Author: Derek Mueller

Ca(s)t in Lilac

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

Yes: It is a purple wrap on the broken left leg of a stray black cat who now
lives in our garage.  Unlucky! Yes: He’s been at the vet for the last two
days because he was sitting on the back porch, suspending his leg in the
air, staring at me, waiting…for two weeks.  Unlucky!  Yes: The vet
told us the cat had been in a cat fight (what cats do this time of year,
turns out), and that the cat’s left leg was broken and dislocated. 
Unlucky! Yes: A board-certified surgeon would be very happy to operate for 1500
clams.  No, thank you.  Unlucky! Yes: He’s sucking on aspirin and
catnip–the feline equivalent of an Elvis cocktail. Unlucky! Yes: He’s been
hanging around since January; the vet described him as a dog-like cat. 
Which explains why I like him, just a little bit.  And they dropped the eu-word with a $30 price tag, before I asked, "What, won’t it eventually heal?"  Yep.  It’ll heal, but he’ll be gimpy, slow, stiff and,
well, prone to losing fights.  "Maybe he’ll learn not to
fight." D. and Ph. have been calling him Pepe ever since he showed
up in January, made his way to our porch after droppers left him behind. When I picked him up from the vet today, his name transformed homophonic to Paypay. Unlucky! Yes: if I start a photoblog one day, I’ll take comfort in explaining less, letting the images reveal their abundant, ridiculous truths.

Extreme Makeover: Discourse

/ Derek Mueller

I didn’t intend to post this morning, but the latest entry at datacloud
jogged my thoughts about EN106, which is winding to conclusion.  Winding.

EN106ers commandeered the course two weeks ago; they organized, mobilized,
demanded an opportunity to take the PowerPoint sequence one step farther by siphoning
two speeches of historical import into slideshows.  It wasn’t my plan; I
was thinking our last bit of work would be a research plan: a research question
or prospectus, a five-source annotated bibliography, and a critical review of
one source.  But, like so many good Pirates, they accepted my early-term
insistence that they make the course their own, took over, put their plans for
the last coursework ahead of my own. 

We switched into groups for the speech conversion activity; they worked in
clusters to remake Ursula LeGuin’s "A Left-Handed Commencement
Address," and Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech
into PowerPoint shows (admitting, along the way, that such gross reductions felt
irresponsible).  Their essays–due Tuesday–are framed loosely as critiques
of the process, critiques of the other group’s work at identifying key bits in
the speeches.  Here are their shows, if you’re interested. 

Ursula LeGuin, "A Left-Handed Commencement Address
HTML
version | PPS
version | Full
Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have A Dream"
HTML
version | PPS
version | Full
Speech

If I did this again, I would build in a round of peer response–some kind of
interchange and revision for polishing the shows (this part of the process was
left off due to time constraints in the semester).  The best part of the
sequence was our class session the other day when we started to talk about the
process by borrowing the premise of the extreme makeover programs on television
lately.  We had a good time working through the transformation in light of
the mad-dash grab-n-fix that is so popular on the tube. The Extreme makeover:
discourse trope was fun and seemed to be an incredibly rich pop culture
pass-card toward theorizing what PowerPoint does–and in ways we didn’t
appreciate as fully when we worked from the smattering
of articles.

Students are in their last
week of compulsory blogging.  I told them they could turn a critical
eye on the semester if they wanted to, contemplate what’s happened since
January, open up about forced blogging, our pace, workload and focus for the
semester of study. Many of the students are doing just that.

Connors, 1982, “Modes of Discourse”

/ Derek Mueller

 Connors, Robert. “The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse.” On Research Writing: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999.

Big Idea
Connors historicizes the ascent and decline of the modes of discourse as a
widely favored, pervasive scheme for organizing FY composition from the early 1800’s until the late 1960’s when
modified approaches and the process movement, bound up with phenomenological underpinnings
in many cases, threw off the charm of modal curricula. The modes of discourse commonly included Narration, Description, Exposition and Argument, although variations included Didactic in place of Expository (Newman), Pathetic (Parker) and Speculation (Quackenbos). Connors’ essay offers a fairly clear chronology of the modes, their brief reign, and the forces that brought about their gradual (and yet ongoing) unraveling: single-mode text books, especially ones centered on exposition, and what Connors calls “thesis texts”–texts purporting a central, masterful method for engaging students to write powerfully, effectively. He details the causal relationships from a classical belletristic set of modes, to Newman’s
A Practical System of Rhetoric in 1827, to Winterowd’s condemnation in 1965, “that the modal classification, ‘though interesting, isn’t awfully helpful.'” 

Continue reading →

A Double-Jump in PrezRhet

/ Derek Mueller / 6 Comments

I’ve been noticing GWB’s ties over the past week.  I caught
a few minutes of his prime time talk last Tuesday, and I, like so many attentive
citizens in viewerland who talk to the TV, asked for the questions to be
repeated.  *Ask it again, ask it again* What’s the name for the rhetorical
event where the questions force the answers into a kind of orbital of avoidance? 
Other, better informed blogs have already suggested that the President might
have been more direct in his answers.  No need to restate that here. 

I really want to talk about his tie last Tuesday and his tie from the White
House meeting with Sharon.  When I watched his press address last Tuesday
for fifteen or twenty minutes last week, I sensed the orbital of avoidance, but
the flicker of his tie is what really spoke to me.  It was alive. 
Radiant.  A brilliant glow.  And that’s what color television does to
black and white patterns.  It fuses the patterns into a shifting rainbow
shimmer.  I think it’s called spectral "ringing"–the picture can’t
restrict the hue range simultaneously occupying the narrow band.  Farther
apart, black and white stabilize; the television screen can depict them
discretely.  But together, tight black and white patterns render dancing,
colorful cartoon characters–like the one I watched while the President talked
at the nation. Surely, the President’s wardrobe crew understands spectral
ringing.  So what were the consequences? 

Well, at first I thought it must be an inadvertent flub.  I haven’t been
watching Bush’s ties, studying the significance of presidential wardrobes or
anything even close.  But when I saw images from the meeting with Sharon, I
thought I saw the fantastic match in the colors between the Israeli flag and
Bush’s tie.  Accidental?  Who knows?  But it sure seems like it
could be deliberate;  surely the President’s wardrobe crew is more careful
about picking out what he’ll wear for a visible, widely broadcast engagement
than I am about what I wear each day.  And if that’s true, then it’s
possible that his dressers, knowing
these basics
(PDF), were deliberate in laying out his

checkered tie, the one glow-shifting on the screen throughout his press
conference last Tuesday.  And for fun, we might speculate about the legacy
of checkered props as sideshow that have been a part of televised
presidential talks since the beginning:

Eight years later to the day, while delivering one of history’s first major televised political speeches, Richard Nixon used a dog as a prop. Nixon was Dwight Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate, and the speech —
unofficially named after the dog — saved his spot on the ticket. In rebutting
allegations that a group of supporters had created a slush fund for him, Nixon
conceded that he had received one gift.

"It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way
from Texas," Nixon said. "Black-and-white spotted. And our little girl,
Tricia, the 6-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all
kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of
what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it!" ("Web
Team hones," 3/8/04)

I don’t know, maybe it’s too great a reach to suppose the President’s tie
last Tuesday was purposefully distracting.  But it was distracting
(for me, at least).

Skip the Part About

/ Derek Mueller / 3 Comments

On this Monday, I’m having a crinkled attitude–that hard plastic
crunchiness, stiff like the lid from a fountain soda cup I picked out of the
ditch before mowing the dandelions this evening.  No delimiters indented: Other, Root
Beer, Diet. The skies are scheduled for rain tomorrow. Buckets. Oh please!

I was at the office at a raw hour this morning–and all day after that.  In
my chair at the office before 8:00 a.m.: raw.  Had to turn out three
player of the week nominations for the U.’s baseball and softball programs. 
Email them to the conference.  By the end of the day, I learned that none
of them was selected.  One twitch of invisible work-product.  One
harmless twitch.  And one in my eye.

The men’s soccer program held their annual banquet late in the afternoon
yesterday.  Since the news about heading to Syracuse broke, there’ve been a
lot of "missyous" floating around.  E. gifted a signed game ball to me at
the banquet yesterday, said a kind few words about how we’ve known each other
since we showed up at the U. twelve years ago–a futboler from D.C. and a
basketballer from Michigan.  Abundant good fortunes have lit the course. 
So when E. floated the panegyric, everyone almost cried. A braid of joy
and sadness, I suppose. 

I’ve been directing information about sports at the U. for the last seven
years.  Directing information is akin to "representing."  It
stems from the powerful potential of  fashioning knowledge, of controlling its distribution. 
It’s rhetorical–inventive, moving, extant by conditional delivery. 

[R.E.M. Out of Time in the earphones, strumming.]

Other than the ditch-mow (a near-road precariousness and slant making it my
job) I made chili for supper.  It’s my week again.  Every other
friggin’ week.  Sunday groceries and a week of meals.  D. and I have
been carrying on this way for a few years; at times it’s a gross and unwholesome
contest in culinary underachievement, both of us smiling at a sort of demented relief in
shorting our turn.  Raisin bread and applesauce?  For dinner? 
Anything’s possible in hopes that the other will cave, concede the system, order
pizza.  Ph.’s survived this long.  Hell, he’s even gained nine pounds
since January, I guess.  Who knows wherefrom.  When it’s my week, I
usually throw together a chili, stew or soup.  Something that’ll carry
forward for a few days.  Mid-week cooking: I’m a lazy reheater. 

Short list I didn’t complete: 1. Start C’s proposal on weblogs and audience;
2. Finish reading and responding to 18 project drafts from intro-humanities; 3.
Blog on Connors’ "Modes of Discourse."  Short list I did
complete: 1. Heard back about a NY realtor lead; 2. Read and responded to six
project drafts from intro-humanities; 3. Read Connors’ "Modes of
Discourse." 

I’m still brushing the about graf I hope to tape up over there one day soon. 
Here’s what I have so far:

Earth Wide Moth is the weblog of dmueller. [He’s this and that.  He wrote up a
100 things list some time ago.]  We should think of this weblog as a
playground astir with a confusing, noisy simultaneity of excitement.  We
should think of it as digital-dust tracks toward a morphing autobiographical
sketch-portrait.  Earth Wide Moth houses a fair amount of dabbling, testing,
and rough extrapolation on academia, technology, new media, rhetoric, writing
programs, distance ed, critical geography, info-flow, and teaching.

I can’t think of what else to say. But the comment lines are open.  What should the about section include? 
To what extent should it stick out as business-card standard?  Maybe I
should skip the part about.

Flower, et al., 1987, “Strategies of Revision”

/ Derek Mueller / 3 Comments

 Flower, Linda, et al. “Detection, Diagnosis, and the Strategies of Revision.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 191-228.

Big Idea
Over two years, five contributing researchers sought to refine the key intellectual actions in revision. The study dealt with both student-written texts and expert-written texts; it’s an example of collaborative analysis and the challenges of collaborative writing. The project seeks refinement in the terms we use to describe the revision process, setting out with special
investment in “detection” and “diagnosis.” It also works from a confluence of theories toward revision. Specifically, the endnote acknowledges
theory’s promise of tentative knowing (Dewey’s "experimental
ways"). Their work affirms the complex, various interplays of revision toward the fulfillment of a textual
need. And, although the textual need is often defined by the teacher, the essay-project promises the value in enabling “novice” student-writers to detect, diagnose and strategically affect textual
needs emerging from their own knowledge and intention. 

Continue reading →

Timed Throat Glorp and Achiness

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

Warmest day so far in Kansas
City this year, and I’m shivering through pangs of some evil,
nasty virus. I made it through the winter without even a cough,
but now I’m flat out miserable with throat glorp and achiness. Lozenge? 

My good friend E. is featured in the Kansas
City Star this week.  Access to the article requires another onerous
registration, much like the ones described
at the Chutry Experiment earlier this week.  But the photo alone is
worth signing up (and yes, of course it’s okay to use phony
information).  Notice the kids in the background, holding push-up positions
while the coach juggles a ball.  Futbol doesn’t look like so much fun.
What, E., you get paid for this? 

My dad sent me an email tonight wanting to know how much time I spend
blogging each day, on average. Reminds me of a story I heard at UMKC about a
professor whose mother was visiting from England.  A comp/rhet/lit prof,
he’d spent most of the day at home preparing for the evening course with
diagrams–a  map of composition studies.  His mother: "Now what
is it you do at the University?  Do you often spend all day
drawing?"  Funny.  Guess you had to be there.  For my dad,
I’ll send a more personal note, but I didn’t figure he would mind if I brought
the family backchannel (*source of a post to come!) here for
mention.  See, the simple answer is that I blog constantly. It’s the
typing time that I limit to one hour or so.  Anything more than an hour of
typing, and it’s ready to post.  So EWM isn’t filled up with the most
polished writing.  Nobody complains.  Nobody gripes about atrocious
sentences or my rambles into unintelligible abstraction.   Here’s an
example: last night, when I woke up at 3 a.m. to find that Max, our nigh 14
year-old Yorkshire Terrier had, well, messed the house, I was blogging things
through until I had everything cleaned up a half hour later.  I couldn’t
type, spray PineSol and wipe the entire floor at the same time, but I was
blogging it, connecting it, imagining the whole experience as part of my sucky,
sore-throated, up-late, mess-cleaning life.  As for time management, I’ve spent less time playing Yahoo!Subterranean Institutionality
Euchre in these months since Earth Wide Moth came about.  And I do miss the
Euchre, but so few people in Missouri have ever heard of it, and even when I won
(playing amongst strangers) it was never as satisfying as this blogging
habit. 

What else?  I thought about canceling a meeting this morning with our
division of online learning folks.  But I went ahead, wound my way through
the Academic Underground to their newly finished space.  (I was blogging
it, too.)  Amazing how completely the U. has rooted itself.  The
development of the limestone mines into usable space makes for an incredibly odd
site: subterranean institutionality. I snapped a picture with the digicam
exactly for use here.  And later, when I lost my precious jump drive for
about three hours–seriously panicked, searching everywhere–I was worried I’d
have to walk all the way back down to the DOL offices where it might’ve fallen
out of my pocket.  Turned out it was here at home, which was a relief
because I didn’t have the last two weeks backed up.  Gah!

Time to eat, so this timed fun’s gotta end. Usually an hour, sometimes more, often less, and bear in mind that I’m under the weight of the spring flu. All total, I’ve been at it for exactly 49 minutes from sitting down
to posting, if that’s helpful for guaging my typing time.  Hoping that it
is.

How will I know when I’m blogging?

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

I’m posting my first lil’ write-up on the Braddocks.  And I should beg
your pardon for not asking whether anyone cares if I turn this weblog toward
self-serving notes on some days (wait…nevermind…I do that every day). 
Periodically, over the next few weeks, I hope to register a series of scrappy
notes like this.  They’re not wonderfully critical or connected; they’re
not aimed at any research project.  They’re rather more like the solid (squiggly?) paint-lines along the highway to Syracuse’s
CCR program in the fall.  With that, I also confess to testing out Scribe–a
free note-organizing app.  These few notes are shaping up in Scribe as a way to see how it works, whether it’s worth the price.  Well, it will be. 
The program works.  How well, I just can’t be sure yet. One of the best
parts is how it fits conveniently on my 64MB jump drive and runs from there via
a USB port, making it easy to switch from home to work and back again.

I had to smile at myself more than once, chuckle, grin inside about my sense
of humor in this whole experiment.  A lot of behind-the-blog antics. 
A lot of tongue-in-cheek and silliness over the idea of taking myself seriously
here.  It’s not official, but I prefer to play around at Earth Wide
Moth.  For now, I’m resistant  to poisoning my blog with
responsibility; responsibility is everywhere else. 

Most of the way through Richard Braddock’s essay, I decided to mix it
up.  Avoid a linear reading of the honorary essays.  I pasted the
table of contents into Excel, inserted a random integer formula, and sorted by
the RAND() column.  Spice it up, you know? Before long, I’ll create a list
of my plan over in the sidebar (along with the ‘About’ note I’ve been mentioning).  And one more thing: I’m not applying a tidy, syntopical format to the essays, covering them only as Mo Adler would want me to.  Just jotting loose notes, free-associating, reacquainting with the Braddocks I’ve read and getting to know the ones I haven’t.  That pretty well covers the who, what and why. 

Braddock, 1975, “Frequency and Placement”

/ Derek Mueller / 5 Comments

 Braddock, Richard. “The Frequency and Placement of Topic Sentences.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed.
Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 29-42.

Big Idea
Braddock’s essay on the placement and patterns of topic sentences exposes a problem of referring students to mythic truths–affirmed in popular textbooks old and new–about professional expository writing. His empirical research and methodical investigation (lots of data-counts, tables) of faulty advice about prevalent organizational patterns is an affront to the echo and reiteration of uncritical teaching. His essay calls for
conscientious attention to topical organization in paragraphs.

Terms of Import
t-unit (minimal terminal unit , Kellogg Hunt (1965)) — the “shortest grammatically allowable sentence into which…[writing can] be segmented” (31).
delayed-completion topic sentence (35)–undeclared predicate forces us to read beyond the seminal t-unit and into a subsequent sentence
assembled topic sentence (35)–infused with quoted bits from another source
inferred topic sentence (35)–implied topic that cannot be reconstructed by quoting phrases from the original text
major topic sentence (35)–reflection of the “larger stadia of discourses,” like Irmcher’s “paragraph bloc”

Monday Morning
Simply put, teachers of writing should be cautious to make unfounded claims likening work done by students to work done by professionals. If we demand students organize paragraphs by locating topic sentences at the beginning and the end of their paragraphs, we must not justify the requirement by referring to foggy,
disproved characterizations of a larger writing institution. Braddock’s research establishes that only 45% of 761
paragraphs studied used simple topic sentences; only 16% located those topic sentences in the first or final sentence of the graf. 

So, 1.) We should always be skeptical about common truths in textbooks; 2.) We should not attest to gross generalizations about expository prose or, heck, even refer to “most” expository prose working in a particularly systematic way unless we are able to attach illustrative examples; 3.) We should watch for topical variations in students’ expository writing and teach organizational variations as a controllable feature of composition (particularly calling attention to it during stages of revision, I think).

Interrogations
How much time and attention do writing instructors give to teaching about
t-units or topic sentences in 2004? Is the concept of topic sentences irresponsible if it leaves off the subtleties and variations? Should instruction about topic sentences in expository prose foreground
the act(ion) of research writing? When should students be welcomed to think about it? Is it inline with broader studies of textual organization (merging HTML, visual rhetorics, distributed schemes)? How do we
teach organizational awareness? Outlining? Mapping? Of students’ writing? Popular writing? How much time and energy does this deserve in a FY writing course? In an advanced expository course? Is this essay
still regarded as important (for its methods, perhaps, as much as its contribution to more sophisticated pedagogy)? Or is it rather more like a shelved artifact? 

Passages Passages
“This sample of contemporary professional writing did not support the claims of textbook writers about the
frequency and location of topic sentences in professional writing. That does not, of course, necessarily mean the same findings would hold for scientific and technical writing or other types of exposition. Moreover, it does not all mean that composition teachers should stop showing their students how to develop paragraphs from clear topic sentences. Far from it. In my opinion, often the writing in the 25 essays would have been
clearer and more comfortable to read if the paragraphs had presented more explicit topic sentences. But what this study does suggest is this: While helping students use clear topic sentences in their writing and identify variously presented topical ides in their reading, the teacher should not pretend that professional writers largely follow the practices he is
advocating" (39).

Quiet While I Drill Your Head

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments

In the dentist’s chair this morning.  Hayakawa in my lap.  Getting
x-rayed, poked, scraped, polished, flossed.  Sprayed, vacuum-sucked. 
Shined by the brightest light ever put to me.  Hovered over by a masked
agent of the dental conspirators.  "Open wide.  Turn your head to
your right."  

I brush twice each day, floss once.  Tooth Invaders was one of the first
video games I ever owned; J. and me up late on the C64 with black and white TV,
scrubbing bacteria. Tooth brushing is ritual.  But in the dentist’s
chair-cranked-back, my mouth takes to bleeding.  Things a coherent, sober
person wouldn’t allow anyone to do: sharp metal prod to bare gums,
touched.  It was awful.  It is always, time after time,
awful.  Still, I return.

Why Hayakawa (Language in Thought and Action)? Haven’t read it before.
Quite a mix in the selected bibliography. Couple of interesting sections (though
brief) on maps, extensional world as territory, and also on the levels of
abstraction with a drawing of the ladder.  When the dental assistant
finished grinding my teeth, I picked up the book again, started reading where
I’d left off fifteen minutes earlier:

No matter how beautiful a map may be, it is useless to a traveler unless it
accurately shows the relationship of places to each other, the structure of
the territory.  If we draw, for example, a big dent in the outline of a
lake for artistic reasons, the map is worthless.  If we are just drawing
maps for fun, without paying any attention to the structure of the region,
there is nothing in the world to prevent us from putting in all the extra
curlicues and twists we want in the lakes, rivers, and roads. No harm will be
done unless someone tries to plan a trip by such a map. [emphasis in
original]

Continue reading →