I wrote down some notes while at my parent's cabin about a blog on men, hunting, and digging trenches, but I'm too stressed about the upcoming semester to flesh it out at this point.
Why does it seem that I always set out to prepare dutifully for my fall classes during the summer, only to wind up scrambling to figure out what the hell I'm doing during the 3rd week of August. My only hope is that it can't possibly be worse than last spring when I showed up (first time in teaching career) to my first day of a class without a syllabus and without realizing I didn't have it.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Anarchists in Cache Valley?
I went to a cousin’s marriage today, one of the few events in which I see another cousin (groom’s brother) who lives in Denver. It generally only takes us a few minutes to go deep. Normally we start talking books or movies and then bump up against some friction or tension. Today I mentioned the PBS special of Jared Diamond’s, IMHO, amazing Guns, Germs and Steel (a book my cousin had recommended a few years back). My cousin said he wasn’t too interested in the PBS special since he’d read the book, plus he disagreed with some of Diamond's work, especially his new book on civilization. He then went on to explain that he is anti-civilization (I had to resist pointing out that he had just given a toast to celebrate his brother’s wedding, THE ritual of civilization) and doesn’t believe we can reform away our problems. His idea is that we must save the planet first and then figure out our own society. A familiar argument, he argues that society has built layers of consciousness thus removing the individual from direct experience with survival and the earth.
After going out to my car to get a phone number (I was in the middle of trying to set up a pick-up for my new bike rack—talk about layers of constructed consciousness and experience), I sought my cousin out again. I still had some fight:
“So, if you are against civilization and believe we have deceived ourselves with self-conscious layers of ‘thinking about life’ then how can you be sure that your anarchist platform is not just another layer, just another feeble human attempt to abstract its way from direct contact with the earth? Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do. The idea that by telling everyone they need to live in a certain way the anarchist becomes some sort of elitist.”
“Yeah, in part.”
“Well, it’s different than that. What I’m saying is we go back to our individual roots. I mean did you know that in some hunter gather societies people worked for 3-4 hours a day? So are we progressing?”
“I have heard of this before, but still how can this new idea, these ideas of anarchism, pull themselves out of society, outside of consciousness? This sounds like another sort of ‘false consciousness’ move to me.”
“It’s not about telling people what to do but about each individual getting closer to this unmitigated experience. It’s not the group.”
So is my cousin an anarchist? I do respect him. He does, by and large, live his creed. He has turned down full-time and long-term employment so that he isn’t tied to a job. And he uses his time wisely. He’s been to Italy a number of times and to Japan. This next semester he is going to volunteer two weeks in Costa Rica to help out with sea turtles. Also, he will help put on his second play in January, a political satire, run by a very small yet progressive and participatory theatre group in Denver.
And this is amazing. He grew up in Cache Valley; his mom was 15 when she got pregnant with him. Growing up he didn’t seem that interested in academics. He was, though, a very fine wrestler but also, as seems to accompany success in sports, quite cocky and full of himself. I still remember how he told me he could become a better skier than I was after skiing 3 or 4 times (I’d been skiing, taking lessons and racing some for about 6 or 7 years). And now he’s an anarchist. How did he extricate himself from such a masculine small-town mentality?
I’m fairly cynical about society’s ability to reform itself; nonetheless, I think the effort to reform, whether it leads to an absolute reformation, is still worthy of something. I guess I’m a bit of an existentialist in that way—rolling the rock up the hill, even though we know it will come back down, must count for something. And I think our layers of ritual and society do create authentic, albeit imperfect, meaning in our lives. Still, it seems too simplistic to say my cousin is wrong and I’m right. I guess I’m more concerned with how he lives his beliefs and from that perspective he really is a true anarchist.
After going out to my car to get a phone number (I was in the middle of trying to set up a pick-up for my new bike rack—talk about layers of constructed consciousness and experience), I sought my cousin out again. I still had some fight:
“So, if you are against civilization and believe we have deceived ourselves with self-conscious layers of ‘thinking about life’ then how can you be sure that your anarchist platform is not just another layer, just another feeble human attempt to abstract its way from direct contact with the earth? Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do. The idea that by telling everyone they need to live in a certain way the anarchist becomes some sort of elitist.”
“Yeah, in part.”
“Well, it’s different than that. What I’m saying is we go back to our individual roots. I mean did you know that in some hunter gather societies people worked for 3-4 hours a day? So are we progressing?”
“I have heard of this before, but still how can this new idea, these ideas of anarchism, pull themselves out of society, outside of consciousness? This sounds like another sort of ‘false consciousness’ move to me.”
“It’s not about telling people what to do but about each individual getting closer to this unmitigated experience. It’s not the group.”
So is my cousin an anarchist? I do respect him. He does, by and large, live his creed. He has turned down full-time and long-term employment so that he isn’t tied to a job. And he uses his time wisely. He’s been to Italy a number of times and to Japan. This next semester he is going to volunteer two weeks in Costa Rica to help out with sea turtles. Also, he will help put on his second play in January, a political satire, run by a very small yet progressive and participatory theatre group in Denver.
And this is amazing. He grew up in Cache Valley; his mom was 15 when she got pregnant with him. Growing up he didn’t seem that interested in academics. He was, though, a very fine wrestler but also, as seems to accompany success in sports, quite cocky and full of himself. I still remember how he told me he could become a better skier than I was after skiing 3 or 4 times (I’d been skiing, taking lessons and racing some for about 6 or 7 years). And now he’s an anarchist. How did he extricate himself from such a masculine small-town mentality?
I’m fairly cynical about society’s ability to reform itself; nonetheless, I think the effort to reform, whether it leads to an absolute reformation, is still worthy of something. I guess I’m a bit of an existentialist in that way—rolling the rock up the hill, even though we know it will come back down, must count for something. And I think our layers of ritual and society do create authentic, albeit imperfect, meaning in our lives. Still, it seems too simplistic to say my cousin is wrong and I’m right. I guess I’m more concerned with how he lives his beliefs and from that perspective he really is a true anarchist.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Tallying up the summer
Still reeling from the accusations of writing a depressing blog, I want to, in true cliché fashion, focus on the positive. Actually, I’m getting a bit reflective, somewhat nostalgic and want to impress on my mind what’s been accomplished and what’s gone well, in order to thwart my obsessive nature which always says, “I could’ve done more, coulda worked harder, coulda got up earlier, coulda had more energy” (you get the picture). So, on with the list in no particular order:
I started a blog and have been writing more frequently than I have for years (excluding crunch time papers).
My 4-year old son gives me hugs everyday as I’ve been home a lot (he loves and needs much hugging) and he still plays a bedtime goodnight game I started with him a year ago or so: “I love you…I love you more….I love you the most ….I love you more than the most….I love you the mostest” etc. infinitum until I give in and let him love me more.
I lost my running habit which led to extra time and energy to study—most theoretical and difficult reading done since starting SLCC.
Took kids backpacking—memory is bliss even though actual event was sorta o.k.
I baptized my 8-year old daughter. We had a few nice connections before and after, something I generally struggle to create with my very quiet not so bookish, people-focused daughter.
I read Joe Harris’ A Teaching Subject and felt rejuvenated professionally.
Several students got something out of my first go round with Envision: one students created a rhetorically savvy website and several students thanked me for having a class that allowed them to explore their interests.
I've had more time to talk and watch movies with my wife—I would have never guessed it could feel quite this way after 13 years.
I made time for my hometeaching (Mormon church visits) and while most were very perfunctory, checking it off the list as it were, one visit was quite amazing: a young couple facing some of life’s big changes in a very similar fashion to what we did 10 years ago. Husband had just accepted a job and wife was quitting her job so they could move south and then have their baby in September. In a rare fit of listening for me, I realized they just wanted to talk and be reassured.
Experienced beauty of the west: Yellowstone’s colorful hot pools, Island Park’s slow moving rivers, Zion’s amazing views atop Angel’s Landing, and the Uintas’ glassy lakes and cloudy skies.
Was around to see son ride his bike without training wheels—hadn’t needed them for months but was oh so attached.
Made time to watch older classics: Hitchcock’s Notorious (great dialogue but hard to believe they are really spies) and Vertigo; Fellini’s 8 ½ (not as great as billed); Bertoluccis’ (and Brando’s) The Last Tango in Paris (as disturbing as I expected); Brest’s (and Pacino’s) Scent of a Woman (I love Pacino—“Whoo-ah”); Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers.
Have amazingly curious kids who were willing to watch non-Disney films: several Charlie Chaplin’s including Gold Rush (great scene where the house is teetering off the cliff—kids giggled like crazy); several three stooges films; Phantom of the Opera and others.
Completed first biathlon.
Helped neighbor with swimming pool even though said neighbor has been extremely insensitive with us in the past.
Finished Plato’s Gorgias
Gained much insight and understanding of composition field and SLCC English dept. by serving on the hiring committee.
I started a blog and have been writing more frequently than I have for years (excluding crunch time papers).
My 4-year old son gives me hugs everyday as I’ve been home a lot (he loves and needs much hugging) and he still plays a bedtime goodnight game I started with him a year ago or so: “I love you…I love you more….I love you the most ….I love you more than the most….I love you the mostest” etc. infinitum until I give in and let him love me more.
I lost my running habit which led to extra time and energy to study—most theoretical and difficult reading done since starting SLCC.
Took kids backpacking—memory is bliss even though actual event was sorta o.k.
I baptized my 8-year old daughter. We had a few nice connections before and after, something I generally struggle to create with my very quiet not so bookish, people-focused daughter.
I read Joe Harris’ A Teaching Subject and felt rejuvenated professionally.
Several students got something out of my first go round with Envision: one students created a rhetorically savvy website and several students thanked me for having a class that allowed them to explore their interests.
I've had more time to talk and watch movies with my wife—I would have never guessed it could feel quite this way after 13 years.
I made time for my hometeaching (Mormon church visits) and while most were very perfunctory, checking it off the list as it were, one visit was quite amazing: a young couple facing some of life’s big changes in a very similar fashion to what we did 10 years ago. Husband had just accepted a job and wife was quitting her job so they could move south and then have their baby in September. In a rare fit of listening for me, I realized they just wanted to talk and be reassured.
Experienced beauty of the west: Yellowstone’s colorful hot pools, Island Park’s slow moving rivers, Zion’s amazing views atop Angel’s Landing, and the Uintas’ glassy lakes and cloudy skies.
Was around to see son ride his bike without training wheels—hadn’t needed them for months but was oh so attached.
Made time to watch older classics: Hitchcock’s Notorious (great dialogue but hard to believe they are really spies) and Vertigo; Fellini’s 8 ½ (not as great as billed); Bertoluccis’ (and Brando’s) The Last Tango in Paris (as disturbing as I expected); Brest’s (and Pacino’s) Scent of a Woman (I love Pacino—“Whoo-ah”); Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers.
Have amazingly curious kids who were willing to watch non-Disney films: several Charlie Chaplin’s including Gold Rush (great scene where the house is teetering off the cliff—kids giggled like crazy); several three stooges films; Phantom of the Opera and others.
Completed first biathlon.
Helped neighbor with swimming pool even though said neighbor has been extremely insensitive with us in the past.
Finished Plato’s Gorgias
Gained much insight and understanding of composition field and SLCC English dept. by serving on the hiring committee.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Birthday Angst
I just escaped from my daughter’s 8th b-day party for her friends. My official masculine role was to light the candles. It’s a pretty big to do as we only allow “friend parties” on significant birthdays—5, 8, 12, and 16. My wife created a fancy Hawaiian theme with little wooden umbrellas to stick in the smoothies, music, and grass skirts. While lighting the candles I was thinking about how removed from the moment I was which led me to thinking about writing a blog about this insight which then reminded me of what my friend said about my blog, “Your blog is depressing; I don’t mean that as a critique but just as an observation.” It seems I’m rarely having a ball right in the moment, especially when (b-days, parades, holidays, graduations, etc.) your supposed to be having fun. At my kids parties or Christmas I’m almost always worried about the commercialism and the fakeness of it all; most often I feel super annoyed with my mother, who inevitably gives our children more (in number and costliness) gifts to our children than anyone else including us. It’s kind of depressing. I remind myself of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye when he’s all worried about those ducks in the pond while driving around in a taxi.
My mother is really into making everything right, choosing the right gift for each child, a gift they will go ape over. Of course this is a dangerous thing, expectations, as one can get disappointed. In these gift giving frenzies I first react to the whole mass of stuff, the commercialism, but then I start to watch my mother and worry about her being disappointed. Without fail I make a rather sarcastic remark, “Boy, I hope we can fit into our car after we put all this in” or “Nothing like investing a ¼ of our income in batteries to run all these toys.” Maybe these comments are to get back at my mother, to say, in effect: “told you not to set your hopes on all this crap.” And maybe they just express my frustration with the pressure and desire to have our lives feel meaningful.
I was thinking about a recent post on nostalgia (Unhip's) and how it ties into the b-day scene. Though I can’t name any one film, I know there have been several films with b-day scenes that induce heavy nostalgia for me. These scenes seem mistily representative of “a” life, an existence as it passes through different stages. I guess that’s what gets me: why can’t I feel some of this dreamy nostalgia-like feeling in the moment? I have to say it is much harder to engage with the moment, to enjoy what’s supposed to be enjoyable, than I thought it would be. I thought somehow it would be easier to find meaning in such important events. Instead the memory of events past or daydreams of moments to come are much more satisfying and real to me.
My mother is really into making everything right, choosing the right gift for each child, a gift they will go ape over. Of course this is a dangerous thing, expectations, as one can get disappointed. In these gift giving frenzies I first react to the whole mass of stuff, the commercialism, but then I start to watch my mother and worry about her being disappointed. Without fail I make a rather sarcastic remark, “Boy, I hope we can fit into our car after we put all this in” or “Nothing like investing a ¼ of our income in batteries to run all these toys.” Maybe these comments are to get back at my mother, to say, in effect: “told you not to set your hopes on all this crap.” And maybe they just express my frustration with the pressure and desire to have our lives feel meaningful.
I was thinking about a recent post on nostalgia (Unhip's) and how it ties into the b-day scene. Though I can’t name any one film, I know there have been several films with b-day scenes that induce heavy nostalgia for me. These scenes seem mistily representative of “a” life, an existence as it passes through different stages. I guess that’s what gets me: why can’t I feel some of this dreamy nostalgia-like feeling in the moment? I have to say it is much harder to engage with the moment, to enjoy what’s supposed to be enjoyable, than I thought it would be. I thought somehow it would be easier to find meaning in such important events. Instead the memory of events past or daydreams of moments to come are much more satisfying and real to me.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Visual rhetoric
I'm swamped with portfolios, a task that just doesn't seem to be congruent with summer. Oh well. I used O'Brien's and Alfano's Envision, a visual rhetoric, for the first time this semester and it's gone quite well. I think (I hope) students have been able to more easily find a unique angle on their research questions, angles that allow them to actually throw something back into the debate rather than pretending like they can fix the problem. Also, in many cases, the visual analysis and production in student papers has lead to more ownership, a sense that they have "crafted" their work in ways that only they could. Above is an example from a paper which argued that one can have a rational belief in God without relying on complicated philosophical treatises. In this example the student has tried to visually represent her critique of the ontological argument for God. The words in the background are complicated explanations of the ontological view.
In another example, one I couldn't figure out how to reproduce here, a student created a paraody of a Jessica Alba cover for Self magazine. In her parody, entitled "REALITY"--Alba's head sits in between "REAL" and "ITY," she found a photo from the same photo shoot and then superimposed her own article titles: "hooked on plastic surgery," "Diet pills might be dangerous," etc.
While I'm leery of giving the visual too much credit (as if writing, as we know it, will soon disappear), I do think composition teachers (as has been said over and over again throughout the years) must allow and prepare students to use visual design and rhetoric in the creation of standard English papers. I know much of this has already occurred in public genre focused courses, but it seems to me that it doesn't necessarily take a public genre to teach and/or make the visual integral to what we write. Of course, as I was discussing with a colleague yesterday, it may take much new learning on our parts to reintegrate and introduce the low-culture/carnivalesque/pop culture into our academic composing.
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