Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It's All Mine, I Tell You

It takes a while to get to the blogroll on a dial-up. Here's what's new elseblog:

Item: Way back on Wednesday, Alex Halavais wrote of an article in today’s NY Times ... [that] indicates that 38% of undergraduates cut and pasted parts of their work from the internet in the last year. That’s up from 10% three years ago. Scary. [n.b.: In appreciation of Alex' fine work, I copied-and-pasted most of the last three sentences directly from his blog into mine.]

Item: It's Tricky to rock a rhyme to rock a rhyme that's right on time
It's Tricky...it's Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)
It's Tricky to rock a rhyme to rock a rhyme that's right on time
It's Tricky...Tr tr tr tricky (Tricky) Trrrrrrrrrrricky

Okay, so I really got Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, just like mrs_fezziwig. But only because there wasn't a Howard Jones song on the Which 80's Song Fits You list -- c'mon, quizilla, where's Howard Jones?

Item: Via Webraw, a Shock and Awe story purporting to debunk snopes for "making up" a story about binLaden relatives being flown out of the USA on George Bush's personal say-so two days after 9/11 despite the national no-fly zone at that time, and erroneously attributing it to Michael Moore. To be fair, snopes does seem to be eating humble pie, and rightfully so, for attributing all or even most of the runor-mill's worst-case-scenario broadly incorrect version of the story to Moore.

But Moore is no saint, and doesn't deserve our pity here, despite what SandA says. Because Shock and Awe, in order to show how Snopes was in the wrong, ends up having to assert that Moore's original statement on the daily show which seemed to relate to the being-debunked rumor is "a correct statement" as long as "...you changed "out of the USA" to "an undisclosed, secure location."

Sorry, Moorites -- not this time, either. This is exactly the kind of mental gymnastics that makes Moore so deserving of our scorn. There's a HUGE difference between flying within the USA and flying out of the USA (and with George Bush's personal involvement, yet!) during such tense, wartime moments. Time to face the truth: your hero is fast and furious with detail, making him an unreliable witness and a poor journalist. At his worst, like back when in Bowling for Columbine he "bent" the videography and edited carefully to make it look like banks were trading guns for cash with no waiting period (not true), he bends reality so far he makes shit up and then claims it's "basically true." He's managed to drag Tom Tomorrow, who used to be (sometimes) smarter than that, onto the bandwagon, too -- please, will somebody'd stop Moore before the entire world goes machiavellian and vague-minded? Doesn't precision count for anything anymore?

In addition: Hilatron goes to Lansdowne Street, one of my own old adolescent haunts, to party in Fenway's shadow; Ms. Bumptious has an Office Space-y day; total redesign at I Want To Hug Kafka has a turtle that makes me happy.

John Gone; Cash Cashed Out

Poor John never knew what hit him...

John Ritter died today on the set of his half-decent new television show, of a hole in the aorta he didn't know he had. One hopes that he'll be remembered for his more-recent role in Slingblade, and that excellent turn as Sigourney Weaver's warmly eccentric anti-father husband in last year's Sundance favorite Tadpole. But despite a recent glimmering of (who'da thunk it) real talent in his late middle age, it seems inevitable that his legacy will never make it out from the shadow of That Seventies Show (no, the other one, with Joyce DeWitt and Barney Fife).

And that's a shame, really, because in the end, John Ritter was seriously underrated.

Ritter's recently evolved almost-seriousness suited him, and suited us. Once he outgrew the melodrama, his characters were realistic and engaging, cheerful and almost-self-convincingly mature on the surface, but childlike, impish around the eyes. The beard mellowed him, masking him in just the right amount of adulthood to take on the paternal role. Poor guy; after decades of suckiness, he was just coming into his own on the big screen.

But, even putting his recent seriousness aside, we should work hard to remember Ritter for what he occasionally did best. His comedy -- at which Ritter made his career and never looked back until late middle age -- wasn't always overdone; when he got it right, it was right. His turn in the now-obscure direct-from-broadway minimalist play-within-a-play Noises Off, shows a comic actor with the impeccable timing and self-awareness to hold his own and parry wit with a stellar cast of surrounding comedic genius, including Christopher Reeve, that girl from Airplane who looks like the girl that married Tom Hanks but isn't, and Michael Caine. And although the rest of the movie is worthless, that "glow in the dark condom swordfight scene" in Skin Deep (1989) is a defining moment in nobrow comedy, one for which, according to this chud.com review, the movie is still banned in Korea and most of Scandinavia.

Even though he'll largely be remembered as the not-after-all-gay chef sharing digs with the down-to-earth brunette and the typical blonde, I guess the legacy could have been a heck of lot worse, though. Remember Problem Child? That "sucked into the TV" movie with two kids and Pam Dawber? Not to mention that Three's Company spinoff, and that horrible six-hour made-for-TV miniseries of Stephen King's It with Harry Anderson and a bunch of other never-heard-of-agains.

Sorrowfully, though, it's a sure thing he wont't be remembered for his best work. And this is no unusual phenomenon in the world of fame: serious actors are remembered for their successes, and comedic actors are remembered for thier ilures. But the world in its own way is just, or at least consistent. It is no small comfort to remember that long after Rushmore's a long-forgotten entry in cinematic history books, Bill Murray will be spending his days living out the painful burden that is Peter Venkman, while Williams' Garp will have been forgotten for his Doubtfire. It should go without saying that The Cable Guy will become a cult favorite, although it remains to be seen if there is more to Carrey than Truman.

* * *

Johnny Cash died today too, at 72, just a few months after second (third?) wife June Carter. He'll probably be remembered for his best work, but to be honest, his more recent forays into the modern pop music catalog totally transformed what had been entirely excellent songs and made them even more excellent; one also hopes that they, too, will rightfully linger in the popular imagination, 'cause how can you not love Johnny Cash reinterpreting Depeche Mode and Bono, in ways only he can?

Of course, what with Warren Zevon's death Monday, there's your belly-up trifecta for the week. RIP, guys. Hope there's decent beer, wherever you end up.

Daddy

Willow calls me Daddy. She also calls Darcie Daddy, sometimes, and my parents -- pretty much all her other close relatives except Ginny. Though she seems more tentative when she's not talking about me, much of the time, it's pretty clear that daddy means "family."

So many things have names now: apples, cows, toes. We're far beyond nouns; there are words for walking and eating and nursing and getting a diaper, one color (green, although, it's hard to tell on this one; the word may merely refer to all things that are crayons or make marks on paper), several toys, open, closed, up, down. We walk walk or run run run down the hallway depending on mood, and on whether it's time to tire ourselves out at the end of the day. The softest bedtime bunny I got her before she was even born gets hugs and hop hop hop with a p so sparse it hardly registers.

Daddy was one of her first words, before mamai (mama) and doe (door), not long after dawgh (dog) and mao (cat) and oh (water -- who knew babies spoke french?). It's a common word even today, according to Darcie; when the phone rings, Willow says Daddy?.

What hurts is that I can't trust that she's asking for me.

We had such grand plans for sharing the bedtime ritual: baths together, Beatles instrumentals, Goodnight Moon in Daddy's lap. But the best laid plans fell flat over weeks when she was more distracted by two than one, long months of late work and heavy stress, a summer in Bangladesh, half a world away. I'm gone all day, and Darcie is not.

There are times, more and more, when I worry that it's too late; surely every father does. She won't kiss me, or hug; she cries only for mama, squirming out of my grasp when I catch her in play. I get a couple hours a day, tired when I've come home; they're good hours, better than last year or the year before, clear of work in my mind, but most days, they just whet the appetite and frustrate the soul.

Maybe I'm selfish. I love this precious kid with all my heart, but somehow, until tonight, I thought parenthood would be more rewarding.

But she only had to say I Love You once, unprompted, for me to know she meant it.

Thanks, baby. Daddy loves you, too.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Job

Monday I spent all morning teaching two paired sets of freshman Humanities classes -- 30 kids each -- to present with PowerPoint. No, I don't teach software anymore; with each group we got a whole glorious hour to explore best practice, and think about the best ways to establish relationships between subject, slide show, audience, and presenter.

Tuesday I met with the Director of Health Education and planned out six days of media literacy into the brand new, thirty day, all-required 9th grade health curriculum. A whole day on critical viewing, a day on violence, and several days on body image and relatiosnhip protrayal, among other things; I can't wait to be asked to teach the class so the other course teachers can learn how to take on those csubjects themselves in subsequent terms.

Today I spent the morning teaching blogging to two smaller classes of ninth grade Algebra/Physics students -- not just how, but why. Blogger and enetation for comments; inserting pictures and manipulating font; journaling for math and science class and how it can support learning and idea-sharing. As an added bonus, Carlos, the new math teacher, got all excited about both standardizing blogging across all 9th grade math/sci classes, and even suggested having the course teachers keep a group blog, too, for parents and other outsiders to check in.

Heck, my primarily job function this year was to find the best technologies and the best place for them-- in bureaucraspeak, formalizing and institutionalizing the 9th grade academic technology curriculum and its delivery, including integration into our core freshman classes. Looks like I've got my trifecta: Blogs in Alg/Physics, PowerPoint with Fresman Humanities, and Media Literacy in the 9th grade Health curriculum -- and it's perfect. And, as a total bonus, each subject and tool, and the discussion we have in each class about what kind of communication each tool/subject makes possible and best supports, directly addresses the 9th grade program's fundamental focus (Who am I? What is my world? What is my place in it?) Now all I need is the documentation and case studies.

* * *

In other medialiteracy news, spent the afternoon teaching media literacy to this year's crop of Peer Educators. We started with a discussion of how our understanding of Sept. 11 is informed and flavored by the ways in which we experienced that horrible day and it's aftermath, used that discussion as a way to evoke the basic health and wellness issues -- body image, violence, substance use and abuse, popularity and social status, race, gender -- which Peer Eds might be able to support, and then walked them through a pretty standard 40 minute curriculum cobbled straight from last year's major course in media literacy, which centers around an old Rosie O'Donnel instructional tape called Taking Charge of Your TV" of the same title.

And to think I was worried that I'd be stuck at a desk all year.

Air

Went into the studio tonight without telling a soul, just to feel myself out on the radio. No callers, no co-host -- now that Virginia's moved down the road a piece to Northampton -- and quite possibly no listeners, unless someone out there was spinning the dial in our tiny school-radio-station radius. But it felt good to be back.

In the long summer hiatus I picked up a few new CDs, and rediscovered some old ones; playing them tonight was a good way to get back into my own music, too, after too long driving a car with no CD player and, before that, an even longer summer series half a world away from the bulk of my life's soundtrack, a collection fast approaching the 500 mark.

Tonight's annotated playlist follows. As always, cover songs are starred, and I'll give a free amazon.com gift card to the first person who can identify the original performing artists of each cover song. Seriously.

Tributary Log: September 8, 2003

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
>>>our theme song, and did you know that Bob Dorough is most famous in the pop culture world for writing and performing the bulk of the original Schoolhouse Rock TV shorts?
*The Rembrants -- Making Plans for Nigel
Habib Koite -- Cigarette Abana
Jorma Kaukonen -- Big River Blues
Erin McKeown -- Hum
Biscuit Boys -- Coming Into LA
Chris Smither -- Thanks To You
>>>I've had this CD since I was a kid; it was autographed by Smither at a show my father took me to. Johnny D's in Somerville MA; I think it was my first time in a real bar. Good times.

-- bedtime story break: The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown --

Trey Anastasio -- Cajun Review
Keller Williams -- Anyhow Anyway
Gillian Welch -- Look At Miss Ohio
Girlyman -- Hey Rose
>>>You have to hear this group. Trust me.
The Waifs -- London Still

-- bedtime story break: The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein --

*Dolly Parton -- Shine
*Johnny Cash -- Personal Jesus
>>>The first "real" non-club concert I ever went to was James Taylor, but the second real concert I went to was Depeche Mode. Happily, I remember none of it.
*Nikki Boyer -- Brain Damage
Warren Zevon -- Don't Let Us Get Sick
>>>Except he did. Warren Zevon died today after a long battle with untreatable lung cancer. He was 58, just a year or two older than my father; I went to college with his daughter, in fact. I'll never listen to Werewolves Of London the same way. Don't Let Us Get Sick is one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking songs ever recorded live in a radio station.
*Patty Griffin -- Take It Down
* Girlyman -- My Sweet Lord
>>>God, is this a beautiful song.

-- bedtime story break: Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, recited from memory --

*Nenes -- No Woman No Cry
Eddie From Ohio -- Good At That
Bare Naked Ladies -- Light Up My Room
*Tom Landry and the Paperboys -- All Along The Watchtower
*Norah Jones -- Cold, Cold Heart
>>>Sadly, few people know this is a cover. Did you?
*Sarah McLachlan -- Blackbird

From folk to funk, jazz to jambands, blues to bluegrass and back again: you're listening to Tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show here on 91.5 WNMH, serving Northfield, Gill, Bratteboro, Keene -- and you.

Monday Mosh: Back With A Vengance!

You remember the rules: Dance around with impunity; answer three simple unchanging questions; post answers here and/or in your own blog; feel good about memedropping. Okay, let's Mosh!

What song did you mosh to?

Restless Wind, a live cut off The String Cheese Incident's Extra Cheese, Volume II disk that came free with the SCI DVD. Just a funky feel-good ten-minute long song.

What did you bump into or step on? (Bonus points for breakage)

Nothin' this week 'cept the world's largest bug, and that was deliberate. It did break, though, so 50 bonus points for me, yay!

Why did you stop?

Had to go wipe bug off my shoe so I didn't smear it into the carpet.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Convocation today, the usual pomp and circumstance. I'm a big fan of ritual -- not merely, as religion teacher and newly-ordained minister Ted suggested during the pre-event milling-around, for love of ritual itself, but most especially because I find the potential for interesting chaos to be heightened significantly when so many people have so much stake in such an ordered program. Ceremonies such as these are often arenas where small mistakes make big waves: the instantaneous visibility of persona and pride on a full community scale prime the pump, as it were, for moments to become, in-an-instant, part of a community memory.

On that scale, today was a bit disappointing. Other than a few easily-rectified program sequencing errors from the head of school, school songs went smoothly, the orchestra and chorus performing at a near-professional level, and everyone actually waited for the last row of seniors to get up for their recession before storming the exits, as requested. Lucky for Loki-lovers, there's plenty of ceremony in prep school life; surely, the next event will better serve my impish nature.

Subjectively speaking, the most striking aspect of this annual formal opening of the school year was the Senior class, who in formal clothes marched in slow procession past the faculty gauntlet to sit front and center, where they were easily visible from our own seats in the balcony. I remember teaching most members of this class, and they seem too young to be seniors -- indeed, despite their stiff shirts and spring dresses, and in most cases a few more inches of height or bustline, these could be the same raw prep school recruits I taught and mentored four falls ago. It's as if their movement in time has been an illusion; as if, for me, they will always be freshmen. I must be getting old, or at least settling in.

Blogwatch

New from Reed College freshman Will Henderson, a recent NMH and Media Literacy alum: lifebeat: rhapsodies of a young college boy. The blog comes to us courtesy of the MT-served Reedie Journals service, which I covet thoroughly, and if Will's student papers and projects last year are any indication, it -- the blog, not the service, though the sentiment surely applies there as well -- promises to be coherent, creative, and perceptive.

Fairgrounds, Fouled Grounds

Last Wednesday between media center coverage and dorm duty the three of us -- spouse, child, and self -- went into nearby micropolis Greenfield for a quick family supper at local fave People's Pint and, upon leaving, serendipitously emerged onto Main Street just as the annual Greenfield County Fair kick-off parade began their slow plod through the thinly lined streets. Here, umbrella-ed despite a sudden downpour just moments too late in its beginning to cause a parade cancellation, was the best of local half-rural life: shaky old-men's marching bands, preadolescent cheerleading squads, car-bound small-town mayors, dumpy girls dressed as Holsteins waving from the back of hay-lined tractors. It made a fitting end to a meal at the People's Pint, famed for IPAs, farmer's sausage quesadillas and thick grilled steak burritos, and other small-batch brews and fine and hearty foods made with local and oft-organic materials.

Having seen the parade, it would have been a shame to miss the fair itself; further, we had high hopes that Willow might enjoy it more than last year, back when she was just a tiny summer baby, a fleshy peanut asleep in a stroller. This morning being the only coinciding ole in our schedule, we woke not-too-late, headed out to the free roadside parking, and made it into the park just after ten.

Fairgrounds are funny things: in most communities, their purpose is spent in a single summer weekend. The rest of the time, they just sit there, unnoticed and unseen off the main roadways, the only reminder of their presence several small green streetsigns pointing the way into their small suburban cover neighborhoods. Today the park was still only half-full or less by noon, and the light crowd led to a light spirit as we wandered through barns filled with prize winning flower arrangements, apples, and quilts; petting farm stations and cattle pens; half the midway; a huge farm equipment showcase, and seventeen fresh-cut fries and cotton candy booths all aglow like Christmas. Willow liked the duck and rabbit showcases best, a half-lit and stinky spot where she clucked back at the chickens so endearingly I later won her a stuffed one at a water-pistol booth just to hear her cackle to it in the car on the way home.

And home was calling quickly, an unfortunate truth of boarding school life on the first weekend of the year. No racing pigs, no second lunch, no tractor pulls to come kept us around, though I wish we'd thought to buy tickets for tomorrow's crash-up derby before they sold out, as it turns out Chuck, the otherwise conservative English teacher downstairs from us runs a car in the derby every year. Instead, we left by 1:00 to get back to the dorm, long before the fair's weekend cornerstone, the eight o'clock performance of local hero Travis Ledoyt, "the best young Elvis in the business" -- and came back here so I could get to work.

Today was Community Service Day at NMH, a by-now annual first-saturday event which plants the right seeds for student works later on in the year and beyond, but which in the moment feels like one of those "good idea at the time" curricula in which little gets accomplished and even that's hardly community service. After a 45 minute discussion defining terms (What is our sphere of influence? How do they need help? How can we help?) and another 45 in the chapel being lectured to by do-gooders from alumni to current students, a few guys from the dorm and I decided to wander out into the 3400 acres here and pick up trash along the trails -- mostly because it seemed like real work, made all the more satisfying by the fact that all around us other groups were walking others' dogs, babysitting faculty kids, planting flowers outside their dorms, and, suspiciously, making banners depicting their community service project ideas. In an hour we found and kept enough glass alcohol bottles (remnants from last-year's illicit student woods-parties) to make my back hurt carrying my share, enjoying each other's company despite initial unfamiliarity, took it back, weighed it in our hands, felt proud of ourselves and each other, and called it a day.