Random Notes from a Crank

I had hoped that with the retirements of Brett Favre and Peyton Manning that I wouldn't have to see them on commercials as much. Unfortunately, those two bozos are shilling for all kinds of products. How disappointing.

As someone who consistently has to endure people equating "grammar" with "writing," Doug Hesse's article, "We Know What Works in Composition," should be spread to others as liberally as possible.  

One of the books Santa brought me is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. It's a helpful, powerful, eye-opening history book that is accessible to most readers. Dunbar-Ortiz puts together strains of thought and incidents I had suspected fit together, but I never put together. Her "settler colonialism" thesis makes sense and coheres with how settlers squatted on and stole Indian land and waged genocidal "irregular war" against Native American tribes. In the recent chapter I just read, she explains why the 2nd Amendment was so crucial for taking indigenous peoples' land because without a large standing army, the military relied on volunteer militias to kill natives. This book pairs nicely with Zinn's A Peoples' History of the United States. 

One of my early birthday gifts was Squirrel Solutions Seed Saver 200. I got it today and filled it up with cracked corn. I'm hoping I see more blue jays and woodpeckers with that seed. My other bird feeder was consistently being knocked down those furry rodent bastards, and this new feeder has a spring within it that covers the feed holes once the squirrel puts its weight on it. I haven't witnessed the feeder schooling a squirrel yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Knock on wood.

Fully Labeled

Finally, I'm done.

It took a while, but this here blog is fully labeled or "tagged."

Going through this process was interesting because I got to see how PlannedOb has changed over the short lifespan it's been around. Since I started the blog at the height of the presidential primaries, it's not surprising that one of the top labels is "Politics."

But lately I haven't been writing as much about politics as I did when I first started this blog. It was one of the main subjects of my first blog that I started when I lived in St. Louis. Some readers may remember that one.

But election time is ramping up, so I suspect I might write a bit more about politics. Then again, maybe I won't. I don't know. It can be tiring and depressing. I need a more "Stay Positive" outlook because of my natural pessimism, and writing about Mitt Romney, the Tea Party, and attack ads is not going to help.

Regardless, if I do write about the upcoming election, here are some pertinent labels I might use for such posts:

• Frustration
• Anger
• Media
• Race
• Social Class
• Stupidity
• Deceit
• Nonsense
• Dark Messages
• Immigration
• Iraq

I added "stupidity" late in the process, so I'm sure there are some posts from the past couple of years that I could use that label for, but I don't think I want to back through all of those posts again.

And I need to add hokum to that list.  

Stay Positive: An Excellent Second Grade Teacher & Kid Literature

There are a lot of things to be positive about these days: the start of baseball season, spring, gardens growing, summer approaching, and so on.

But I'm not interested in talking about those subjects.

I'd rather talk about my daughter's excellent second grade teacher and a book.

One of the major projects for my daughter's class this year is students writing and illustrating their own books. This teacher knows her stuff. She worked her students through the writing process. Since I volunteer every Thursday to tutor and then eat lunch with my daughter, I got to see little snapshots of the progress of these project and how her teacher guided them through the writing process, which entailed rough drafts, mandatory revisions, peer review, and polishing their books for presentation.

My daughter wrote a tale that involves a princess; a dognapping; villains named Tim, Quinn, and Bob; dragons; nefarious intent; true love; hula dancing; and plot twists.

If you're interested in reading the full story, it's after the jump. The numbers indicate page numbers, but you're missing the illustrations. I wanted to provide some shots of some of the pages; however, our digital camera doesn't want to communicate with my laptop for whatever reason.

Stay Positive: The Writing Process

I haven't done a "Stay Positive" post in ages. So here goes. I got three 'graphs to drop on you.

My daughter was telling me today about how she's required to revise her writing because she said she had written a rough draft of something, but she was trying to remember the name of the word of what's she's supposed to do after the rough draft. I correctly guessed the word was "revision." Since I do some volunteer tutoring on Thursday afternoons every week, I've noticed that her second-grade teacher puts her students into pairs, and they workshop drafts. As you can imagine, I'm hoping my son gets this teacher when he hits second grade.

My daughter was also telling me today about the story she's writing in her journal. She's very proud she's on page six of the tale. From what I'm told, here's the deal. It's about a princess who loves her dog so much that one day when she gives the dog a kiss, the dog mysteriously disappears. After some investigation, the princess finds out that three boys used some manner of magic to make her dog disappear. They're holding it for ransom. The band of culprits are named Bob, Quinn, and Tim. That dastardly trio then tells her that she can get her dog back if she goes into a creepy cave, which has a dragon living in it. But it's a "friendly dragon who's just lonely." So then the princess and the dragon go to Florida, and then it snows there. Then they travel to New Mexico, and it "rains ice." I think she was just brainstorming about the Florida and New Mexico trips, but I'm curious to read this story when it's finished. Her journal is twelve pages, and she's halfway there.

I travel to a conference next week to do a research presentation. So this morning I shut the door to my office and sequestered myself to write a draft. From 8:30 to approximately 10:30, I churned out what Anne Lamott would probably call a "shitty first draft," and it felt good. I've had ideas bouncing around in my head about this topic for a while, and like always, I discovered ideas and points through the process of writing.

Notes from a Wandering Mind

As I was listening to "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin this evening on the drive back from Mattoon, I thought about how I'd like to see William Shatner do a dramatic reading of the lyrics.

I wonder if the kids will help me pick up the front yard. Those sweet gum balls aren't going to pick up themselves. "Kids, meet the Nut Wizard."

I caught a program tonight that featured baseball records that aren't likely to ever be broken. One I wasn't familiar with was Hack Wilson of the Cubs reaping 191 rbi in 1930. That's an astounding number, especially since they didn't play 162 games back then. And Hack is a great name for a baseball player--not a good one for a golfer though.

I rediscovered an old fashioned weight loss program a while back. Just get sick. I lost seven pounds. Now a number of my pants feel baggy.

I don't get texting. I mean, what the heck are all these people texting about? Then again, I've never liked phones.

On campus the other day, I saw a young lady texting while smoking a cigarette and crossing a major road.

Mrs. Nasty and my daughter bought tickets for a Taylor Swift concert this summer in Indy. The price per ticket was $84. That fact makes my head hurt. Translating that price tag to my concert-going inclinations, I could go to four shows for one ticket. Greed is good for Ms. Swift. I could say mean things, but I won't.

I was in a conversation the other day where people were discussing the merits of jazz music, which reminded me of my favorite elective course I had as an undergrad--Jazz History and Appreciation. And thinking about that class reminded me of Wynton Marsalis's Soul Gestures in Southern Blue trilogy of albums, which I listened to quite often when I was drafting my dissertation. Uptown Ruler, in particular, reminds of the room where I wrote the tome in our apartment in Tuscaloosa.

My favorite course in my undergraduate major was Mythology.

My least favorites were Victorian Literature (reading selections) and Intro to Poetry (professor).

I don't know why I can't seem to get interested in college basketball anymore. Alabama is back on the rise (won the SEC West), but maybe March Madness will pull me back like it usually does.

Five Drafts

For my birthday the other day, one present Mrs. Nasty got me is one of those bathroom reading, Cliff Clavinish tomes, a little book that has amusing and interesting information.

As I was leafing through the book, which is titled Contrary to Popular Belief: More than 250 False Fact Revealed, the other day, I stopped on page 35 because of the statue of the Lincoln Memorial and the long title "Abraham Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope while riding the train to Gettysburg."

My interest was piqued. I read on.

Apparently, Lincoln started a rough draft on Sunday, November 8, 1963, which is close to two weeks before the famous address on the battlefield. The author says that his final draft was on "executive letterhead and probably finished the night before the dedication ceremony." And his secretary reportedly says he didn't writing at all on the train ride to Pennsylvania.

The truth is that, according to the author, "He wrote five drafts."

That's right. Let me spell it out nice and slowly for you:

F

i

v

e

D

r

a

f

t

s.

I remember hearing that story about Lincoln writing the address on the train from somewhere, and the fact that this myth might have aided and abetted and could still aid and abet people's rationalizations (especially college writers) that they write well "under pressure" pisses me off.

FIVE DRAFTS.

Here in the Prairie State where Lincoln idolatry is lively and also a lucrative affair, I wonder how many schoolchildren have been told this lie about Honest Abe churning out a cherished piece of polished oratory without the need for multiple drafts, revision, editing, and proofreading.

What's even richer about where the myth came from is from whom it originated. Lincoln's son, Robert, is supposedly the perpetrator who "claimed in a letter that his father wrote the speech on the train" in 1885.

So the son of Honest Abe was a liar.

Huzzah to Us

This morning my co-author shipped the manuscript of our basic writing textbook to our publisher in New York.

The book has 12 chapters and two appendices that weigh just over six pounds. The initial manuscript is 435 pages.

Huzzah to us.

The First and Then Edited Version of the Declaration

If you've never had a chance to look at Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration with Adams and Franklin's editing, click HERE for a link to USHistory.org's photo of it with transcription.

This copy, of course, is the one before it went to committee. In committee the references to slavery were deleted, of course.