betajames

In reading James Fallows' "How American Can Rise Again," the cover story in the Atlantic (print edition), a particular passage got me thinking again about the recent rise of post-apocalyptic tales across various media. Fallows paraphrases Rick Perlstein, writing of "the relative shortage of a jeremiad theme under Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Obama." Perlstein attributes this to Reagan, who equated criticism with anti-Americanism. If we look at the best-seller lists in the 1960's and 1970's, though, there were countless "doom-and-gloom books."

With a majority of politicians no longer performing their patriotic duty in telling us that America's gone to hell, that our collective future's bleak, perhaps popular culture's picking up the slack?

Ashley always falls asleep in a regular, curled-up position. The deeper her sleep, the more she uncurls. Above is the latest documentation of this fact.

Before I made Posterous my new home, an intermittent feature of my Blogger blog was "Delicious Every Other Day" (DEOD). Information flows are quite fast these days and this feature was an attempt to organize and summarize articles and links shared via Twitter and added to Delicious in the last 48 hours. By providing a choice quote and/or summary statement, DEOD was a way to not only revisit important ideas but also maintain an additional public record of research interests. This was quite similar to "Clipped," what old friend and colleague Tim Lepczyk offers on occasion at Digital Dunes. 

I thought DEOD would streamline quite well with sharing features in Posterous. Instead, I still struggle to strike a balance between sharing links via bit.ly and providing choice quotes via Posterous. The former are much more likely to get a "retweet," while the latter are more likely to get page views. There is minimal effort involved, so I'd like to keep up with both. I miss the opportunities presented by DEOD, though. I also feel like I'm doing a disservice to those friends and colleagues (if any) who followed my link-sharing after I deactivated my Facebook account. 

So, as the title of this post suggests, I want to introduce a new feature, "What You Might Have Missed" (WYMHM). At least every other evening, I'll be reposting links and/or quotes shared via Twitter over the last 48 hours. I look forward to providing the very first of these tomorrow night.

"To jump, or not to jump--that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the game to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous boss monsters, or to take power-ups against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them" (215).

--Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design

As mentioned in previous sections, I maintain a persistent presence online, which has significant connections to professional service. In keeping active accounts on Delicious, Posterous, Twitter and Scribd, I not only make new contacts in my fields of interest but also have additional venues for sharing ideas and information. By posting items about composition, literacy, pedagogy, rhetoric and technology, I support and encourage the work of others. I also remain engaged in learning on a level that is similar to yet different from conversing with colleagues in the halls of the English department. Such online engagement is a kind of worthwhile public intellectualism and it continues to have a direct impact on my pedagogical and publishing interests. 

Less nebulous forms of university service have had similar impact. The first of these concerns my participation in Mid-Career Writing Assessment. Roy Barnes, Stephanie Roach, Jacob Blumner and I selected essays of varying correctness for a university-wide norming session on what faculty should value in terms of students' writing. Bi-weekly meetings involved detailed discussion of scoring sample essays and justifying those scores in narrative formats to be distributed to UM-Flint faculty volunteers. The actual norming session with these volunteers occurred March 27, 2009, and lasted from 9am until 2pm. I was thankful to be part of this process as I found cultivating common ground with instructors from other fields to be easier and more enlightening than daunting.

Just as enlightening has been my time serving on the Student Publications Board as advisor for the student literary magazine, Qua. In Fall 2009, I conducted a successful search for a new Qua editor, interviewing two possible candidates. As of this writing, there is an open call for submissions to Qua and the editor plans to have the new issue published just after the spring break. In facilitating my role as Qua advisor, there is an opportunity to reinstate something of substantial worth to the campus community.

I also accepted invitations to and/or volunteered for a variety of other university activities and events. All of this is in addition to my regular attendance at CAS and English department meetings. 

• At the invitation of Mary Jo Finney, I attended the first FYE Living Learning Community meeting at Good Beans Cafe on November 5, 2008. 

• When MLA updated its handbook, I helped revise the Composition Survival Kit in May 2009 to reflect the changes.

• I was a guest lecturer for New Student Programs (Orientation) in summer 2009. 

• With Dr. Vickie Larsen, I represented the English department at UM-Flint's Fall 2009 Academic Showcase. 

• At the request of Krista Heiser, I was among the contributors to the Office of Extended Learning's "Blogs in Education" session on October 7, 2009.

• Most recently, I joined the Bookstore Advisory Board, which addresses customer service, long-range planning, textbook adoptions and the support of local authors.