November 30, 2004
Carded!
So I'm at Wegman's in Fayetteville NY (the world's ruling grocery store, better even than Tom Thumb in Fort Worth), and I'm getting a huge cartful of groceries (cuz I'm one of those country ladies who does the family grocery shopping in a once-weekly trip), and I see a rack of fancy schmancy beers and think that the Adored Partner might enjoy one of these (at $3.99 a bottle, it's gotta be good, right?) and put a bottle in the cart. And I'm checking out, and the checker says,
"Do you have an ID?"
and I say,
"Huh?"
and she says,
"Identification? Do you have some identification?"
and I look at her in a particularly bovine manner and say,
"Whut for?"
and she says,
"This beer."
and I say, in an increasingly loud, happy voice,
"Oh, my god, are you CARDING ME?"
and the young women in the line next to me start cracking up.
and the checker says,
"Yes, I'm sorry. We have to check everybody."
She didn't have to apologize. When you're 58 and you get carded, it's a smile.
Posted by senioritis at 10:04 PM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2004
An (ir)reverence for sources
Observing, "IT'S NOT PLAGIARISM when you repeat stuff from a press release without checking it -- but it's not journalism, either. It's not even very good punditry," Glenn Reynolds links to Patterico's analysis of the latest NYT misuse of sources. This one, like the dodgy dossier (and no, I'm never going to let go of that one, so quit snickering), not only plagiarizes but also misrepresents sources--here, by distortion through decontextualization. Yuck.
Posted by senioritis at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)
Adaptability and flexibility
Jay Rosen reviews the charges leveled against mainstream media coverage of the 2004 election. These charges center around the claim that MSM aligned itself with Kerry. But Rosen has his own, fascinating analysis: the failure of MSM in 2004 was not in whether they failed to maintain objectivity, but whether they delivered what the electorate needed.
[O]ur campaign journalism was, almost in its entirety, premised on an informational need that barely existed. This led to journalism that at its best helped us make a decision that 90 percent or more had already made.
Maybe an extremely "partisan" year should have been called a year when people were extremely passionate about politics, and interested in participating. A reportage to meet and inform those passions is not the same as "news to help in your decision. . . ."
I believe the press failed in 2004. It failed to innovate. It failed to move with the times. From what is called the mainstream media, "the famous MSM," we did not get a reportage suited for the political era we were actually living in. That means Big Journalism failed some ultimate test of currency, which in journalism is the test of time. To report the truth about our struggles with politics... in time.
>sigh<
Well.
He's right, of course, in suggesting that it is extremely difficult for a cumbersome institution such as the MSM to exercise adaptability and flexibility, those essential qualities of the successful corporation or subject in a globalized economy: "As complexity and uncertainty become essential characteristics of the new environment in which organizations must operate, the fundamental needs for the management of organizations are those of flexibility and adaptability. . ." (Castells, Manuel. "Flows, Networks, and Identities: A Critical Theory of the Informational Society." Critical Education in the Information Age. By Manuel Castells, Ramón Flecha, Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, Donaldo Macedo, and Paul Willis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. 37-64.).
The institution of first-year composition suffers from a similar malady. Composition studies has a much-debated but nevertheless widely shared sense of self, a sense of what it is that FYC can/should accomplish. We struggle to adapt; we struggle to devise learning outcomes for FYC that will reflect the established concerns but also embrace the needs of readers and writers in new media. The struggle feels, however, something akin to pinning flowers on an elephant. The flowers are temporary and incidental; the elephant, in all its bulk, remains.
But notice what Castells is saying about adaptability and flexibility: it's not corporations themselves that need it; it's workers and managers who need adaptability and flexibility. I puzzle over this, thinking about how impossible it is for institutions to adjust to change. I think it more likely that new institutions arise to take their place—institutions that were created for current need. Oddly, Castells' analysis of the postindustrial state has some resonance for all postindustrial institutions, including MSM and FYC: "[A] state incapable of keeping up with the rapid, endless process of technological change will become a weak state both internally (its economic basis will deteriorate) and externally (the coercive means of its institutional monopoly of violence will become technologically obsolete)" (49). I think the change that must be kept up with, though, is not just technological but also social. Jay Rosen suggests that the MSM in 2004 failed to provide "a reportage suited for the political era we were actually living in."
Posted by senioritis at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2004
Walt Kelly lives!
Actually, my all-time favorite cartoonist passed away a number years ago. But before he did, he left the world decades of Pogo, a wonderful melange of politics, satire, buffoonery, and a wary eye on but kindly disposition toward the human race. Pogo ruled the newspaper comic pages in the 50s and 60s and was of course published in book form, as well. Beloved Partner and I got together because of our shared enthusiasm for Pogo, and we sent Mrs. Kelly a wedding invitation when we got hitched. And anytime either one of us encounters a fellow Pogo devotée, it's a smile. Guest blogging on Eschaton, Robert Jeffers even demonstrates in the Comments thread that he has a pretty good memory for the lyrics to "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie."
Posted by senioritis at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2004
Heteronormative traditions
When I was in college in the Day, homecoming traditions were lampooned by the occasional interspecies homecoming queen candidate--sometimes a chicken, more often a pig or cow. Today the issue is not social satire but diversity, and it's a serious issue.
We have to reimagine the traditions that make heterosexuality seem normal and necessary. Especially in the case of homecoming queens, that reimagining has to come from within colleges, from the faculty and students, and it's going to have to be sustained in the face of people like the 500 townspeople of St. Cloud, Minnesota, who feel they need to draw the line somewhere.
Nor is separate proms, separate homecoming events, a respectable answer. I grew up in an apartheid town in the upper South, with separate churches, separate schools (even though the population of the entire town was only 2,000), separate seating in the movie theatre. Until I went to college, the only African American I knew was Josie Brown, who did our laundry. And until I went to college, I had no idea that this meant I was living a starved, stunted life that was disadvantaging all of its participants. Whether the issue is race, gender, sexuality, or whatever, separate is never equal, never acceptable.
Posted by senioritis at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2004
Memoirs of a cable surfer
Just watched one of those two-star cable movies, Unconditional Love (2002), starring Rupert Everett, Kathy Bates, Jonathan Pryce, and Dan Ackroyd. It was very very silly, but it did a nice job of parodying and simultaneously celebrating banal pop music, and it had funny cameos by Barry Manilow and Julie Andrews. We pay for a gazillion cable channels, but I'm so movie addicted that I've seen all the good films, so I'm constantly surfing and complaining that there's nothing on. So when I can stumble on a diverting if disposable movie that includes Rupert Everett (not only eye candy but a good comic, as well), I'm set for the next two hours.
Posted by senioritis at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2004
Thanksgiving, Chez Howard
Rule du jour (legislated by Kelly): NO WORKING!
Instead--
Spent 8 hours making a compilation tape, Etta Taco. It's tape #462 for the two of us. (We started making 'em in 1981.)
SIDE ONE
Albert Collins, Etta James, & Joe Walsh, Goin' Down
Albert Collins, Etta James, & Joe Walsh, Rock Me, Baby
Etta James & Chuck Berry, Rock and Roll Music
John Fogarty, Rock and Roll Girls
Toots & the Maytals, Take Me Home Country Roads
The Ikettes, I'm Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)
Albert Collins, Etta James, & Joe Walsh, The Blues Don't Care
Toots Hibbert, Maggie's Farm
Keel, Rock 'N' Roll Outlaw
Etta James, Ninety Nine and a Half (Won't Do)
Velvet Underground, Sweet Jane
Etta James, Love and Happiness
Ray Charles, Unchain My Heart
Them, Baby Please Don't Go
Canned Heat, Shake, Rattle & Roll
Black Keys, Hard RowSIDE TWO
Apache Indian, Boom Shakalak
Alberta Hunter, You Can't Tell the Difference after Dark
Ray Charles, What'd I Say
Etta James, Shakey Ground
Temptations, Ain't Too Proud to Beg
Black Eyed Peas, Shut Up
Aerosmith, Walk This Way
Stevie Wonder, Uptight (Everything's All Right)
Etta James, I Got the Will
Dizzee Rascal, Fix Up, Look Sharp
Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, Love and Satisfy
Toni Price, Measure for Measure
Etta James, Jump into My Fire
Siegel-Schwall Band, Tell Me
Howlin' Wolf, Tell Me
Howlin' Wolf, Just Like I Treat You
Carl Perkins, All Mama's Children
Then made our traditional Thanksgiving dinner: tacos. This year an especially good one, since we had ground buffalo rather than ground beef for the tacos.
Finally, watched WVU play Pitt. Wish there were cause for rejoicing in the outcome. But as Tom remarked in the closing seconds of the game, "Rich, your team underachieved severely this year. Count me a dissatisfied fan."
Reached audio saturation with the Big East athletes' self-encomium; that ad now gets Instant Mute (for as long as Congress will allow me to mute ads).
Advertised product to which I can just say "no": Bacardi Silver green-apple low-carb malt beverage. Color me incredulous.
Posted by senioritis at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2004
What I wouldn't give
—to know the full details of the collapsing house of cards in Iraq, e.g.,
In just a few days, the police force in one of the most densely populated portions of [Mosul] has dwindled to only a few hundred from several thousand, and two Iraqi National Guard units in the region were forced to disband when between a third and half of their soldiers fled, according to a U.S. military official.
and
The four insurgents were heavily outnumbered and outgunned by US marines in Fallujah.But armed with just assault rifles and grenades, the quartet locked an entire company in intense battle for hours, inflicting casualties in hand-to-hand combat and delivering a tough lesson for US forces as they deepen their hunt for an ephemeral and patient enemy that embraces martyrdom.
and also
Allegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city.
Posted by senioritis at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2004
Planning for snow days
I live 50 miles from Syracuse (a one-hour drive in good weather; 2 hours in bad), and bad winter driving conditions are right up there with Killer Bronchitis in the category of "Things Becky Really Whines About." And this winter, my grad class meets at 9:30 a.m., which means I have to leave the house before I can count on the roads' being cleared.
So this winter I intend to be smart and set it up so that (a) I don't have to try to drive when it isn't smart to and (b) I don't have to call off class, either. I'm a perfectly hardy driver in normal winter conditions, but not in the middle of a storm nor on icy roads. It's my intention, therefore, to set up my undergrad course on Blackboard and my grad course on a website that includes a blog. I want the grad students to have the experience of posting documents to a website and of blogging (hey, if I can do it, anybody can; and of course I have the New Convert's missionary zeal), and I think it's particularly useful to have a grad course blog so that others can drop in on conversations. I can even invite guest bloggers amongst colleagues elsewhere. We'll use the blog for a variety of things, but it's my intention that one of those uses will be for holding virtual class on rotten travel days.
And I'd really appreciate the advice of others--particularly teachers who are experienced with collaboratie class blogs, and also the students who participated in today's band-aid 607, in which students could only comment but not start new threads.
Posted by senioritis at 09:29 PM | Comments (4)
CCR 607: Ground rules & thanks
CCR 607, Fall 2004, Syracuse University, is a wonderfully patient group of people, willing to take part in this band-aid method of meeting without my having to come to campus because I'm still recovering from a near-fatal and widely-publicized bout of Killer Bronchitis. Next semester I'll have a blog set up for CCR 611, one that everybody in the class can post to and not just comment on! Today, however, I'll set up threads for discussion, and we can "talk" by commenting on those threads.
So much for the thanks. Now for ground rules:
First, let's stick with the real-life class boundaries; i.e., resist the urge to run all over the building or take a break to get the laundry out of the dryer or carry on a side conversation with someone else who happens to be in the room or check your email and respond to one of your students' frantic queries. You are, however, Hereby Authorized to wear your jammies or iPod.
Second, I'd like to focus the first half of the class period on the diversity discussion, and then move to the other discussions in the second half of class. As a confirmed multitasker (aka ADD), though, I don't want to forbid people from jumping around from discussion to discussion; rather, I just want us to stay focused on the diversity discussion in the first half.
Third, you all should decide when we're breaking. Just send me (and anyone else who's not with the group) an email saying "break now!" And we'll take 10 minutes from that point. (Note to anyone who's not with the group: set your email to check for messages every minute.)
Fourth, if anything goes tragically awry, call me. You've got my home number.
Finally, others who chance upon these discussions and are interested in them are very welcome to join in.
Anything else?
Posted by senioritis at 09:17 AM | Comments (16)
CCR 607: Diversity
This space is for talking about diversity in FYC (first-year comp, known locally as WRT 105). I'd like to begin our discussion of this topic with responses to Clark Ch. 10. But I think we should also fold in discussion of Clark Chs. 8-9 and Tate's chapters on cultural studies and basic writing. Feel free, too, to talk about experiences in your own classrooms (now or in the past), but let's keep the focus on what useful ideas we can draw from these five chapters. How do you think diversity should/not be taken up in FYC, and what challenges do you see in the task?
Posted by senioritis at 09:09 AM | Comments (63)
CCR 607: Writing Center consultation
This space is for talking about your experiences in conducting Writing Center consultations. We can also talk here about your observations of WC consultations, but I'd like to focus as much as possible on the consulting that you've done. And I'm keenly interested in any reflection you have on how your WC observations and consultation might affect your classroom teaching or your one-on-one work with students in classes that you're teaching.
Posted by senioritis at 09:02 AM | Comments (24)
CCR 607: Technology
This space is for talking about technology and teaching FYC. Vanessa's going to tell us what she found useful in that chapter from Clark, Aleshia's going to tell us what she found useful in that chapter from Tate, and we can talk about their ideas and about our own readings of Clark ch. 11 and the Tate chapter. One useful question: what light do these readings shed on your own experiences with technology and FYC, and how might they affect your future practice?
Posted by senioritis at 08:59 AM | Comments (7)
CCR 607: Genre
This space is for talking about genre and teaching FYC. Tyra's going to tell us what she found useful in that chapter from Clark, and we can talk about her ideas and about our own readings of Clark ch. 6.
Posted by senioritis at 08:55 AM | Comments (4)
November 22, 2004
The Wisconsin Auxiliary Hunting Season
Out in Wisconsin, they really know how to make deer hunting a truly multifaceted sport.
Posted by senioritis at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
Life's reassuring constants
Morgantown is about an hour's drive from Pittsburgh; the geographical distance between WVU and Pitt isn't great. And every year the two schools play a hotly contested football game. Just before the annual match one autumn in the late 70s (when I was in grad school), as I was crossing the bridge that connected the WVU campus to Sunnyside (the slum where I lived), I saw the usual array of homemade anti-Pitt signs. Particularly memorable was a paper plate taped to a pole. Taped to the paper plate were a knife and fork (in proper position, I might add) and, in the middle of the plate, a baggie of dog dung. Above it was the message, "If you're from Pitt, eat this shit." I see in today's news that the sentiments in that locale have not changed.
Posted by senioritis at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2004
Drama Queen
Sandra reads this blog, including my stirring health reports, and remarks offline that I'm a "drama queen." What can she mean? I haven't even reported on the bronchitis, fever, antibiotics--and I think that took great restraint!
Posted by senioritis at 06:20 PM | Comments (1)
Following one's own syllabus
Tyra speaks blithely of my inability to stick to my own syllabus. How right she is, and how very much I enjoy that inability! Teaching makes sense when I work out a detailed plan, but not when I follow it. If the students are following the detailed plan, it allows me and the class as a group to range afield from it, where our interests take us. Yum.
I do have to face the fact, however, that having committed myself to a big grad class next semester means I will have to follow my own syllabus. Otherwise, I'll be a basket case by the end of the semester. Gulp. That will be a new experience!
Posted by senioritis at 02:28 PM | Comments (6)
Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos
Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion. Yeah, but at least we brought them democracy. And liberty. And freedom.
Posted by senioritis at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
Don't Know Much About History
On Nov. 15, NPR had a bit about history textbooks in Cambodia today. They say practically nothing about the Khmer Rouge--in part, said the report, because so many well-placed Cambodians today were Khmer Rouge yesterday. Anyway, the net effect is that Cambodian schoolchildren know practically nothing about the genocide of the previous generation.
Meanwhile, in Rwanda, the genocide of just a decade ago is ignored, and my friend who works for the State Department there says that nobody has forgotten, and that tension still simmers because no resolution has been reached. That tension boiled over on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan massacres.
And meanwhile, the majority of people in the U.S. are willing to re-elect a president who has blundered us into an imperialist losing cause that resonates all too loudly with Vietnam. But Vietnam was thirty years ago. Many voters in 2004 were children or not yet born, and those of us who remember may have become--well, complacent. Our nation knows a lot more about homeless vets and post-traumatic stress syndrome than it does about the affairs of state that led to the Vietnam debacle.
If people in Cambodia, Rwanda, and the U.S. knew just a bit more about history, we might be a little less willing to repeat its errors, and a little less willing to tolerate those who are old enough to know better.
Posted by senioritis at 08:01 AM | Comments (2)
Containing diversity
Under the apt title "Holy Crap," Atrios provides a link to this and endorses its recommendations. Welcome to WII, everybody.
Posted by senioritis at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2004
But then there's this
hockeyman at Metafilter provides a link to this gruesome story. hockeyman's commentary focuses on the specter of laws against fast-forwarding through commercials, and I agree; it's outrageous. From my perspective, though, even worse is this little comment, made by Jonathan Lamy, spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America: "Intellectual property theft is a national security crime."
Oh. My. God. Now transgressive authorship is not only a sign of low character; a "violation" of the {putative} originary author's "soul" (see Malcolm Gladwell's piece for samples of this sort of discourse), but it's a violation of national security. Will music downloaders, plagiarists, and people who fast-forward through commercials wind up at Guantanamo, defined as enemy combatents? I'm only half kidding. I really never anticipated my concerns about Turnitin.com converging quite so directly with my concerns about repressive, imperialist government. But of course I should have seen this coming.
Eric Hellweg, who writes the report for Technology Review, reacts with more temperance than do I: "Anyone attuned to the machinations of Congress the last two years likely has become numb to the often overblown rhetoric on this issue. Both sides use hyperbole—usually in the form of calling a piece of legislation the death of an industry or the death of individual rights."
Posted by senioritis at 08:10 AM | Comments (2)
Property fundamentalism
Both Chris Bennem and Collin Brooke have written to alert me to a story in the November 22 issue of the New Yorker. And that publication, god bless 'em, has put Malcolm Gladwell's reflection on plagiarism on their open site, where non-subscribers (and those of us subscribers who live so far in the hinterlands that mail arrives by pack mule) can read it. Gladwell does a wonderful job of stating the commonsense notion of plagiarism:
Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property. In the past thirty years copyright laws have been strengthened. Courts have become more willing to grant intellectual-property protections. Fighting piracy has become an obsession with Hollywood and the recording industry, and, in the worlds of academia and publishing, plagiarism has gone from being bad literary manners to something much closer to a crime. When, two years ago Doris Kearns Goodwin was found to have lifted passages from several other historians she was asked to resign from the board of the Pulitzer Prize committee. And why not? If she had robbed a bank, she would have been fired the next day
But, gloriously, he goes on to examine the many ways in which this representation falls apart, and he coins the fabulous phrase, "property fundamentalism." Gladwell actually acknowledges that copyright law has veered too far away from the Constitutional assurance of fair use. Even more remarkably, he notes the legal and cultural differences between plagiarism and copyright and observes that plagiarism strictures are even more restrictive than copyright.
Posted by senioritis at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Allergy self-research
Alllllll righty! It's been decades since I was in such an altered state; it feels like my head no longer exists above the cheekbones, and I'd hate to try driving just now. BUT nothing is running down my face, nothing hurts, and I'm able to breathe a bit. God knows what combination of chemicals has produced this, but it includes Zyrtec, Flonase, a saline nasal spray, Singulair, Sudafed, aspirin, and--Zantac! That's right, Zantac. My nurse practitioner sez it has some kind of antihistamine properties, especially when taken in combination with Zyrtec. Whatever. I'll choke down anything that might help, and something apparently is. Oh, yeah, and a lot of herbal tea, diet soda, oranges, and a humidifier are making their own contribution. And don't worry; I've talked with my Renowned Pharmacist (with whom I am occasionally on a kickass bowling team) twice today to make absolutely sure that I'm not poisoning myself here. So yes, dear reader, you can try this at home.
Posted by senioritis at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
I'm signing.
Atrios reproduces a letter from John Kerry and urges that we sign the petition. The petition itself is up at Kerry's website, as is a video of the speech.
Posted by senioritis at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)
More breathing data
Now I'm trying yet another medication, this one intended for asthma sufferers but demonstrated effective for about 70% of allergy sufferers, as well: Singulair. Stay tuned for upcoming reviews. Meanwhile, hilariously, my doctor's directions on the label are "Take 1 tablet daily for allergies or breathing." I'll take the breathing, please.
Posted by senioritis at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
Media perspectives on authority
The current edition of Editor and Publisher links to a Slate piece on how many citations of anonymous sources can be found in a New York Times story, notwithstanding that publication's efforts to increase its credibility. The Jack Shafer story in Slate also links back to a Public Editor piece in the NYT last June:
In his June column about anonymice, Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent asks why reporters quote anonymous sources at all. "Do their words take on more credibility because they're flanked with quotation marks?" he writes.
And my answer is, "Of course." The 1966 Practical Rhetoric, a textbook by O.B. Hardison, Jr., explains, "Quotation is one of the most effective forms of evidence." And if the very intelligent, well-educated students in my Writing 109 are any indication, a great many people believe that major commercial media sources do not tell lies, except for the occasional Stephen Glass/Jayson Blair renegade. (Which would, I suppose, relegate a source such as Media Matters to the lunatic fringe?) So all those anonymice really do work for the story's credibility. Readers associate the content of the quotation with the revered Fact, and because of the corporate ethos of an establishment such as the NYT, they believe that these quotations are indeed fact and not fiction. So anonymice proliferate in an era of breakneck journalism, when there's little time for verification--unless, of course, one reads MSM and blogs voraciously.
For those of you without library database access to the full text of Jack Rosenthal's insightful analysis of what I'm calling "breakneck journalism" (with which, of course, both MSM and blogs are afflicted), here's an excerpt:
Our generation is witnessing a relentless rise in the number of news outlets, the frequency of news reports and the media's clamor for every scrap of new information, consequential or not. In this all-news all-the-time environment, society is immersed first in a flood of facts and then in a rush of opinion. Inescapably, the public's interest is soon saturated. Too soon.
Posted by senioritis at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
Beyond all imagining
I have just discovered that my village, Earlville, New York, actually has a web presence. The entry for 11/18/04 notes that Shari Taylor and family want to borrow a donkey for the December 11 parade. I love it here.
Posted by senioritis at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)
Community and competition
Your help, please! The majority of students in my Writing 109 are wanting to write their final paper in the course on the topic of classroom community and competition. These are first-year honors students, so they have lots of experience with classroom competition, and lots of thoughts on the topic. But they're wanting to put those thoughts in dialogue with other perspectives, other sources. If you have your own observations about classroom community and competition that might be useful to these students, please post a response to Chris McGann's query. Ditto if you have suggestions of sources--in popular media, literature, or scholarly research--that they might want to consult. Thanks!
Posted by senioritis at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
The Health Report
Beloved Partner went to his doctor yesterday and came home with an inhaler and antibiotics. Today I make my own pilgrimage. Sounds like Collin should do the same! What are doctors for, if not to express sympathy and pour a bunch of medications over everybody's seasonal URIs? I'm having one episode of allergies after another, precipitated by such ephemera as wood smoke; aromatheraphy; dust; and mothballs. Survey says, allergy tests and shots are in my future.
Posted by senioritis at 08:30 AM | Comments (2)
Mencken the Prognosticator
Forwarded to me through the good auspices of Jon Adler, this little gem should be of particular interest to Ty O'Bryan, himself a diehard Mencken fan:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Posted by senioritis at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Had it with Hadley
So Condi Rice is going to be Secretary of State. No commentary necessary. Holy catz. I've just watched The Day after Tomorrow, and a ten-degree-per-minute temperature drop in NYC is nothing compared to the spectre of Secretary Rice.
But it is worth pointing out, too, that she will be replaced as National Security Advisor by her now-deputy, Stephen Hadley. According to today's NPR, Hadley has been a servant of every Republican administration since Nixon. And what a loyal servant he is. Colin Powell was willing to argue for a war he thought was a mistake. (Most of the 100,000+ dead people probably think it was a pretty big mistake, too.). In the same vein, Hadley was willing to take the blame for some of the falsified data used to "justify" that war. As Josh Marshall observes, Bush is locking himself within a fortress of good-servant yes-men: "[T]he shift is not toward right, left or center, but toward more direct White House control and the silencing of dissident voices in the civil service." Bush can spend the next four years cushioned from any debate, any disagreement whatsoever. And whenever he screws up, a piece of his fortress will step forward and take the rap.
Posted by senioritis at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
Apologies accepted
Tyra points to a website that reminds me of those "response" songs that were popular in the early-early 60s. Somebody would release a song (about a woman who done him wrong, for example) that would get a lot of radio play, and then somebody else would release a "response" (about why he was such a jerk that she had no choice, for example) that would get its own 15 minutes of fame.
Well, Tyra points out that the "sorryeverybody" website has generated "apologiesaccepted." I found sorryeverybody wry but painful. Apologiesaccepted, on the other hand, has something compelling about it; I keep going from one frame to the next, fascinated by the mix of jocularity, forgiveness, accusation, hope, and despair there. Setting aside comparisons with 60s AM radio pop music, these two websites offer a strange and somewhat wonderful visual montage. Instead of writing their thoughts on a blog or in a chat room, people wrote them on posters and then photographed the posters, usually showing the writer holding the poster. The effect is banal but poignant and disturbing--in a good way.
Posted by senioritis at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
Coffee reverie
A CCR Student Who Shall Remain Nameless came to my office this p.m. declaring herself totally wired on caffeine. And after about an hour of our talking about everything from nail polish to qualifying exams, she declared herself in need of a fix. I knew just how she felt; I'd had the same crisis whilst teaching 607 this morning. The only problem with getting wired on caffeine is how you feel when suddenly you no longer are.
Which leads to the entry I've been thinking about all day: coffee. First, a biographical bit: until just two years ago, I had spent most of my adulthood off coffee; the stuff gave me palpitations. It was Sanka for moi. Then I had heart surgery that cured my palpitations. To celebrate, I took up coffee.
And I am such a coffee snob already! I have discovered that Common Ground in Cazenovia purveys the absolute best coffee in central NY. (Just because I deride the social pretensions of Caz doesn't mean I don't partake of their corporate consequences. Go ahead, tell me what a hypocrite I am.) I have discovered that buying organic beans at Hamilton Whole Foods and grinding them in a little machine purchased from K-Mart makes the best coffee at home. And I have discovered that McDonalds makes the absolute worst coffee in the universe. I have pondered and pondered how they do it, and it remains a complete mystery to me. To make coffee that bad, they must really, really work at it. But why?
Posted by senioritis at 08:35 PM | Comments (2)
November 15, 2004
Powell's resignation
Matthew Rothschild, reviewing Colin Powell's resignation, says that it came two years too late. Powell was against the invasion of Iraq, and instead of resigning in 2002, when he saw that he could not sway Bush from his course, Powell should have resigned.
Instead, Powell chose to front for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, parroting their propaganda, most embarrassingly at the United Nations in February of 2003. There, before all the world, Powell presented, in his most authoritative manner, a detailed case against Saddam Hussein, citing "evidence" about weapons of mass destruction and about connections to Al Qaeda. On point after point, Powell was not telling the truth.
And even when confronted with the fact that he wasn't telling the truth, Powell continued to insist on the case for war, a war he knew was a bad idea, and a war whose evidence he knew everyone knew was fabricated. On 7 February 2003, two days after his warmongering speech to the U.N. Security Council, Powell was confronted with the evidence of falsification in the British "dossier" that he had used as evidence for warmaking. His spokesperson at the State Department replied, "The British report contained good information. We'll leave it to them to talk about how it was put together." Not only did Powell advance the cause of a war that he did not himself support, but he also stood behind the evidence for that cause, even when that evidence had been revealed as false. And a year later, on 3 February 2004, he finally acknowledged that the evidence was false but still stood behind the invasion.
Let's not kid ourselves about Colin Powell's integrity and conscience. He has neither--or if he does, he skillfully ignores them.
Posted by senioritis at 05:24 PM | Comments (2)
I can't help myself. . . . .
I don't have the nerve to list this on my blogroll (give me a couple of hours before I do!), but reading it is definitely a guilty pleasure. It's just fun to read such a sterling example of raging schoolyard humor fix(at)ed on jesusland.
Posted by senioritis at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
The enrollment mambo
There are a buncha people who are required to take or are interested in taking CCR 611 next semester. And therein lies the quandary. The enrollment max is supposed to be 12, but 14 people want to or have to take it, and the question is, do I let the extra two in? Eileen raises the issue of overloading the class and thus diminishing everybody's experience in it. I see and agree with her point, yet I find myself really wanting all those people in there. But I can't articulate why! Is it because I just can't say "no"? Is it because I think my classes are so fab that nobody should be deprived of them? Is it because I just love intellectual interaction with as many human beings as possible? Is it because I think these two particular people will make significant contributions to the mix?
Posted by senioritis at 08:05 AM | Comments (4)
7 class meetings to go!
Is every teacher in the universe rejoicing that there's only 3-1/2 weeks left in the semester? I love, love, love teaching, but by this point in every semester, I'm so desperately tired that I feel like I must be one of the contestants in Academic Survival, a reality show coming soon to your TV. And I'm the one who's about to be voted off the island.
Posted by senioritis at 07:59 AM | Comments (2)
November 14, 2004
Texas 84, Penn State 69
And it wasn't that close. I only watched the first half, but Texas looks like a machine this year. I hope the sports programming gods let me see them play several more games before the dance.
Posted by senioritis at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
Kristoff antidote
Without directly referencing Nicholas Kristoff, Joshua Micah Marshall's blog today offers an excellent counterargument. First Marshall limns the clear, simple, concise messages that rallied a majority of voters around the Republican flag:
I think I can tell you what the Republicans are for and without referencing hardly any policy specifics. They're for lowering taxes in exchange for giving up whatever it is the government pretends to do for us, (at a minimum) riding the brakes on the on-going transformation of American culture, and kicking ass abroad.
Having looped back to an article he wrote more than a decade ago, Marshall concludes his entry with an important point to remember in the post-debacle hubbub that has everyone left of Attila trying to answer the "what next?" question:
The Dems did not get 48% of the popular vote for nothing. They got it because of what they were clearly for and clearly against. 48% isn’t enough for the White House or enough to be the country’s majority party. But it’s nothing to sneeze at either. And many changes that would gain Democrats votes in the Red States would lose them votes or unity in the Blue ones.
This doesn’t mean Dems should just stand-pat or be satisfied with what they have. They shouldn’t; indeed, they can’t. It is only to say that there are real limits to how many positions and rhetorical styles Dems can ape to good effect. And it means having a little more respect for themselves, their voters and what they claim to believe in than to collapse into a puddle of self-doubt just because this election didn’t go their way.
As a member of the Network for Media Action in the Council of Writing Program Administrators, I'm keenly aware of how well conservatives--whether in the educational establishment or the federal goverment--have deployed public relations techniques to convey their messages. In Delaware last July, several dozen of us worked for a hilariously long time to come up with simple slogans to convey the WPA's perspectives on writing, slogans that might counteract the rhetorics of back-to-basics and standardized testing. The Democrats have a similar problem. Making one's message clear and simple does not mean destroying one's intellectual integrity. It means you've come to grips with who your audience is, and figured out how to capture their attention. And that, really, is the first job: agreeing on some central tenets and being willing to communicate them in extremely simple form.
Posted by senioritis at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)
On disappointing one's spouse
Esteemed Partner says, "I can't believe I'm married to one of those people who babbles her opinion onto the Internet." Seeing me writing this, he wails, "Oh, please! I am not a participant in your purile, semi-intellectual endeavors!" I won't quote the rest; it might get me arrested. If you think I'm nettlesome, you oughta see what I live with.
Posted by senioritis at 10:34 AM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2004
Molto grazie(s)
Whilst exercising infinite patience, academom set this blog up for me and is nursing me step by step through its development. In a phone conversation this evening, another literacy muse, Collin, after dismissing my beautiful olive green background as "some kind of camoflage," helped me get the calendar back up in the sidebar and set up the blogroll. And Earth Wide Moth, bless him, has my back. Without friends like these, I'd be one of those senior faculty who reads other people's blogs, keeps her mouth shut [as if!], and steps aside at her appointed hour.
Posted by senioritis at 08:35 PM | Comments (6)
Boston College 36, West Virginia 17
'Tis a sad day for WVU football fans: "The Mountaineers (8-2, 4-1) squandered a chance to clinch their first BCS bid and a tie for a second straight conference title."
Posted by senioritis at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
Hunting
I've come to terms with deer hunting. Living in a rural working-class village, I've come to understand that all the local freezers are filled with deer by December, and that's the main protein source for the year to come. I'm okay with that. Not happy, but okay.
Fox hunting is quite another matter, and to my astonishment, I drove past a fox hunt on my way to work yesterday. By the time I came upon these fine sporting folk, I was already feeling really sick, and I'd like to think that if I'd been in a normal frame of mind, I'd have parked my car and picked a fight. As it was, I just shouted at them as I drove by. It was maybe a dozen people on horseback, decked out in fine array, with a few serfs on foot loading the hounds into a van, presumably at the end of the hunt. It was on Ballina Road in Cazenovia. Now, everybody in these parts recognizes Cazenovia as the capital of central New York social pretension, but fox hunting in Cazenovia takes that characteristic to new, supremely nauseating heights. The UK is busy outlawing foxhunting, albeit against the protests of those who wish to display their wealth and hard hearts in this particular manner. But here in New York, the Limestone Creek Foxhunt Club seems to be thriving unopposed. So far.
Posted by senioritis at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)
Goose maneuvers
According to one website, the Canada geese start migrating in August. Maybe that's true further north, but here in central New York, they're mostly just doing maneuvers until December or January--whenever the really bad weather sets in. (And the resident flock at Rogers Nature Center stays over all winter.) We saw so few geese through the summer, I was hearing speculation that the Atlantic flyway had shifted. Today, however, I saw a flock of nearly 1,000 birds filling the sky between Hamilton and Eaton. Last week I saw my first flock of snow geese of the season; I'm made a little nervous by their early appearance, even though the wooly caterpillars are saying no sweat. (Some fool named C. Susan Brown calls wooly-bear winter predictions a "superstition." It all depends on who the wooly-bear is talking to; not everybody can read them!)
Posted by senioritis at 04:35 PM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2004
Directions for surviving a cold
When you arrive at work and it's foggy, cold, and rainy, and you're sneezing so much you almost wrecked the car and suddenly your head is pounding and you feel really, really warm, turn around and drive the hour home. As you turn around, pull off the road (hey, this is New York, and the last thing you need when you're sick is to be hassled by a cop who has decided to pursue cell drivers rather than real criminals today), get on your cell phone, call the office, and tell them to put up a notice on your classroom door. As you drive home, fight the urge to close your eyes for a moment and rest them. When you get home, take two aspirin, two Sudafed, 3,000 mg of vitamin C, climb under two blankets, and sleep to the comforting drone of Dogville. (Much more comforting to sleep through Dogville than to stay awake through it.) Curse the Esteemed Partner for having the bad timing to catch this crud at the same time as you, so that you can't in good conscience get him to wait on you. Crawl into bed with the partner, a couple of cats, and the second of Trollope's Palliser novels, and wait for time to pass.
Posted by senioritis at 06:18 PM | Comments (2)
November 10, 2004
Student authorship in the UK
What does it mean when a university in the UK advertises for a "plagiarism researcher"? Perhaps it's an occasion for celebration since, as far as I know, it's the first academic position in the world that's dedicated to applied studies in authorship. And when the ad specifies that the university wants to look at "cultural values and assumptions," one might hope for a cultural studies approach to authorship. But ominously, much of the language of the ad comports with the widespread notion that international students are a problem whose dimensions need to be understood. Still, even that is better than the stance taken by Northumbria University, which devoted a June 2004 conference to extolling the virtues of digitized plagiarism-detecting programs.
Posted by senioritis at 09:51 PM | Comments (2)
November 09, 2004
Directions for upstate breathing
IF you live in upstate New York
and IF it's winter (which in upstate NY is from Nov 1 to Apr 15)
AND IF
- You have a constant headache around your eyes or cheeks
OR
- One or both of your nostrils is always clogged
OR
- Your nose is running all the time
THEN
- Remind yourself of how much fun skiing, snowshoeing, and winter cycling are
AND - Remind yourself of how much you would hate a single-season climate
AND - Remind yourself of how horrible winter is in all the places where it means cold rain and ice
AND - Go to your doctor and get some Zyrtec. Take the stuff every day.
AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, - Get a prescription for Flonase, too
AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, - Take some Sudafed when things get really bad
- Get some over-the-counter moisturizing saline nasal spray
AND IF THAT DOESN'T STOP THE NOSEBLEEDS
- Go to K-Mart and get a humidifier. Set it beside your desk (or couch, or bed--wherever you spend the most time) and keep the damned thing running
Don't blame me. I told you everything I know. You're on your own now, kid.
Posted by senioritis at 08:27 PM | Comments (7)
November 08, 2004
Seasonal firsts
First snowplow of the season: November 8, 2004, on Route 20 in Madison County, NY. First jackknifing truck right in front of me: November 8, 2004, on Route 92 in Manlius, NY.
Posted by senioritis at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2004
Cranberry muffins
They're bread, not cake, and they're one of the fine features of autumn, when cranberries show up in the supermarket produce section. These muffins not only are nourishing, but they also bring clarity.
2 eggs
3 T olive oil
3 T honey
3 T molasses
3 T orange juice concentrate
1 t vanilla
1 c mashed banana
1 c chopped cranberries
1/2 c chopped nuts (pref. pecans)
1 c sifted whole wheat flour
2 T wheat bran
2 T wheat germ
1/4 c oat bran
1 T grated orange rind
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
Combine dry ingredients in one bowl; wet ingredients in another; and then mix them together. Stir by hand, just until combined. Fold in cranberries & nuts. Spoon into greased muffin cups and bake at 375° for 20-25 minutes.
Posted by senioritis at 10:55 PM | Comments (2)
Deja vu all over again
My brother made a post-election comment on our family website that alarmed my niece, who reads LiveJournal. And indeed she should be alarmed--as those of us who lived through McCarthyism and Nixon's Enemies List have long ago learned. Welcome to the wonderful world of Homeland Security. In the 70s, it was hard to get respect if you didn't have an FBI file from the 60s. At least for anniesj, though, the response to government surveillance is to monitor one's speech carefully. It's logical, I guess; how could you ever hope to get a plum job in the Pentagon if the FBI has a file on you?
Emerson: "Henry, what are you doing in jail?"
Thoreau: "Ralph, what are you doing out of jail?"
I don't plan to make any threats against Bush (or anyone else, for that matter). But the repressive Right has to be fought, not hidden from.
Posted by senioritis at 08:06 AM | Comments (2)
November 06, 2004
The Little Mandate that Wasn't
Like the rest of the universe, I'm sick and tired of hearing about this landslide mandate that Bush got. EconoPundit should be universal required reading.
Posted by senioritis at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
On not moving right
Nicholas Kristoff recommends "compromising on principles." Democrats, he says, need to "give a more prominent voice to Middle American, wheat-hugging, gun-shooting, Spanish-speaking, beer-guzzling, Bible-toting centrists." Well, that will sure as shootin have me voting Green or Socialist again.
Posted by senioritis at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
New Curse
I dig what Bethany Allen is saying: that although one Boston curse has been broken, there's another, on Massachusetts presidential candidates. But the curse, I think, is not on Massachusetts but on the Democrats, who for the past couple of decades have been trying too hard to out-Republican the Republicans. In today's entry at Progressive Teachers, sparks argues that the Democrats should be unafraid to take the moral high ground on social issues.
Hey, it just might break the Curse of the Reaganino.
Posted by senioritis at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)
Leafing
A friend in NYC sounded puzzled today when I said I'd been out raking leaves. Downstate, one can get a lawn service to do such things. In Earlville, one can get a neighborhood kid, a leaf blower, or a rake. C'est ça. No neighborhood kids have been pounding on our door; the Treasured Partner is mortally opposed to leaf blowers; and hence today, while lake effect snow swirled around me in a high wind, I raked.
And all those leaves have to be carted to the compost pile. We could just shove them to the curb and the village truck would come vacuum them up, but then they'd have gone to waste and would not be the fertilizer for the 2006 garden. And if they're just left on the lawn, they kill same.
Sheer logic drives me out there each fall, while I freeze, curse, and plot to buy a leaf blower next year, hide it, and only use it whilst TP is off the property. . . . .
Posted by senioritis at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2004
hooked already
Oh, hell. I remember back in the late 80s when I was resisting getting on the Internet, 'cause I knew that when I did, I'd never want to do anything else. And over the last year I've been watching with a wary eye as the blogosphere picks up speed, and I've hatched 1,000 reasons for remaining a lurker. But Collin, Madeline, and Derek have been just too, too helpful, and here I am, even though I don't really know what I'm doing. But already, within an hour of getting going, I'm having trouble thinking about anything else. All I want to do is play with this client & figure out how to customize; appreciate exactly what trackback pings are now that I have my own blog; set up a blogroll; post pix; etc., etc., etc. One thing I can say for sure: this blog will never have the visual verve that Tyra's does.
Posted by senioritis at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
Sitting down
I was at James Madison University, preparing to talk with faculty and students about plagiarism, when John Kerry made his concession speech. Throughout the day, as I talked with old friends Kurt Schick and Hollie Young, and as I met their students and colleagues, the failed election hung like a cloud. All I could think was that I have to work harder; I have to investigate my options for political activism. At JMU, as I talked about student plagiarism, I also talked about government officials' plagiarism as they built their case for war. But all this talk is not enough. Voting is not enough. We have to get rhetorically smarter if we're going to effect change in our repressive political scene.
Fortunately, of course, I'm not alone in these thoughts. At DailyKos, DHinMi observes the "off to Canada" movement and says,
We're at one of those junctures in our history where people need to figuratively sit down. We can not flee. We can't leave the work of building and strengthening a progressive majority to hold of Bush and the rightwing to someone else.
And Steve Parks has set up a blog for the CCCC Progressive Caucus for that very purpose: "building and strengthening a progressive majority." This promises to be an important resource for people like me, people who feel they simply have to do more over the next four years.
Posted by senioritis at 08:23 PM | Comments (4)