So, uh, and how have YOU been lately?

This blog has long felt unwieldy, but much of it was cobbled together so long ago, like some monstrous edifice out of Mervin Peake, that the thought of fiddling with it's innards became overwhelming. But being away from blogging for these past few months has taught me one thing: that I still want to blog. But better, smaller, smarter. No, wait, that is how our uni president motivates the troops in the face of our current disaster chaos black hole fiasco boondoggle mismanagement challenges. Unlike a university, however, a blog could perhaps be both smaller and smarter. Or, at least, smaller.

And the winner in the weird cross-over category is (envelope, please) ...

Harlequin and Nascar!

Dedicated to a few people I've had contact with lately

"Once upon a time, before the awful misfortunes of the 1960s, America was a theme park constructed by nonunion labor along the lines of the Garden of Eden. But then something terrible happened, and a plague of guitarists descended upon the land. Spawned by the sexual confusions of the amoral news media, spores of Marxist ideology blew around in the wind, multiplied the powers of government, and impregnated the English departments at the Ivy League universities, which then gave birth to the monster of deconstruction that devoured the arts of learning. Pretty soon the trout began to die in Wyoming, and the next thing that anybody knew the nation's elementary schools had been debased, too many favors were being granted to women and blacks, federal bureaucrats were smothering capitalist entrepreneurs with the pillows of government regulation, prime-time television was broadcasting continuous footage from Sodom and Gomorrah, and the noble edifice of Western civilization had collapsed into the rubble of feminist prose."

from Louis Lapham, Hotel America: Scenes in the Lobby of the Fin-De-Siecle

Doing my bit to increase the rubble, here and there. But sometimes it's a thankless task.

Usually I have to take these things a couple of times

but not today. I'm so happy.

I am: Samuel R. "Chip" Delany Few have had such broad commercial success with aggressively experimental prose techniques.

Via A Blog Around The Clock. Who, sadly, is Robert Heinlein.

Teaching Carnival #19: a day late and a dollar short. But with pictures.

The theme of this carnival is "back in the saddle":

Tenured Radical on setting their hair on fire. Flavia on setting the tone. Ancarett on the start of term (and on the enviable flexibility of, to a large extent, organizing ones own schedule). New Kid is starting her term with a bang and a whimper. JM embraces the start of term for the way it structures her other work. Liz Kleinfeld on thinking one semester ahead. Anne Galloway has decided to follow the Chinese calendar this year. Mary McKinney remains philosophical. Dr. Virago is still in her pajamas. Janet Stemwedel on the physics of parking. Dr. Crazy wants them to come to class.

Manorama on teaching feminism.

Trillwing on mentoring graduate students with Bitch Ph.D, and Spencer Schaffner on the politics of putting together committees.

An American Professor in China asks what's in a name? Sarah learns some names in English.

An excellent post at The Paper Chase: "Teaching students with chronic illnesses, kindly."

Horace posts an oldie but a goodie.

Or maybe the theme should be, "back to basics":

Readin'

Films, that is: Chuck Tryon on that celluloid phantasm, the noble teacher.

And: reading last term's evaluations and learning that gay history is not history.

Writin'

Hilaire on "The joy of writing...and writing about teaching."

Scot Barnett asks, why teach digital writing?

Marcia says, "It's all professional writing," from emails to essays. She also posts on writing and researching using del.icio.us

Senioritis on ghost writing.

Laura tries Second Life, with mixed results.

Some practical tips for teaching with blogs at xoom. Delaney Kirk has more on blogging.

Jason Jones' students will "collectively populate a timeline of British literature since romanticism." (And he contemplates using Atlas, too).

Dr. Fabulous exposes anti-technology rhetoric.

George posts about assignments designed for either end of the undergraduate teaching spectrum: some truly inspired assignments for a senior seminar, and freewriting with an intro. class.

Jill wonders if her worksheets for students are crazy.

Tinma worries about censoring students online.

Finally, as far a writing is concerned, it turns out that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Speakin'?

Krista Kennedy on teaching cadence in a public speaking course.

Jenny asks, is it wrong to be wrong in class?

Manorama and Dr. Crazy on participation.

'Rithmatic (work with me here)

Timna plays the numbers.

David Silver just began two courses, one in digital journalism and and the other in media internship.

At Parts-n-Pieces: "The Benefits of Project 365." Ditto at Scrivenings.

Strength in numbers: Zimbio is calling for a new Carnival of Edublogs.

And check out the 103rd edition of The Carnival Of Education at The Education Wonks.

If you would like to tag your posts for future carnivals, find out how here. Sorry if I missed you; there were lots (LOTS) more great posts, but I ran out of steam! Check out the next Teaching Carnival at revisionspiral on February 15.

WTF

FYI: there's a nu b%k ot dats ritN Ntirely as txt msgs. un4tunatly -- or 4tun8ly, depending on yr POV -- itz n Finnish.
gt d tale hre.
fnd ot WTF I'm sAyn hre.

Somebody

quantified procrastination.

Guess they were avoiding a deadline.

Students reading

In my intro. course I asked the students to suggest novels for our final reading. The results were surprising, pleasantly so: some old chestnuts, to be sure, as well as some best-sellers, but also quite a few new novels, some of which I didn't know. Not as many books by women as I would have liked (I added a couple of ringers to the list: guess which two) but that gives me something to work on.

I suppose this is a risky venture; one of my colleagues did the same thing some time ago and ended up having to teach Anne Rice. Don't get me wrong: I have read most of the vampire books myself; I teach genre fiction; I research street literature. And I think almost any novel has something to tell us, even if it is only a cautionary tale. But I still hope to hell they don't select The Da Vinci Code!

Course blogs

Madly putting together three course blogs while still attending to loose ends from last term. I swear, this is the worst year I have had, as far as flying by the seat of my pants is concerned. I thought it was just me — the result of falling behind because of various family crises last term — but I find that many of my colleagues are in the same condition. Something in the air.

At any rate, here are the three newborn blogs:
Looking about
being any gender
1001 reasons to read

I am trying out WordPress, and so far, it's really nice. I miss being able to mess with the CSS though; you have to upgrade for that.

Good music

My friend Howard has had an early Sunday morning show on our campus radio for some time now, but I have never heard it. (Sunday at 7am? Please!) Finally, no doubt in response to the nagging of various of his lazier friends, Howard has begun a blog where one can hear a weekly podcast of his show. I'm listening right now, and I can tell you, I feel … contented … calm … vaguely happy.

It's a good show.

Happy New Year! Or at least, here's hoping.

Mail server seems to have been down

all day; if you want to email me, use scribbling at gmail dot com.

Town with a "kick me" sign taped to its back

A couple of links about the pipeline proposal. The hearings at the National Energy Board were a few weeks ago and we expect to hear early in the new year.

Save Rockwood Park
Friends of Rockwood Park
City Under Siege. The Fight For Saint John

This is what we get for living in the last feudal state in the West.

Charles LeBlanc

There is an article on New Brunswick activist-blogger Charles LeBlanc in the Saint John-focused online journal Coalfish:

Last month, the well-known New Brunswick blogger made provincial legal history when he was acquitted on charges of obstructing justice by provincial court judge William McCarroll, who ruled that the Fredericton man was simply plying his trade when police arrested him out side of a business conference in Saint John last June.

The focus of the article is on the contentious question of whether or not blogging is journalism, and if so, in what way. I am delighted to have been quoted (as was Joe; we're a tag team). My only beef is that I hope my remarks on gender and blogging did not seem quite so bald: I was trying to describe various debates and ideas about gender and blogging and not saying, in effect, that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Gender is not the focus of the article, mind. But still.

So no complaints, please, from diffuse, chatty female bloggers or terse, single-minded male ones!

And congratulations to LeBlanc.

Merry merry happy happy

Cinderella

Good article in the New York Times Magazine by Peggy Orenstein on the whole Princess marketing phenomenon.

There's still time to get to the toy store!

Yes, yes, I'm marking (sheesh!)

but I have also been Wiki-ing. For the greater good, don't you know. And, it is helpful to me: it gets me ferreting around where I would not be otherwise.

Here are some excellent resources I have stumbled on in the past few weeks:

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
British Fiction, 1800-1829: A Database of Production, Circulation, and Reception
British Poetry 1780-1910: a Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions, The Modern English Collection, and more, at the Electronic Text Centre (some items restricted).
British Women's Novels: A Reading List, 1775-1818
British Women Playwrights around 1800: etexts and articles about little-studied women dramatists

Meta:

The Online Books Page

Meta-meta:

Humbul Humanities Hub
Intute Arts and Humanities

Googling gender

because I am working on the blog for an upcoming course and found this:

Old Jewish woman on cell: Carla is going to be there, too…You've met Carla…You met her the other week. She was the one with the penis.

—77th & 2nd

Considerate guy: Hey, man, don't burst his bubble. If it ain't a man, it ain't a man.

—Outside 10th Precinct, W 20th St

Voice on intercom: Sir, that's the women's restroom. Sir…Sir…Stop!

—Times Square

Drunk guy: Well, it was either a real ugly woman or a guy with man-boobs.

—F train

Drunk dude to girl: Wow, you're the prettiest man I've ever seen.

—Women's bathroom, Saloon, 83rd & York

Little girl, staring at the Statue of Liberty: Who's he supposed to be?

—Circle Line

Young guy: …so, technically, I'm lactating. Technically.

—Central Park

Gosh, despite the relief at not having to travel, I am sad we are not going to NYC this Xmas.

The intro. survey course

is over, though I still have a scad of marking. It was a lot of fun: there were some really interested and interesting students, and we did some more creative assignments than I usually assign. I'm in the middle of reading a pile of Behn/Wilmot mash-ups, and they are a hoot. Just saw a post over at xoom about some creative projects the students did with Beowulf, all involving performing. How cool is that?

Underrated writers

A list for 2006 has been posted at Syntax of Things. Was surprised to see Iain Banks on the list; didn't know his books were difficult to come by in the U.S.; here in Canada they are available. Elizabeth Hand and Jeff Noon are also listed, also excellent, but less widely read (at least in Noon's case, over here).

Many on the list are so underrated that I have never heard of them. Or perhaps it's that they're still alive and kicking.

Yeah, yeah, I'm marking! (snort, mutter)

And if I weren't a sonnet (but wait … I AM a sonnet, right?), I'd be:

A clever quiz (from Amy at Books, Words, and Writing. Who is a Sonnet/Haiku hybrid. Not that there's anything wrong with that.).

Well, IS it?

DIY.

Carnivalesque #22

On the table

Natalie Bennett writes about the Cooke sisters, learned women of the Renaissance, and reviews CJ Samson's Sovereign, the third Master Shardlake detective novel set in the age of Henry VIII.

Alan Baumler presents fascinating material in Keeping Halal in the Ming dynasty.

Confused about tipping? Raminagrobis's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves may not help you work out the correct percentage, but it does offer some interesting etymologies.

Really stretching the limits of the "early modern": Mary Mark Ockerbloom alerts us to Diplomatic Difficulties, a new selection of texts at A Celebration of Women Writers which focuses on "women who were first-hand observers or direct participants in the diplomatic process."

Conrad H. Roth translates and comments on a poem by Ausonius about an adulterous woman who poisons her husband but then worries that the poison was not strong enough.

Mark A. Rayner presents The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Pope Leo X Edition) at the skwib.

Across the table

T. Bridges justifies a madman, specifically, William Dowsing, at The Conventicle.

Gavin Robinson discusses shock tactics during the English Civil War at Investigations of a Dog, and explodes some myths about early-modern cavalry charges.

Abu Sahajj suggests that the work of modern American intellectuals "reflects a greater self-absorption than that of 18th century imperialist scholars" in An Occidental-Muslim's Criticism of Empires and Orthodoxies.

On periodization: Longer Than I Don't Remember: Idiosyncratic Periodization for Fun and Profit by Scott Eric Kaufman (host of the most recent History Carnival).

The Long Eighteenth just finished their second collaborative reading, of The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson by Blanford Parker (the first was of Michael McKeon's The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge).

At the table

After several weeks of posts on foie gras, Carolyn Smith-Kizer posts a recipe for Goose Pye at 18thC Cuisine.

And, given the season, recipes for Marchpane.

Books, art, and book art

Jem Webster goes museum hopping and offers Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Four Figures on a Step (ca. 1655-60) for the reader's perusal.

Sharon points toward Joe Miller's Jests: or, The Wits Vade-Mecum (1739) at staggernation (also home of John Ashton's Modern Street Ballads (1888)).

Mister Aitch offers selections from A Catalogue of Engraved and Etched English Title Pages down to the death of William Faithorne, 1691, at Giornale Nuovo. An earlier post offers images from The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord, "an absorbing history of the study, classification and illustration of plants."

More? Visit Heidelberg Schlossgarten at BibliOdyssey. And linger for images from Fasiculus Rariorum, the Comic History of Rome, and, just today, Stilt Walkers.

Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie always has lots to look at. And don't forget to check the item of the day at the 18th-Century Reading Room.

Onstage

Jem Webster posts about how Daniel O'Quinn's Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800 has affected his teaching.

Tim Abbott discovers an ancestor in the circus.

And — too good! — Hieronimo imagines — and begins — a Shakespearean history cycle about the Bush family. It's funny because it's true.

My graduate course, Women Onstage in the Long Eighteenth Century, just ended. I blogged; the students blogged; and we made forays into Wikipedia. Speaking of which …

Around the web

The latest in Random Wiki-Testing at Blogging the Renaissance. Hieronimo says this is not a meme, but it looks like fun. Might I add, as a suggestion, that people who do engage in this non-meme might want to consider making some edits if they don't like what they find?

The next Carnivalesque will be an ancient/medieval edition at Memorabilia Antonina on or about 25 January. Want to join the carnival? Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnivalesque using the quick and painless submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the index page. And please check out the Carnivalesque site.

Thanks to all who submitted links.

Today

is the 4th annual International Day to End Violence against Sex Trade Workers.

Nine questions about poetry

Via Household Opera.

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was...

My mother half singing, half reciting, "Three little fishies." I begged her "Again, Again!" And she was a trooper. But as it is a song that may be a bit of a cheat. Okay, how about this one:

How do you like to go up in swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child could do.

&c.

2. I was forced to memorize "The Owl and the Pussycat" in school and........

I still know it.

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat.
They took some honey and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up at the stars above
And sang to a small guitar,
"Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are.
You are, you are.
What a beautiful Pussy you are."

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl.
How charmingly sweet you sing.
Oh let us be married; too long have we tarried!
But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away for a year and a day
To the land where the Bong-tree grows.
There in a wood a Piggywig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose.
His nose, his nose:
With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runciple spoon,
And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the Moon.
The Moon, the Moon.
They danced by the light of the moon.

See? (and that took way too long so please click on at least some of the links.)

3. I read/don't read poetry because....

I certainly read it to teach it. I also read it when I personally know the writers. But I can't say that I keep up with current poets. By a long shot. Part of this is due to training, and part to research interests: I focused on the novel in grad. school, though I did treat songs and popular verse as part of my dissertation and have kept up those interests since. And teaching has certainly broadened my horizons in that respect, as in many others. But to sit down with a book of poetry with no other agenda . . . not very often. Kermitthefrog writes: "I think poetry is like a bath. I wish I had time to take some more often, but my tub is kind of dirty, and it would require effort to clean it. But it's so relaxing once you've stepped in." That's good.

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favourite poem is .......

Lots by John Donne. Robert Browning, though he is arguably a fairly un-poetic poet. "The Wife's Lament." Sonnets. And I love the old ballads. But I'm just coming off the pre-1800 intro. survey; ask again in the Spring.

4.5: There are some poets/poems that I don't like or don't understand...
I like punctuation, she says with deliberate obtuseness.

5. I don't write poetry, but...
I used to. The doctors were right; it was just a phase.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature.....
because it's more like decoding, than swimming. Hearing it is another matter: you can't usually ask the reader to stop and repeat; you have to just let the words wash over you and you take what you can. Sometimes listening to poetry seems like one giant Rorschach test.

7. I find poetry...

under every rock. Seriously. All I have to do is walk out my office door and I trip over a poet. I could show you bruises.

8. The last time I heard poetry...

was Robert Moore reading from his new book.

9. I think poetry is...

Primordial. But for most, the impulse is atrophied. Or, more accurately, it has to find a different outlet.