Yet Even More of National Poetry Month

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

--Dorothy Parker, "Resume'," Enough Rope

Back Through the Academic, Bureaucratic Looking Glass.

Normally, when the term "job search" crops up in my life, I am the one doing the searching for a job. Now, for the first time in my entire career, I am among the anointed who will be evaluating other poor souls in their own quest for employment. This being a state institution, there are committees and meetings and forms and all sorts of other bureaucracy to go through in this "job search" process. Me being me, I am attempting to use my own past understanding of being the applicant to make sense of my role in this "job search" process both for the committee and the applicant.

The first issue to appear, of course, is the power games being played between two of the higher level members of the committee. Some might call this a "pissing contest." These two members are already interacting with barely concealed contempt for one another over both the meeting time and agenda. Already, they each are amassing evidence to prove that the other is in the wrong.

The second issue has arisen from the paper work required in the search, all of which, on the surface is perfectly reasonable. The job announcement was posted, the applications came in, and the committee members reviewed the applications according to a printed list of criteria "for elimination" created by the Human Resources department. Theoretically, the announcement matches the duties of the job (and the person currently holding the position actually told the person writing the announcement exactly what she does at her job). Theoretically, the cover letters and resumes of the applicants directly respond to the information in the announcement. Theoretically, the list of criteria from Human Resources matches the announcement.

Now, if an outsider were to look at the documents relating to each of these three steps and at the job actually being done by the current employee, they would be surprised to know that they all pertain to the same position. The job is essentially an office manager and administrative assistant job in publishing. The announcement makes the position seem like it is an advanced research position. The selection criteria address the needs of a search for a faculty position. In other words, we seem to be asking for a researcher to fill an administrative position according to faculty qualifications.

To make matters more confusing, only three of the eight people involved in this committee will actually work with or, indeed, have anything whatsoever at all to do with this new person once the new person has been hired. Of the ten people with whom I met on my own interview, I have since seen none but those with whom I now work. So, most of the people involved in this selection process are not picking a new colleague and know nothing about the work being done in the position.

Of course, now that I think about it, their disinterest might help them in their selection process because they are operating with less of this contradictory information. Then, again, the benefits of disinterest may be offset by the probability that these disinterested members find the work on this particular committee a waste of their time.

Thus, we enter Wonderland. We have two high level committee members using the search to score points off of one another. We have five committee members with no investment in the outcome. We have a job ad that does not exactly fit the position that it advertises, and a set of criteria that address neither the specifications of the job ad nor the job itself.

At least, so far, the other committee members seem aware of the problems between those other, contentious two, and know how to work around them. Also, even the disinterested committee members seem to want the best candidate in spite of their own lack of investment in the process, and the pool of applicants is very strong.

More National Poetry Month

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or you shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust...

--T.S. Eliot, "Burial of the Dead," The Waste Land

Women, Groups

About seven years ago, Blanche Wiesen Cook spoke about her Eleanor Roosevelt biographies at the Brazos Bookstore. She spoke of Roosevelt's female friends, whom Roosevelt took with her wherever she went, even into meetings with important men in government. "'Never go anywhere without your gang,'" Cook quoted Roosevelt as saying (or something to that effect).

At the time, I regularly attended a woman's group, called The Woman's Group, which met each Sunday at 11:00 am in the Unitarian Church. When the Woman's Group found out that Cook was speaking on Roosevelt at the bookstore, we all attended, en masse. We even had dinner with her afterward at a restaurant in the same neighborhood; and I ended up sitting right next to her at the table.

When I had first heard of the Women's Group, I never planned on attending its meetings. I was engaged in a bit of picture painting (badly, of course) when I noticed both a notice for the Women's Group and for a women's book group in the "Events" section of the local "independent" newspaper that I was using to protect my roommate's IKEA table from my sloppy pseudo-Pollack style of painting mess. "Ah, the Women's Group is probably full of a bunch of corporate types," I thought. I figured that they would be more like the lawyerly NOW chapter in the city rather than the radical theorists and activists of the defunct university chapter that I had belonged to. The book group looked more interesting.

So, I went to the book group, which was filled with fabulous women, and had read Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life for that week. This was more like what I wanted. Feminism, reading, interesting women at different stages of their life. "You should go to the Women's Group," the book club leader, Anne, urged. "I don't know," I said. "It's at a church, wouldn't it be kind of conservative?" "Oh, we aren't part of the church," she said, "and there are all sorts of ideas there." So, I went.

As it turned out, the Woman's Group had a very broad definition of "feminism." The founder, Iris, had kept the group going for thirty years with no more precise a feminist philosophy for the group than "each woman defines her own feminism." She could always be counted upon to support anything that a feminist-identified woman did, and to help connect women with one another be it for business, legal council, support, or friendship. "Women have to help women," she said, "Because men sure aren't going to."

Women had never really been my allies in life. I had fairly antagonistic relationships with most of my female friends growing up. Maybe this stemmed from my relationships with my mother and her mother. I am pretty certain that this had something to do with the general attitude in my home, reinforced by many of the messages bombarding me from outside of my home, that girls were "bitches," or "weak," or "silly," or in some other way "wrong." After a childhood of thinking that females were the far superior gender (I had brothers, what more proof did I need?), I disliked myself as an adult female, and I disliked other females by extension. As a fellow female graduate student once said, "the worst thing that someone can do to you is make you feel bad about who you are." She was right, because feeling bad about yourself alienates you from not only the rest of the world, but people with who you can identify and who will be your allies.

In spite of my dislike of myself and of other women, I desperately yearned for some kind of human connection, especially that kind of connection that you have with people who "get it" because they have experienced some of the pain and frustration that you have. I yearned for other women who understood, especially as I stopped disliking myself for being female and started to become angry at all of the messages (and some of the messengers) who told me that I was wrong simply for having two X chromosomes. I yearned for a community of these women, and doubted that they even existed.

At the Women's Group, for probably the first time in my entire life (and I was over thirty) I found a group of women whom I could trust. I had had a brief taste of that trust earlier, in the college NOW chapter, but this was much more free-form, much more social, and, in some ways, much more necessary for me at that time. Nastiness did crop up, but no one was vying for power within the group, no one saw anyone as controlling limited resources, and everyone had a common goal, nebulous as it seemed, of preserving the Women's Group as a place where we could all go for some sort of mutual understanding.

When Blanche Wiesen Cook quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, the room erupted in applause. As one woman from the Women's Group stood up to make a comment, she introduced herself as being "here with my gang." We were, and we accepted Cook among us, as well. There was a safety, a comfort, and a courage in our numbers.

Photo Credits:

IMAGE 1: Blanche Wiesen Cook and my friend, the Radical Feminist Separatist Persian Lesbian.

IMAGE 2: Blanche Wiesen Cook and the members of the Women's Group who stayed to close the place down (some went on to a bar afterward).

The Price of Books

This past Saturday I attended the local public library's book sale. Hardcover books for a dollar and paperbacks for fifty cents! While many of the books were, in fact, crap, many were great. Unfortunately, I am broke and seldom carry cash, so I could not avail myself of my inhibitions and just buy everything that caught my eye.

Among my meager purchases was a copy of Tristram Shandy, a book that A White Bear has recommended and that I have been meaning to read. This copy of Tristram Shandy dates to an age when paperback books could be bought at a much lower price than today. The price of this particular copy, back in the day?

Online Museum of Historical Kitsch

Even when I am seriously touring a historical site, contemplating the events that took place "on this very spot," the blood shed, the lives lived, the babies born, the books written, even when I am imagining life at that particular time, searching for sympathy with a foreign world and analyzing the interpretation of the history, I am, the entire time, shamefully anticipating the gift shop at the end of the tour. The placement of the gift shop, conveniently between the end of the tour path and the exit of the museum, the types of books, the items related to the museum, the prettypretty jewelry, the art, the kitchen ware, the textiles, the toys: all of the worthless crap sold to make cash catch me in their tractor beam and draw me in with a force more powerful than the history itself.*

I adore gathering souvenirs from my various wanderings; but I don't particularly tend to accumulate kitsch. I have rules for my souvenir gathering that tend to preclude the excessively tacky. First of all, in keeping with the translation of "souvenir," "to remember," the item must have some relationship to the site. Second, the item must fit in my hands. Third, since the item will probably end up somewhere in my home decor, it should be pretty. Kitsch, by definition, tends to be excluded by that last requirement.

Nevertheless, I do have a freakish fascination with historically-themed kitsch. You have to admire the creativity that goes into beanie baby Harriet Tubmans. Who thinks up bobble-head George Washingtons? How tacky can they get with Abraham Lincolns on a stick? What are their limits if they create inaccurate action figures of the Underground Railroad? When did this lack of decorum in regard to these subjects all begin? Do their creators have not taste? Or are they being intentionally irreverent? These questions are in complete earnest! Yet, despite my fascination, I cannot bring myself to actually purchase any of these items.

Actually, I just lied. I am the biggest sucker for the flattened penny machines. Really, they are the perfect souvenir. Fifty-one cents gets you a little memento to trigger your memory about the happy vacation, and it doesn't take up shelf or luggage space. Still, a penny flattened out with a dolphin and "Miami Seaquarium" imprinted onto one side isn't exactly "pretty;" but it is small and it is a little reminder.**

Despite my need to flatten pennies into souvenirs, I do not buy the truly tasteless crap that so interests me; so instead, I have decided to collect these souvenirs in another way. I am going to start my own Online Museum of Historical Kitsch beginning with installments right here on Clio Bluestocking Tales. All I need are pictures and information about the items, not the actual items themselves.

To this end, I am also soliciting donations, which will cost the donors nothing in that they can just snap a picture in a gift shop (or from their personal collection), then send it along with any pertinent information such as the place where the donor found this lovely bit of worthless crap, what or who it depicts (sometimes that is not always so obvious), the manufacturer (if possible) and a brief statement as to why the donor finds this item so objectionable (although sometimes the item speaks for itself). Since credit earned is credit due, I'll even link to your blog or website (or keep you entirely anonymous if you prefer).

You know that you've seen something that made you pause and stare in horror and awe. You know that you wanted others to see it themselves because they would never believe you description. This is your chance to share the disgust. Become a Friend of the OMHK!

* I am still completely convinced that the Rock-n-roll Hall of Fame exists simply as the world's most interactive advertising tool for the record story at its exit; but that is another story for another time.

** Yes, the Miami Seaquarium isn't exactly "history-related," but it was the flattened penny that I had on hand, I have them from various locations in San Francisco, New England, Galveston, and various other places, but they are all still packed because I have yet to completely unpack from my last move.

IMAGE 1: Beanie Baby Abraham Lincoln, now residing in my boss's office, purchased at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois, by one of his students. Yes, Lincoln is holding Beanie Baby Law books.

IMAGE 2: Flattened Miami Seaquarium penny, obtained by Clio Bluestocking, Dec. 2006, while visiting Nephew the Elder.

To Continue With National Poetry Month

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring.
...
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remained suffer'd.

--Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

In Memoriam, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007).

Even More Bitching and Moaning from the Land of Local History

NOTE: I just have to bitch. I was going to make this part of my Tuesday Hate at The Weblog, but it got out of control, so I put it here. Scroll down to the Peeps entry, or the one about Babu, if you want happier entertainment.

Paranoia is contagious. The publisher of my Local History Book has told me that they need the approval of the Big Museum in the area for my book to do well. This is good business, which I understand and, naturally, fully support. The problem is that the Big Museum, where I used to work in the library, and particularly certain individuals who work at Big Museum have this belief that they own the history of the town. Outsiders, such as myself and pretty much anyone whose ancestors weren't living there since the American Revolution, can be interested in that history and spend money on that history (although sometimes your Outsider money is still not good enough), but can't actually participate in it.

The irony of this attitude of ownership as it applies to the Big Museum's culture is that the mission of the Big Museum is not local history. Indeed, many of the people charged with carrying out the Big Museum Mission consciously cast aside that local history and instruct their interpreters not to talk about "what was right here back then" (which is the second most common question asked by tourists).

In any case, here I am, writing this history, investing my very scarce dollars into the 80 to 100 illustrations specified in the contract, when the publisher went to visit the town to drum up interest in the book. She met with some of the local historians, who are all just thrilled about my book. This part actually matched my experience there with the small museums and archives, who joyfully share the wealth. The Big Museum, not so much. The representative from the Big Museum also acted thrilled. Heck, he went so far as to offer to read the manuscript. This is where I began to catch the paranoia.

See, this representative, the Big Local Historian who works in a high position at Big Museum, was the same one who tried to warn me off of writing the book in the first place because he thought it might compete with the reprint of his own book. He was the same one who suggested that I was trying to get him to write my book for me merely because I asked him to take a look at my work. He was the same one who criticized another local history book for being "inaccurate," after it was published, and after he refused their request to have him co-author it with them or at least look at the manuscript. In my case, he was kind enough to begrudgingly agree to read a draft, and I thanked him profusely; but his attitude made me decide that the less that I dealt with him, the better. He was clearly one of the people who thinks that he owns the history.

I also gathered, in our meeting and from things that I have read about him in local papers, that he is not a person who tolerates anything that he perceives as competition, and he is not a person who tolerates alternate interpretations of history from his own. I am am the first and have the second. Where he sees a loving community created by the owners of a factory who were so kind as to rent to their employees and issue them company script to shop in the company store, I see a company town with all its warts. Where he sees a hiding place on the Underground Railroad, I see a storage closet. Where he sees a heroic struggle that allowed white men to settle New England, I see the slaughter of women and children. I don't have to use hard words, I just have to lay out the evidence, and it speaks for itself. So, I decided to do that, and sidestep any confrontation with him until the book was in print. At that point, he might bash it to his friends and associates, but all of the thousands of tourists who don't know him from the next guy would still buy it.

Now the publisher wants him to read the manuscript after it is done. She wants his approval and, by extension, the approval of Big Museum. Having a reader or an outside institution's approval of the publication of the volume was nowhere in the contract. When I asked about this, I was told "we sometimes do that." What really pisses me off and makes me very paranoid, however, is that he could easily kill the book after all of my work and investment of time and precious dollars (most of which has gone to Big Museum for the use of illustrations from their collections*).

Here is where I get even more paranoid. He could kill the book, then he could turn around and write his own for this publisher or for his own publisher (which, what do you know, happens to be a department of Big Museum) now that he knows that someone is interested in producing such a book. I consider this a conflict of interest on his part. This is not to say I wouldn't love experts on local history to read and make suggestions about my work. That would be wonderful; but I would like them to not have a vested interest in the work failing.

Ultimately, I realize that I am producing a product, not a piece of scholarship. "Good" doesn't matter so much as "Saleable." "Saleable" includes being non-threatening to anyone who might be offended by the very existence of such a product (unless, of course, they themselves produced it). Indeed, "saleable" might mean altering my work to make them happy, regardless of what those alterations do to the quality of the scholarship. I have to be compliant to whatever the publisher decides because they control the crucial element in getting my creation to the world: the printing and distribution of the final volume. They are the experts, and know what will and won't sell, and they know how to make the selling happen. Yet another lesson learned on the Local History and Commercial Publishing front.

Maybe I should come to grips with the fact that I can be an unpleasant person and put people off. I clearly don't have the political savvy to be a local historian.

*This also pisses me off. I don't work for them any longer. I don't work for them because of conditions that they created. They have been the only institution who has given me trouble on this book. They have had their pound of flesh -- twice -- in the form of $1000 for the reproductions and rights to the illustrations. Now, they want to approve of the book itself or it won't sell. Does it never end?

An Oldie but a Yummy

Peeps Research at Staley Library, Millikin University.

Happy 1/2 Price on Easter Candy Day!*

* Which is, alas, the closing of the Candy Season, which will re-open in October. So keep in training.

Return of the Babulon!!!

Babu has returned to the internet.

Share the soul-destroying comedy.

Whan That Aprill

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

--Geoffrey Chaucer, "Prologue," Canterbury Tales

Note: Fellow dilettante, historian, and librarian, the History Librarian gave me this idea to post a poem each Friday in April in honor of National Poetry Month.

Quilts on the Underground Railroad; or, Who Knows? as a Historical Argument

The April 3, 2007, issue of Time Magazine has run an article about the Underground Railroad quilt myth that I have discussed (but not concluded, because I have a hard time with conclusions) in the past couple of months. I read this article just after reading a post on Pharyngula about the kid-glove handling of the supporters of "intelligent design" in the media. What struck me was the similarities between the pro-Underground Railroad quilt camp and the promoters of "intelligent design." At the heart of both arguments lies the insistence that "we want it to be true, we believe it to be true, therefore it is true." They persist in their beliefs despite the fact that the evidence does not support their assertions. Moreover, both have infiltrated institutions of education, such as museums and school curricula, and are taken seriously as actual theories despite hard evidence to the contrary.

The quilt people have my sympathy to some degree because I understand the difficulties of documenting the lives of non-literate and disempowered people. The Time article cites the Michigan Plymouth Historical Museum education coordinator, Anna Lopez, who sees "...no reason why the story of quilt codes can't be fact. "What I tell kids is, who writes history? Men do. Mostly white men. Then I ask, who made quilts? Women did, and a lot of black women made quilts and passed on their oral history. No one wrote down their history, so who knows?" Lopez challenges the children to consider the sources of history, which is wonderful. She goes a step too far, however, in insisting that her answer to "who knows?" automatically translates into "it was." She has turned speculation into fact, then turns around and teaches this "fact" to the classes of schoolchildren and visitors who visit the museum to see its exhibit on quilts of the Underground Railroad.

The author of the book that began this myth, Jacqueline Tobin, insists that she was only trying to tell the tale of one family. As to the quilt legend, she says, "'Whether or not it's completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense with the amount of research we did." She is being rather disingenuous, given that she does present and encourage the repetition of this one family's tale as typical. Furthermore, "the amount of research we did" involved quilt making and African textiles, which proved little more than that African folkways survived the Middle Passage. None of that "amount of research" provided a link between the textiles and fugitive slaves.

What we have here, then, goes beyond the perpetuation of a myth. What we have here is flawed methodology in studying and teaching history. That flawed methodology is being ignored in the public while the mythology is being celebrated, funded, and taught as truth. The same holds true for the intelligent design people. The very concept of a "theory" as a rigorously tested hypothesis has been discarded in favor of "theory" as "an idea I like that could have happened." "Theory" has become whatever answer that someone wants to give to "who knows?" Additionally, scholarly questions are being treated as if democracy provides answers. "I want it to be true, a hundred other people think it is true, therefore this is now true," has become a recurring answer to any serious challenge to both intelligent design and the Underground Railroad quilt story.

When I first began writing about the Underground Railroad on this blog, indeed, when I first became interested in other people's fascination (including my own) with the Underground Railroad in general, I was trying to figure out why people discard their own intelligence to believe false stories. Maybe we like to think that, were we living back then, we would have behaved in heroic ways. Maybe we like to think that, if our ancestors were heroic, then we may also have retained a bit of that heroism. Maybe to contemplate the complexity of the past, particularly if you are part of an oppressed group, but also if you are part of the oppressing group, is too emotionally taxing.

So, white southerners want to believe that slaves were happy or that their ancestors did not own slaves. White northerners want to believe that their forefathers helped fugitive slaves. African Americans want to believe that their ancestors resisted slavery or helped those who resisted slavery. People like themselves doing good things in the past. As the more eloquent David Blight wrote, "The disturbing present can always be avoided by finding the right place to live in the past, or simply declaring that past dead."

This identification with a particular version of the past lies at the intersection of both the personal and the political, filling a need within the individual for some inclusion in a collective identity that transcends time. Identification makes history about the present rather than about the past. This is a very powerful way to use history, but it is not the disciplined craft of history.

Meanwhile, I have a little idea of my own about that quilt story. When I read Tobin's book, I began to wonder if perhaps another folkway was in play. Maybe Ozella McDaniel Williams was "puttin' on ole Massa." Tobin did, after all, encounter the source for her oral history on quilts in the Charleston market, which is essentially a tourist mall. Williams may have just been a very savvy business woman. Maybe she told an exciting, folksy tale, one in which a black, female, elderly person like herself could be heroic. The story might have been devised earlier, the story might have been based on a true story, the story might have been embellished. Don't we all have something like that in our own families? In any case, the white tourists with money to spend ate that story up like candy, and Williams sold them all a quilt. Doesn't a good story always enhance a souvenir?

Who knows?

Virtual Education, part 6: The Joke is on the Nice White Lady

My worries proved entirely unfounded. Amazingly unfounded. Instead of fretting about the ways that I might stand in their way, I am now worrying about keeping up with them. I suppose that this shouldn't be that much of a surprise. They are all adults, after all. Still, how exciting to have a class of so very creative and inquisitive students!

They all turned in suggestions for paper topics as an assignment for the first week. Good god! I could never have come up with these ideas when I was a graduate student, much less an undergraduate (not that I'm the best point of comparison). Selection of paper topics requires a little bit of knowlege about the subject at hand. Since they are taking a class, I presumed an ignorance of the subject, a presumtion supported by their own claims not to know any history.

Thus, I expected the usual "I'd like to write about Rosa Parks," or "I'm interested in the Montgomery Bus Boycott." Those are fine and entirely appropriate to their level. I did, in fact, receive a couple of those proposals, too. Yet, even those students demonstrated some thought and were more than the one-liners that I've written here. They explained why they were interested, and what aspect interested them, giving me a paragraph rather than a sentence or two.

Then, I had students who went beyond the expectation. They wanted to look at the Black Panthers and their connection to Cuba. I had students wanting to compare Malcolm X (using his full Muslim name) with Martin Luther King, Jr. I have students wanting to right papers on the racism faced by Hattie McDaniel. I had students wanting to look specifically at desegregation and Civil Rights activism in their hometown. I had students wanting to study the Million Man March. I had students wanting to study the history of a particular perjorative. I had students wanting to study the history of rap and hip-hop.*

To a seasoned scholar, these may seem pretty basic, but for undergraduates who are not history majors and have not taken a history class since 9th grade, this is pretty great. They are showing, first, and awareness of people outside of the mainstream of the History Channel's version of African American history. They are showing an awareness of different approaches to Civil Rights activism, then wanting to compare those approaches. They are showing an awareness of local history as a topic for research, which is not too common where I come from. They are defining history as include things outside of the "big events" and "big names." I very am excited about observing their progress through the semester.

This online teaching is very subtle. You set up the assignment, and you grade the assignment, everything in between is, as Lori Hahn commented, letting them have their own voice and stepping in to question them on this or that. This method of teaching is much more like what I think of as coaching. You let the student do their thing and just encourage or challenge them toward improvement. I don't feel so bad about how passive this type of teaching was beginning to feel.

Best of all, some of these papers just might be fun to read.


* I posted an announcement that said how incredibly impressed at the sophistication of their topics. Which led to an hour or so of Whiteguilt because I started to wonder if "incredibly impressed" might come off as the backhanded compliment of "articulate." Well, it was a backhanded compliment, but for an undergraduate. That little moment is over, now.

Fiesta de Tejas at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Visit the Fiesta de Tejas at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub! Many unique and interesting entries. How could it be otherwise? It's Texas.

The next one is on May 2 (which is three days before Cinco de Mayo). I promise to enter in that one as most of my deadlines for whatever the hell it is that I'm doing will have passed. I should actually be visiting the state in question, perhaps even writing the post on the very land once owned by the white "Mother of Texas," Jane Long. Indeed, I may very well write a post about her and the much more fascinating Kian, the enslaved woman who was with Long through most of their lives.