James Agee On The Limits of Text

Pannapacker at MLA: Digital Humanities Triumphant? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Pannapacker at MLA: Digital Humanities Triumphant? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education: "I wouldn’t worry about community colleges. Although two-year schools sometimes show little interest in theory, they have been ahead of the rest of us in using new technologies, at least in pedagogy."

That is a comment by Henry_Adams on Pannapacker's post in the Chronicle. The comment is right on target. I made the same observation when I was directing a tech center for faculty (some years ago--during that fuzzy time between Web 1 and Web 2). The two-year faculty had pedagogical question but mostly they had questions about how to stretch capabilities of common software--from presentation media to web work. As Blackboard made its appearance at the four-year campus, the community college regulars asked for accounts. I gave permission and even assisted in moving content from their WebCT LMS to our Blackboard system.

The reasons? I find them embedded in the post and the comments. The community college faculty members had teaching as their primary assignment and seemed to like the situation. While my local faculty members found themselves tied to the triad of professional responsibilities, and teaching ranked low at most levels of faculty evaluation, the community college faculty members knew that their evaluations would be linked to good teaching.

However, I do not think that all the two-year faculty members were after points in the academic game. Most of my contacts were with people who liked technology and believed that technology could be an aid in their profession. They were professional teachers.

What I did not do then was to try to find our of our community college transfer students if they brought superior technology skills to our campus--compared to our four-year students. Having skills does not predict student preparedness, but having tech skills that might be higher than our regular junior students does suggest good preparation.

Much of this has changed in recent years. The four-year "mission statement writers" finally discovered that students needed a grounding in those tech skills demanded by the employment market and so insisted that professors include tech skills as part of the expectation for students enrolled in our classes.

And that is the saddest part. The community college experience gave students a grounding in technology as a communication aid. I fear that my four-year institution's demand for tech skills is more directed towards knowing spreadsheets and presentation software and whatever other skills of the moment attach to a major. As most of us interested in a deeper view of technology know, the up-to-date skills of the classroom will be not-so-useful in the world of work.

I find satisfaction with the work I did several years ago. I am also grateful for the examples I saw among community college teachers. Those examples remain an inspiration.

10 Hottest Careers in America - CBS MoneyWatch.com

10 Hottest Careers in America - CBS MoneyWatch.com:

"5. Feature writing on the web. Is this where all those newspaper reporters who lost their jobs will end up?

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

I talked to a colleague who said that submitting the productivity meant that he was being used

The time arrived. I must complete my annual report form telling my university what I did last year that ought to be regarded as meritorious. We faculty members used to refer to the form as the "merit pay form." Not so many years ago faculty members got pay raises based on a chair and/or dean evaluation and ranking of the reports.

I talked to a colleague who said that submitting the productivity meant that he was being used. The university could use his achievements to show itself active without giving him a dime for what he did. The mention of his achievements might even be considered false advertising. Marketing scheme. Interesting.

The Mob. Your Ancestors?

I followed a link to the New York Daily News and discovered a section of the paper devoted to gangster mobs and their activities, including the rubbing sort. The page took me back to my childhood, to the family gathered around the 300 pound Muntz black-and-white TV, watching Eliot Ness gun down thugs weekly. Magically, the thugs returned by the following Saturday.The frightful fun never ended. 

The quite wonderful thing about the section leader today is that Ancestry.com has a header add on the page. Tempting. Yet, what if this placement is intentional beyond click-throughs. If I enter my name and START NOW will one of those grainy smudged faces below pop up as my starter and turn out to be the Great Uncle that nobody would ever talk about?

Resist. That's it. Don't START NOW. Better to read "Suspected Colombo mob scion Michael Persico celebrates release from jail with pizza and pasta." He's relatively young. He could not be the unbespoken Great Uncle.

Muntz, pizza, pasta. Good protection.

No idea who wrote this.

The Children Will Go to School Because the School is Warm...

The weatherman predicted freezing temperatures for the region, a swath of land in the impoverished black-belt. My friend teaches in a consolidated school for the region. He said to me, "We will have a full house tomorrow; the school is warm; and the students will get something to eat."

I Would Miss Saturday Postal Service

I love getting mail at home. Always have. Saturday deliveries are special. I am at home most Saturdays and hear the mailbox rattling and know that the mail is waiting. Sometimes I work in the yard when the postal person comes with the mail. I've yet to see a grumpy carrier. I take the mail and we exchange a few words about the weather, about the sudden increase in catalogs (November and December), and notification that the carrier will be on vacation next week. The US Postal Service is the closest I come to the federal government and the meeting is usually pleasant. If only the rest of the government would aspire to behave as does the USPS. 

I know. Nixon or somebody axed the postal service from the government. Never mind. The service is still a government service to my mind; just as Benjamin Franklin intended. By the way, Franklin proposed a seven-day postal delivery service.

Tempting the Sun to Stand Still and Straining One's Clock-Setting Fingers In a Regimen That Resembles Either Life in Prison or Hell

As best I understand the game rules for abandoning daylight savings time, at 2:00 AM on a given Sunday, the clock must be turned back to 1:00 AM. The likelihood that most folk in America make the turn back earlier or later than 2:00 AM does not change the rules. The rule specifies that at 2:00 AM on the given Sunday the clock must be turned back to 1:00 AM. The problem with the procedure mandated by the rule is obvious. If the given-Sunday clock declares 2:00 AM, turn back the clock. Each time one turns back the clock to 1:00 AM, one establishes that the clock will need to be turned back by in another hour. When the clock reaches 2:00 AM the second time, the rule instructs us to turn back the clock. If one plays by the rule time will not stand still, but it will consist of an unrelenting circle of just one hour, the hour that lapses between 1:00 AM and 2:00 PM on the given Sunday.

Academic Conference in a Huge Bookstore and the Hidden People of Chicago

I dreamt last night that I visited Chicago. I was walking through a huge bookstore and came upon a group of people having a meeting. Turns out some academic group was holding its conference in the huge bookstore because they could not afford a conference hall. Anyway I stood and listened and figured out that the group was talking about the death of languages in universities (that really is happening all over). So the speaker finished and asked if anybody else had anything to say. I raised my hand and gave a contemporaneous talk on how I saved Greek at a school. All of it was a lie but the crowd liked it and gave me a good round of applause. I wonder if I can put that on my productivity report.

Outside of Chicago I found a group of people behind a hillock. These people were completely cut off. I visited. They were friendly. I noticed that they moved everything by mule or by hand and then noticed that these people had no wheels. I wondered whether I should show them the usefulness of the wheel. Decided to do so. Got a woodsman to help me and we made four wheels. When I told him we need something to attach them to, he threw down his tools and walked away. So I won one and lost one. Really I'm glad that they didn't put up with wheel idea. Soon they'd be caught in Chicago traffic and so much for being nice people.

Sleeping is a lot more exciting than teaching.

What Cliff's Notes has to say about a swept yard in To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird: Summary and Analysis by Chapter: Chapter 1 - CliffsNotes: "'swept yard' In some areas of the South, a swept yard was a sign of a well-kept home. A swept yard was typically kept neat and clean using straw sagebrush brooms.

Sweep My Yard

Johnny Cash :: Like The 309 Lyrics

Hey, sweet baby, kiss me hard: Draw my bath water, sweep my yard. Give a drink of my wine to my Jersey cow. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for my journey now.  

The Mid-Sized State University

As the higher education crisis grows worse I see more clearly the characteristics of the mid-sized state university.

• Wish for respect
• Lack of respect
• Imitation of perceived grand characteristics of the grand state university
• Long mission statement marking out all territory that might be useful in the future
• Tolerance of salary inequity justified by a vague concept of market value
• Insistence to have what real universities have: sports at high level, research, terminal degrees, highly paid administrators
• Budgets out of control
• Reduction of the institutional mission to one item: survival

Just What Is It that Makes The American Revolution So Different, So Appealing?

The ruling class before the revolution

The ruling class after the revolution

Thanks, Wikipedia Commons

I cannot help but wonder how I got through the sixth grade without passing my standardized test

Back when. OK? Back when.

Back when I was in grade school I dutifully walked the five or so blocks from home to school, passing each day the house known to all students to be the residence of a man who was evil because that's just the way he looked.

At school I settled into the routine. One room. One teacher. All day. We got marks of some sort. I'm sure of that. The marks might have been OK, Needs Improvement....I do not remember exactly. But I know that we got marks.

I also know that we moved from first grade through sixth grade based I suppose on some computation from OKs and Needs Improvements. Somehow that never seemed to much matter.

Now I find myself thinking of standardized tests because standardized test are all the rage today and I am trying to remember if I took standardized test when I was in grade school. Maybe we took standardized tests. Maybe I forgot. Maybe I was absent that day. Maybe standardized tests just were not all that important--no nearly so important as the evil man who had a house between school and home--standardized test just not all that important. Could be.

On the other hand, standardized tests are at the center of education today.  No, no. Standardized tests are the center of education today. How could it be that we would have missed out on such a treasure. How could it be that I went through the sixth grade and was allowed to journey on to junior high if I did not complete standardized tests?

I mean, how would grade school teachers know that I was ready to pass on to junior high teachers if I had no standardized score to prove that I had learned to cipher and read?

So there I am. No, here I am. No better off than when I began writing this. Might I have gone to junior high without documentation of more than OK and Needs Improvement?

 I could ask my brothers. But my brothers probably don't remember any better than I do. Or don't.

Life is full of mystery. Sometimes you have to shuffle along without knowing everything. Unless, of course, you have a standardized test.

Work of Tuscaloosa's first black architect shines in churches | TuscaloosaNews.com

Work of Tuscaloosa's first black architect shines in churches | TuscaloosaNews.com: "It's been 60 years since the death of Tuscaloosa's first — and Alabama's second — formally educated black architect, and only a few remember his name.

Baptist minister Allen Durough was first introduced to Wallace Rayfield after he cut his leg on one of Rayfield's old printing plates while cleaning out his barn in McCalla in 1993.

Durough, who had purchased the property from an antiques dealer, found several hundred of Rayfield's drawings, floor plans, business advertisements, portraits and graphic art pieces that were housed in the barn. He did some research and discovered Rayfield's range of accomplishments.

“Wallace Rayfield is arguably one of the most important architects in Alabama,” said Amber Baker, a University of Alabama graduate assistant who helped write the introduction to Durough's book “The Rayfield Architectural Legacy.”"

Afghan Snow and Mud

Mazar-i-Sharif
February 26, 1969

We've had a week of snow. I saw it snow every day of the week. It snows in the night and melts in the day. Snow and melt. Snow and melt. The snow melts and we have mud. The mud of Mazar fights at you. It is up to the calf of the leg in places now. Everywhere it is up to the ankle.

Every day I hope for the plane. Never comes. Soon I will take land transportation through the tunnels to Kabul. I have to get a shot.

When a plane comes I ought to get lots of mail.

Male Cat Cares for Kittens as All Bond Among and Also Bond with the Neighborhood

Two black kittens, small but getting about, took residence a couple of doors away. No mother came with the little furries. What did is a black male. Attentive, protective, he lies on his side the the small ones snuggle his tummy with their tiny lips. All sleep snuggled. A neighborhood conversation. So far the local rag and tube have not been told. Good.

My childhood always had a dog or cat or both who came home to our place. They had wonderful stories; some we knew and some we surmised. This story of my adulthood will join those of special relationships of long ago.

If only such kindness were common in the adult world.