Category Archives: Uncategorized

A couple of months ago, my College’s IT department invested in several “telepresence devices”: rolling robot-type gizmos with iPads on top, of the sort that most of us probably have only seen on a legendary episode of “The Big Bang Theory.” I dismissed the purchase as a curious end-of-year exuberance; nothing to do with meContinue reading “bags of meat”

You know, I am really getting to the point where I don’t care if what I have to say about school sounds smart, or even if it is particularly compelling or convincing. I only care that I know that what I say is true: the truest, truest true that it can be. Because if weContinue reading “What’s Next, What’s Done, What’s Good”

I’ve been invited to participate on a university panel today entitled “Why Teach the Humanities?,” and this is what I’ve prepared to share. It’s a bit of a jeremiad, for sure – but it’s what I am seeing right now, and some of what I am doing about it in my teaching. I have been onContinue reading “Why Teach the Humanities in Education?”

I gave this little paper at a conference in fall 2013 and don’t think I’ll do more with it right now, at least not in its present form. Though the ideas at its core remain some of the most vital I know for putting education on a profoundly different path than the one we’re on.Continue reading “wake up”

Two observations: 1. My iPod Classic is broken. Kaput. All I wanted to do was put the latest Donald Fagen on it. But My MacBook Pro updated iTunes on the down low last week. And after several cycles of reformatting and shocking claims of “corruption,” it now insists, with an almost audible sigh, that theContinue reading “souvenirs of perfect doom”

My blog space is becoming sort of maudlin, isn’t it, with all these elegies: my beloved professor earlier this year, and my perseverations on Dave Wallace that have preceded the class I’ll begin next week on him. Maybe something brighter can come of remembering Robin Williams, even as news of his death is still settlingContinue reading “And Sometimes It’s Not Even Funny”

This is pretty meta: posting on the blog the description of blogging I’m asking my students do this semester which I figured out by…posting on the blog. Still, beauty’s where you find it- and I stand by the pedagogy. Teacher friends: anyone else doing this kind of work? What writing matters most to our learningContinue reading “writing expectations for the class”

Well, folks, I’ve been scooped – but The New Yorker is a worthy scooper. Check out Jon Michaud’s wonderful piece upon the fortieth anniversary of Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, won’t you – for the crazy video stills of Peter Gabriel performing in character in 1975, if nothing else. Maybe rethink what “progressiveContinue reading “something moving in the sidewalk steam”

And so on this morning, as Oscar Pistorius apologizes and Mickey Rooney dies, I am home sick on a rainy day. Too sick to teach, but not too sick to read and type. Lucky you. Reminded of some rainy days in the spring of 1996 when I was home sick too. Right in the middleContinue reading “The Thing of Important”