond just writing better feedback and meeting more frequently with students, Ms. Pitts says. If professors truly want to empower their students to be 'critical learners,' she writes, then they need to develop their students' ability to evaluate their own work, increase the effectiveness of the drafting process, and make assessment criteria 'more accessible and transparent.'"

Well, duh. What else is new? Now, if these advice-givers could just follow their own advice and make this process more transparent for those of us who really do give a hoot?

Photo courtesy of Minjuan

The Chronicle has just announced some of the major new perspectives on academia and the humanities that were opined at the recent MLA Convention in Washington. Since I've been mulling many of these issues myself, and worrying more and more about the role of a professor who teaches a field so outside any practical application, I was happy to find that I'm not alone in my concerns. And I'm even happier that many in academia are thinking practically and inclusively rather than politically and elitistly.

Some of the topics: rethinking the role of the intellectual in the 21st century and coming up with a new set of ideals "adapted to modern times"; adopting, for that matter, a new vision of modernity "which is neither hostile nor indifferent to religion" (Julia Kristeva); and, best of all, seeing language and literature "as a way of connecting to the rest of the world" (Domna Stanton).

I like all of that very much. Now, how to transform all this talk into classroom practice?

I do both, and for the record, the mom's work is harder. Forty hours a week on campus never tires me so much as a single afternoon at home with three strong-willed children. And they're always hungry? It's a full time job just keeping them fed. I feel like one of those mama birds who keeps frantically jamming worms down all those open cheeping throats.

Thank god they're not all mine. I'd have keeled over from a stroke long ago.

Who cares about the political message? I hated it. Okay, maybe hate is a strong word....I was just very, very disappointed, especially after all the hype.

Munich is just a very flawed film, with all the typical Spielberg warts: lots of loose ends, characters who go nowhere; too much reliance on cliched dialogue and stereotyped characters--including the protagonist who's basically made sympathetic via the fact that his wife has just had a baby; stupid and obvious symbolism (my favorite: the scene in which the protagonist has hot sex with his wife, interspersed with cuts of the Olympic massacre--isn't the massacre strong enough to stand on its own, fer cryin' out loud?); and, deadliest of all, the typical unedited mishmash. Three whole hours of it.

Spielberg's greatest flaw as a film maker, in my opinion, is his inability to edit himself, as if every line and every shot is just too good to go. It's the ultimate sin of good storywriting. You _have_ to be able to throw out what doesn't belong or what seems superfluous, even if you love what you did. That's the staple of good writing--and good film making.

My husband asked why I was so pissed after seeing this movie. I think it's because I'm a professor, and thus these really basic writing problems seriously bug me. And they're so easy to fix! This could have been a great movie, but it's just not.

But instead I'm musing about how mind boggling language is.
I was supposed to have wanted to work today.
How would you explain what this sentence means to someone learning English?

Our governor has been erased from the annals of his home town in Graz, Austria.

I started a couple of pre-Christmas rant posts about my discontent with the season. I never got to post them for one reason or another and in a way I'm glad. I'm not sure if rants are more like enemas or diarrhea but in the past couple of years I've been noticing that I'm better off chosing my purges thoughtfully. So I've dropped 'em. The only remain is this Daily Om.

Other tidbits:
I've been exploring Second Life and that is wild.
"A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe"

And I've decided to pursue a PhD and that's exciting.

I enjoyed my 1st Hanukah celebration on the 26th, and discovered there IS a Christmukkha.

In writing classes nowadays students tend to get taught that grammar is not as important as content. They're told to concentrate on their argument and the rest will just magically come (or something). I'm grading papers now, and feel the urge to tell the world how very untrue that is. If anything, it’s the other way around: great writing can carry a crappy idea any day. Look how many times this has happened in history! But without grammar, and without attention to a varied and interesting style, you get nowhere.

Bad writing just makes such a very bad initial impression. I imagine it's much like meeting any new person: say this person hasn’t brushed his teeth; he smells bad; you shake his hand and it’s greasy. How much more do you want to know about this person? Do you want to know anything at all? This person may be perfectly great on the inside. But you’re probably never going to find out, because you were so put off by his appearance in the first place that now you’re just anxious to get out of there.

That’s what writing and grammar are to a paper. And the shame about bad writing is that no one has to be a bad writer. A little practice and effort--and the reading, perhaps, of a good grammar handbook--can make anyone into a passable writer. Not a great writer, maybe--writers have degrees of talent, just like musicians or artists. But just as anyone can learn to play an instrument, anyone can also learn to write, and, moreover, write reasonably well.

So, for any of my students out there, here it is: when I read a paper full of dangling modifiers (even one is a pretty bad sign, actually), that paper just dropped to a maximum grade of a B. And the ideas therein better be pretty darn good to get that, because that’s how low my overall impression of the paper has just dropped. It’s going to take a lot of effort to overcome that initial bad impression--effort that an elegant writer doesn’t have to make. Sadly, a poorly written paper with bright ideas will probably get a lower grade than an elegantly written paper with average ideas.

That may be wrong and sad, but there it is. I can’t help it; I’m human. But so is everyone else, and every student should be aware of that. Bad writing is a real crippler.

We have a scary elevator in my building. It is often being worked on, which I find alarming. I wonder what it did this or that time to warrant a rebuke. Frequently there is just a long yellow piece of cautionary tape strung across the doors, warning you not even to think about getting in, because you don't know what will happen if you do. Remember that episode of LA Law, the one where the disliked female lawyer made to step into the elevator, stepped into open space, and crashed to her death? This is that kind of elevator. It's temperamental; sometimes it decides to come down when you call it, sometimes it doesn't. If it does come, it may or may not obey you once you're inside and the door is closed. Sometimes you just sit there.

So anyway, I tend not to use it that much, unless I'm really in a hurry. Which I was the other day. So I stepped inside; the doors shut, and the elevator lurched and plunged. I thought, Oh shit--I'm dead.

Fortunately I did not crash to the bottom of the basement (obviously). Instead the elevator caught itself and I just stuck there, three feet lower than level, with the doors jammed shut. After ringing all the requisite buttons and banging for help on the doors, I pried doors apart about three inches--not enough to get out.

There were two students, female, standing out there, just looking at me.

I couldn't believe they were just watching this whole thing with this complete sense of detached interest. They knew I was in there; they could hear me ringing the panic button (which, inexplicably, does not apparently ring in to someone who might be able to help) and banging away. And yet they just stood there, watching.

"Can you GET ME SOME HELP?" I asked them--yes, I confess it--a bit rudely. (Can you blame me?)

And they still just stood there.

I asked them again, louder. Then I told them in no uncertain terms to go upstairs, get the secretary, and have him call for someone to get me out.

One of the girls turned around and just left. This still stuns me!

The other, bless her slow soul, finally went upstairs and tried to find someone who would listen to her. I found her there a few minutes later when the doors suddenly released and freed me. She had a trail of helpful professors who had similarly had this experience tailing along behind her. I'm not sure what any of them could have done, but it's nice to know that not all SDSU inhabitants will run away rather than lose five minutes helping someone.

Needless to say, I'm back to taking the stairs. I figure it's better on my thighs, anyway.

Well, here I am, pretending I don't have flu, and noting the irony of my last post, where I spoke of the inevitability of flu. This is definitely the flu. Flu is the one where you're sitting there chatting and having a perfectly good time, and all of a sudden you feel like someone smacked you with a large bat. You ache all over, horribly, and then you go to bed for three days. It's unmistakable.

I would have to call this a mini-flu, though. I am able to minimize that steamrolled sensation by swallowing lots of tylenol and advil simultaneously. And then I'm almost normal again. I had the flu two years ago (and, like this time, I had had the danged flu shots and got it anyway!), and that was perfectly miserable--this is nothing like so bad. So maybe that flu shot did some good after all?

Lately I've been thinking each night on my bike, blazing through North Park: What do I want to eat when I get home. At one point I realized that it's often some version of bread and cheese. Pizza always sounds good, but that's it, and good bread isn't easy to come by at 7pm. Cheese and crackers, yeah. The corner market has enough cheese and cracker choices for me. Wheat Thins and mozzarella are fine or some premium cracker all make me really happy.
It's a nice feeling to know what you want to eat and to eat it. Most of the time I eat what I should, which over time has become a habit of wanting to.
I'll be going to a new doctor for a physical in January. I know she's going to look at my inherited high cholesterol and I'm going to have to say: Yes I eat variations on cheese and bread and damit I'm not going to stop!"

Does anyone else ever have those crawl-under-a-table-and-panic kinds of moments, or am I the only one? I don't have them very often, but they do seem sort of inevitable. Like getting the flu.

What never fails for me is finding yet another book review out there. I think book reviews must be the gods' punishment for being so brash as to even write a book (but I only did it for tenure! I swear it!). I knew when I published my first book that it would be hard for me to take the evaluations; the way I managed to convince myself to do it anyway was by promising myself that I just wouldn't look at the reviews.

But that was before the era of the internet journal. It seems as if every blasted academic journal is now online. Which means all my reviews are, too, and every time someone calls up my name on Google--which they do, because I can see them on my statcounter--up come all the reviews, too. Talk about public humiliation. It doesn't matter if the review is positive, either--its the public scrutiny of something that seems so private that makes me writhe.

I wonder if any other profession has as much public judgment out there? Most people never have to endure the kind of public scrutiny that professors get. Celebrities do, of course. But they sort of ask for it. Professors are hardly celebrities. They're mostly shy sorts who really don't get along very well in social situations. Yet there it all is, all those gossipy comments, all protected in the name of "free speech": the appraisals by students, the judgments from critics, you name it. Every aspect of a professor's person is considered fair game.

I think that's one reason I started blogging...it's kind of like at least having a say in what everyone is already saying about you?

Yesterday our dog was obviously feeling poorly. She was lying very still--unusual for her--with a pained expression. I kept prodding her to make sure she wasn't dying, and was just about to haul her off to the vet when....she threw up. And do you know what she threw up? A screw. A plastic one, but still, a screw.

Geezums--no wonder she felt bad.

But I ask: what animal is stupid enough to swallow a screw whole? And not just a screw, mind you. Also seen in the vomit: a pony tail bobbin, two plastic fake gems from my daughter's collection, and about a quarter-cup of wool from the carpet. All of these things were entirely intact, and not chewed in the least.

We fear that at this rate, this dog may not be destined for a long life.

I don't know if this is dirty laundry material; many people in the business of education don't know much about education. I don't think the field's yet recovered since teaching became woman's work. I'm not a scholar in education; I'm thinking about becoming one although I'm not sure that it'd add to my episodic frustration. On one side of the fence, (I heard on the bus) that SDSU was recently rated one of the top 10? Party schools by Playboy. On the other, we have a institutional research agenda that feels like the chest of an inflatable Incredible Hulk. (Carnegie has recently rearranged it's classifications of universities and stuck a pin in it.) Still another interesting twist is that we're unlike all the other cashes in that we DO have a research agenda. I guess they don't. Oh. They must pay more attention to education then.
I like to succeed in life but I often find myself in these kinds of predicaments, the odd-one out. There's a handful of us concerned about real student learning at SDSU and we're not in the decision making seats. There's a slew of new mega-large lecture halls to fill and I suspect faculty will just have to figure out how to teach in them. Or not.

Hate 'em. Especially when they don't bring cookies. I had one of the latter sort this week: I arrived late, starving because I'd been in meetings all day long, none of which had had cookies, and noticed, once again, that this one, too, had no cookies. Thus this particular meeting sent me into an even deeper torpor usual. I dropped by bag, dumped stuff on the floor, had my cell phone go off in the middle of the thing, etc. It was bad.

But at least I didn't make THIS pointlessly time-lengthening remark: "It's a small part of the total consideration, which is to say it is not all there is to consider, but still, it is a small part of what we must consider."

One of my colleagues gets the credit for that one. Whew.

Last weekend I was hiking in eye-shot of the Hollywood sign. This morning I was introduced to Bollywood in a BBC article about a Bollywood star. The few Indian films I've seen, I've really enjoyed, like Monsoon Wedding. I'll have to keep an ear to the ground on Bollywood.

Most people are out shopping for xmas gifts; I'm out for upgrades. A couple of weeks ago it was all those long handled tools -- broom, mop, rafter duster. The past couple of days it's been stuff like pillow, kitchensink sponge holder and my very favorite--the plastic-bag holder thing.

It has a name but I've forgot it. I applaud the American ingenuity in this thing. I think we produce and waste the most plastic bags the world over; the least someone could do and did, was create something that makes us feel ok about it. My plastic bag of plastic bags shoved between the sink cabinet and wall never really bothered me, but now that I have a somewhat permanent job so I thought I'd live-in a bit. I hope it works. I really hate it when gadgets are all show.

We get a variety of exhortations from the teaching gurus on high: "Professors should be coaches rather than lecturers." "Students need to be taught life-long learning, not a list of facts." "Lectures are an inefficient means of teaching. Students need hands-on learning." And yet at the same time we are told, "Grade inflation is out of control. Start lowering your grades." And "You will now teach classes with 250 students in them." And my favorite: "We fear instructors are not using Powerpoint effectively in the classroom."

Is it just me, or do these demands seem utterly contradictory? How can you be a "coach" when you've got 250 students--and you've got them for only one hour at a time, three days a week? How can you implement "hands-on learning" in a classroom of that size? Even if we are lucky enough to have "regular"-sized classes of only 45 students (my average seminar size), how is it that we're supposed to both give up lectures and at the same time use more Powerpoint?

And most of all, I struggle with the grades. We're supposed to coach and teach students how to learn for themselves. Then we're supposed to grade them--for what, exactly? Don't grades become utterly subjective and meaningless at that point?

Argh.

There's an old saying that you should always be careful whom you abuse on the way up, because you'll see them again on the way down. In general, it's safest to be nice. I learned this to my detriment a couple of years ago when I wrote a negative review about a book in my field. I thought I was as generous as I could be while still being truthful, but sometimes the truth doesn't matter. When my own book eventually came out, this author slammed me as hard as she could in a negative review of her own. Would she have been less vindictive if I had been more generous myself the first time around? It's hard to say....this person has a reputation for being a bit off, and truthfully I've never seen her write a kind review about anyone she sees as a threat. But still, if I'd been nicer myself, I would have to be having these second thoughts about it now.

What got me thinking about this was a dream I had last night about an old acquaintance from graduate school...someone who had, I thought, been rather aloof and patronizing, though I was never sure why. I looked her up this morning to find out what had become of her, and behold! Nothing at all had become of her. She had ended up in a non-tenure track lectureship teaching writing--a field far outside her area, and for most of us who pursue Ph.D.s in literature (a completely different field from Rhetoric), sort of a last resort.

Anyway, after discovering what had happened to this old acquaintance, I had a momentary spasm of guilt....because years ago (at a different institution) I happened to be on the review committee that screened incoming applications for a position in the department, and her application was in the pile. Because I thought she was patronizing, I said nothing when her application came up. I could have spoken for her, but I didn't. I said nothing at all.

And so she didn't make the first cut.

This is not to say she'd have gotten the job; there are multiple levels of screening, and this was only the first level. But it's important who speaks up for you in these things. A helpful word or two makes the difference between having your chance or not.

So now there she is, in a lectureship outside her field. I feel bad for her, actually...is she happy there? Would she have wanted to be in that first institution after all?

Still, she had her chance once, too. She should have been a bit nicer.

It's a sad thing when you find out your own brother bought a new car by reading his blog. Fer cryin' out loud. This just shows how completely out of touch with everyone I've become.

Which is just to say that EVERYONE should have a blog....so that those of us who keep in touch, say, only once a week (and less when there's an emergency, holiday, death, etc.) can still feel like we're part of our loved ones' lives. We can read those old posts and feel like the news is, well, new.

Not that I've been very good about keeping blogs myself of late...because my own life is zipping by at an unfathomable speed. Things that I know happened only a few days ago (at least, I register this when I look at a calendar) seem like they're already a month away. And I'm always a day late and a dollar short at just about everything. Like, say, these exams I fully intended to have graded last week.

I hope none of my students are reading this? Because I've just committed the cardinal rule: never admit to anything. Especially in writing...

Maryanne & Heather in SD

I'm sitting here in my office on the day before Thanksgiving--nominally a teaching day--and this campus is EMPTY. As empty as if someone suddenly decided to call off all classes and forgot to tell me. Most of my colleagues, I know, cancelled their classes; my students, whether their classes were cancelled or not, casually announced to me weeks ago that they'd be gone all week long regardless. My child got the entire week off from school.

So is this something new? This is the first year I've seen anything like this on the SDSU campus. Students have always been present Thanksgiving week. I've always strongly suspected that the reason students stick around is because this is largely a commuter campus, and they're eating in town anyway--but that meant I could count on them to be here.

But perhaps that has all changed?

Anyway, all I can say is that it is creepy here, and I'd rather like to go home.

Before today, I had none. Now I have 3 and they're all different. I'm suppose to keep them to "tighten up" the furniture I assembled with them. I had a successful assembly session; they can be frustrating. Ikea doesn't do it for me really. It's convient and at this point an upgrade from the the hand-me-downs I'd inherited--a wobbly picnic table repurposed as kitchen table and a small bookshelf that I've not turned into a shoe rack and replaced with a tall, slim book shelf.
Life is good.

The new table

I'm not sure what to think of Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel and the government's grand coalition.
Horay that a woman is in the lead? Well, yeah a little. She's from their more right party the Christian Democrats, though. And while I like the idea of a grand coalition I'm not sure it's what the world needs right now. Will it weaken Europe in the global picture? Or does that matter? I'm not cheering for the US, but I've heard more than once and from various sources that it's Asia who's our main opponent. I'm reading The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman, NY Times journalist. It's about globalization; and so far, he's talking more about India than any other country.
Here's an interview with Friedman in the Harvard Review.
When was the last time you talked to someone in a call center about something, like a flight or a credit card bill? S/he may have been sitting in Bangalore, India. Does it matter that call-center jobs have been outsourced and offshored? Well that depends. What kind of jobs are left?
Friedman's book is a light read about a complex theme. It's worth it if you're interested in a simplifed story about the bigger picture.

Who'd have thunk there was a word meaning "having shapely buttocks"? The English language never ceases to amaze me. Now we need only the perfect illustration for the word....one that, optimally, obviates any need for a verbal definition...

Will this one do?

AfterHerSoup.

I'm not superstitious but I pay attention. Critbritlit AND Aminita, 2 of the 3 personal blogs I subscribe to, posted about cats yesterday, November 10th.
Critbritlit's posted about her very own. Amanita always surprises me. This time it's with the Moscow Cats Theatre. She's got 3 tickets for the first and only performance in the US at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center! Is that in NYC? I thought she lived in Virginia?

Phone photo my old friend, Richard

Phone photos sent directly to my blog need some fixin' up. They don't have a title for one. The caption under the photo I did with "inserting text" on the text message I sent. I've added to the library of Quick Notes on my phone. When I'm on the bus, I think of quick notes I might want to use. On this one the quick note is "Phone Photo," then I laboriously typed in the rest.
We stopped some guy on the street to take our photo under an orange street lamp on Adams Ave. We walked from Hillcrest to Normal Heights, where Richard's been staying.

I've know Richard since 1984, we worked at Jimbos together through the 80s, and lived at Madre Grande together in the early 90s. Now he lives in Laurence, Kansas on his big chunk of land near his family. If I were to drive cross-country, (not high on my list) he's 20 minutes of the freeway, he told me.
I have a lot of stories because I've spent a lot of life's best moments with and around Richard. Many of them were at Madre Grande. That year I spent there deserves a few chapters though, not a blog post.
Anyway, I'm glad he comes out here every couple of years so that we can catch up. I only have a couple of guy friends and he's one of them.

Phone photo my old friend, Richard

More cat pee. It turns out I had the wrong culprit. It was the dog all along.

Tabby Cat, slightly senile, incontinent. Must have quiet household. No children or other pets. Prefers to be spoon-fed Iams Gourmet wet catfood, but a pile on nice porcelain will do. Dislikes loud noises, kids, TV, drafts, men, littly mousy things that scooot around on the floor, water, flea drops, bugs, women, heights, dry cat food, outdoors, nighttime, daytime, sunshine, other cats, and brushes.

Pembroke Corgi, happy and bouncy, incontinent. Must have noisy household. Prefers households with children and lots of other pets. Prefers to be spoon-fed Iams Gourmet wet catfood, but won't insist. Likes loud noises, kids, TV, drafts, men, little mousy things that scoot around on the floor, bugs, women , heights, dry cat food, outdoors, nighttime, daytime, sunshine, other cats and dogs, brushes, shoes, sofas, chairs, toys, pencils, erasers, scotch tape, chewing gum, halloween candy, cat poop, and anything else you happen to leave on the floor.

Here's a pattern recognition game set game
I've been having some fun with. I've become more of a game person over the last year or two because I've been reading about the brain and getting old. And I've been noticing it. My senior moments of forgetfulness.
Set game has a daily game on which you can time yourself. It looks easy but it isn't. And apparently some games are easier than others. I notice my right brain working when I play it. It's the same sense I have when I do music or art. I have no words; there is no language, no logic or analytical process. I feel like I don't "think." After I had read the rules of the game, they disappeared, as if they got in the way of playing.
This morning even before I had my coffee, I finished in 5 minutes. The other morning, I gave up after finding 5 of 6 sets 15 minutes later.
Anyway, I do notice my brain working. When it's alert and not. When I can use vocabulary words from the GRE exams and when I can't clearly express a simple thought. But those are left brain activities. The right brain activities are something else, harder to pin down and evaluate. I also notice how many of life's daily tasks are no-brainers. I suppose that's why I get bored with them. When I was living in another language, and learning it, those tasks were wildly challenging and I'm still comparing that experience to this one. Sometimes I watch myself doing a task. I step out of just doing it to observe the doing, the body movements, the procedure, the sounds. It's a game I play, a mindfulness game.

The cat has just been banished into the back room of the house, having become terribly incontinent and adverse to using her litter box in her old age. We've been dealing with this about a year to no avail; now that I've just paid umpteen billion bucks to have the carpet cleaned and patched where she'd soaked it down to the floorboards, I'm feeling reluctant to do it all over again.

So now she's sitting at the glass door, glowering in at me with her half-lidded eyes, and obviously pissed that she's over there and we're in here.

I can tell what she's thinking:

"Just wait until they let me back in there. I'm going to pee all over their new rug. That will teach them not to treat me like this."

I love what I can do with my camera phone and text messaging. I probably use those features more than the telephone. I started a photo series "A Heart Poses," that's 1 of 7 above and Zee's joined in, below. How fun!

In the meantime at work, we got our funding and I got a new computer, a 15" Powerbook, personally configured. My favorite thing about it is the silver illuminated keyboard. oooooo......makes ya wanna sit in the dark and type.
And I'm trying out Entourage, a Microsoft Office tool that manages projects. I don't know if it comes with Office for PCs. I'm trying it out because that's part of my job, just like with the video Ipod we got. I experiment and stay up on things. I guinea pig myself too, because I think I go through similar feelings as my peer group, who grew up with typewriters and wall mounted phones that dialed. Moving to word processors and pushbutton "princess" phones wasn't challenging.

So in the rush of all my work, I'm slowing down a bit to work in using Entourage. I used to get anxious during this process. My discomfort was in my spending more time with the how of what I was doing than I think I thought I should or wanted to. I also like to sit under trees and do nothing or sit in the dark and blog. The should and want to though are fueled by my desire to help other people deal with the very same issues.

In the late 70s, my mother was working as a administrative assistant; she recently told me that when "the computers" started coming on to the scene she split. She didn't want to go there. For the last 5 years, we've had more contact than ever because of email. And she's become the keeper of the computer room key and the computer teacher at her seniors' apartment complex. She's told me that being able to email grandchildren is what most old old folks wanna do. I'm sure that they then sit there, arthritic hands and all and do it. And I'll bet they think it's keen.

that bands of pirates could stop global warming. Here are 2.
And I saw at least 1o more.

Current Reading: The Princess and the Goblins.

I was just recently reflecting on the curse of certain names. Pretty much all the Susans I know, for example, are bossy alcoholics. I'm sure there are a few perfectly normal, non-alcoholic Susans out there, but I haven't met them. The name seems to bear a certain burden that can be overcome only by the strongest of wills.

Lisa is another such name: I have yet to meet a Lisa who is not completely, dysfunctionally neurotic in some fundamental way. It's too bad, because I really love the name....but such a cost. My husband and I rejected the name Lisa for our daughter, in fact, because we agreed that all Lisas are mental. At least the ones we've met. No point in imposing that particular burden on our kid.

The same character branding seems to go on for Jeffs. All the Jeff's I've met have been big blustery types. This does not include Geoffs, of course, which are a different breed altogether. Just Jeffs. Frequently Jeffs have profound masculine issues, which they compensate for by talking loudly and taking offense easily. However, Jeffs can be okay once you get past the bluff...they may be nice, insecure folk on the inside.

Unlike Lisas and Susans, who only get worse the better you know them.

Then read why they do.

What do you do with all those baby teeth your kid sheds? There seems to be some expectation on the part of small children that their parents will keep those little baby teeth and cherish them as a relic of their lost childhood. I know I certainly expected that of my parents...though, come to think of it, I haven't seen those teeth since. Maybe they threw them away when I wasn't looking.

Of course, you have to do the thing where your child puts the fresh tooth under the pillow for the Tooth Fairy to spirit away. You have to do that. Those teeth are worth money to kids. Which is why, last time my daughter lost a tooth, she very excitedly held it out to show me, so that I could put it in a very safe place until the Tooth Fairy could get it.

But as she was handing it to me, I dropped it. And the dog, who is always lurking about waiting for something edible to drop out of the sky, promptly ate it.

Oops.

We got a new video Ipod today. Brock talked Cathie and me into it. I was and am skeptical of it for teaching and learning. But his point was well taken, we need to stay ahead of the curve, experimenting with technologies, even when many around us are far behind. I don't like gadgets for gadgets' sake, but put in another context--experimental--then it makes sense and I'm there. So I had some time at the end of the day to download some videos onto it. The screen has amazing resolution. I watched a Democracy Now broadcast, something I don't have access to on regular TV. Then I watched an above average amateur news broadcast and the reasons why I had hesitated and hesitate around gadgets for their sake was on my screen. It's very easy to produce mediocre to bad stuff. Television, movie production, newscasting, writing are skill sets that you can't just pick up. We're all very used to high production value when we turn on a screen, the bar is high, and that's without little special effects.
I'll show Cathie and Brock. The non-example. Otherwise I'm very interested in what kinds of productions far best on the format. The Chinese or maybe it's the Koreans are way ahead of us, they produce soap operas explicitly for cell phone broadcast. Well sex and the city is on. I might pay $1.99 to view it in the bus, once maybe twice. Maybe. I would though watch stuff I can't get on tv, that's for sure.

I had a heavy weekend, The Constant Gardener on Friday and a play, A Piece of My Heart, on Sunday. It was about women who were in Vietnam and it was shown in the Veteran's Museum. I'd recommend the Constant Gardener, great cinematography and acting. The play was just ok for me. I couldn't empathize with the characters and I felt a bit uncomfortable about. It's the war culture here, particularly here in SD. Zee once wore a pair of Paul Frank (designer I think he is) camouflage pants here, I asked her not to. Why are the artifacts of war considered fashion? During intermission I walked around and looked at all the museum stuff, uniforms, metals, photos. I saw an M16, a weapon mentioned in the play. I'd never seen one before. Only heard about them; weapons like sports vocabularies are common vernacular in the States.
I was at Qualcomm Stadium on Saturday night for a work related event. The SDSU Aztecs football team played, we were high up, in the President's box, and felt special. A colleague had never been to an American football game before. I don' t think I had either, although I know the rules of the game. It's quite spectacular, the enormity of the stadium, the lights, the action on the field and beside it. Many people come regularly to these kinds of happenings, I thought. It's pretty normal, like going to malls for entertainment. It's the stuff of our Disneyland culture. Until someone shows up with an M16 or the damage from one.
Most of the people at the play didn't look like the same people who go to peace rallies. I'm guessing there were a lot of vets there. The play was sponsored in part by Vets for Peace. I think it was for them; the play spoke to them.
I have hope, radical patience, just because the evidence is so grim.
When health insurance is not a Safeguard.

Hi Everyone,
Given the limited amount of time that we have left to pick a document and develop a proposal and the limited amount of time some of us have to review documents due to our work/other schedules, I think it is important that when we send each other potential documents that we indicate how we feel the document can be changed or improved. Some of these documents are rather large and if you have taken the time to look at the document and see potential problems, please share them with us so that we can zero in on those problems and either agree/disagree.

With that, I'll give you some feedback on the Disaster Preparation Handbook that I had suggested. Let me just preface this by saying that the handbook is designed for regular, everyday individuals to help them prepare themselves and their families for emergencies/disasters. Here are some issues:
Kathy mentioned on Monday that she was having some difficulty with some of the terms in the document. Maybe this is a problem with the document that we could address since it is designed for people like us who need information on how to prepare ourselves of emergencies and disasters.
There seem to be some ambiguities regarding using/not using the phone during non-911 emergencies; it also does not give clear instructions on what to do if you are in a situation where you need help or direction, but it is not necessarily a 911 situation.
I would suggest including a checklist in the document of the types of items you may want to have packed in a disaster kit and ready to go if you need to leave in a hurry.
I was wondering why a section on securing computers was included in the section for individuals with visual disabilities.
I also wonder whether the sections on advocacy are appropriate in this type of a manual (p. 4 and 5)
There are several issues regarding preparing for terrorism; I'm a little apprehensive about the wording "the government.....would most likely instruct people to either seek shelter where they are and....". Does that mean that sometimes they may not inform me?
In several places I don't feel like the document gives clear instructions; for example, the document mentions that in the event of a biological attack some medical facilities may not want to receive you for fear of contaminating the hospital population. There is not indication of what you should do in the event this does happen to you.
They have Spanish translations of some checklists within the document. I would suggest including other translations depending upon what region the document is being used in and the types of populations that live in the region.
I question the appropriateness of a lot of the questions that are listed on the Bomb Threat Checklist (eg, the address and name of the person calling in the bomb threat).
There are several other things I've noted and this was just from reviewing the first 11-12 pages. Anyway, I guess I'm putting in my vote for this document, but I definitely want to see what the rest of you come up with. And don't worry, if you decide not to go with the Disaster Preparation manual, I won't be hurt. I just want to pick something quick so that we can move on to getting our proposal ready. Talk to you all later.



-Tania

Apple has just released an amazing-looking new product for its iLife collection: Comic Life. Check out what you can do with this thing! Of course, I can see absolutely no practical reason for making these little strips, but that isn't going to stop me from wanting one. Hmmmmm.......

Haha....I'm feeling quite clever this morning, having managed to disable my profile page while still retaining my favorite picture of the Bard on that top right corner.

The problem: the stats collection feature on the profile section does not update on my blog, thus showing an embarrassing small number of viewers that does not correspond to the stats given to me by Statcounter. And I think I'm going to trust Statcounter on this one, not Blogger--especially since I tested out the Blogger feature on several different computers and servers and ascertained that, indeed, their stats don't work on my page. Annoying.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that this feature does not work properly, it cannot be removed from the profiles page. Also annoying. I'm not sure that my stats are anyone's business, anyway...that's why I keep my Statcounter numbers private, after all. Shouldn't this feature also be an option on Blogger?

I'd like to ask for professional advice on this, but the "ask for help" feature on Blogger also doesn't seem to be working. My query will not submit. Period. I wonder if the Blogger folks know about this one, too?

Currently Reading: Aeneid Book VI

....Which happens to be where Aeneas visits the Underworld. Told by the Sibyll that the door to Dis is always open--anyone can go there, whenever they want!--Aeneas finds that the problem, as always, is getting back out again.

Sometimes Dis visits us, though. Repeatedly. My grandmother passed away in January...but I've had several messages from her since then. Some more literal than others.

The spookiest was her voice, which kept mysteriously popping up on our answering machine even a month after she'd died. We'd hit the "new messages" button, and there was my grandmother, her voice recorded in some sort of background conversation with my father.

It was the creepiest thing ever--the kind of moment where all the little hairs on your head rise straight up.

But this moment, as all moments, had its explanation. We'd all participated in the sad task of going through Grandma's stuff after she died; little things, like recipe boxes, TV sets, and sewing machines, all had to find their new homes. We took home Grandma's phone. And we'd plugged it into a back bedroom somewhere and forgot about it, little suspecting that this wasn't just ANY phone.

This phone had a fancy recorder and message machine attached to it, and somewhere along the line, Grandma had recorded her own conversation with my dad as they tried to figure out how to make the thing work. That conversation somehow remained on the machine. And every time our answering machine picked up, hers would as well; but ours would override hers, and what would happen is that that strange conversation would get recorded onto our messages. So we heard it again, and again, and again.

We figured it out, obviously. And then I had the second oddly sad decision to make: do you erase the voice of your deceased loved one? Even she IS haunting your message machine ever day?

my '05 jack-o-lantern
courtesy of the cell-phone camera.

It's cold and wet, and I've got a couple of sniffles. I feel like turning the oven on for these biscuits by Critbritlit. I went to North Park Produce yesterday, the place for things you don't find elsewhere in SD. I buy my coffee there, usually a Mediterranean roast, for $3.49 lb. I thought I'd try Ethiopian and Brazilian roasts too. The Ethiopian is milder than I had expected, but full. I'll have to try the darker roast next time; I think I got the medium.
I won't live without bread and coffee. Ok, and cheese.


North Park Produce

3551 El Cajon Blvd

92104

619.516.3336

I was suffering through a dispiriting day today when I realized that things would be much improved if I had some biscuits. So I made some.

I consider myself something of a biscuit afficionado, having probably tried every biscuit, scone, and roll recipe that has been created since the year 1600. But here is my favorite:

2 C flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 C shortening
1 C whole milk, or, better yet, half and half

Preheat oven to 425 and make sure it's HOT before you even think about sticking the biscuits into bake. Meanwhile, mix the first four ingredients together, then cut in the shortening (I use a food processor for this). Add the milk/cream, but don't overmix. Turn the biscuit dough onto a floured surface and fold over a couple of times to make layers. Pat into a nice 1 inch thick square, then cut into 8 pieces. Transfer onto a baking sheet, with sides of biscuits still touching each other, and bake 13-15 minutes.

Eat hot out of the oven, with butter and honey.

For a long time I believed that biscuits could not possibly taste good unless you made them either with butter or buttermilk. But they just don't get as high or fluffy that way--go figure.

I do hear lard makes nice biscuits, however. One day I may be able to bring myself to try that.

I went to a Center for Teaching & Learning event; Paul Loeb spoke on students and civic engagement. About 20 people attended. I was glad to hear that SDSU has a wonderful track-record (as compared with our cousin up the coast) of community-based programs. And I'm always energized when I meet faculty and staff who are engaged, formally and informally in social issues. One attendee, I believe from the Criminal Justice Department, (at SDSU) talked about a week long outing to a prison he took his students on. They were always transformed by it. Many came out with completely different attitudes and new questions about "thugs" and our justice system.
I wish more classes were like that. I wish more students were outraged and acting that out. But they aren't. He suggested and I might agree that they are moved; they just don't know what to do about it. He names it "the perfect standard." The media and our hero culture promulgates it. If ya can't do it like Rosa Parks and Cindy Sheehan you might as well stay home.
Paul is clearly an activist; he's an organizer, and he understands what keeps people from acting. He's also clearly American; he drew all his stories and examples from the United States. To my disappointment, he didn't broach the "personal is political." He didn't suggest the activism in what my friend Mel calls "voting with your dollar" or what Odile calls being "one grain of sand in the cog of the machinery." I didn't want to chime in, but I do think it's a place to start--living is a political act.

Sex and the City reruns entertain me. Tonight Carey, Samantha and Amanda are in LA. I like their characature of smoke-free superficiality, fun and frolic and "happy people."
Cars are to LA what pocketbooks are to NYC."
Carey gets a Brazilian wax and Amanda meets up with an old New Yorker friend, who's been transformed into a "happy person."
I suppose everywhere can be made fun of.
LA is one of a kind, and it entertains me too.

Yesterday as I walked to class I saw one of the university's illustrious students being led away in handcuffs by a burly officer-type. The student was protesting, "But sir, I have an exam in my next class!"

The officer said, "Well, you're gonna miss it."

It wasn't one of my students, fortunately....at least, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Some of them look kinda alike to me. But still, it's just another of those little reminders that when you have 120-plus students per semester, some of them are going to be, well, a little off.

As faculty we periodically get little memos from the counseling people (always a useless lot) on how to handle nutty students. There are a variety of set phrases you're supposed to use, of course. But basically it all amounts to the same thing: Run. Quietly, imperceptibly if you can, so that the student doesn't fully grasp the fact that you're running.

But run. And tell everyone else to run, too.

I haven't personally had any dangerous students that I know of. There was, of course, the born-again Christian guy who missed class one day, misunderstood whatever he had been told the lecture had been, and came to yell at me at length about what he hadn't heard the next day. I thought he was a little nutty (as I casually called security). But mostly when I meet nutty students they're just so far out in their invented worlds that I have little concern that anything will ever be actuated here on the planet.

My favorite was the woman who missed a midterm exam. It was a smallish class, so I noticed her absence. I figured she'd dropped the class, and sure enough, I didn't see her for several weeks after that.

But then she showed up again, and waited around after class to pick up her "exam."

"But you didn't take the exam," I said.

She swore she had. She told me an elaborate story about what she did before and after the exam: the lost sleep, the worrying about it afterwards to her colleagues at the job, what she told them, what they were wearing when she told them, etc.

It was a very elaborate story.

So elaborate, in fact, that I became rather concerned and decided to let her make up the exam rather than have to dwell in her fantasy any longer.

So she took the exam after all, long after the original date, failed it anyway, and of course it all ended up where it should have all along.

But you see?

Sometimes these people can be quite odd.

Monday, 10/3:

Group Formed

June volunteered to send list of names, emails, phones and to set up Wiki space.
June's comments: We did not ask Steve what criteria he used for forming our little group, but I'm thinking it's the health/education angle. It appears extra returns are not translated into lines with only returns - if spacing is really desired put a period on a line alone - or use different formats.

Thursday, 10/6 (deadline):

Use this space to put your ideas for the group and for which docs to use for the project.

I get an rss feed to the Daily Om, a thought provoking, calming read 5 days a week. Today it was about taking a media fast.
I just re-entered the world of cell phone ownership. Again as before, I just have a prepaid plan. My phone however has
camera and
video features
and wallpapers
and hi-fi ringers
and text messaging
and picture messaging
and games
and internet
and office tools
and an alarm clock
and a speaker phone
and a headset
and world gms.
I like the camera and world gms features. And last night, while playing around with it, I downloaded a 70s funk song for the ringer. It's fun, the new toy.
I like the added convenience when I'm underway. But like 7-11s, rice cookers and valet parking, there's always a price.
Claudia and I were talking last night about choices--things and services that are supposed to make our lives more comfortable and thus a happier. We both attend to choices in similiar ways. I chose the Motorola V330 because of the camera and gms features. It weighed however 1oz more than another model without those features. In exchange for the total 4.3oz of incredible gadgetry, I was able to ditch the watch and spare change for phone calls that hang out in my bag.

We just got back from a brief two days in the Sierras...first in Yosemite, then in Mammoth and June Lake. The colors were just turning on the eastern side of the mountains--a bit early for the season, so there must have been some cooler, unseasonable pockets there this year. Anyway, it was gorgeous...and on the eastern side, at least, there was absolutely no one there. It was like having your own personal mountain landscape.

a site worth a peak now and then. i subscribe to it and found out i've been dooped by a legend making its rounds too. this one i hadn't heard. it's odd. and hard to believe it's believed. but i've never seen much marzipan art, so i may the one out of the loop.

On Being 40

I've just turned forty. And you know what? You really do feel different. You feel liberated.

I just talked to a friend today who told me he went into a deep depression when he turned forty. Why? I asked. When you're forty, those old standards of measure don't matter anymore. You realize you've got time....lots of time. Time to do whatever you want, and to be whatever you want.

At 38, I went on my first serious trip alone. Not exactly alone--I went with a good friend from high school. What I mean is that I went without my parents or my husband.

I love all three, of course, and I cherish our close relationships. I love being able to run over to my parents' house on a moment’s notice to drop of a piece of pie, or pick up a magazine article my mom thought would interest me, or even to show my dad my new budget chart.

But there's always some cost to that kind of closeness. There's responsibility, for one thing: the responsibility of making sure people who care about you know where you are and that you're safe. And more--I let my parents' opinions, if not my husband's (!) --affect everything I do. Thus, even nearing middle age, I let their worries about me keep me from driving across a couple of states to help a friend move to Montana. This is a parent’s worry that is legitimate, say, for an eighteen year old. But for their 40 year old daughter? Really.

Forty is a good number. I thought I would feel grown up at 30, but I didn’t. Thirty didn't make a whit of difference to other people, I thought. At 40, though, you don't care whether other people recognize your maturity or not. You've got as much right to your place in the world as anyone. It is well time you asserted your right. It is well past time. It is time to do your own thing; time to feel financially responsible (a physical fact in existence, upon the time of my 40th birthday, for eighteen years, but in psychological terms only for two!). It is time to raise your kids the way you think they ought to be raised. It is time to give yourself some time, if that is what you want. It is time to stop feeling guilty, stop feeling competitive, stop feeling like you NEED to compete, because heck, you're forty, and competition is other people's problem.

Forty is great. I think I'm going to really like forty.

Because you know what? Thirty sucked.

I was thinking about William Bennett's Book of Virtues today--well, scoffing at it, really--and it occurred to me that the world might really benefit from a Book of Vices. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't already been written. You know, a book full of all the wonderfully decrepit things that literature can teach us about. Why should literature always be morally uplifting? Who said that was supposed to be the point? Sometimes the imagine can be just as titillated by imagining the unimaginable.

So what would go in my Book of Vices, were I to edit such a thing?

The Marquis de Sade, of course, would be an obvious choice. So obvious, in fact, that I hereby banish him and all his works from my collection.

So: instead I start with Chaucer--The Canterbury Tales--and all the CT's wonderful bawdy introspections on married life, mortal sin, adultery, lying, making money, getting drunk, and the rest of it. The Canterbury Tales can really show you how to live it up.

And from there we go to Rabelais, of course--the writer Bakhtin pointed to as the embodiment of Carnival. The body--its noises, smells, sores, and orifices--all delightfully expounded and personified for some seven hundred pages. Wonderful.

And then how about Ben Franklin, the old lech? He knew a thing or two about life. This is the guy who told you to pick an old mistress over a young one, because they're "so grateful." And according to Bill Bryson, he knew what he was talking about. He'd belonged to a couple of rather sordid--but very elite--sex clubs on the Continent. Now there's a guy who definitely belongs in my book.

For poets we've got lots of choices: Andrew Marvell, with his yearning desire to win over his mistress before worms have the honor instead; Ben Jonson--hey, I forgot to mention his plays, too!-- and Robert Herrick....all those carpe diem guys, in fact; we'll just include them here en masse. Then there's Christina Rossetti, with her erotic "Goblin's Market," and Robert Browning, with "Porphyria," "My Last Duchess," and a score of sociopathic others.

And we haven't even reached the twentieth century yet. There's still the scandalous Picture of Dorian Gray; James' Turn of the Screw; anything by Poe, and all those nineteenth century gothic horror novels: Dracula, Uncle Silas, the works of Wilkie Collins...Yeah, yeah: the virtuous usually win out. But that's hardly the point of these books. The point is the gruesome, gothy seductiveness of it all. White-clad heroines are boring. We revel in their strangulations--let's face it.

Yep, this is a book I bet people would read.

There is something almost lascivious about reading the newspaper in the morning, when you're still undressed, with a pungent cup of slightly-too-thick coffee and an unbrushed mop of curls on top. By "reading the newspaper" I don’t mean reading the front page, of course, with its in-your-face portrayal of wars, famines, and all the other griefs of the modern world. I mean the inside pages--the arts section, with its tempting display of coming movies--I’m sure each will be terrible, but when it’s all in the future tense, how magical they seem?--the book reviews, with their descriptions of lands you’ve never seen and probably never will, its histories, its explorers who took more risks than I can myself risk even considering.

That’s the kind of seduction I mean...and it is lascivious--full of escape, so lacking in responsibility, such temptation to abandon all one’s current choices and flee for the upper (what’s the area called in Canada--where the land is always frozen? The Tundra?)

Early morning reading should never be deep. It should always involve some form of escape and fantasy--something that gives you ideas for how to spend your day.

When I wake up in the morning I am always full of hope. Already as I think about these things my husband is ruining my reverie. My husband is hopelessly practical. I type frantically, trying to capture this moment of almost-epiphany; my husband enters, telling me I need to buy more nightgowns for my daughter. These desultory realities, these ho-hum responsibilities, it occurs to me, are the death of the spirit.

Augustine was the first to write about “the death of the spirit.� Except that, of course, he meant it in entirely a different way. But what if we expand the idea of metaphors, of living figuratively instead of literally, to a different kind of meaning?

My husband lives in the literal. He does not read novels; I haven’t known him to read a single novel in the eleven years I’ve known him. I tried to get him to read the Canterbury Tales once; it didn’t work. I would never have thought I could love a man who did not read. It is a most strange union, though it works in many ways. B. is the realist; I am the idealist--although I mean this only in the imagination. In temperamental terms I am the realist; he is the idealist. But in practical terms his free time is spent inspecting the house, fixing the sprinklers, making sure the garden, which I admire, is always beautiful. He is the one who makes sure we have heating, that the air we breath is unladen with pollutants and dust mites, that our back patio is always clean, that the pump on the pond that gives me so much pleasure actually is able to pump its tiny waterfall.

I appreciate the aesthetic effect of everything he accomplishes for me. The world needs realists, people who can fix things and make them beautiful. These are the people who put beauty into place. But it also needs aesthetes--people who appreciate the beauty once it is in place. That may be what my husband and I give to each other: creation plus appreciative audience. In a way, he is the poet; I am the reader.

Obviously the best world would be to be able to inhabit both planes, but I expect this may be out of reach for all but the Thomas Jeffersons of the world, the geniuses, the jacks-of-all-trades. Such geniuses stand out because they can see it all.

And those of us who are lacking in one area or another, must, I suppose, marry the needed complement.

Which leads me back to Augustine and his giving up of both worlds altogether. Except that now it's too late in the evening to start thinking about why Augustine gave up humanity for Christianity. I still have to prepare my notes for tomorrow's class on the Iliad and Achilles' overwhelming rage and grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. I shall save Augustine for another post....unless, of course, I write about Achilles instead.

I've been wearing a found-on-campus, inexpensive pair of sunglasses for the last 2 years. When I first moved back to SD, I got myself a decent, (then-$30ish-must-have-been -on-sale) pair only to lose them within a couple of months. Annoying. I suppose I've been practicing not losing sunglasses with the found-on-campus pair I haven't lost.
Climat considerations: In Bielefeld, where it rained incessantly, you always needed an umbrella. The wind would rage and turn it inside out, you'd leave somewhere; cheap umbrellas around $10 were fine. At one point though I thought I'd ask about high-end umbrellas. I appreciate quality and umbrellas are like sunglasses. Come to find out that while the workmanship and materials were superior, the turn-it-inside-out problem couldn't be avoided. It might not break after 3 windstorms; that's about it. And then there was that leave it somewhere thing. I couldn't justify the upgrade.

So like my sunscreen online research, I went snooping for the real truth about sunglasses and UV protection. In short, there's only voluntary standards practice. I'm interpreting that to mean, you can't trust the labelling. Today I went to the closest mall, Horton Plaza to do some sunglasses shopping. Reality check. A decent pair of glasses by a company you can "count on" start at $80. I had hoped for around $30, you know that losing-them thing. I went for it anyway. Unlike with the high-end umbrella, I can justify the upgrade--the sun does damage your eyes over time.
Which saint helps you not lose things? Or is it the one that helps you find them?

Yesterday, I stopped by Kensington video which has the best selection of foreign films in SD. I watched 4 of 5 last night and tonight. I miss having regular access to diverse foreign films in a cinema. And I still want to experience Istanbul.
Fear and Trembling
the price of milk
im juli or In july
Intervista

that I had to add a step to your commenting process. The comments that look unrelated to the post are really commenting spam. I'm hoping the extra step will help get rid of it.

On PBS (Public Broadcasting System) the past 3 nights there's been some great documentaries about Bob Dylan, political movements and the music that reflected and shaped them. I never knew that Billie Holiday's (songwriter Lewis Allan -- pseudonym) Strange Fruit was about a lynching and that her record company refused to let her record it. Read More

One of my students--the brilliant Jetta--suggested today that Harry Potter is himself the final horcrux. Just think, she said: Voldemort empowered Harry accidentally, just after killing his father, who was intended as the final death securing the last horcrux. But Harry's mother got in the way, and the mysterious blasting/mixing of identities occurred....

Could it be Harry, then? Harry himself?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4275818.stm

Sam the cooking guy and Sam's wife make these great little instructional videos on cooking. I spent a good portion of my working life cooking for a job and for that reason I don't cook too often anymore. Although I might now, 'cause he's given me ideas that seem to fit into a busy life and ones too that start with some good basic ingredients, or designs that can accomodate them.
At the same time the landscape of all things food is annoyingly overdeveloped with cheap standarized goods that try to pretend otherwise and "tasty" foods that seduce more than nourish or satisfy. The slow food movement tries to counter the trend but I think collectively it's too late. I often see educated people drinking 20 oz diet cokes throughout the day; the healthfood industry's prepared food sector booms. I often make my lunch for work, and it occured to me the other day that I eat with plastic utensils, (I reuse) everyday. I brought a real fork and spoon in.
I like to cook because it's creative and that entertains me, like blogging or painting, or gardening or . . . fill in the blank. I like it too because it nurtures, like sex or sleeping or bathing or...fill in blank. Both of those likes though feel like they've lived their lives and I've moved on. I suppose I'd feel differently if food/diet/exercise weren't the national obsession it is.
My cooking days were spent in the forerunner industry to the WholeFoods take-out culture. There are 50 ways to prepare your tofu.

I'm beginning to wonder whether perhaps I'm doing Nature a disservice by feeding her goldfinches. Some of the regulars at the feeder have become rather tubby. I'm looking at one now who can't even dangle upside down anymore to peck his food, because he's gotten all oblong and wobbly. Poor fellow. He tried it just now and fell right off. And when he stands on his little perch his tummy hangs over his feet. I don't think goldfinch tummies are supposed to do that.

One of my favorite new food shows is Sam the Cooking Guy, a San Diego local who makes up very fast recipes from the auspices of his own home. His wife does the camera work, and his dog sits on the floor in the background, but this homely environment is souped up with cute camera shots and a jazzy background. Nevermind that Sam has one of those "jazz band" strips on his chin that I so loathe. It's still very entertaining.

This week he made something that looked just so incredibly good that I'm going to make one of those marathon trips to Costco just to get the cheap goods to do it: crab wontons. It's a mixture of only four COMMON! AT HOME INGREDIENTS! that people like me never have in their cupboards (canned crabmeat? Come on. Cream cheese? Right) that you can mix in just seconds and then pile into wonton wrappers to bake in the oven.

Forget that I never have wonton wrappers, either, or that it will take a second special trip to a gourmet store to get them because Costco is hardly likely to carry such a thing. Forget also that these are all highly expensive ingredients, even if there are only four of them. Look at the picture. And maybe you should see the video, too, where he takes a bite and his eyes roll into the back of his head because he's just never tasted anything so good.

....Though a tiny cynical part of me wonders if half the success of a cooking show is pretending to have conniptions over your own out-of-this-world creations?

I used to love MacIntosh apples. Just the right crispness, sweet/sour, juiciness, nothing beat 'em. But now I can't count the variety of apples you can buy and I kind of lost touch with MacIntosh apples. They didn't shine anymore in my BookofApples. Braeburns, Pink Ladies, Fujis....and those are just the varieties sold in the States. In fact, the few times I've bought them in the last years they were dissappointing. Till today. I saw some organic Macs and took a chance. And WOW!
Apples are a staple of mine. I'm kind of at a fruitLoss during the summer. I'm very content eating an apple everyday, but not any apple. Like anything, once you've sampled the cream of the crop, you can't go back. Apples off one tree of a group of less than five, organic apples, apples from an apple region....
Zee and I were talking about food and eating. I said I didn't know a woman who doesn't have "issues" around food and eating. I forgot that I do have a friend who doesn't. It's apple season. Did anyone else notice?

I forget how much I love words and language, particularly the little puzzles of ideas I try to "get" in a foreign language. I wish I had a passion to learn Spanish. A practical incentive, like work, would do too. Odile finally posted something on the German election. I had read some German articles in the Frankfurter Rundschau, but my language skills are receding so I "got" more of the happenings from the Financial Times.

Odile wrote about Bremen: "Fast 30% Grüne. Das nennt man wohl Stammwähler. Ich kenne mich aus mit Stammwählern. In Baden-Württemberg, wo ich herkomme, kann man Wahlscheine für mehrere Wahlperioden im Voraus erstehen, mit vorgedrucktem Kreuz bei der CDU. Das ist sehr praktisch."

It's very funny. I'll try to translate.

Context: Most Germans vote for a party, not a personality. (That's been changing however, particularly since Schroeder's, the current Chancellor, campaigning strategies in the 90s.) And regions are politically affliated with and known to support certain parties. For example the southern regions (Federal States), Bavaria, and Baden Wuerttemburg, are conservative -- CDU Christian-Democratic Union party. The north is generally left -- Social Democrats/Green.
People in the south are known to be extremely tidy and orderly, frugal yet wealthy. They'll tell you if you're breaking a law or more, like crossing against a red walk-sign or doing your laundry on Sunday.

Odile wrote about Bremen (in the north): Almost 30% voted for the Green Party . That's what we call staunch supports. I'm familiar with staunch supporters. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, where I come from, you can get pre-printed ballots with a vote for the CDU
several elections in advance. It's very practical.

During my last year living in Seattle, some enormous Meeting of Nations event took place. I can't remember what it was now--maybe the first of the World Trade Organization meetings or sommething. The lucky SOBs staffing the ritzy downtown hotels were reporting $100 tips from the Sultan of Brunei just for holding the door open for him. I wanted to go downtown and hold open doors. A hundred bucks was a heck of a lot of money to me. Maybe if I did up my hair and put on a strategic outfit he'd take me on as permanent staff. I could certainly think of worse ways to make money.

So anyway, as I mulled over this, while doing my early morning walk around Greenlake park, a huge entourage of black limousines with darkened windows began circling the lake. There were probably seven of them. It was very early morning, maybe 7 am. I figured it was some foreign dignitary taking a little trip around the city, and, having little interest in these things at the time, I went home and then off to my classes.

But it wasn't just any foreign dignitary. It turned out, as I saw on the news that night, that what I'd seen was President Clinton. And he wasn't just passing through--he was getting set to do his morning jog around Greenlake. If I'd hung around for maybe another ten minutes, I'd have seen him trot by in his jogging shorts, surrounded by seven cars' full worth of secret service agents.

My friend L. was sorely aggrieved when she found out she'd missed it. She would have been there waiting for him to pass, she said, and then she would have asked him for a kiss.

A kiss? Weird, I thought. Why would anyone want to kiss Bill Clinton?

But I did not doubt that this was exactly what she would have done. This was the girl, after all, who once licked the sweat off Bruce Springsteen's leg at a concert. I thought that was pretty gross, too, but maybe I'm just a prude.

Anyway, she was a very attractive girl. If she'd had her chance that morning, it could have been her instead of Monica Lewinsky.

Just think. She could have changed history.

A while back my brother and I dropped by a fast food place. The restaurant was not busy, so the guy behind the cashier was occupying himself, it appeared, by licking the screen of his computer.

"Are you licking that screen?" I asked him, once his head had popped up over the counter.

"Well, no," he said, a little sheepishly. "I was trying to see if I could press the buttons with my nose."

Well, why not? Heck, the same question has often occured to me. What else is there to be thinking about in a stultifyingly boring profession, especially after you've already run through the ordinary gamut of thoughts? My heart warmed to the fellow. He was an odd fellow--like me.

Anyway, it does make one rather wonder what other odd things people are up to when they think no one's looking. We've all seen the one-way mirror trick on TV, where some hapless person peers into what he or she thinks is a mirror to check their teeth, adjust their underpants, or look up their own noses. Ha! ha! isn't it all so hilarious....yet that stuff is mundane compared to pressing buttons with your nose.

I remember now all sorts of difficult-to-explain fixes my friends used to get into way back when we were in high school. Like the guy who stuffed a bean up his nose to gross out a friend, but then it got stuck....he ended up trying to inhale it back the other way, until finally it came out his mouth.

Yep, his friend was definitely grossed out by that one.

Or the time my friend H. was changing her gym clothes inside one of the stalls of the girls' bathroom because she was too embarrassed to change out in the open, and accidentally dropped her underwear into the toilet. She didn't know how to get them back out again, so she decided to try to flush them down, which of course jammed the toilet, flooding the whole bathroom....though by the time anyone figured out the cause of that event, she was long gone.

Then there was the particularly odd story of one of my classmates when I was an undergrad--not a friend, exactly, more of a friend of a friend. She appeared to class one day wearing an eye patch. She claimed she had had a brain tumor, and that she had had to undergo some horrific surgical procedure wherein the doctors removed her eyeball in order to get through her skull to remove the malignancy. We were all horrified, of course, and she received much attention and sympathy....until it came out that no such procedure existed. Nor had she ever had the tumor. She had been wearing an eye-patch around....just because.

So--people are weird. Much weirder than we can ever suspect on the surface. What other secret things do seemingly normal people do that they'd be absolutely mortified to have anyone discover? You know they're doing them. You just wonder what it is they're up to.

Zee and I used her new digital camera to take letter photos for Spell with flickr, my blog's title is spelled with flickr. It reloads new letters everytime. Cool huh? And easy to do.
After I uploaded the letters, I looked behind the scenes of some of those letters to see just how they were tagged. Tags are the one word descriptors you give your photos so that you and everybody else can find them. I found letters and P, J, etc. as tags. I mailed Eric the creator of Flickr and he suggested the tag oneletter. So I added that too. Now each reload of my blog is exciting... waiting... till finally recognize one of our photos....:))).

This is a picture of the insect found crawling through my classroom this morning as my students and I were nobly discussing Chaucer. I was oblivious to it until I heard a muffled gurgling sound, which I mistook to be someone's cell phone going off. But it wasn't a cell phone; it was a stifled scream, and it was quickly followed by a mass scuttling away from the offending critter, which swerved and made a beeline right for me.

It was an American Cockroach. I didn't even know we had an American Cockroach until today. I thought we had just ordinary cockroaches, like everyone else. But we do: and for a cockroach, it's not all that bad. This one was quite large--maybe an inch and a half long--and it had elegant curvy antennae, like a moth.

Always cool in the face of a crisis, I opined, while backing up against the wall, that it should be removed to another classroom (preferably one in use). But instead a heroic student seized the cockroach by the antenna and flung it out the window, where it could do no further harm.

I may have to give her extra credit points.

At least American Cockroaches don't scream. There is one breed of cockroach that does, you know. My parents had the misfortune of finding one in their house. They said it was huge and black and slimy-looking, and when they tried to corner it, it let out a horrid, angry screeching noise at them, as if it were cursing them.

They were still talking about it two months later.

As far as I can tell, only one species of cockroach screams: the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. (Though for the record, my mother insists this was not a hiss, but a screech.) I have no idea what it was doing in my parents' California bedroom.


And now for something completely different:

A Ghost Update

Landlord Sues Restaurateurs Over Ghosts

So you see, I'm not just making this stuff all up. But exactly what are these guys really seeing out there?

That's what I want to know.

So you see, I'm not making it up:

Landlord Sues Restaurateurs Over Ghosts

But seriously, just what are these guys seeing out there?!!

get the military in there to get the job done. Fema's Chief has stepped down, and been replaced by Admiral Fill-in-the-name. No disrepect to him, I'm sure he deserves all his stripes and bars and I'm certain he knows how to get things done.

Read more.

Gee, we just can't seem to function without the military or some military-like entity.
What was that Eisenhower said in 1961 about the military-industrial complex?

I'm fortunate; I don't have to work for the Department of Defense, which is not bad employer if you don't have a conscience.
Is developing software for nuclear warheads, or instructional manuals for them a sin?
I don't care, I'm not christian, but lot's 'o people round these parts are...
When was the last time a bomb didn't kill a human being? Who's counting. Combat fatigues are fashion and military vehicles are chic. And didn't Jesus say something about killing?
Well anyway...I'm getting into a mood, a not very compassionate one. So I'll stop and go off to my job.

Unicef has been sending me unsolicited fund-raising mailings for more than a year now. It doesn't work. I'm annoyed by it and everytime they tell me they're not going to mail me again, they do. I just wrote back, using their licked-stamped envelope, and asked them to take me out of the database. A friend told me that Save the Children sold her name to other organizations and she's upset about it.
I had a phone date with a woman, (who I ended up never meeting), who lived in LA, was a playwrite, drama teacher, etc...who talked with me via her head-set, and described her life as relentless. Not attractive, even if it's the truth.
That word has been hanging with me these past couple of days. I'm not particularly busy, so it's not MyPersonalWorld. It's MyBiggerWorld.
It's Katrina. It Roberts on the Supreme court. It's job insecurity and it's impact on living . It's healthcare and its impact on living.
I recently got excited for about 5 minutes about Apple's new Nano. I haven't bought a new toy in a long time. But working as a "temp," paying for my high-deductible health insurance, which hangs $5,00o a year on my shoulders, I'm not inclined to splurge right now. I have some routine check-ups to attend to, and who knows how much they'll cost, or what they might find that costs more. I'm not complaining. I'm priveledged in many ways--like being in the category of persons (no previous conditions) who is allowed to and can afford such health insurance. For American standards, that's somethin' to be damn proud of.
I'm reminding myself, publicly, that it's relentless here and that I'm not attracted to it and I resent it. I'm going back to my 500 piece puzzle of Christmas stamps now.

I've just made the horrifying--and completely unenlightening--discovery that a dried pig's ear--you know the kind you give to dogs as chew toys?--will revivify into a REAL ear if buried in the moist ground for, say, a month.

I discovered this to my complete disgust this morning. The dog skipped in to the living room, happily bearing what looked to me like a giant clod of earth.

"No," I said. "No earth in here!"

But it was not earth. It was decaying flesh. Plumped up, pink, moist flesh, complete with rehydrated, gooey veins.

I had to touch this putrifyingly fleshy thing in order to remove it from the house. And now I keep washing my hands, Lady Macbeth style, because I can't remove the stain.

Last week I spent with family and food.



Aunt Bert turned 90, so we had a clambake.
Maine lobsters and little neck clams.




9 months, 45 years, 90 years

Classes start again in two days. As I write this I have a house full of small children running around inthe background--most of them not mine--and they've created chaos already, though they've only been here half an hour. Beads are strewn all over the floor; clothing is scattered from my daughter's room, out across the hall, and into the backyard; cushions are missing from the sofa because they've been turned into princess accommodations; and a strange, urine-like smell is permeating the air. I think it's the littlest one's lyotard. It felt kind of wet when I picked her up a moment ago.

But that's okay, because all of this, I am sure, will have disappeared in an hour...not because these small tykes ever clean up, but because I do, and because I'm not teaching.

Yet. I have two days until I teach again. And then, I fear, my little home cosmos and the family that lives in it will fall into complete disarray.

So how can you be supermom and a professor, too?

I'm not sure you can.

It's amazing how much time can be swallowed up by a family with a small child and pets. This summer has been quite nice, and our home has been a pleasant place to enter as long as it has lasted. During the summer I can vacuum every day, wipe the sticky fingerprints off the table and shelves, put away the My Little Pony toys and the books, and still have dinner on the table by 6:30. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there's food in the house--because I can shop for groceries, too.

But classes start in two days....did I mention that? And once that starts, how will I clean up? When will I cook? Who will make sure there is food in the refrigerator and in the pantry?

How can you do two jobs when you've only got one day to do them?

Finally. After a month of waiting. And YES, that's a goldfinch: look carefully to the right! It's hanging upside down.

Well, I've been scouring the internet looking for suitable web collaboration programs that don't cost an arm and a leg. Most of these puppies seem to be designed for deep-pockets industries, not for cheap souls like myself. I like the .mac program the best so far, I think: not only does it have a public folder you can share, with drag-and-drop capability, but it has lots of other neat little syncing features as well. With the full subscription you can theoretically take pretty much all your most-used home features with you anywhere: your address book and contacts, your bookmarks, and of course all your in-progress files and folders.

BUT....there's not much you can do with the technologically lagging! My collaboration partner's university uses Windows NT, and .mac doesn't have a download for that. ARGH.

Who uses Windows NT anymore, anyway?!!

There's a 67% chance that I do.
Take the quiz which also gives you informative feedback about each question -- just 6 of them, thanks to the ACLU.

It's easier than even to stay up on what's going on at the national, legislative level and be involved.
I just subscribed the the ACLU's RSS feeds on latest stories and Action Alerts.
Action Alerts makes it simple to email my Representatives on issues important to me.

This is a screenshot from Zelda: Twilight Princess, due out this Christmas. I CAN'T WAIT. After all, didn't I play Zelda: The Windwaker two or three times straight through? And the new graphic design is so incredibly lush and grown-up. I loved the design of the first game, too, but it was definitely more kid-oriented, as you can see in that second picture below. Still, great stuff and totally addicting. You basically get to be a boy-hero running his own animated feature. Point him at a tree and he'll climb it. Leap into the ocean and he'll swim. Bring out your sword and start hacking: you'll wreak ecological havoc in moments. Plus you get to save the world. What more could you ask for in 90 hours of playing time?

LastNite at the La Jolla Playhouse, Julia and I saw, I am My Own Wife about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. It's set in Berlin, as is a novel I was just given -- Absolute Friends by John le Carre. A couple of weeks ago I was saying to someone, "I don't read novels." And now I am, and I'm enjoying it, particularly because I can NotBike-Bus and don't get so irritated waiting for the bus. It's light to carry and I don't even need my glasses to read it.
I'm also enjoying brushing up against the culture, language and people of Germany in it. That's why I was given the book actually. Last night's play brought be back there too. Germany and my life there is becoming further away as my life here roots.
HealthcareUSA--This morning I spent scanning sun-protection information and products. Living in SD they're necessary. I have an appointment in late September for a full-body screening with a dermatologist, who I'll also be asking for advice. I'm hoping, but not expecting she'll add to my find.
I still notice the time I spend doing this "research." I don't resent it as much anymore. I think that's because for now, I feel like it pays-off. I'm not victimized nor enslavened by the system or our market economy; they seems to work to my advantage. For now. Managing the existential anxiety of knowing that could change overnight is something else.

At the Nagasaki vigil on Tues, Lynn, a long time activist, told Claudia and I, she was going to Crawford, Texas to support Cindy Shehaan. Till then, I hadn't been up on what was going on there.
Googled:
Cindy Shehaan = 312,000 hits.
BBC article.

It's interesting how one person's pain publicized, can rouse this country. It's really amazing how it works here, how people get active and why. I can't ignore the media event, book/movie-deal in the making side of it. That's not to say I don't empathize with Cindy's pain. I do.

I took the bus, (no bike in tow) this morning. It was garbage pickup day and all the bins were in the streets. Up and across our street was an old, frail man crouched over crushing aluminum cans with a large stone he'd got from the canyon. I was carrying my new messenger bag I'd bought the night before. I was happy; it felt good. I'd been looking for some months now, and found a sleek design that fit my needs and my environment.
I know that the $60 I spent on it carries different meanings for the people I know, some of whom will spend that much on an inexpensive haircut, others who never spend that much on non-essentials, and many inbetween. I wasn't thinking about that when I saw that man, though. Nor was I thinking about the billionaires edition of Forbes I'd leafted through on the train the week before, or Rob Reich's talk, I'd posted last week. I just didn't think he deserved to be smashing cans just to get some food.
I stood on my steps as I pulled out a ten dollar bill from a single and a twenty. I folded it so he wouldn't see it. I didn't want him to feel grateful to me; I didn't want to embarass him. It's such a weird thing, being present with that kind of suffering. It's incredibly uncomfortable, actually.
Anyway, we smiled quietly at each other; he softly said something in another language and I got on to my bus stop. Along the way I saw 3 other people going through the garbage bins, dragging trash bags around filled with cans. I'd never seen that before in our neighborhood.

Yesterday on the trolley, on the way to mall, 2 older African American ladies were sitting behind me, chatting about the new trolley, where it stopped and didn't, what it passed by, and how beautiful the view was. At the Qualcomm Stadium stop they noticed another lady they'd seen earlier on the trolley.
"She must be just ridin' around like us, seeing the sights."
They talked about the bargain it was to ride the trolley, $1 for seniors and how long their ticket was valid for; they were content.

Like a new hair-do. Refreshing.

Last night I went to a candlelight vigil to remember the bombing of Nagasaki, 60 years ago.
"The Japanese city of Nagasaki has marked the 60th anniversary of its destruction by a US atomic bomb at the end of World War II." BBC read more
We were gathered in front of the Midway, an aircraft carrier museum. I got 44,700 hits on a google search of the USS Midway. Just a reminder, I suppose, of the glorification and fascination of something that has been designed to destroy.
The US dropped the first and only atomic bombs then. The other day on the local news I heard an interviewee say "we are a peace loving nation." One of the speakers last night, a veteran for peace, told about the military designing bombs now that have 40-70 times the strength of those then.
Another, a Buddhist talked about the being both victim and perpetrator, as a member of the human family. Indeed, as an American, I find it difficult to live with the shame of being so often the perpetrator.
But I'm rejuvenated by events like these. They tell the truth, in public, and in meaninful ways.

WORK IN PROGRESS.

I was just conversing with a friend this morning about all the various perturbing imponderables in the latest Harry Potter. Things that don't make rational sense according to the logic of the book itself. Like, why didn't Harry and Dumbledore just apparate onto the island to get the horcrux, instead of paddling through dangerous waters filled with the undead? Why, when Dumbledore lost his wand at the hands of Draco, did he not shout "Accio wand!" to recover it, as Harry himself had so many times in the past? How could the locket have disappeared from the center of the island at the hands of one "R. A. B.", when two people are so clearly required to retrieve it? Why can't Ginny Weasley go with Harry on his quest for the other horcruxes, when Ron and Hermione are allowed to? Harry cares about them too, obviously, so that "I care about you" argument doesn't really hold water in Ginny's case.

There are other small logic lapses too, obviously. The biggest one for me is still how Harry is supposed to defeat the Dark Lord when he's such a sucky student and barely passing his courses. Look where Snape and Voldemort were when THEY were his age--they were inventing their own spells by then, fer cryin' out loud, and in Voldemort's case, already plotting to take over the world. Harry is very, very average, except for that much-touted sense of courage and righteousness. It just doesn't make sense.

I'm hoping Rowling is aware of all these consistencies and has answers for them. Hmmm.

In world of social software, I've taken on social bookmarking, primarily to have my bookmarks wherever I go. Or in another couple of instances to create a compendium of bookmarks for a group, such as pICT. I've been using del.icio.us, for my personal use. An extra click on the Javascript bookmarklet, and that page is up in cyberspace, not in Firefox. The complaints everyone has with both the

Rediscovering America. Owl figurines peering out from rooftops. Are they solely decorative, or do they have another function? I was in a less polished part of town and saw a rooftop-bulldog- figurine in an action-figure stance that made it look real. hmmm.....

Microsoft's new OS Vista

Letters from Salon readers Is Wal-Mart the symptom or the disease? And are Target, KMart and Costco of the same kind? I've been looking for things to upgrade my material world -- towels, a trash can, sheets, clothing, etc. I don't have a DVD player/video recorder and my computer is old. Since the trolley from SDSU goes by 3 major shopping malls within 20 minutes, I have choices. Wal-Mart isn't

A moving talk by Robert Reich-- How Unequal Can America Get Before We Snap Professor of Social and Economic policy at Brandeis University and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, talks about inequality of income, wealth and opportunity in America, which is wider now than it's been since the 1920s. (April 5, 2005. Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley)

"The decision by Harvard to grant a 3 percent raise to its controversial president, Lawrence H. Summers, was the final straw that led to the resignation of the only African-American member of the university's governing board, according to a resignation letter released yesterday by the university." NYTimesRead more "President George W Bush bypasses the Senate to confirm John Bolton as US envoy to

I've been avidly reading the posts speculating on Snape's actions at the end of the Half Blood Prince. Snape (and surprisingly, Draco Malfoy!) has certainly turned out to be the most interesting of the characters in the Harry Potter lineup. Here are two of my favorite essays thus far: Corporate Mofo's snipey rendition of the overall series, and Tracie Rubeck's "Snape is Evil." I especially like the Rubeck article for its poignant explication of the logic behind the morality and values of the books:

Dumbledore mentions that to commit murder is to destroy one's own soul. We have ample evidence within canon that this is a basic, if not the basic, understanding of the difference between which choices are "good" and which are "evil." Those who are evil disregard this cost. For example, another testament of Harry's ability to love is that he is as frightened by the prospect of committing murder as he is by the prospect of his own death.

Rubeck's logic and fine literary analysis are impeccable. Even so, I'm not sure I agree with her ultimate conclusion--that Snape must be evil, because murder, according to Rowling, splits the soul irrevocably. I sincerely hope that I'm wrong, and that Rowling does finally insist that there are no exceptions to the murder rule, but somehow I think that Corporate Mofo's ace-in-the-cap is probably the better predictor of what will happen in the next book:

In every previous Harry Potter book, there’s been an elaborate plot, and things were never the way Harry and his friends thought they were: Snape wasn’t trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone; Hagrid didn’t open the Chamber of Secrets; Sirius Black wasn’t evil; Mad-Eye Moony didn't rape sheep, etc. The attentive reader always found out that Rowling had dropped clues throughout the book that only made sense in retrospect—Herminone’s cat trying to get Scabbers the Rat, for instance. Yet, in Half-Blood Prince, the nefarious plot was EXACTLY what it seemed. Instead of the plot being revealed in the course of one book (it was getting pretty repetitive...), Rowling threw us a for a loop by stretching it to two books.

Or was it? Dumbledore knew of Malfoy’s plan, and therefore Snape’s oath to help him—after all, he (inexplicably to us at least), completely trusted Snape. Dumbledore, doubtlessly, had something up his sleeve—something that involved his own death as part of the plan. His pleading on the roof was not asking Snape not to kill him, but rather to not break his Unbreakable Vow and follow through with the plan; why else would he paralyze Harry in order to keep him from interfering? He knew what was going to happen.

Okay! So here, for what it's worth, is my own assessment of Snape's inner demons, as well as my prediction of what will happen in the final book:

Yes, Snape is self-motivated, consumed with old resentments, and ultimately driven by his extreme envy to destroy those who outshine him in any way. This would include destroying even Dumbledore, the single man who trusted Snape despite all the evidence against him. And why DOES Dumbledore trust Snape? I think Dumbledore realized that the only way Snape might be saved from himself would be for someone to love, trust, and believe in him. Dumbledore is, of course, the only wizard to make this huge leap of faith, but he does it, knowing the risks, because that belief in the inner goodness of all people is the only thing that can prevail against Voldemort. And so Dumbledore dies.

However, it is precisely this trust and belief that will finally transform Snape in Book Seven, stretching even beyond Dumbledore's grave to effect Snape's redemption. I believe that Snape's actions at the end of the Half Blood Prince were indeed motivated by his own overwhelmingly dark preoccupations. But I predict that Snape will, at the very end of the series, do an about-face. Inosofar as Snape is the only one powerful enough to counter Voldemort, he simply has to be involved in Voldemort's vanquishing. It can't be Harry alone (Harry, let's face it, just basically dropped out of high school. Where's he going to get the know-how?). In order to sustain the murder-is-bad theme, it should really be Snape who finally does in Voldemort, but of course plot demands will probably mean that Harry is the one who gets to do it. (I hope he doesn't...it would be so much more satisfying to have our expectations foiled there.) Either way, though, Snape is inextricably involved.

I like my work because it's intellectually stimulating. I get to think, and more importantly be creative. I also schlep and pick up after people during events. I've been involved with events, in some capacity, for my entire life. On stage, behind stage, roasting chicken, blowing whistles, schlepping, guarding, selling, informing. And most everyone I know has done the same. Is that usual? On Sex

My knees bug me. I bike or walk everyday, and I've been pushing my knees into interesting angles at odd hours of the day and night with Zee. It's not that I'm so worried about my knees. I'm 45. Is that old or young, in knee-life? Many people I've known live with some kind of chronic pain, usually back pain. And when I've thought about it, I don't really know what they mean or experience. So I've

Meditation in the usual sense is not really my thing. I fall asleep, so I must be doing something wrong. Being in the here and now and being attentive to that works better for me. Of course when I'm doing something that's cognitively demanding, I can't. But there are plenty of things I do during which I can focus my attention on certain aspects of the doing. Most repetitive tasks, for example,

As I was waiting to get on the bus today, a man in a manually-operated wheel was getting off. He was a veteran. I know that because he had something on his chair or mutilated leg saying that. There are a lot of veterans in San Diego. They've been mamed and disabled, with or without having ever been in combat. I know 2 women, who never carried weapons and still have permanent disabilities from

loves his daughter. StevenSadie, July 17, 2005.

you be the judge.

I know I've ranted about food here and here in he States--the portions, the junk, the wants to be healthy, but is still really junk. I'm amazed, but might be biding my time, that I haven't gained weight. Weight that puts you in another size clothing. It must be my biking, because I've given up trying to find normal portioned food. I'm happy to go out to eat with someone who also thinks the same

I'm going to start paying attention but I'm fairly certain that every train gets waved at by someone along the stretch between Solana Beach and Santa Ana. Loud-speaker-ing like Bill Murray Just after departure, Anthony, the concessions stand guy announced, ittn melodic-list-form, every item he sells. Is he bored? Just after Oceanside, in a melodic-patriotic-narrative, he not only welcomed

The new Green Line trolley connects Santee with 3 malls, Qualcomm Stadium, oh yeah and SDSU, where I started from. It seems that MTS's long range strategy is to use light rail systems to bring folks into the inner city from the corners of the county, relieving commuter traffic, I suppose. A minstral construction worker told me this on my 2nd trip through Mission Valley towards MallLand. He's

Well, just as I'd convinced myself I'd found a reasonable educational use for blogging, the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education came out. Lots has been posted on this already, but suffice to say that the anonymous author warned potential job candidates about doing any blogging at all. And the problem is not just the potential for rants --which are an obvious no-no to a professional--but even the explorations of personal interest, the elaboration of research, and the like. All, he argued, reveal too much about a potential job candidate, and result in an almost inevitable disqualification from the pool.

Of course there was an immediate outcry from educational bloggers who believe absolutely in the effectiveness of the blog for encouraging student writing and critical thinking.

But the outcry is all beside the point, which is not that the author is wrong, wrong, wrong about the value of blogging, but rather that he (she?) may have been telling the truth about the nature of job searches. Though the author seriously misdirects the source of the blame (which, frankly, should not be on the bloggers but the reviewers), there is much to be said for acknowledging outright that reviewers are judgmental and may react very badly to discovering that their candidates have interests and viewpoints that inevitably differ from their own. This is the nasty truth of--probably--all academic job searches. Academics aren't looking for people who can do the job capably and well. They're looking either for allies, or for people who will fade into the background and never be heard from again.

Let's be honest.

In fact, I think this article is very valuable to us all--both potential job-seekers AND to reviewers. Job-seekers should know that their best prospects for hiring probably lie in neutralizing their personalities altogether. Go for the granny outfit, the de rigeur spectacles, the grim half-smile, the anemic body, the occasional self-deprecating-yet-assured witticism. This is what departments are looking for. Clothing should be plain and dark.

Reviewers should know, on the other hand, that anyone who appears for an interview modeling this ideal is faking it. And they should not be surprised when the hiree turns out to be radically different from that first impression.

After finishing Greenblatt's fantastic _Will in the World_, I found myself somewhat dismayed by the concluding judgment on Shakespeare's final days. Greenblatt writes,

"Even if we strip away the machinations over the enclosures, the probable sense of disappointment in his younger daughter, the disgrace of Thomas Quiney, the sour anger toward his wife; even if we imagine his Stratford life as a sweet idyll--the great poet watching the peaches ripen on the espaliered trees or playing with his granddaughter--it is difficult to escape a sense of constriction and loss. The magician abjures his astonishing, visionary gift; retires to his provincial domain; and submits himself to the crushing, glacial weight of the everyday."

Such disapproval at the everyday? Such judgment that Shakespeare should retire to the country a wealthy man, not because he was forced to, but apparently because that was his choice? Greenblatt has children, I know, so I can't understand his insistence on the boredom of family, in being near people we love, in sharing dinners, holidays, or simple everyday conversations with those we feel close to. That last chapter seems to reject the idea of happiness without work, comfort in leisure, and satisfaction with a life well-governed.

Yet who is not to say that after a lifetime of what must have seemed grinding, ongoing work, in a dirty city riddled with jeopardy and where a simple night in a tavern might end in anger and death, Shakespeare simply chose to listen to the lessons that come out so clearly in the plays--to take pleasure in family, to love life, and to strive for harmony in the everyday?

So this summer's course on Shakespeare is winding down, and I find myself looking back on it as one of the best classes I've had in years. My students are always great, but what a difference it makes to have a smaller sized class (30 students), where I actually know everyone's name and even a little bit about them, and where we can have such full and satisfying discussions in which everyone participates. I have not had the opportunity to do this kind of teaching in years. Budget cuts in recent years have necessitated larger classes; now I can expect 50 students in an upper division lit class at a minimum. And the GE courses are, of course, much worse--normally I don't even get the opportunity to learn my students' names.

This class, though, was marvelous. We could do more focused individual projects, share each others work, and invest in a few more creative enterprises, like the digitalized poetry project in which students applied music, image, and layout to their favorite Shakespeare sonnet. The results were incredible--I wish we could share them even beyond our class.

Already I am regretting that I may not get to have another class like this one in a good, long while. Fall will bring us back to the budget cuts and back to the large classes. But how nice to have had this experience again? It reminds me why I love teaching, and why I got into this business in the first place.

Existing side by side in my life one day in LA was me sleeping in a very large house and me witnessing other human beings sleeping on the street outside that house. On another day in my life, I witnessed me driving a Mercedes in the morning and me taking an SD bus that afternoon. I think I need these kinds of experiences, and witnessing them, to feel sane and connected to the bigger

yesterday morning i read about the blasts on bbc; that afternoon, i went to flickr's tags page, to see if there were cameraphone images. last night i watched about an hour of bbc via c-span reporting on the londonbombing. i haven't yet perused any blogs about the happening. i could though, rather easily via tim lauer's july 8th post, which i have easy access to because i subscribe to his blog

I'm finding better RSS sites all the time: my favorites now include the Telegraph, for its witty book reviews and opinions, that aforementioned "New Urban Legends" feed, and something called "Educational Technology Headlines," which appears to be a blog, but a fairly up-to-date and informative one. I found out about concept mapping there, which is not particularly new, apparently, but which was still new to me. As a new acquisitor of Inspiration, I'm happy to find additional ways to deploy my new software. (If only my students had it, too!)

Meanwhile, my wiki page has become enormously popular with my students. I created a special wiki just for the Shakespeare students (it started as an all-purpose wiki, but rapidly got too big for its britches), where they can add little reports for extra-credit points. I keep having to gently chide them on what kind of work counts for a point (plagiarism doesn't count, for example; neither does a cut-and-paste), but they seem anxious to try the page out and fascinated by what they can do with it.

I decided to go with Seedwiki rather than PB Wiki, as Seedwiki has a really nice editing interface that makes uploading pictures and links just so easy. PB Wiki has that password option, but seemed so primitive by comparison--anything more sophisticated than plain text requires special code. Plus, I want visitors--any visitors--to be edit that page. Seedwiki has recently announced that it has implemented a variety of strategies for combatting the spambots, and so far I haven't had any problems. I keep a backup copy of my three main pages on my hard drive just in case, and I update them regularly. But so far, so good.

A film studies professor I was working with last week, commented that some of his undergraduate students have asked, "Why is this film in black and white?" Last night I was chatting with a 50ish software developer who suggested that CDs, (well really recorded music in generally) has effectively created generation(s) of listeners, who don't have the ability (I believe he means attention span) to

I downloaded NetNewsWire--the 30-day trial version--and now just can't stop browsing RSS feeds. I like NetNewsWire much better than Bloglines, for whatever reason (just an easier interface, I guess), though Bloglines has the advantage of always being out there, no matter what computer I'm using.

I am unfortunately finding my paltry collection of some 374 as-yet-unread headlines inadequate for my browsing purposes, and have taken to staying up late nights previewing through my "bookshelf" for more interesting feeds to add. There are many sites now doing RSS, yes, but not nearly so many as I would like. I've had to make do with some really goony sites like "AskMen" and "E-Online" instead (though I want to be quick to announce that I have yet to actually click on one of their articles.) A good many of my favorite browsing spots seem to be lagging behind the times. I want automatically generated crossword puzzles, movie and book reviews, Amazon sales....too much to ask?



Meanwhile, here's a dolmen, much like the Poulnabroune Dolmen I saw last year outside of Galway. I'm posting this one here as a visual reminder that I'm not in Ireland right now, nor am I likely to be any time soon. However, I did at least notice that you can resize these little goodies by grabbing their corners. Nifty. We'll just see if the formatting works when it's all published...

And it DOESN'T. Okay, why bother including the option if it's not going to WORK?



At my desk, I'm waiting for a tech person to call me back about a conceptualization problem: a database design. Caspio is the product, one of the "we'll do all the programming and serving, all you have to do is have the ideas" product. What's missing from the online documentation is some incredibly important conceptualization information; the stuff that you really need to understand about what

Hey everyone...here is some fun new technology for you. Give this blog a try by posting a reply...

- Michelle

Who's sleeping with whom? And who do those kids belong to?

Here's another try, this time linking blogger to another site on the web. You have to use a little html encoding for this, and the instructions are not particularly straightforward, but once you figure out what they're asking for it's not hard.

Note to self: paste in html command for an image----then hit "preview" to make sure the picture appears like you want it.

Just trying out a picture upload here. And it's a typewriter because I like letter shots--ever since being told how to construct entire names out of shots from flickr.

"Faculty Write" is the title of this blog. I chose this title to assert a truth--and to exhort college and university faculty to action. Faculty need to write. They need to write for tenure and promotion, of course. More important, however, they need to write to learn, grow, clarify, consolidate, explore, extend, and ...

I'll use this blog to share information about writing for professional journals and other venues that might be encountered along the path to tenure and promotion. Research, of course, will be one of the sources for information. Hard won wisdom from successful faculty writers will be another source, most likely a more authentic one.

Although this is part of my job, it is also my passion. Writing, to me, is very hard. It is also very rewarding. Until I write, I don't understand. When I write, I begin to understand.

How much do you write? How often? Do you write something every day? week? month? semester? Are you a binge writer who waits till spring break or winter break or summer? Or do you try to get some writing "exercise" every day?

Jay Parini recently published a provocative article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The Considerable Satisfaction of 2 Pages a Day". He recommends writing every day rather than waiting for that large span of time that may or may not appear sometime in the future.

What do you think?

One of my favorite news sites, Inside Higher Education, has a story today on the tenure process and the relative contributions of the traditional trinity: teaching, research and writing, and service. Here's the advice of one newly tenured associate professor of chemistry: "I have two words for you: grants and papers.� Here's the article: "Telling Postdocs about Tenure".

I'm using Bloglines now to aggregate Blobs, newspapers, email newsletters I get. Read why and how. The idea is managing information overload. It works. To a degree. I'll post more after I've been doing it for a while, but as an example instead of BBC World being my homepage, my Bloglines is. I can read scan headlines from several if not hundreds of newspapers on one page. I can see who's posted to the blogs I'm watching, presently only 3, and those email newsletters and listserves go there, not to my mailbox.
Pretty cool, huh?
Anyway, since I have more time now that everything aggegrated, I subscribed to an Urban legends reference site. From there I got here.-- a true? legend about a farmer who carved a USA-shaped maze in his cornfield in Lawrenceburg, TN.
"Another popular agritourism scheme ... is the conversion of corn fields into large, elaborate mazes , which hapless tourists fork over dollars for the privilege of wandering through for hours on end (also known as "solving" the maze)."

I wonder what it be like to live, eat, work and study here at SDSU? I like working here because there's just about everything you need to "get the job done." Not quickly, and in some instances rather inconveniently but all in all it works rather well. My work is relatively behind the scenes. I don't work directly with students and on as as-needs- basis with faculty. I work more with other

It is interesting to me how much more I enjoy planning than actually doing the tasks for which I have planned. I am currently working on a plan for getting some research papers revised and out to journals. The plan is very detailed... I just wish the plan could take the place of the hard work that actually needs to be done.

I am also planning my vacation (a good example of where the task really is as much fun as the planning part). Reading about places I want to visit and things I want to see is amazingly therapuetic. I think that maybe I should always be in the process of planning some sort of adventure. I think for the first leg we are going to stay here. For the second leg, this looks like the place to be. If you have any information to the contrary, let me know. Clearly I like to travel on the cheap...it leave more money for chocolate, you see. And money for other adventures, too!

Father's day is coming so do not forget all the dads that you know. It is usually kind of a tough day for me since my father died a while back. It gets easier, but i could sure do without all of the misty Hallmark ads. Good reason not to watch television in June. Monk will be back on in July, so I'll be sure to tune in then!

And now I must work on the work for which I have made the plans as well as the work that is so daily that it never actually makes any sort of list.

hi ho, hi ho....

Did i spell that correctly? "christian?" I guess so.



and the new girlfriend


And in Europe the Dutch and French have said "non" & "nee" to the constitution.
"The 'No' votes of two founding members of the European Union could effectively kill the constitution, analysts say."
BBC World
Read more

ProCon.org looks interesting. --non-profit/non partisan.

"Our purpose is educational. We do not express opinions on the foundation's research projects, but believe:

Most people care about their community, their state and their country, have common sense and good judgment and can better exercise their judgment if the large volume of data and rhetoric on an issue is reduced to a fairly crafted pro/con presentation.

We therefore research issues that we feel are complicated and important and work to present them in a balanced, comprehensive and straight forward pro/con format.

I'm going to use it to debate/discuss/delve into the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the new Jewish girlfriend. Her idea--both sides of the issue--I'm the one with the "Stop US Aid to Israel" sticker on my bike basket.

Well, this has been an adventure. The biggest challenge was finding a URL address that wasn't taken. I finally created one using three components: pkvmonkeys5. Amazing. According to the speaker, there are 4 - 7 million bloggers out there, suggesting the population includes lots of monkeys. Maybe it is the seven year old population. The speaker indicated blogging is really catching on with this age group.

Blogging is an on-line jounal that can be updated daily. It is both personal and reflective in nature completed by a single author, similar to Chapman blackboards. Unlike a diary, the information structure is viewed in reverse chronological order. Blogs contain an index and at least one external link per entry. The speaker recommended blogging for faculty and K-12 teachers. An English instructor requires blogging by all of her English students. Her next class will be taught in a computer lab. To create a blog, all one needs is a browser and an e-mail address.

Blogging differs from Wikis in several fashions. Unlike blogging, Wikis have many authors and the structure is determined by content, enabling comments to be shared globally. Most information is objective in nature, so for you want-to-be editors, this is your niche. Wikis use both internal and external links.

We viewed a simulation Wiki written by a student as an assignment for a technology class. The topic was Bringing Peach to India and Pakistan.

I spoke at the School of Communication commencemnet ceremony this year. If you squint real hard you can kind of make me out there in the middle.

While some donkeys are out having adventures, others are very busy taking a nap. Which would be a nice change of pace, really...

There was just some great information presented by Alan Levine about Flickr (an online photo storage / sharing site) and about RSS (a way to subscribe to updates on certain websites). I think I am really sold on this Flickr site! It's amazing. I'm going to have to upload lots of my skimboarding photos onto Flickr. That would be great for the skimboarders to see!

Hey, this is my first blog! I created it in a computer lab at SDSU during the morning session of the pICT (People, Information, Communication, and Technology) Fellowship. [Hey, why are they not capitalising the first letter of the word people? People are important, right? RIGHT? Well, I may have to ask Qualcomm about that. Qualcomm is funding this program, and they are into Information, Communication, and Technology--but they have to be into PEOPLE, too, right?]

Too much information? No, I wouldn't actually say that the pICT program has turned into an Information Overload for me. However, it has motivated and enouraged me to care more about the technological tools that are available "out there" for educators like me to use.

Honestly, I'm wondering which bits and pieces I can use in class and which I can use in my own personal life. I feel greedy, though. I WANT IT ALL FOR MYSELF! I do feel my life has changed a little bit because of the pICT program: I haven't watched TV or even rented a DVD movie since the start because I have rushed home every night to check out the amazing sites that were mentioned during the sessions. I'm a TV watcher extraordinaire, and for me to miss some truly good (bad) late night TV like "The Anna Nicole Smith Show" is quite a rarity.

But I digress. Okay, so. Back to--umm--teaching, yeah. I have no doubt that the learning experience of my students in CCS111A (Oral Communication) can be enhanced by the infusion of technology . A famous poll revealing Americans' top fears indicated that DEATH ranked number 5 while SPEAKING IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE raanked as their top feared situation. Can you see why teaching this class makes me feel like the Evil Master of Torture sometimes?

I am definitely going to be changing the way I video-record student presentations in class. I'm going to switch from VHS recordings to digital video. This might seem like a small, insignificant move; however, the part of the class I am looking forward to changing (or enhancing, or improving) is the comment-and-evaluation portion. Students don't seem to be willing to be forthright when they are sitting directly in front of the person they are evaluating. My hope is that putting a bit of time and a bit of physical distance between them and the speech presenters will allow students to think more clearly about the comments they wish to share with the speakers. If students are afraid that their in-class comments may come across as mean or harsh, viewing a web-posted video-stream and composing an evaluation document outside of the classroom just might give them the time they need to be more confident in their word choice and expression. The quality of the evaluative comments should lead to better speech delieveries--or at the very least, better PLANNING for subsequent speeches.

I went to bed so late last night because I was visiting all of the great sites recommended to us in yesterday's pICT sessions. Flickr is amazing! It seems to work in all kinds of different ways that can be very helpful for people who want to view photos there.

I'm now considering having a classroom presentation from students in which they use Flickr instead of PowerPoint! This would prevent them from using textual cues (or complete sentences) in their slides--causing them to read words to the audience rather than providing information about what is up on the screen. This should give them the idea that I do NOT want them reading while they are giving an in-class presentation.

Oh, and that www.newseum.org is a fantastic site for students who want to find out what the front page issues are on over 400 newspapers around the world! Great recommendation.

It's already May 31st. I thought I'd better post a new blog entry now.

I'm serving as a host / tour guide for Laurence, who is stopping by on his way from New Zealand to the UK. You can find photos of his stay here by going to www.flickr.com and searching for "skimboarding". When you get to the right spot, you'll see my Flickr username: EthnoScape. Click on my username, and you should be able to see all of my photos.

Agenda for today: Take Laurence to the Oceanside College of Beauty to get the cheapest haircut around. Go to the Carlsbad Outlet Mall to look for some affordable trousers for him.

Tomorrow, we're going to cross the border into Tijuana to attend a party hosted by a colleague of mine, one of the SDSU professors in my Department. She lives in Tijuana and specialises in film studies. It should be fun.

Well I finally have an opportunity to get back to the moodle, look around and post my blog from Monday. The workshop seemed like a whirlwind. Overall, I'm pleased with how engaged the faculty seemed to be in the process. In general, the evaluations were positive, nothing less than 5 and many 10's. I probably left out some questions but there were some very thoughtful comments and certainly some things to reconsider. Most everyone thought the first two days were helpful, some more than others. Some felt overwhelmed, or needed more time, others wanted more tools and tricks and would have been happy staying in that moodle space. Others thought John Nash provided a thoughtful process for how to consider the problem, the underlying undesired condition(s) and focusing on those conditions that can be solved (with or without) a learning tool. Still others, felt like they were already very familiar with the undesired condition and wanted more work with the tools. Most did not see the relevance of the visit to Qualcomm. So I have, we have, a lot to think about and I hope to hear more from the faculty participants.

In the ensuing weeks of summer I hope to hear more thoughts and suggestions as we faciliate your process. I want to emphasize that our role is in facilatation. You are the experts in your own class, you know the the problems or projects you want to work on. We want to facilitate and help to make the project happen--like a back-up team.

We are thinking about establishing optional weekly or bi-weekly brownbag lunches on specific topics as well as opportunities for cross discussion on projects. Suzanne will be eliciting feedback on that idea as she meets with you in the next couple of weeks.

I hope we can keep the momentum going...

Great beginnings for a project may not be as important as the way one finishes or the final outcome, but I think great beginnings help. I'm sitting here next to Eric Riggs feeling happy about the way in which the workshop has come together so far. Working jointly with the School of Education and having guidance from Bernie and Bob and all of the resources and people from James Frazee and the ITS staff along with the CTL and the library is my idea of a terrifically collaborative project.

For those who are curious about the pICT project you might try our website (which does need to be updated now): pICT. If you are curious about what is meant by ICT literacy or competencies we have many readings posted on the pICT website at: pICT readings. The very first reading on this site from the American Library Association not only provides ICT learning goals, it also provides a nice example of how one might write learning goals and how outcomes can be written in a manner that will allow them to be assessed. For example the first goal is "The information literate student defines and articulates the need for information" and some of the measurable outcomes include things like: "Defines or modifies the information need to achieve a manageable focus" or "Identifies key concepts and terms that describe the information need."

I look forward to the next few days and hope this great beginning forshadows some exciting pICT projects.

All right folks. Y'all got to watch an alt.celebrity death match (one fac/one admin) yesterday. For those who missed it, Pat and La Marquesa got into it over: multimodal analysis, triangulation, Hinton 1993. Now that Pat and I have "modeled the behavior" of knights, we all (The pICT 2005) have to return to the lowlier (and less prestigious--go to my web site http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~marquesa/ and click on Manuel de Landa--in the interview with Manuel Landa, there is a section on knights vs. archers) task of strategizing together about bringing those of us in the humanities into a project being run out of the College of Undergraduate Education. This is my concern: it's being "run" with certain unexamined/unstated assumptions that "feel" more like "College of Sciences" than "Arts and Letters," or English and Comp Lit.

We all need to read, if we have not (I have not yet), Perry R. Hinton, The Psychology of Interpersonal Perception.

Those in the sciences who get grants are judged by a different set of criteria than those in the humanities. We have to do research because that's how they judge us--not by grant amount--many of us do not get grants.

Simply put, it's not that Pat and I are on opposite sides of anything. I want to bring quantitative and qualitative thinking together into our classrooms. Math and lit in the same undergrad lower division class. However, like all real research institutions (and we are now having the kinds of problems they have), we will have "tense" moments when funding seems threatened--anyone's--for any reason.

Assessment is more complex. We are moving from party school to think tank. Out of respect for all sides, we need to be UN-style "sensitive" to possible misunderstandings. When the term "assessment" is used by an administrator in the presence of both tenured and untenured faculty without cushioning/explaining--many of us got to feel like students during the last four days--we're being graded on what????? We are not "recalcitrant." We are terrified. There's a difference.

Brock and Hicks haven't had lunch yet to work out the relationships among: digital culture, ontology, epistemology. I am sure he will inform me of the correct relationships and the software that can be used to relate all data in all possible configurations using multidimensional scaling, peanut butter....sunlight...a piece of glass...

It's all good. I remember being a grad student at UCSD and hanging out at UC Irvine (Program in Comparative Culture) (late 70s). The hard/soft divide can get much uglier than yesterday--yesterday, we were on the same side. Ugly is when people have fully funded high stake differences--when "multimodal" is not a term respected by all.

Real research institutions get their labs shut down, their funding lost...all the time...really important stuff...delayed, ruined...over... I went to Berkeley as an undergrad. My grandfather has patents (ionizer, electric car). Tracy and I both grew up with some exposure to all this (Tracy grew up in a lab). It's pretty sad seeing grown researchers trying not to get emotional when it happens. Tracy's father worked at Rockland Institute. One day you're inventing the precursors to Prozac (no, Tracy's father didn't make any money---would we be here?) running the lab...next day you're in charge of making sure the top floor is secure--a sort of well-respected night watchperson (but woops, you lost your funding/space). It happens. So bajale (calm down and, please, get over yourselves) non-humanities people. Quit "telling" us and consider learning from us. We're "way" closer to our colleagues at the elite research institutions than you are. Like them, we already know how to "do it in our garages." Just like good fashion, ideas come from the street.

I would like to answer a question Brock implied.

Brock made a statement which I mentally rewrote as a question he was having trouble formulating. He stated: "You (read: tiny earthlings) don't have to do research (in relation to the last four days). You can just do a project (that he gets paid to study????)." What he may have meant was: "Wow. You seemed stressed. Just add a blog assignment to your class." Or " Why are you stressed?" We in the humanities do not have the time/infrastructure to "just do a project." We have to do research all the time--not curriculum development that we do and you guys study as we do it. For some of us, this is not the first workshop/curricular reform project activity at SDSU. For some of us, we have done so many of these projects that a special form of post-traumatic stress kicks in when we see the weird brown plastic coffee cups/holders (topographically speaking, what are they and will the coffee really stay in there?), no more coffee in the big icky silver thing (we're four minutes late and the coffee's already gone), and we're asked to "come up with new ideas for courses." We need to do research in relation to all other activities all the time.

Please do not look down us. No one shot stipend is worth giving up our dignity (all we have left).

Curriculum development in our world (the humanities) is despised (ranked lowest for you quantitative types) by all committees (from who decides which lecturer for which class to RTP) all the time judging all aspects of our lives (ranking, room assignment, use of Xerox machine). We get that you don't get that. We brought it up over and over for four days. You did not hear us yet. Each one of us in the humanities can explain our own, unique versions of lack of access to rooms, etc. What version would you like: a high level researcher from a country that is not the United States, a leader in her field, who gets invited to international film conferences constantly and can't get a smart classroom to teach film? She crosses the border from unnamed country, parks, goes to AH, checks out the equipment (laptop, whatever), carries the equipment upstairs. That's what we're talking about. Some of us can explain these counterintuitive relationships to you in several non-English languages. If what we do does not lead to an article in a refereed journal, it will not "count." We do what we do (teaching/research) without grant money, for the most part. Regarding the research, we do it, as in free beer, for free.

Sara warned us not to put things in blogs that we don't want to be there forever (or until The Singularity/the big black hole suck). I live a little less sad knowing that this pre-wicki still in blog form attempt at communication in which I try to get those outside the humanities to "understand" may never die. Please read it over and over. We can help you "get it." We won't be impatient explaining it to you over and over...

On a happier note, Qualcomm corporate headquarters is not what they showed us. It's HTH. Latest report (while driving to school) from my son on what he and Alex Dodge were discussing last night on line: the computing capabilities of a rock. Discussion began in relation to how far back the ability to lie goes. That (using John Nash's chart and the entire tradition of software and other research out of which it came, genealogically) was "caused" by concern with Bush's "lies" about Iraq and rhetorical tactics used by Hitler. They were discussing an issue in the field of rhetoric: how far back lying goes... So we in the unfunded humanities win this round...the kids are talkin' about "our" stuff (in relation to computing, of course). For free.

Off topic: today is my birthday. 54. Happy to be working with researchers...hopin' to move towards policy shifts...thank you Qualcomm. I applied to Stanford when I was twelve...they asked me to finish the sixth grade...the eighties were good...it's been hard...when my son quit making math the center of his life (may be temporary), I remembered I loved set theory...and now it's getting good again...

Don't forget to check out that journal Sara mentioned. Cool web site: http://www.reason.com/

So it's been a long week...it's nice to be able to sleep in, even it's only for an extra twenty minutes (have small child; must feed; get her to school). Anyway, today I'm looking forward to creating a couple of new objects for my techie portfolio: a webpage for my current Shakespeare class, a sonnet transformation (or digital poem, as we called them in workshop) to show them on Monday.

But before I get started, I want to sort out some of my conflicting feelings about this week's workshop. The first two days were spectacularly great. I think the reason why was because the presenters made good assumptions about their audience. They assumed that, as teachers, we all know how to teach already, but that we really are interested in freshening up our bag of tricks and keeping in tune with the times. And that's what they delivered: some great new tricks to get students involved and excited.

The workshops of the next two days were not as successful, though, and I've been busy trying to figure out why. Mainly there seemed to be a bit of a misfire calculating the level of the audience. Most of yesterday afternoon, for example, was spent with people telling me how to teach, including--of all things--how I ought to be teaching Shakespeare. While, again, I welcome new tricks any time, it's patronizing to be told by someone outside the field how a Shakespeare class should be taught. And it's especially distressing that someone would assume I'm doing it all wrong when they've they've never attended one of my classes to see what it is I do already.

There also seemed to be some sort of assumption that, even though I'm a tenured professor and have probably taught about fifteen hundred SDSU students since first arriving here, I've never planned a course before. So we made endless diagrams of course planning and objective making, all of which seemed completely useless (especially since we were never told why were doing any of it), but which I tried anyway, and very little of which led me to anything new.

So, final thoughts. I think that, in order for these workshops to be really successful, there needs to be a feeling of mutual respect here. Part of the reason the first two days were so great was because the presenters assumed we knew what we were doing--and that we were even already good teachers--and that therefore we would see immediate applications for the new projects they were showing us.

The next two days had valuable moments--and I appreciated them mainly for the opportunity they provided for talking with some interesting people on a more individual level--but for the most part took a giant step backward by some ten years. It seemed to have been forgotten that faculty have already spent years training in their various fields; that many of us in that workshop have been teaching for a minimum of ten years at San Diego State alone; that, in fact, we get very good evaluations from our students already, and, perhaps, we're even doing a good job. Showing up at a workshop on teaching doesn't mean we don't know how to teach. It means we care about what we do and are interested in always improving. Perhaps we even care about what our students are learning (shock of all shocks). Being told that I'm alienating students when I require writing in my classes, or that analyzing a great book destroys its meaning, is...

Well, I'm not even going to say what it is. Let's just say it makes me sad, and today, Friday, instead of waking up feeling invigorated, I awoke discouraged.

I'm still trying to hang on to the enthusiasm those first two days inspired in me, when I felt good about the profession and excited to be working with people at SDSU who really care about their teaching and the degree to which their students engage. I'd love to see more workshops by Bernie, Alan, and Randy....these guys really know what they're doing, and their enthusiasm is catching. And parts of the past two days were quite good: I had conversations with a few individuals that felt genuinely collaborative. That alone made this workshop worth attending, and hopefully that is the part that will stay with me the longest.

My maiden helmut ride through City Heights aside street-cutting machines in construction sites brought me safely to SDSU. No, I rode no differently that usual and other than the visor thing, I hardly noticed it. Ok, my head was sweaty. That I noticed. My vision wasn't obstructed nor was my hearing. My hair was a mess. Kids were on their ways to school so the streets were full with them. An

Two horrifying new developments. Was informed first that blogs should be shared amongst class participants. Yikes. Already went back and edited out all the trite bits. Second, pushed this little button up in the top corner called "next blog" and ended up in some gothic chick's blog. (Some FREAKY gothic chick's blog. Yikes.) Anyway, am assuming people can do that to me, too.

Why would I want anyone reading this thing?

My head is a little befuddled from all the new technologies we learned about today. About an hour before class ended I was excited; by the end I was hungry and was rapidly beginning to forget just about everything, including what I'd even been interested in trying.

So here I am now at home, having eaten, and gamely trying the whole thing out by writing a blog. Can't say I'm crazy about posting personal thoughts on the web. On the other hand, I have lots and lots of IMpersonal thoughts that I don't mind sharing so much. Like stuff I look up for my classes after the fact and such. Questions constantly come up in class about esoteric subjects I know nothing about at the time; I go home and look them up up, and voila....it's time to share, preferably with some way of having my students share back.

Sooooooo.....we'll try this for a while, see if we like it or if it just creeps us out entirely. I still think wikis may be the way to go. But no one seems to know how to install those for me. Harumph.

Just to make sure I remembered what I was excited about, I went home last night and tried out pretty much everything we'd learned at home: started an account with seedwiki and began a few pages on "zeugma" (don't ask); went to the Flickr site and uploaded a few photos in case I need them in the next few days; and--this was the most gratifying one--added an RSS feed to my already-existing webpage on NY Times book reviews (http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/esoterica.html). I'm very pleased with that last one...used the java script Alan showed briefly from their home site at maricopa to do it and it popped right up. Very easy.

Sooooooo....now just need to come up with reasons to use all these new goodies.

So I'm intensely curious as to what the ed people did today. What we piCTy people did was an inspiration-style bubble-chart trying to dissect our basic classroom problems, followed by a trip to Qualcomm. Wasn't _entirely_ sure how the Qualcomm part related, but it was very interesting to see the place and listen to what people out in a megacorporation are doing. Also we got to see a lot of upcoming technology. I made a small list with which to impress my family and friends. (It's not often I get to one-up my brother on technology....._he_ works at Nintendo, don't you know.)

Anyway, the nucleus of Qualcomm appears to be a dark security room inhabited by people sitting at triple-monitors, monitoring things. On either side of them were real-time screens showing graphs of problems in the network and spools that might indicate break-ins. (The chief-info guy, who looked very much like some character actor I couldn't place--is this what happens to out-of-work character actors?--said that Qualcomm gets 20,000 break-in attempts a day!) All day long these people work out long threads of code on the third screen, trying to address the problems that come up on the other two.

There was a huge screening of headline news at the front of the room, which they said they keep there just in case something really big hits, like a power outage (but I think they just wanted to watch the Michael Jackson trial). On either side were screens showing real-time shots of various places of "Building R" (I desperately wanted to ask what was so valuable in Building R that they monitored it constantly, but I didn't dare), incoming video streams, network locations across the Qualcomm system, and problem areas.

It was scary. It was just like those rooms they show you in the movies--the rooms they show you that monitor everything we do.

BUT: the upside? Granite-covered conference tables and really good cookies. Yum.

Am reflecting on a disturbing conversation I had today with a High Authority Who Shall Remain Unnamed, who asked why I required writing in my literature classes. I was really taken aback. All lit courses require writing--there is consensus in our department that this is a Good Thing. Are we wrong to believe that writing engages students, gets them out of that passive-learning mode, and is, well, just plain good for them? Am I wrong to want to work on writing in my classes as a part of the teaching I do?

Wow.

I begin to worry that Chaucer and medieval literature may seem, well, terribly quaint.

"President George W Bush has suffered a setback in his efforts to appoint an outspoken conservative, John Bolton, as US ambassador to the United Nations." "Mr Bush has called Mr Bolton "a blunt guy" who "can get the job done at the United Nations" BBC World Read More I fail to see the advantage of having a "blunt guy" as a diplomat, particularly at the UN. Cheers to those couple of Republicans

I have a job. It's here. And here. Well it's really work--I pay my own health care, and for now that's ok. Working with faculty is super. As a group, they're smart and informed and commited to social issues whether they think so or not. They earn far too little "money" for what they do and what they're responsible for. As indiduals they're opinionated, open minded, obstinate, arrogant,

Is going to LA by car for the weekend easier, funner, more fulfilling? Hard to say. It's about 125 miles, (200km) of 4-5 lane freeways and could take 2.5 - 4.5 hours depending on traffic and bathroom-stops. If DoorToDoor-ness is a non-negotiable, not simply the luxury it is, then yes, ease wins hands down. But I can think of only a few examples--like people with restrictions on mobility--where

This seemingly simple question has turned out to be one of the most difficulty and challenging to answer in a succinct and comprehensible manner. I welcome your take on this!

Some of the key components seem to be ...

The specific and deliberate facilitation of learning - by using research-based interactions - to target enhancing specific thinking skills (cognitive and motivational) with the capacity for far transfer.


I have been especially interested in the intersection of cultural applications and issues in MTL and in strenths-based approaches to learning; thus, I would add ... MTL draws on the prior experiences and/or culture of the learner from which to develop baselines in learning strengths. Using those, the mediator explores the development of new learning skills and strengths using the interactions between the learner and mediator, and well targeted content objectives (whether problem solving or skills development ).

This is a test of our IEC planning Blog. As members you can add comments. But I think it would be better for you to log on and publish new posts directly.

As a doctoral student in educational technology, I suppose it is high time I enter the blogosphere as contributor. This semester I will be teaching undergraduates for the first time - freshmen, no less - in a very interesting course at SDSU created by the illustrious Bernie Dodge last spring. The course in a nutshell (from the syllabus): This is course about the intersection of three

I'm sitting now in a USD seminar on academic integrity and digital plagiarism. Yesterday's focus on the issue was eye-opening: the numbers of college students admitting to some form of cheating runs between 50 and 80%, depending on college classification (significantly higher in public and parochial schools than private schools). Only 55% of students think cut-and-paste without attribution is

I'm a forest creature. So when Geoff Chase mentioned FujiFilm's Forests Forever yesterday, it sounded like a place I'd enjoy. Lush, indeed. Settle back in the mossy roots, and gaze up at the canopy. A terrific demonstration of what images and sounds can do with your psyche.

I just had my first experience with Wikis, and I was appalled. It was a wiki on World War I [http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/world/tiki-index.php?page=World+War+I]. Essentially, students are to learn about the weapons of mass destruction used during this war by playing a "game." In the game, they are to use the wiki as a resource to research specific weapons' destructive power so that they could use them "accurately" to "win" the game.
I could go on forever about the lack of sensitivity, common sense, and lack of respect for human life demonstrated by those who designed this blog; however, I could go on even longer criticizing those who think that this kind of wiki is a good pedagogical strategy for engaging students.
The only pedagogical value I see of a resource of this nature is to take experienced and beginning teachers to it so that we could deconstruct its lack of pedagogical value. It could also be used to help teachers and their students become more vigilant of the variety of tools and sites available in the internet that are not really "resources" but could be used more as weapons of mass stupication.


In regards to blogs, I do not see myself using this tool in my classes. This semester, I have had an unusually higher number of students going through personal crises. I had to play the role of priest, life coach, teacher, and parent, so the last thing I need is a tool that could be used for my students to share more of their life with me. I'm more concerned however about helping them improve their academic writing. Grades are due tomorrow, and I'm far behind grading my students' papers. I'm spending a lot of time writing comments on their papers, so what would be really helpful for me is not to get them to write more about the details of their everyday lives, but to help them improve their academic writing. Are we going to talk about how to help students become more critical thinkers and writers? How do we help them become more critical consumers and producers of knowledge and not just consumers and reproducers of superficial information?

My goal in attending the Emerging Technologies workshop is to learn about strategies for developing on-line modules for an inservice course on working with gifted learners. Currently, we offer four sections a year, each with 50-70 teachers. The courses are scheduled in large blocks of time (5 hours on Saturdays or 3 hours on Tuesdays). Teachers need greater flexibility, and so do instructors. The overview on blogs and wikis stimulates thinking more about strategies teachers can use with gifted students than ways to provide more flexibility for the teachers taking the course. I just need more time to reflect on both uses.

After the previous entry, and after my laptop battery gave up, I asked ethicist Dr. Larry Hinman a question. He was discussing the "What's wrong with cheating?" question from the point of view of different ethical theories/systems. He brought up different cultural views on this, and had earlier mentioned a change in our culture (where students brought up on cheating charges used to be primarily

The term social justice is used a great deal in U.S. society. People define it in may different ways. What does social justice mean to you? How do you define it?

To me, transformative social justice means including the voices of everyone, especially those typically not heard, in processes and dialogue, reflection and action, with the goal of transforming society to include the needs and desires of everyone. Inclusion is critical to TSJ.

Too much information? No, I wouldn't actually say that the pICT program has turned into an Information Overload for me. However, it has motivated and enouraged me to care more about the technological tools that are available "out there" for educators like me to use. Honestly, I'm wondering which bits and pieces I can use in class and which I can use in my own personal life. I feel greedy,

Thoughts on blogging while sitting in yesterday's workshop. My first "real-time" blog. On the one hand, I'm intrigued about the process of critically sifting through the ideas being generated and reflecting on them in the blog, as the event is ongoing. As always, I find having a wireless connection to explore resources and concepts on the Internet during a discussion/conference quite helpful - and

I went to bed so late last night because I was visiting all of the great sites recommended to us in yesterday's pICT sessions. Flickr is amazing! It seems to work in all kinds of different ways that can be very helpful for people who want to view photos there. I'm now considering having a classroom presentation from students in which they use Flickr instead of PowerPoint! This would prevent them

The workshop, so far, has been interesting and full of information. I'm very glad to be here!
: )

Darn. The semester has gone by and what do I have to show for it in this blog? Blogging hasn't yet become habitual enough for me. I have been using blogs with EDTEC 296 this semester and I guess that's where I've contributed to the blogosphere. I do hope to go back and think through some of the highlights of the semester: TaskStream and AACTE conferences in DC, SITE conference in Phoenix,

Hey, this is my first blog! I created it in a computer lab at SDSU during the morning session of the pICT (People, Information, Communication, and Technology) Fellowship. [Hey, why are they not capitalising the first letter of the word people? People are important, right? RIGHT? Well, I may have to ask Qualcomm about that. Qualcomm is funding this program, and they are into Information,

There was just some great information presented by Alan Levine about Flickr (an online photo storage / sharing site) and about RSS (a way to subscribe to updates on certain websites). I think I am really sold on this Flickr site! It's amazing. I'm going to have to upload lots of my skimboarding photos onto Flickr. That would be great for the skimboarders to see!

I am in the pICT/COE workshop on technology and teaching, and have already begun to learn new things. Although I knew before this morning what blogs and wikis were, I have not had much time until now to sit back and reflect how they might be used. I have the sense, as I do with many of the technological developments that coming speeding down the higway, that the possibilities are vast.

I am reminded of the line from Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo: "You must change your life." Rilke's notion is that the once you see the sculpture he describes in the poem, the world is a new place. I take this to mean that works of art whether they are paintings, sculptures, poems, plays, novels, force us to change our lives, to see the world anew. I would add that technology, whether we are talking about pencils or blogs, does the same thing.

Mary Catherine Bateson has said, I am paraphrasing here, that teaching students today is like teaching them to live on a planet we have never seen. Part of being an educator, then, is staying open to those things, art and technology, and many others, that change our lives and create new worlds.

"Faculty Write" is the title of this blog. I chose this title to assert a truth--and to exhort college and university faculty to action. Faculty need to write. They need to write for tenure and promotion, of course. More important, however, they need to write to learn, grow, clarify, consolidate, explore, extend, and ...

I'll use this blog to share information about writing for professional journals and other venues that might be encountered along the path to tenure and promotion. Research, of course, will be one of the sources for information. Hard won wisdom from successful faculty writers will be another source, most likely a more authentic one.

Although this is part of my job, it is also my passion. Writing, to me, is very hard. It is also very rewarding. Until I write, I don't understand. When I write, I begin to understand.

How much do you write? How often? Do you write something every day? week? month? semester? Are you a binge writer who waits till spring break or winter break or summer? Or do you try to get some writing "exercise" every day?

Jay Parini recently published a provocative article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The Considerable Satisfaction of 2 Pages a Day". He recommends writing every day rather than waiting for that large span of time that may or may not appear sometime in the future.

What do you think?

My emotional reaction to new tools and technology is a mixture of fascination and apprehension about the potential for frustration.

Moving from paper journals in my service learning class, to on-line blogs seems a natural improvement. But this is a class of 15 or 20.

I'm more concerned about making a lecture class for 100+ more effective. How is it possible to encourage students to actively engage with the substance of the course? A moderated discussion might be valuable, but how much instructor time would be required to make this viable?

My general impression is that there is no shortage of information. But that as in economics bad money/ideas may tend to drive out the good.

What a day....but it is the end of my first year as department chair and I have survived. I believe colleges need to become systematic about enculturation of chairs. leadership is not as easy as we all think before we take on the job...

Really, the most difficult part is coming up with a clever name to call your ruminations. I have an affection for donkeys. Like horses only smaller, less glamorous, and more hard working...and stubborn. And who doesn't enjoy advantures?

This is my cat Lucy P. Boots, of the California Boots. She can often be found hiding in clever places. I sent this image from flickr (http://www.flickr.com) so I am feeling very technologically advanced even though I know the truly advanced would mock me. Lucy would be impressed, though.

Action smaction....

What am I going to do? I am working on making modifications to a course in critical/cultural research methods. It is writing intensive and I am looking for tools for students to share their work and to collect feedback to help them in future revisions.

I still haven't found exactly the tool that I am looking for, but I am beginning to suspect that Blackboard might have the capability for students to share their papers with one another. But that is just mechanics, and a good way to cut down on paper, I think. I am more interested in the feedback portion.

I think the thing to do might be to set up a class of blogs (similiar to the ed tech class example where all of the blog links are on one page. I can do that in Blackboard, I think.) where after each paper is due, the author will then blog some reflections, strengths, weaknesses, and questions. Then, the 2 other students in each small writing group will visist the blog after reading the draft and respond the the authors comments as well as offering insight of their own. It wouldn't have to be "turned in" to me, which would cut down on the papers I haul around, but I could keep tabs on the quality of feedback being provided.

So, I need to do the following:
1. investigate Blackboard more fully to determine if there is a mechanism for students to upload essays.
2. investigate Blackboard to determine how I could post the links for the class blogs. (I know there is a links section so this should be easy.)
3. adapt the workshop worksheet for creating blogs for my class, adding anything that was trickier in process than it looked on paper, a deadline, and my email where they should send the address when they are done. (I should then add all of these to my bloglines)
4. modify the syllabus to reflect this change and determine point value for feedback assignments.

The problem of this research is to study communication channel selections made by business people in order to understand their decision making process so that we can learn what they believe is a good choice for effective and efficient communication.

Ok. Enough "polite." This blog has been taken over by La Marquesa. Emily Hicks, the overachiever of all time, who is such a dork she arrived early to the Italian restaurant last night (wow, the chcolate mousse was extraordinary) is getting ready to go to Day 3, but I'll be going to Qualcomm in her place. Must bring her badge. I will be bringing a portable altar: a photograph of myself in my normal attire (7" heels, a tutu), an empty pill box with red/black tiger stripes (purchased two years ago with Mark Deutrom, ex-bass player, The Melvins--he told her to bring the same small items to every gig) and a little Buddha. If asked, I will say it is my "digital story-telling shoe box stuff." This piece (for art historians) is La Marquesa's second major border crossing piece. The first one was about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as The Wrestler Bride; this is one is crossing the digital divide.

Back to that old performance piece. When asked for ID, I opened a portable altar (eye glass case) with items from a botanica (Botanica Ochun). For that piece, Berta Jottar (filmmaker) followed me (unbeknownst to the border patrol) with a hidden video camera. Oh yeah. I was wearing a wrestler's mask. They asked me to remove it (border patrol). I said I would only remove for a female border patrol officer (I'm a QD feminist!). They got me a female border patrol officer, we were taken to a private room (I said I was going to meet with G.L.O.W.--Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling--in LA) and I removed the mask for her only. Berta taped me coming out of secondary.

Hicks did one good thing today, and it may have been a result of her attendance at this Emerging thing she's doing. She got her kid to laugh. She was going on, on the way to High Tech High, this morning, about growing seeds, and environmental chemistry, and the relationship between photosynthesis and global warming, and how she could wear a hemp T-shirt and teach this stuff in a GE course, because she's straight-edge when it comes to "seeds"...and the students would do the assignment (she's tried it before--they grow the seeds in their closets)...anyway, her High Tech High kid, as they are driving to school, listening to Flogging Molly ("I've been down in this world, down and almost broken") got that little smile that sixteen year-olds don't normally get on their faces when talking to their moms...

Off to Qualcommm...a ver que pasa

Thoughts about the future after Day 2 of the 4 Day Event/Emerging. In the summer session course I will be teaching in CCS and in the composition course I will be teaching in Fall 2005 I plan to continue my research on the The Border e-Model. The Border e-Model has grown out of my earlier work on holography and border culture. In early versions of the model, I discussed the experience of living in border regions, border semiotics and holography. Now, I am analyzing underrepresented ethnic communities in relation to the building of cybercommunities. I plan to encourage students to engaged in study about their own ethnic backgrounds/family backgrounds during the Fall semester classes. By doing so, they will quickly immerse themselves in threaded discussions, Netiquette, flaming (:)) and many other aspects of digital culture. The methodological approach I am developing in my work on the Border e-Model is influenced by over twenty years of research in semiotics, deconstruction, holography, nonlinear narratives, border theory, and most recently, set theory. I have written a paper about the model and how I have tried to implement some of John Seely Brown's ideas in my classes (Spring 2005), particularly in relation to Xboxes and zines. In Fall 2005, I will be adding two of Bernie's idea: 1) moving up the triangle to assigning authentic, adult tasks (writing letters about the situation of women who have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, for example) and 2) shifting from talking about novels with nonlinear plots (Cortazar's Hopscotch in this case) to having students choose characters and blogging in the voice of those characters. Other ideas include (for the summer class) introducing the recycling/refurbishing of technology and an environmental approach to digital culture. I want students to understand how exciting it is to take old, discarded computers and install Linux. The literary component of analyzing technology will include a short story about Polaroids (by Cortazar), Vinge's story (the one we are reading). In the middle of the course, a guest speaker will it all together in relation to RFCs (Requests for Comments). The importance of being able to use "old" stuff, again, will be emphasized. The high tech/low tech relationship is what I want students to think about.

Comments on Day 1 of pICT/Department of Ed Celebrity Death Match. Bernie's discussion of "defining end points." This is a nice way to introduce our students to Vinge's concept of singularity/the critique of Vinge as "rapture for nerds" and Heidegger's concept of finitude. For a Day of the Dead altar, created by students, there could be a sugar skull with a group blog for a particular class. This would work best for Fall semesters:)