Put together a small collection of poems for a friend's birthday, and thought about how much I miss writing...which made me think, damn I miss painting and photographing too... lame
We traversed down to GP again. The roads were foggy in the mountain tops, but otherwise fine.
I am so thankful that this week is going to be short. I just got a stack of student papers and I have so much of my own work to do. Meh. This is getting a bit intense. I am anxious for the term to end so I can stop all of this and focus, or try to focus on my thesis.... panic, just a little touch of panic.
As the readers likely know, Friday was the Information Literacy Summit. I was rather nervous about presenting there but over all it went well. It was interesting to listen in on the conversations about who is responsible for teaching IL in the classrooms. Many people seem to be fine with the job being seated in composition classrooms while others seem to take it as a slight. I think that overall there is a sense that Information Literacy is everyone's business. There are different levels of specificity in IL just like in everything else and those levels can't all be covered in one or two comp. classes.
Sitting at the IL Summit, feeling much less distressed than I did yesterday.... haven't spoken yet, but still. The PPT is done and that's all I need to prompt myself to speak.
In Betj's class today I noticed that I see in two of Cather's novels (Death Comes for the Arch-Bishop and The Professor's House) an argument for an intermediary space between to "poles". In both of these books this intermediate space seems somehow related to gardens or orchards. I have not worked out all of my thoughts about this, but I do know that I totally adore both of these works of fiction and it will be a pleasure to write about them, I only wish I had more time.
In other news nothing has happened with the thesis....stasis.... I can only hope that my ecocritical work with other texts and in other contexts will prove fruitful when the time comes to crank out chapters.
Back in Corvallis, and back to school. I am very ready for this term to end despite the fact that I haven't completed my seminar papers yet.
Much work to be done!
We had lost some film a while back and recently recovered it. What great fun to develop these shots taken during out March 2007 trip from MA to Oregon.
1. Wall Drug Jack-a-lope
2. SD rest area
3. Portland OR's world famous Voodoo Donuts
The Slow Travellers
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The past few days I have felt like I am just squeaking by. It's conference week so almost every minute of my day has been tightly packed with scheduled events. On top of this the term is winding down so there are many projects with fast approaching due dates.
Some of my conferences are frankly depressing. I know that I've done my best as far as instructing these students but many of them are quite transparently trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Many have submitted frankly useless drafts which seem to have been put together in one night. There are few if any quotes, no citation and little organization. It is overwhelming because I am not sure what more I could do.
In light of this let's forget about 121 for a moment....
Here's a little floundering bit of semi-recent poetry
Yaquina Head
Sooth on sooth the sea
tosses and wears away the meanings
in an arching skyward cauldron
combusting ginkgo
A delta leaf vein tremulous
stilled in Holocene weed fields
Rosebay pointing up and up
spike on spike between clusters
Salal all finger-linked haunched
and sea air rounded in great hills
Tomorrow I have a test in Espanol, and my conferences start for paper two. It is rough. I don't really understand my Spanish that well with regards to verb conjugation, and I don't know why, but my students seem awfully confused lately, as though midterms sucked out their brains. My plan is to have them read their essays out loud to me while I take notes or ask questions about what I hear. We'll see how it goes.
In the joys of Sunday, my garden is doing well. We ate fresh strawberries this morning, and there are beans ripening. One sunflower has blossomed and many more are on their way. The peas have blossoms also. Oak leaves are crowding the lettuces, and it is a daily battle fending them off. Soon I'll be planting chard and kale. The herbs look great and the pansies too, some gladiolus soon to bloom. Sweet Oregon!
Today I went to PDX and took the English Literature Subject GRE. I was much dismayed to see that almost all of the questions were British Lit pre-1800... egh. This of course is a section of lit that I know almost nothing about. I answered what I could and left some blank since blank spaces don't really count against you. It was three hours of testing that I would have been happier without, and 150 bucks I would rather have spent on --well on just about anything-- but sadly the Subject GRE is needed by most of the schools I'm looking at.
It's pretty depressing to think about how many African-Americans voted to preserve or create inequality.
For me Judy Weider says it all.
It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America. - Obama
But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!- MLK
I am so excited about the election. Having had Bush in office for the past eight years I've felt pretty down about America and our politics. Now for the first time since the great robbery of 2000 I'm excited about the election and hopeful about the future. Naive? Perhaps, but I am still feeling good.
I've noticed over the past few days that the ILP grades for my class seem a bit lower than usual. There could be a number of reasons for this. Primarily I am thinking it is a result of these two:
So recent research into our energy use has yielded fantastic results. As most readers know, we are serious about reducing our energy use. We moved to a small place, we replaced all of our bulbs with CFLs and we have been minimizing electricity use in every way practical.
RIP Studs- "With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.I'm thinking it might be fun to make a yahoo account for my mother so that we could occasionally have a game of scrabble or cards (prehaps even pappy since he might be bored these days). Not that either of us are particularly into games, but it would be something fun to do, and chatting over an online game of scrabble can be fun...though I am deadly awesome at said game....
