Today marks my fourth day into a 31-day challenge to eat in. I have two pieces of good news: First, I survived two days of solid travel without buying any food and second, The Jew and the Carrot will publish my thoughts on the month. More soon!
About the photo: This sign I shot at a D.C. Metro station sums up my 31-day challenge. Sometimes home will have to come with me, though.
Filed under Uncategorized
Photo by Flickr user bencarr
When the clock strikes 2013, I will embark on a month of eating in. No sit-down restaurants, no takeout, no Starbucks. I figured it’s time. I’ve worked to demystify home cooking. I’ve relied on my own for a solid week. And now I’m bound for an adjunct faculty budget, where every scrap of savings counts.
Others have eaten in for more than two years straight–in New York City. I figure I can manage it for 31 days in D.C.
Stay tuned for more (you can even subscribe over there on the right), and happy New Year!
Filed under Uncategorized
Finally, in this series of kids’ poetry, I’ve posted Sophia Diggs-Galligan’s “The Farmer.” You can find her poem and a video of the writer’s delivery (and impressive composure given what was going on) over at the DC State Fair.
Next in the procession of kids’ poetry, I’ve posted Rachel Epstein-Shuman’s “In My Garden.” Catch both her poem and a video of the writer’s delivery over at the DC State Fair.
This year, I had the pleasure of launching the DC State Fair Kids’ Poetry Contest. With help from the organization Kid Power DC, submissions rolled in from pint-sized poets living all over the District. I just posted the poem “Everybody Knows About Carrots,” the first in a series of spotlights, on the DC State Fair website. It took second place in the 4th and 5th grade category. Check it out and I think you’ll see why it’s a winner.
Photo by Flickr user Steven Depolo
The Videofreex and the School of Visual Arts have rescheduled the event We’re All Videofreex, to take place at SVA in Manhattan on April 3 5, 2013. The original event was scheduled for November 1, a.k.a. the fresh aftermath of superstorm Sandy.
Immediately after the cancellation, the group regrouped, figured out this new date, and witnessed (some first hand) the opening of an exhibit about Videofreex contemporary Nam June Paik. I look forward to being there to take part in this evening and connect with my late pop’s video-and-pirate-TV collective.
Two stories on two rather different topics appeared in two divergent publications this week. One thing they have in common is that I wrote them. They both, I realized, also carry the theme of making something from thin air. See any other similarities?
Growing something out of nothing: The story of D.C.’s Wangari Gardens, on Grist.org, December 4
The Mad Lib legacy, on DeafEcho.com, December 6
Filed under DC
Yesterday, news of the Common Core State Standards exploded. A front page feature in The Washington Post brought them to my attention, and I guess a few others’, too. By 9:30 a.m., more than 300 comments trailed the piece. The standards in question were adopted by states as early as 2010, sprawl across a 66-page document (PDF), and raise some questions about genres and communication.
This effort toward K-12 education reform is a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
What was the deal with these standards, and why would I—a college instructor and non-parent—really care? Well, the goal, according to the document, is “to help ensure that all students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school.” So yeah, I do care about students’ readiness to tackle my course material and do well in their professions. But I also have to make a confession: I learned from a crazy, mixed up set of genres and I liked it.
My confession
I was the kid who read Flatland: A romance of many dimensions for extra credit in ninth grade math class. My Civil War bookshelf comprised the fiction of Toni Morrison and Margaret Mitchell alongside the documentation of Howard Zinn, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs. I saw some high school classmates grok their longing through Whitman, while others soaked up our health class textbook with fascination. Later, I would understand nonfiction by John Hersey and Maxine Hong Kingston as deeply literary work. So when I saw something about required amounts of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry on reading lists, I perked up. Continue reading
Filed under Teaching
Like most college instructors, I use the Blackboard online learning system. And like some of those (possibly misguided) instructors, I believe I can keep students’ attention by adding color to the software’s dour design.
It’s easy to do. You just go into an assignment, click “Edit,” and in a few seconds you can make the title of the assignment a pretty color.
Oh boy! Color! Can you feel the excitement?
For a few semesters now, I have been noticing two things about the color choices for such titles. First: Each option on the color wheel that pops up has a formal name. Second: Those names, without exception, make me want to slit my wrists.
Want to turn that project title a grassy green? You’ll have to slime it with Obscure Dull Spring.
Would you like to soften the headline for the test by applying an “It’s a Boy!” azure? It’s Medium Faded Blue for you. (Thank goodness Evite doesn’t use the same color system as Blackboard. Planning your little fellow’s baby shower could get depressing real quick). Continue reading
The form letter from Marine Captain Kingrey lumbers on for a good two dozen words before it gets to the condolence.
The recent death of your son, Private First Class Dan Bullock, U.S. Marine Corps, on June 7, 1969 at Hoa Combat Base, Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, is a source of great sorrow to me and all the members of Company F. Please accept our deepest sympathy in your bereavement.
As far as the Marine Corps knew, Bullock was old enough to serve in the military. Yet days after his death, The New York Times ran an article stating his actual age and declaring this North Carolina native “the youngest American serviceman killed in the Vietnam War.” Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Rhea Kennedy Morgenstern, writer 