http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Alarm no sun, alarm is thinking, alarming is determination an earth wide moth is something. Braque | G. Stein en-us dmueller@syr.edu 2008-08-24T21:50:28-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002060.html Like a lot of schools, SU's first day of classes is tomorrow. But I don't teach until Tuesday, so the plan is to jam on the diss in the morning and then head over to The Great New York State Fair for the afternoon and early evening (a dinner of deep fried Oreos?). Special happenings at the fairgrounds: Day five, which means Senior Citizens' Day and Dairy Day. I'm too young to capitalize on the first one (although, what about this here sun spot the shape of Onondaga Lake?), but there will be milk to chug and ice cream to slurp down. Also, cheese. And bunnies in cages, goats on leashes, etc. And then I teach on Tuesday morning, after the new semester's dust has finally started to settle. 2060@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Orange 2008-08-24T21:50:28-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002059.html Wednesday we cut away from the usual paces for an afternoon and evening of late-summer lake time at Southwick Beach State Park, an hour north of Syracuse on big, blue Ontario. We caught up with some friends who were in the middle of a two-week stay, camping near the beach. Had turkey burgers--birdgers--and enjoyed a few hours in and on the water, swimming and kayaking--as rejuvenating as anything I've done this fast-fading month. 2059@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Travelog 2008-08-23T22:50:34-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002058.html A wayfarer unexpectedly encounters a tiger and so runs to get away from it. He comes to a cliff, looks back to see the tiger in ravenous pursuit, and left with no other choice, leaps off the edge. Much to his temporary relief, a small ledge breaks the treacherous fall; he clings to it, suspended more than seventy feet above the ground. The traveler briefly regains his composure before he realizes another hungry tiger lurks at the bottom of the cliff. He is trapped, unable to step in any direction and cornered from above and below by predators. He looks over at a cluster of rubble and is surprised to see a delicate strawberry plant and with it a small, bright red berry, which, with nowhere else to turn, he happily eats while leafing through a packet of ads printed from the Job Information List. 2058@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2008-08-21T21:35:44-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002057.html .]]> 2057@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Writing Center 2008-08-17T14:50:34-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002056.html Monday is our grad program's "Community Day," a day of pre-semester conversation to set up the collegial mood that will sustain us throughout the year. I am both happy and sad (not tearfully so): it will be fifth and final such gathering I attend at SU. I'm slotted in the afternoon for an informal ten-minute spiel concerning "experiences finding and working with mentors and building relationships." And I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately, especially about the options available given such a specious invitation. I've had experiences. I can identify several really terrific influences--a long list of folks, academics and non-, who have shepherded me in various ways through this program of study. Best to list a few? Name names? Cut straight to anecdotes? I have considered this, thought about zeroing in on three off-site mentors who helped me to think differently about what I was setting out to do back in 2004 when coursework got underway. Maybe begin with John Lovas.... But the list is long, and I expect that there will be a lot of this sort of thing on Monday--naming of names, recounting how thus-and-such has been such a beacon, etc. It's hard to avoid. We're largely accustomed, it seems to me, to talking about mentoring relationships at the scale of person-to-person. Fine, so I will probably do some of it, too. Only a little bit. Because I'm also interested in getting at a larger proposition--that my program of study, because of non-directed networked writing practices, has been shaped tacitly by a large number of people (viz., the blogroll and reciprocal Delicious network). Many of these encounters are fleeting, serendipitous, casual, and gift-like. An aggregated subscription to 20 or so Delicious users' links, a pseudonymous comment posted to Yellow Dog, a syllabus for a course at Purdue, a blogged call for a conference. None of this is especially directed at me, and yet, at the very same time, much of it is and has been. Is this mentorship? Seems so. It's a sort of opt-in presencing, a manner of dwelling, of doing stuff not because anyone said you should. And I am tempted to say that those passing characterizations of online narcissism, vanity, or self-aggrandizement (wherever they lurk, usually in "that's not for me" conversations) tend to dodge, downplay, or under-value this point about tacit, small-crowd mentorship I am trying to develop. I can't definitively put a finger on what sustains it. Desire? A blend of interests (self-interest among them)? Whatever it is--in terms of mentorship--it has left me with a sure sense that my program of study would have been drastically different without it. 2056@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Networkacy 2008-08-16T22:35:28-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002054.html 2054@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ On Weblogs 2008-08-15T15:15:59-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002053.html 2053@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Media Mass-Age 2008-08-11T22:30:46-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/002052.html A draft of my fall syllabus was due on Friday, so draft it I did. I'm slotted for a section of WRT195: Studio 2 for Transfer Students. It pitches itself as a "best of" blend, a rip-and-mix that puts the best of WRT105 and WRT205 into a single course for transfer students. For several weeks, I mulled over using Pink's Whole New Mind. I read Johnny Bunko, too, and thought about how I could fit that stuff into the course. But at the last minute, I went with another plan focused for now on the latest greatest literacy crisis and also on Googlization (while taking up some of Vaidhyanathan's blogbook-in-progress). So we'll read about and write around some of the stuff that happens when we 'do a Google,' size up some of the apps, and forage around for research projects concerned with Google's construction of the web or the world, grand databases and privacy, Knol, directed and serendipitous search, and so on. So far, the course opens with a digital memoir of sorts (not quite a mystory, but maybe not too far off), some summary and critique work, a researched argument, and a translation (switching the argument into a 2.5 minute audio short or a Pecha Kucha slide-improv, I haven't decided yet). Here's the current plan, subject to minor revisions until I hear back from a coordinator later this week about whether it will fly. I'm also slotted for ten hours per week in the Writing Center, or, I should say, doing Writing Center work online, as we continue stabilizing some of the consulting options piloted this summer. More on that when the batteries in this cordless keyboard are recharged. 2052@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Dry Ogre Chalking 2008-08-10T22:15:46-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001909.html I haven't had much to say about the dissertation for a while. It's reached its top secret phase, as covered up as a smoking Roswell UFO. Sometime in the spring I broke rhythm from the regimented daily progress I was making (600 new words by noon or else!), iced the draft of chapter four, and rolled the office chair away from the office desk for CCCC, RSA, a jaunt to New Mexico, another jaunt to southern Pennsylvania: summertime. Next thing I knew, shellacked by the whoosh of whole months passing me by, I was really coasting through June and July: teaching online, mentoring four new online instructors, and putting down 15 hours per week in the Writing Center, while carrying the torch for a bunch of online pilots--consulting by email, consulting by IM. Hi, summer. Bye, summer. I'm once again on a dissertation writing jag. In over 6K words on Chapter Five. Or maybe it's not a jag as much as a rediscovery and resumption of the daily rhythms that carried through the first four chapters. Yet it is also like a jag, all herky-jerky. Lurching sentences (all of them footnoted with mea culpas, my bad, etc.). Beads of forehead sweat. Deep reflective pauses for rummaging in the now-desolate grey matter for whatever on earth can come next? I am sure that with every sentence my facial expression tells of one who has writer's anguish and an upset stomach. So: I eat yogurt for breakfast and keep after it, periodically wondering what life will be like when the dissertation is drafted finally, maybe by the end of Soontober. 1909@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Dissertation 2008-08-08T22:40:23-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001908.html 1908@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Reading Notes 2008-08-04T22:40:14-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001907.html 1907@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2008-08-01T13:55:09-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001896.html 1896@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Reading Notes 2008-07-31T14:40:36-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001906.html 1906@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Gobstuff 2008-07-30T19:30:11-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001905.html 1905@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Slouching Toward 2008-07-29T23:25:43-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/001904.html Just returned from a local house concert put on by Mark Cool (tonight was solo acoustic, in the house where he grew up). Snappy grooves, well played, and an eclectic mix of influences: Libba Cotten, Dylan, Cash, Van Zandt, Led Zeppelin, Springsteen, and some more I can't remember. I had to cut out early because Is. reached her bedtime, but the first half of the show was good enough that I would have liked to hear the rest. So: Once home, I tracked down sites due for a return to get a copy of last year's album (where we can find most of the stuff he played tonight) and more. 1904@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Orange 2008-07-26T22:30:48-05:00