Random Notes from a Crank

I haven't grown a beard during the pandemic because my job required me to be masked. I work in a public setting, and I was perfectly fine with wearing one for safety and for the safety of others. 

It's science, people. Water droplets travel widely when a person is unmasked. 

Now that masks are optional at my place of work, I've been contemplating growing a beard. While it's only spring, summer will fast be upon us, however. I've never had a beard during the summer. What to do? 

If I do grow one, I'll eventually cut it off and have a Zappa-like 'stache. 

Chance and luck plays into our lives all the time. 

A few weeks ago, I saw a call for proposals come across my email, and it intrigued me. So I wrote one to see if I could write an article for what was proposed.

It got accepted. So now I need to work on something this summer. Past me was not thinking of future me. That future me has work to do. 

If the pandemic taught me anything beyond the obvious, it's that an old coach-speak maxim is true: "Excuses are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink." 

I've been slow on releases of new music over the last two years, but I'm looking forward to the new album by Delta Spirit. 

The new album from Father John Misty hasn't grown on me yet. 

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.

Random Notes from a Crank

If you get a chance, check out this short article in Forbes from 2011: "Why Trying to Learn Clear Writing in College is Like Trying to Learn Sobriety in a Bar." While Ellsberg creates a strawperson about humanities professors (or presents a blanket/hasty generalization), especially because he's speaking from the viewpoint of an Ivy League grad, it's a damning portrait that provoked and will probably continue to provoke responses. Thanks to Dr. Kim of Pros Write for passing this along on 12/12/12. 

I rarely talk about my work on this blog because I usually don't want to "go there." In general, I've wanted PlannedOb to be a place for my other interests in life. However, this week provided the highs and lows of what I do. My group of first-year students, as a whole, did fine jobs on their final portfolios, which made me feel good about what they learned this semester and their prospects next semester. One group in my other class, however, did a half-assed job on their final report. In fact, when I met with two of the group members on Thursday, I told them that if I were to receive a report like theirs in a business setting, I would start thinking about ways to fire them. A finals week of pumping sunshine and bringing the pain. 

Some people like to use online systems to sort out their schedules. I, however, am old fashioned. On Wednesday, I bought a new weekly planner and perused 2013 wall calendars. Take that 21st century practices. Huzzah to old technology. 

My son, in his ongoing quest to repeat all kinds of stuff he hears, was funny Thursday morning when shot out his index fingers at Mrs. Nasty and said, "What's happenin', hot sauce?" 

I finished David O. Stewart's American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America a little while ago. I highly recommend the book if you're someone who likes reading about history. Aaron Burr, what a character. He was a fellow who was close to becoming President of the United States over Jefferson in 1800, and then after he was no longer Vice President and after his duel with Hamilton, he hatched a plan that he thought would separate the western part of the US to become its own country along with acquiring grand chunks of Mexico and Florida. And he got off. He beat the rap at his treason trial (thanks, in part, to Chief Justice John Marshall). But the biggest villain might have been General James Wilkinson. Stewart's book reads like a cross between history and detective work because Burr, a highly successful lawyer, was smart not to leave solid records of his true intentions. And when he did leave records, his intentions to various people provide mixed messages. Burr was known to repeat the maxim, "Things written remain." Indeed. 

Now it's on to shuffling my reading life among Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines by Mary Soliday, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W. Pennebaker, and The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men: Stories by Adam Prince. 

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.  

Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood

The book (above) I finished this morning is the kind of book I don't read that often. It's Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood by Ralph F. Voss, who's a good friend of mine.

But I also am a fan of the "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood. I'm pretty sure I've read some of Capote's shorter works sometime in my life, but his masterpiece was a result of him finding a small article in the New York Times about the grisly murders in western Kansas. Based on a hunch and backing from William Shawn of The New Yorker, he traveled to Kansas, researched the story, and turned it into a literary gold mine.

I didn't know much about Capote, but I do now. And after reading the book, I want to check out the two films of Capote and Infamous because I'm interested to see how the filmmakers chose to portray the man, how he went about composing the work, how the relationship between Capote and Harper Lee is presented, and how his presence in rural Kansas is portrayed.

For me, someone who reads mostly non-fiction, one of my favorite chapters in Voss's book is Chapter 4: The Myth of the Nonfiction Novel. And because I'm very interested in how native Kansans still feel about the book that is indelibly linked with their state, I really enjoyed the final chapter, Ch. 8: The Legacy in Kansas.

If you're a fan of Capote or In Cold Blood, I suspect this book is pretty much required reading, especially because of Ch. 5: The Gay Subtext of In Cold Blood.

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.

Maps and Atlases

I first got to thinking about maps and atlases after reading a post on February 18, "Friday Draft: Fairy Tale with Maps," on Sandy Longhorn's blog, Myself the Only Kangaroo among the Beauty. In her post, she's working through a poem that, as she says, "has bits of autobiography" in it.

As I related in part of my comment to her post, "I'm also nostalgic about maps and atlases. You splay out the folds or pages, and you see potential on paper. A GPS just squawks at you."

Another cheer for the old technology, people.

And ice cream socials.

We went to Hannah's ice scream social a few weeks back. While they had all kinds of games to play and "bouncy houses," as Mrs. Nasty describes them, they were also selling books at 50% off.

One of the two books we picked up for Hannah is the Beginner's United States Atlas from National Geographic Kids. The photo below is a similar structure for what you find for every state, but the state featured in the photo is Iowa.

On the pages for each state, you get to learn about "Land & Water," "Statehood," "People & Places," a "Fun Fact," along with pictures and info about the state flag, flower, and bird. Assorted factoids dot the pages with appropriate visuals, such as the one associated  with the hog above: "Hogs outnumber people five to one in Iowa, which produces 25 percent of all hogs raised in the U.S."

So maybe that's why I like porcine goodness? I know I ate a heck of a lot of pork when I was growing up, even the dreadfully chewy pork cutlets that my dad loves.

But back to maps and atlases here.

Americans are known for not being very knowledgeable about geography.

Could GPS squawk boxes and phones be making us even worse?

Some Max Headroom-like voice is perhaps making it easier to find places you need to get to, but we could be losing, as a culture, our ability to get, as a farmer might say it, the "lay of the land," a knowledgeable background about geography. Could we be going from geographically dumb to dumber because of passive reliance on gadgetry?

I don't know, but my initial answer is "Yes."

But the question of whether technology is really helping us develop our intelligence/knowledge is something not enough people consider, and that question is part of the driving thesis within Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, a book I believe lots of people should read.

As veteran writing teachers know, various pundits--educational or otherwise--heralded the personal computer and then the Internet as a boon since they felt the technology would help students become stronger writers. One could argue, and some have, that students are writing more than they ever have before because of computers and texting.

But think about the quality and depth of that communication.

The medium, as Marshall McLuhan opined decades ago, frames the message. If you're considering online fora, at least with a blog you can write as much as you like. With Twitter and Facebook and whatever's next, you're limited by character count. 

The whole warm embrace of the new reminds of the guy who sold us our mattress years ago. During small talk, he asked me what I was going to school for, and I told him my standard line that I plan to "teach writing and teach people how to teach writing," and his response was something along the lines of "Well, why would you study to do that? The computer will just do it for you." It was one of those moments in my life where I almost told someone, "You're a moron."

That's obviously an extreme example. But the anecdote, for me at least, displays how some people might think the newest technology is always better. It's improvement, right? It's new. The machine will do it for you. It makes our lives "easier," more "convenient."

Another anecdote that comes up for me is a conversation I witnessed where one person asked where she could get some fabric for something she was making. She related that she looked all over the Web and couldn't find any stores in the area for that merchandise. The fellow who was talking to her handed her a phone book, and she found what she wanted pretty quickly.

But part of the impetus for this post though is my nostalgia for the old technology of maps and atlases.

For a short time I had a job as an "Regional Admission Coordinator," which is a fancy phrase for an college admissions dude who traveled to high schools to give presentations. The pay stunk, but I had a job and health insurance while I finally figured out that I wanted to go back to grad school. Based in Kansas City, I traveled the western part of Missouri--west of Columbia and Jeff City--along with Kansas and Nebraska--Johnson County, Lawrence, Topeka, Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, and some towns in between.

Driving around the Midwest in a state vehicle with only an AM/FM radio (in certain parts of my territory, it was country music or nothing), I relied on those maps and atlases. And when you hit a small town that you've never been to before and you need to find the high school, scout for flag poles, my friends.

Throughout my travels, maps oriented me and helped me see the state I was traveling in. For me, the squawk boxes of now are cold and indifferent and possibly invite passivity. The map, in contrast, is tactile and comforting. And if you're planning a trip, you depend on your brain to figure out your route while learning the towns you'll pass along the way.

Even earlier in my life, the U.S. atlas we had at our home evoked possibility.

Sure, I lived in the medium-sized blue collar town of Waterloo, Iowa, but as a kid I dreamed of living in northern Minnesota (good fishing) or in cities like Milwaukee or the Twin Cities while visiting places like New Orleans, Portland, Louisville, Seattle, and Philadelphia. By scoping out the state maps, I learned about places in all kinds of states through the process of looking around rather than being only focused on the destination.

The process is important.

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.

Neither a Hobby Nor an Interest

Self-disclosure can be funny.

In one of the writing classes I taught last week, we had a short discussion about how using texting language is inappropriate for when you email certain people. We were working with an example of texting language creeping into an email that we have in the basic writing textbook I've written/I'm revising with one of my former colleagues from St. Louis.

To use an example about audience awareness for my students, I told them that I don't text. In fact, I don't think I've texted anyone. Ever. I've gotten a couple of messages and read them, but I'm not using a phone to write. I dislike phones regardless of whether they're land line or cellular, so the specter of using a phone to write smacks of torture.

It was not hard to predict how the students would react when I dropped that little nugget of info on them. One young lady audibly gasped, a few students giggled, some smiled because it was strange to them, and a few others' mouths dropped open in amazement.

On the very first day of class when I asked these students to write down their hobbies and interests along with their names, hometowns, and academic interests on 3x5 notecards, two of them wrote down "texting" as a hobby/interest.

How the @#$% can texting be a hobby or an interest?

Or as Amanda, the wife of one of my friends said this Saturday, "How can that be an interest? It's an addiction."

My anti-texting behavior probably isn't a surprise to some people who know me as an wannabe Luddite. I still like and depend on many of the old technologies such as road atlases, maps, CDs, and (gasp) letters.

Now I have gotten with the 21st century by finally getting an iPod to complement my iTunes, but I can rationalize that move to simple economics. It's cheaper to download music than to buy CDs. That move is just being fiscally responsible I tell myself.

But with texting, I don't see myself going there.

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.