Springfield, Ohio . . .

. . . Renaissance Prose Conference.

Martin Marprelate
Jan Comenius
John Milton
Mary, Queen of Scots
Giovanni Boccaccio
Marguerite de Navarre
Christine de Pizan
John Donne
C. S. Lewis.

Heady company, to be sure.

Adventures with Students, Vol. 13

You know what really bites? Is when you have a student you've trusted, worked with, gone to bat for--a student you have seen as possessing great potential--just completely abuses your trust and goes right off the deep end.

I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. I'm pretty disappointed.

Why, hello, Mr. Orwell. Meet . . .

. . . the University of Delaware.

Chromosome Pair of the Day

XY

Hugo Project #2

The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber (Hugo winner, 1958).

A surpassingly strange book, one that reads more like closet drama than a novel. It relies heavily on a flighty female narrator. Leiber is good at writing in this voice, which makes it almost impossible to read. It also, while inventive, takes place in a space I never could define. I didn't make it to the end.

Kiss of Death

for the Heels. If they end up on the cover of SI, they're absolutely doomed.

Adventures with Students, Vol. 12

You just never know what to expect. I read today a comment in response to Jonson's Cary-Morison Ode (we covered it in class yesterday . . . it's a poem on friendship):

Then we went over the poem about friendship and how a short life can sometimes be better than a long one. We learned the fact that what is done during one's life means the most. And this poem really hit me because my Dad passed away right before school started and I saw a lot of these good things talked about in the poem in my Dad's life. It just helped me to remember that even though he lived a short life, it was a good one.

Friday Cat break

Simon is crazy, but not like this.

Adventures With Students, Vol. 11

You learn the most interesting things about yourself from student gossip.

Today, I learned that I've been called "The Shakespeare Nazi" by a student who recently dropped the Shakespeare class. Godwin's Law aside, what the heck is that all about?

Am I supposed to take that as a mark of honor?

Pig Pickin Update

Success! Beautiful weather, homemade sauce came out pretty well, 90 guests, plenty of food.

We were especially thrilled that R&S came down from Chicago for the big event, and that both sets of grandparents could be here.

Pictures to follow (we've been having trouble with our ISP)--

Ohhhh yeaaaahh

GH III for Mac.

(insert guttural Axl Rose scream here)

Pig Pickin Countdown

Two days

Better start making that NC-style barbecue sauce

Don't worry. We'll have the ketchupy stuff too

Pig Pickin Update

Grass mowed (mown??).
Weeds whacked.
Pits built.
Oinker ordered.
Windows washed.
Edges edged.

Four Days.

Adventures With Students, Vol. 10

I just learned through the grapevine that I'm apparently quitting before next term. Somebody should inform me of these life-changing decisions I'm making before I start requesting courses for future semesters.

Pig Pickin Countdown

6 days.

Here Comes Car'lina 'lina

Late Night With Roy is tonight!

Which means I'll be in a tizzy about twice a week from November through March.

And this is why I never voted for Mike Easley

not that it made any difference, but still.

An item in today's TMQ takes on State 'education' lotteries:

this important story in Sunday's New York Times details how the supposed virtue of state-run gambling lotteries -- payments for public education -- increasingly is a swindle. State-run lotteries took in $56 billion in 2006, the paper reports, but only $17 billion of that amount actually went to the official purpose, support of education. The balance, 70 percent of receipts, was used for prizes and administrative expenses. If a charity spent only 30 percent of its proceeds on charitable works, the managers would soon be in jail. Yet state-run lotteries devote only a third to education and the legislatures of the 42 states plus the District of Columbia that sponsor gambling do nothing.

But it's for the chiiiiiiiiiillllllllldrrrrrrrrrrehhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnn. I call BS on that.

"Free Expression Tunnel" No longer Free

at NC State.

Not that I have a particular love for that institution, but really..."free expression tunnel"? eh? laa-aaa-aaame. And then to start policing what's written? double lame. As if university bureaucrats needed any more ways to look like asses.

New Rings on fingers

I'm bemused to see not one, not two, but three of the young women in my first-year composition class sporting engagement rings this week. How in the world does one get engaged to be married in September or October of one's first year at college?

My Parents' Church in the NYT, of all places

The World Comes to Georgia . . . featuring Clarkston International Bible Church!

And I note a conspicuously (surprisingly!) positive nod to evangelical churches generally:

The transformation of what was long known as the Clarkston Baptist Church speaks to a broader change among other American churches. Many evangelical Christians who have long believed in spreading their religion in faraway lands have found that immigrants offer an opportunity for church work within one’s own community. And many immigrants and refugees are drawn by the warm welcome they get from the parishioners, which can stand in stark contrast to the more competitive and alienating nature of workaday America.

Indeed, evangelical churches have begun to stand out as rare centers of ethnic mixing in a country that researchers say has become more culturally fragmented, in part because of immigration.

A recent study by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam underscored the practical complications of diversity. In interviews with 30,000 Americans, the study found that residents of more diverse communities “tend to withdraw from collective life,” voting less and volunteering less than those in more homogeneous communities.

The study noted a conspicuous exception.

“In many large evangelical congregations,” the researchers wrote, “the participants constituted the largest thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed.”

Not that the notice of the NYT matters, really, but it's nice to get some credit. That's my mom's sunday school class in the small picture on the first page, btw. In the email she wrote to me, she sums it up:

But this one thing is a work of God. We are honored that He chose us to be a part of this unusual body of Christ.

I've had questions about that movie . . .

. . . Beowulf. Students want extra credit or a field trip to see it. Well, I was reluctant to do that before, and after seeing the trailer just now, I'm glad my instinct was correct.

Adventures with Students 9

This is a new one for me. I've got a student in one of my composition classes that has all the signs of being from an extremely conservative background: the long hair, the long skirts, and essays asserting in no uncertain terms the absolute authority of Scripture along with a moral philosophy along the lines of: "there is right, there is wrong, and nothing in between."

Well, I'm in a funny position. I've been going to Baptist churches much longer than she's been going to church, and I'm frankly pretty orthodox in my theology and theodicy and morality, etc. I am not unsympathetic to a biblical worldview, so I want her to understand that my criticism of her work is not because I'm "of the devil's party." But this is an academic class, and part of my job is to teach critical thinking, whether theist or atheist, Christian or Buddhist in orientation.

But then we have a conversation like the one we did today. She had written in her paper a comment about the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden. I, innocently, wrote "& Eve?" above her sentence. After class, she comes to me asking about the Eve comment. She says (and I'm trying to repeat it as best I can from memory):

But Eve didn't sin; she was deceived. Adam is the one who sinned. The sin nature comes from Adam.

I stammered out an assurance that the comment was more a moment of curiosity on my part as to why Eve wasn't mentioned, that it didn't affect the grade on the paper. I then stammered out something like, "well, if you'll look at the Genesis account, it seems that Eve makes a choice to eat of the fruit just as Adam does." I don't know who I was expecting to convince with that statement. She certainly wasn't impressed.

For added irony: in this same class is a fairly aggressive atheist/agnostic who, after we read a portion from 1 Samuel for a discussion about the foundations of monarchy, asked if "we were supposed to act like this is true, or what?"

Eight years at Carolina, and this stuff never came up even once. In my third year at this institution, situated (just ask members of the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee!!) in a "moralistic, blinkered, intolerant, conservative" environment, I'm confronting questions about the reliability and veracity of Scripture, and its place in academic discussion, at the very same time as I'm fielding questions about whether or not Eve's encounter with the Serpent absolves her of sin, and whether a "sin nature" is carried with the "Y" chromosome. Yow.

Another LOLcat

I know, I know, but this picture is hilarious.

go look.

How to Bake an Equity and Diversity Council Meeting

1. Take three parts sanctimony

2. Add one part dark hints about "conservative people"

3. Add two liters of personal testimony, preferably from someone "not from the South"

4. Stir these ingredients with five heaping shovels of vague talk about "issues," and "doing the right thing" and "diversity" and "problems" Important: Make no specific remarks about anything identifiable or observable in the real world.

5. Garnish with a sprig of bureaucratic language and recognition that University policy is set by suits in Knoxville, so the entire proceeding is a joke.

Because I can't use Star Trek jokes in class anymore:

Khaaaaaaaan!

I needed a laugh today

October 3 is an important day

Happy Birthday to Weslee! The Little Boy and I are glad she was born!