Short and Sweet
I was invited to write a review (thanks, Jason Makansi) of a short story collection, and it’s now live. While each of the stories in the collection took just minutes to read, developing a review–a form new to me–was a rather lengthy process involving pages of notes and the welcome labor of writing then sculpting the final piece. And, oh, how sweet the feeling, now that the review is live, to have been accepted by this worthwhile portal that celebrates short fiction. Life can be just so good sometimes, eh?
Meaty Ochre
“Most people are mediocre — obviously, because that’s a term.”
A friend said this over the phone last Sunday. It made me laugh, mostly because Continue reading …
Journey back to SRA
This morning, I was researching instructional technology and soon found myself hunting for images of vintage SRA reading cards. Why did I end up there? Because when I was in grade school I loved SRA reading cards, especially the aqua ones (I can’t remember why.)
1. Design Based Research is a relatively new approach to studying how we learn and how to design learning structures that facilitate learning.
Knowlton, D. S. (2007). I Design; Therefore I Research: Revealing DBR through Personal Narrative. Educational Technology & Society, 10 (4), 209-223.
2. There’s a Design Based Research collective sponsored by the Spencer Foundation, which looks at how education can be improved. It was established by Lyle Spencer in 1962.
3. Lyle Spencer founded the educational publishing firm Science Research Associates (SRA) in 1938, when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. (Note: In the bio link here, the phrase “modus vivendi” means “way of living” or working out a peaceful accord, particularly in a disputed territory.)
4. SRA Laboratory Reading Kits had their beginnings in 1957, when SRA broadened its focus from trades and occupations to include education.
5. Early SRA reading kits contained color-coded cards organized by level of difficulty. In the 1960s, SRA colors were as follows (as far as I can tell from a Google image search):
red
orange
gold
brown
tan
lime
green
olive
aqua
blue
violet
silver
6. IBM purchased SRA in 1964. By 1989, SRA belonged to MacMillan/McGraw-Hill. (Wikipedia)
7. SRA kits, old and new, are still popular worldwide. Just look on eBay.
Hawthorne in Urbana
This past Tuesday afternoon, I was killing time in the University of Illinois (Urbana) undergrad library, and now it’s Friday morning, and it looks like I’ve ordered the March 2011 issue of the New England Quarterly.
You never know where things will lead.
I’ve been pulled in by an essay written by local St. Louis Wash U professor Robert Milder: “In the Belly of the Beast: Hawthorne in England,” which is fascinating to read and references such quotes as this one, from “Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,” a biography by Julian Hawthorne published in 1884:
“Mrs. Hawthorne, on the other hand, enjoyed the Exhibition without limit; she had vastly more artistic faith than her husband, and much less of the arrogant, uneasy, Puritan conscience, which would not let him unrestrainedly enjoy a rose unless he could feel convinced that both the rose and he deserved it.”
From what I remember of my read a few days ago, the essay investigates how Hawthorne’s seven-year stay in England (and Italy) affected him–one could even say, “improved” him.
The writing, the take, the substance of it–moved me the way many literary works don’t these days. I guess I’m just an English major through and through.
Bonus: Cute little Guardian article about Sophia Hawthorne.
What You See First Thing
Let me know if you’ve experienced this: You wake up morning after morning and first thing you find yourself gazing at some part of your room–a wall, a dresser, a picture, a mirror, the door, the ceiling–and you feel a winter’s worth of discontent settling in. First thing: Not good.
Continue reading …
My Dream Copy
From my childhood home, the big white house that was the Case-Halstead Library was a pleasant four or five blocks worth of reading-while-walking. Continue reading …
Thanks, Jonathan Franzen
You know how sometimes you go for a long spell grappling with a “big question”…for so long that you start to think there’s no answer…and then one day you see, hear or read something that speaks to your question to such a degree that from then on everything looks different? If so, keep reading …
White Zombie
We now have a cat. White Zombie came to live with us this week, and he’s already changing things around here. Continue reading …
White Space
Without. It’s been on my mind.
As a copyeditor, I spend most of my time taking things away to make a message clearer or put certain ideas front and center. I was looking at a firm today that calls itself white space, and though I like the concept, the website trips over itself with its ingenuity.
Doesn’t true white space eschew innovation for innovation’s sake?
But I guess when you are in the business of marketing, you’re wired to compete and in fact your industry sort of asks for it. It’s in the oxygen. Which is too bad, because you can’t create true white space out of the ego and you can’t compete without the ego.
Quest: What is real white space and where do you find it?
Knee-jerk Guess: It’s not cheap and it doesn’t come easy.
Plum Galette
Listening to KWMU3. Just heard a Hadyn concerto my mother used to play randomly and am making a plum galette. I’ve decided to use the pate brisee from the Gourmet cookbook I have on hand and the plum galette filling recipe from Martha Stewart
I discovered Joseph Campbell and like what he has to say about the typical route of the hero, from refusal of the call to the little crone type woman at the edge of the scary wood who has some amulets or other special thingies to make the passage possible. The Talking Eggs comes to mind.