Shutter the windows

Well, since it's clear there's little activity going on here lately, we're going to close the shutters, throw some drop cloths over the furniture, turn off the utilities, stop the mail delivery.

School just seems to get busier and busier. I used to teach five classes a quarter when I was an adjunct, and while I remember having to grade all the time, I don't remember feeling like I was doing a plate spinning act all the time.


Maybe that was because as an adjunct I was focused only on the classroom, and even though I had a lot of work, it was all of a kind. Now, well into the second year of my tenure track, I find myself drawn into committee activities more and more, working on planning, budgets, course development, and similar long-term projects. The work has changed, making me feel little bit less focused and directed.

On top of that, I have several other projects going on that take up some time but don't wind up with publishable items for this blog. Not that I haven't had plenty of ideas for posts: my bookmarks folder is filled with interesting links to share, my desk holds a stack of comics I want to talk about, and I have a to-do pile of essays on the classroom experience. It just seems that the season for blogging has turned for a while.

Just as spring in the Pacific Northwest is having a hard time getting any purchase this year, I've been losing some traction here. Both situations will eventually resolve themselves, but for now, this post gives me absolution.

Zillions of 'em!

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers is the yin to his Stranger in a Strange Land's yang, the story of Johnnie Rico's redemption and self-actualization through military service and flogging. I liked the novel well enough when I was young, and in the seventies actually bought the Avalon Hill strategy game pictured on right. I never played the game much; those old-school cardboard-counter games required real dedication, what with all the pieces and their finicky setting-up and complex play calculations and whatnot. I didn't quite have what it took, and didn't have any friends that were nearly geeky enough to play with anyway.

I carry one lasting legacy from the novel; it is a quotation, and one that was immortalized on the game package. Towards the end of the story, Rico has advanced in rank and is commanding a platoon of high-tech infantry seeking to engage the insect-like aliens with whom Earth is at war. Exploring a network of tunnels, he sends a scout ahead to reconnoiter for the enemy. Shortly afterwards, the excited soldier comes running back, shouting his report on the enemy status:


Ever since I read this, it (or a slight variation) has become my stock reply whenever someone asks me "What's in there?" or "What can you see?", especially if the situation involves actual bugs, but often even when it does not. More and more often, people have no idea what I am talking about, but for me, this is a much catchier phrase than "I'll be back" or a dozen others you can think of.

Anyhoo, when I saw this box at Half-Price Books, it brought a lot of memories flooding back. But I still didn't buy the game. It has too many pieces. In fact... nah, that's too easy.

Here's the complete back cover. It's worth looking at close-up just for the pitch supposedly written by Heinlein himself.

Hey! I saw this game in the store and took pictures of it with my cool new phone and even emailed them to myself so I could put them in this blog post even though I am still out and about! How cool is that?

Age of aquarius

It was a lovely day here in the Emerald City. It was warm (looks like we hit 69 degrees) and the skies were blue and sunny all day - quite a treat. I took advantage of the beautiful weather to do some grading out in the airyway, and that spurred a thought not unrelated to some musings from a few weeks ago about student writing.

I have to say that whether or not the form is relevant in the information age, there is something aesthetically satisfying about reading student papers that are actually on paper. Most of the composition assignments I grade are submitted electronically, as Word documents in a digital dropbox. I read them on my office computer or laptop, make my responses in-text with the Comment feature and as a separate e-note, and send the back to the student accounts the same way they came. The system sure cuts down on paper and maintains a complete developmental portfolio of a student's work, and I think it makes me provide fuller and longer comments (and certainly more legible ones), but on the whole, I feel like there's something missing.

Dennis Baron has said "Writing is first and foremost a technology, a way of shaping materials to an end." This truth was apparent in early cuneiform writing on clay and inscription in stone, and it is no less obvious in ink on sheepskin, graphite on paper, or inkjet fluid on eighty-pound bond. A typed - or more accurately, a word-processed and printed - paper is an artifact as well as an act of communication. It is shaped materials, and although the clarity and weight of its end may vary from writer to writer, as a package it fulfills its charge elegantly. A paper reveals its message without the need for any other intervening technology - unless you count my eyeglasses - and is relatively permanent and easy to store.

What are the shaped materials of a .doc file? Where does it actually exist? Where is the final draft? How do we call it writing, then? These are perhaps non-critical questions, since we cannot deny that the nature of textual communication is changing and that these considerations may have already been mooted. Yet the practical consideration of that need for an intermediary technology maintains some significance to the distinction: I could read old-style papers anywhere. And in the affective domain, the difference is profound: it is a pleasure to hold a sheaf of stapled sheets in my hand and move my pen slowly down the margin. I can't do that with a Microsoft product.

In the end, I need to prepare my students to do the kind of writing they will be doing with the kind of tools they will be using for the kind of audiences they will be reaching. But on a sunny spring afternoon, there's nothing like reading a stack of papers, on paper, regardless.