Oh, the places you'll go!

This is just a placeholder for some exhibits I'd like to get to this summer if possible:

1.Avenue Patrice Lumumba: Photographs by Guy Tillim. At Harvard's Peabody Mus of Archaeol and Ethnog through Sept 7. Stillnesss and gentleness in decay in sub-Saharan Africa.

2.Manufactured Landscapes: Photographic works by Edward Burtynsky. At the Boston Museum of Science, through Sept. 7. Quarries, mines, dams, etc.

more from the Muslim world

I have just begun Children of Jihad by Jared Cohen. So far, I am not impressed. I googled for reviews and was surprised to find none with the kinds of issues I'm having with the book, but then again, they were mostly from publishers sites, so naturally they would accentuate the positive.

To be fair, I will revisit this comment (and revise as necessary) with more specifics when I have finished reading it.

Islamophobia?

Juan Cole's Engaging the Muslim World was reviewed in the May 10, 2009 New York Times book review section. From the review it seems that his main point is that those (by which we might infer the Bush 2 Administration) who lump all Muslim organizations together as a united force err on two counts:
1) it confers on them collectively a power (driven by our fears) they do not have and which we should not ascribe to them; and
2) it ignores the substantial differences (and enmities) between them.

Obviously these have major implications for US foreign policy.

On a related note, I am reading Reading Lolita in Tehran right now. It's horrifying and I do not enjoy it although I do appreciate it. But understanding what is going on culturally or ideologically in the Middle East is crucial to the understanding I hope to help my students to build of this region.

Freshman comp is like....

One of my friends, an English prof who has put in his time in Freshman Composition, opined recently that undergraduate writing is not like writing a bicycle, but like playing the violin. In the former model, once you'd "learned how to write" you would always know. It would be a skill you could draw on at any time in the future. It would "come back to you" when you needed it no matter how long since you'd last done it. But in the latter model, writing is a practice to be undertaken daily. You must practice the forms and the skills constantly in order to write competently.

This (btw) is one of the reasons I publish a blog. A blog keeps me writing for an audience (however imaginary it may be!) even when my work of outlining lecture notes or reading in my field isn't forcing me to write academic prose daily. It's like playing scales, I suppose. (And you, lucky reader, are here to hear!)

My friend was a bit defensive, because, of course, those of us who do NOT teach Freshman Comp always have plenty of unsolicited opinions about why our students write so poorly, and a constellation of wonder about what the hell could they possibly have learned in Comp, and, if nothing (as seems so likely), then why the hell is the college even bothering to make it a requirement? As a former violinist, I find that my friend's analogy is apt - and useful for me in understanding where students are coming from, as well as expecting more of myself as a teacher in making them "play their scales." So to speak.

In memory of Ultimate Sacrifices

B and I placed flags on veterans' graves this morning, part of a local project, but the first time we have been involved. We were assigned the oldest burial ground in town, where most of the veterans were from the Revolutionary War.

I'm conflicted about war as a means of settling conflict. My feelings about this have deepened since our trip to the battlefields of World War I eight years ago this summer. Seeing the senseless loss of an entire generation of Europe's youngest is hard to come to terms with, and even although it was so long ago, it felt very present to those of us walking in the trenches.

Rudyard Kipling lost a son in WWI, and was involved in the official efforts at memorializing the dead after 1919. He helped to design the standard features of British cemeteries on the Continent, including verbiage like "unknown but to God." His grief, though, had another side as well - cynical of the politics that led his son and millions of others into death. This couplet of his reflects that sorrowful cynicism:

"If any ask you why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."

True then, true now.

Dear Bigelow Tea:

Your box of green tea contains a bunch of teabags each individually sealed in a foil packet. The teabags themselves have a tag and a string and a staple.

I brew tea often and I don't need the foil packets (not recyclable) or the tags and strings (waste of paper and string). Also, I prefer non staple-flavored tea.

When I need teabags again (in a couple of weeks at this rate) I'll be looking for product with a less-planet-destroying means of packaging. Take note!

Curmudgeon Girl asks...

...What kind of an organization invites faculty to a 2-day on-campus workshop after classes, exams and graduation are over, and fails to provide coffee or even WATER?

Oh, and did I mention that the hall temperature was about 65 degrees? Forget the stimulation factor of coffee: just the warmth would have been useful!