on what i just did at plainer … i don’t know … i didn’t do it to hurt anyone … or to make anyone angry … i wasn’t working from any theory … i wasn’t trying to be new - because i know i can’t be … it wasn’t a proof …

i had these sounds in my head at first … for the first line … and i thought i had a good second line too … but when i got there those sounds had gone & i had to push a little harder for others … and was it here that conscious artifice comes in … knowing i was making & couldn’t stop until i’d reached an end … and trying to keep it all even enough with nothing too prominent but enough difference to stay on it & in it …

after i typed goforth i knew i’d got it from a place near wendell berry’s port william … but i liked the sound & the look of it … if you ask me what it means i will look at you & that’s about all … what it means isn’t the point & i know you don’t want to hear this … i’m sorry … i drummit … & this is terribly irresponsible i know ripping words from meanings … making words apart from meanings … making more damage … sometimes i just can’t help it … a drummit

the following video has brief moments that may bother some of my more gentle readers … you know who you are … please take precautions

Link: YouTube - William Shakespeare - Brief and Naughty!.

although it’s been hanging out in my Loot links to the right for a long time, i don’t believe i have formally introduced you to the wonders of BibliOdyssey … a blog that specializes in Books~~Illustrations~~Science~~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart … i find it to be adequate provocation for eye and mind … glimpses into far-off places & times … a regular reminder of the power of books and artists to astonish … as in …

just between us, i’m having way too much fun being some kind of web-divo … teaching and learning from my colleagues who have allowed me to set up discussion boards for them … it’s good to know that i’m helping some adventurous teachers take their own first steps into web 2.0 possibilities … it’s fun to work at solving the little problems that come up (& hoping the big ones never do) …

i did have a chance at last to speak to a representative of this Major Textbook Company … had a little bone to pick … have had it for quite a few years …

you see there’s this scrap of a passage from Ben Franklin’s autobiography … the part where he tries to make himself morally perfect … he lists twelve desirable virtues and briefly describes each … but when we get to CHASTITY there’s no description … just a big white blank space …

when i asked my class this year why there was nothing printed there, they said something like, “Well, Franklin knew that everybody knows what chastity is, so there was no need,” they said “Well, maybe he was kind of shy about that.”

i, of course, had to tell them that Franklin had written something but that someone had taken it out … of course, i read to them what had been left out:

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

and we had that conversation … the conversation that someone somewhere doesn’t think students should have in english class …

ok … so i pointed all of this out to the representative of this Major Textbook Company … he gave me his card, said he’ll look into it, said i should email him in a few days (& i will) (because i’ve been really curious and cynical about this for years & to finally approach an answer .. corporate though it may be …is about all that i can bear) … i’ll let you know how it turns out

have i seen the future? are any of us in it?

no … that’s too whatever … it was this …

our english department met today with representatives of a Major Textbook Company … not one … not two … not three … but FOUR representatives of a Major Textbook Company … bearing mountains of hernia-inducing tomes, a big box of cookies, and something else in a box on each desk …

they want our business … (more precisely, to continue with our business, since we presently use their old now-out-of-print series) and they presented us with a whizzbang tour of their current literature series … it was all kind of overwhelming for an end-of-day meeting … but this is what i made of it:

the focus was on 1) organization of the texts and 2) technological elements of the new series and 3) integration of all elements of their series (lit - grammar/comp - and tech)

i’ll focus on my course area: the american lit text

1) the book contains most of the same selections as the present text … it has been adapted to the specs (the look & structure) of their new series … this is what bugs me now and has been bugging me for some years: the reading selections seem to be drowning in a sea of pedagogical peripherals … they seem to be barely holding their own against a phalanx of literary analysis exercises, writing “workshops,” vocabulary development, and grammar add-ons … oh, the good old questions at the end of the reading are still there … but they seem to have spawned some god-awful mutant offspring … need i say that i’ve never found these “teaching” aids of any use … the books seem designed to be teacher-proof … i can imagine that if some schools or districts require departments to be on the same page on the same day doing the same things then this textbook would be a great help …

and they are very expensive …and they are VERY heavy …

2) the technology elements involve

a) a “completely customizable” test bank,
b) online submission and scoring of student writing (with immediate feedback - take that, you slacker teacher!),
c) a dvd of Actual Living Writers talking about their work,
d) an option for students to have full access to an electronic copy of their complete text …

all of this is fine … will i ever use it? not likely … the problem? … i don’t know .. this is just too much … and it doesn’t feel very congruent with my approach to teaching … for one thing, i almost never give the kind of tests the test bank offers … another thing: i took the essay scorer for a test drive & recieved such useful feedback (under “Audience and Purpose”) as: While a position may be stated, either it is unclear OR undeveloped … hell, i coulda writ that … and i’da been more SPECIFIC.

i don’t know … this is just me rambling here … i’m not in charge of anything … and i bear no ill-will toward any of my colleagues who feel differently about these things … i will not stand in their way … but i don’t like this stuff … my students don’t need all these bells & whistles … my students need constant close encounters with all kinds of real literature … real literature in real books … who has ever fallen in love with thoreau’s work by reading the scraps of passages these texts provide (smothered in gorgeous big color shots of walden pond)? who?

seems to me that these anthologies make things “easy” for teachers while they reduce “reading” to the blandest & most forgetable of experiences … a brief text by some famous writer hemmed in on all sides by the very visible gears of this pedagogical machinery … where’s the love?

students need to read and think and speak and write about real writing real books … the raw stuff … what is all this other? i just don’t get it.

Reginald Shepherd’s Blog: Some Thoughts on Difficulty in Poetry.

In the perennially popular “death of poetry” discourse, there’s a consensus that people don’t read poetry because it’s too hard, too “elitist” (another word that should be expunged from the English language: it’s never descriptive, only pejorative). I’ve always thought the opposite, that most poetry isn’t hard enough, in the sense that’s it’s not interesting or engaging enough. It doesn’t hold the attention—you read it once or twice and you’ve used it up.

if one has enough money & influence, one can restore the broken thing without too much effort … fixing The Broken behind the thing is a tougher job …

o … sorry … having a cryptic moment

as i type this i’m listening to the gassy hollow goodbye noise from the pipes … the faucets, the toilet …

it seems a waterline has broken over by the school somewhere … so we have lost our water … for how long? overnight? through tomorrow?

we’ve been here before … a few summers ago … and it wasn’t pretty … some of us may be in motel tonight …

they say we can use the toilets at the school … but won’t the school water be off also? why just us?

the noise is fainter now … a long slow gasping … diminuendo

i just noticed that yesterday was a particularly bad day for u. s. troops in iraq … haven’t seen any tv news lately because our big screen’s color has gone all unconverged … looks like 3-D without the glasses … headache-inducing ..

well, as i was saying …

twenty u. s. troops died yesterday … the story was on page 12 in the Daily Herald, page 12 in the Tribune, page 22 in the Sun-Times … just business as usual, i guess …

these deaths … and the daily deaths of how many iraqis … yesterday and today and tomorrow …

no longer all that newsworthy

this from Geert Lovink: "Blogging, the nihilist impulse"

A cynic, so Sloterdijk says, is someone who is part of an institution
or group whose existence and values he himself can no longer see as
absolute, necessary, and unconditional, and who is miserable due to
this enlightenment, because he or she sticks to principles he or she
does not believe in.

finally got around to reading this very interesting essay …

i write … while they write … they are seniors in ap literature … they are thinking about hardy’s convergence of the twain … thinking about "how the poetic devices convey the speaker’s attitude toward the sinking of the ship" … one writes, "Thomas Hardy saw the sinking of the Titanic as inevitable" …

it’s cold … up here … as well as down there where "cold currents thrid" … snow out my window, but sunshine, too … i’ll need a sweater pretty soon … the sophomores have begun Huck Finn … i could probably sum up my teaching career with that line: "the sophomores have begun Huck Finn" … the sophomores are always beginning Huck Finn …

this past week i’ve set up discussion boards for some of my colleagues … a religion teacher, a spanish teacher, an english teacher … this is why i reconfigured my website … to allow for this .. . and now it’s happening … so far, without much trouble … and i’ve been learning, too, about the inner working of the program (phpBB) … it is, so far, a breeze … & i’m way too proud of myself for having trouble-shot a few simple problems & solved them (sometimes via the kindness of some strangers) … it’s fun to learn stuff

in the comments for “lines” (below), mom wonders how the tire tracks were made … i don’t know … i just asumed that the back tires diverged from the path of the front tires as the vehicle began its turn … here is a wider shot in which we can see the entrance from - and the return to - the street …

yesterday the carmel catholic faculty was treated to an in-service day which began with "the role and place of technology in an educational setting" and ended with The Decision Pit …

In the morning, Alan November spoke to us about the technological & pedagogical challenges of the wired world … mr. november drew our attention to:

… the problem with google (via the google-bombing/stormfront issue) … and showed how to find the owner info behind websites via easywhois.com … we were shown how to locate valid, reputable websites via a backlink search at Altavista.

… a range of alternative search engines that would allow us to teach critical thinking about the internet - and about searching same: altavista … answers.com … ask.com … searchenginewatch.com

… overture.com … which (if i understand it aright), among other things, lists the bidding on search terms to give purchasing companies top placement in search engines … they called it "sponsored searching"

… skype and audacity and del.icio.us and technorati … and a service called noodletools.com

and mr. november reminded us that nothing ever completely disappears once it is placed on the internet … bringing us to archive.org … and laughing out loud at the quaint notion that privacy exists anymore.

we were presented with the scenario of bringing the world into the classroom via any combination of these programs … and there’s the rub … because while cchs is a few far steps ahead of most other u.s. schools (i’m guessing), we are still not yet ready for in-class global conferencing … we need computers with microphones … with speakers … with installed programs … at the very least … so there are a number of obstacles … but they are not insurmountable.

now, about that Decision Pit …  in the afternoon we were run through an exercise in consensus decision-making around the question "What one thing will help Carmel to become the best school it can be?"

moving from small caucusses to the whole group … and the dynamics of both … was kind of cool to watch … and it seems some folks forgot (or never realized to begin with) that this was just an exercise … we had some passionate advocacy going on … pretty cool … but leading us to … what?  something … many things …

i spent too much of a good chunk of today online … the other day i set up discussion boards for two colleagues … tonight a question from one of them got me nosing around a few aspects (functionalities) i hadn’t paid any attention to before … cool … but time-consuming …

and this afternoon i was busy seeking out links to resources and pictures related to Woolf’s Jacob’s Room … somewhere in the middle of that i thought, “today would be a nice day to call mom … so call yr mother, tom.” well, that was a nice thought, wasn’t it? but it didn’t happen … sorry, mom.

and tomorrow … while most of the nation is celebrating the legacy of martin luther king, jr. by sleeping in, waking later to eat a leisurely breakfast, and then just putzing around a bit for the rest of the day reading stuff & staring & walking here & there … while this is going on, we here at cchs will be putting on our shoes & shirts, putting on our pants & ties for an in-service day … which begins at 8:30 with a talk by Alan November and then some questions … and then a chunk of time to work in classrooms (while the admins & chairs get to schmooze with mr. november … but why not me, huh? why not me get to schmooze too?) & then lunch & then SOMETHING in the afternoon … & i’m looking forward to it … really … i mean it … no, that’s not sarcastic .. no, neither is that … ok?