So the semester is now well underway, and it’s a beautiful fall afternoon, and I’m sitting out in front of one of the downtown Champaign coffee shops with a pile of papers to grade resting on my table.  And so even thought I’d more or less forsworn blogging because I need to finish the dissertation and prepare my job materials, I’m prompted to turn back, for a moment, to The Qualm, my obscure and poorly-lit weblog, lacking both the defensible professionalism of the academic blog ala berube or digby, and the rhizomatic touchy-feelyness of the youtubers. 

This has been a difficult semester in a few respects.  I’ll leave those out for now.  But one thing that’s not been difficult thus far has been my teaching.  In fact, teaching has been overwhelmingly good.  My writing classes have gone very well, and my intro to literary studies class has been almost disturbingly good, presenting me with heretofore unknown problems, such as how to move discussion forward, when there are consistently too many hands to call on.  On Friday, as I walked into the class, the class began enthusiastically chanting my name.  Which was, for me, a little unusual.

Probably this is mostly because I’ve postponed most tests and papers in that class until fairly late in the semester (their first being due tomorrow).  We’ll see how much chanting I hear, once they have their first paper returned. 

I really don’t have time now to blog too usefully, but permit me to direct your attention to a couple attention-getting items.  It won’t be news to you, but just for fun, have a look at the covers of Newsweek magazine, and see if you can spot the difference between the covers of its different international and American editions.  Similarly, I was surprised at the degree of political manipulation attested to by this former worker at ESPN. [Update: ESPN denies].

Not a picture of a healthy society.  Which reminds me of something else I’ll recommend.  A week ago, I managed to get myself to a screening of Walther Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, a film that sets out to provide a detailed portrait of Berlin, as Ruttman filmed it in 1927.  A silent-film documentary, Ruttmans film attempts to tell the whole story of a day in Berlin–from lightbulb factories and train stations to clerical offices and school and the city’s electric nightlife (what we *don’t* very often see is the home life of the Berliners).

But of course, watching these films of everyday people in 1929, what one looks for are the signs of the Germany was about to develop in the 1930’s, and which are visible here only fleetingly.  Too many ragged people outside the opulent hotels.  Ominous newspaper headlines about the growing Soviet threat.  And perhaps the fascination of the film itself with the sublime novelty of mechanical power.  One of the visual motifs of the film is the switching of tracks–and one can’t help but wonder at what point the lives of the kids we see in Berlin, 1927 got shunted towards Italy, Normandy, and the frozen ground of Soviet Union.  One wonders what switches, here in the States, have already been thrown, and which ones can still be reset.

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