Since teaching is, they say, scarce in the department lately, I’ll probably only be teaching a couple of sections in the Fall, of good ‘ole freshman comp.  But we’ll have to see for sure.

But what to have my students read and discuss? As usual, I’m torn between using the departments standard-issue reader, finding another textbook, or putting together my own photocopy packet.

Historically, I almost always use a home-made packet.  But I could perhaps save time by using the departments default text, Ways of Reading.

I’m a bit averse to Ways of Reading, I think.  It prefers texts that perform rhetorical work through a kind of “thick writing” based on experience and observation.  I like this approach, and I often begin the semester with argumentative autobiography sort of readings and writings.

But in a Rhet 105 class, I move gradually towards more straightforward argument, and a pretty standard research paper, while encouraging students to continue using the direct language and personal engagement they usually begin with in their more descriptive and autobiographical writing.

Ways of Reading seems less insistent on moving towards argument, and more comfortable with a somewhat oblique approach to persuasion.  Which strikes me as sort of cowardly, even if it has the advantage of keeping tedious trite polemics off the instructor’s desk.

Perhaps I’m especially wary of excessively non-confrontational approaches to persuasion after reading this New Yorker article (which I’m sure you’ve seen already) about the sort of “cultural studies” undertaken by the Right over at Patrick Henry College (hey, where’s David Horowitz when you need him?).

My sense is that a rhet class should yes help students (whatever their politics, need I say?) engage with Discipline and Punish and Interpretation of Cultures but also make sure they can kick ass in the dorm room arguments Stanley Fish so despises, and in the public-policy debates that are those arguments writ large.

So, we’ll have to see what this year’s text books have to offer.  But for now I’d bet on the photocopy packet, yet again.

[p.s.  Was that New Yorker article on Patrick Henry College creepy enough?  Perhaps you’ll want to cleanse you palette with a little humor from the Liberal elites at McSweeney’s]

I spent the morning sleeping late and installing three-prong outlets in my apartment.  So all you get for now are these:

If men could have abortions . . . [via BitchPhD]

and, does anyone know how I can reserve a room at the Lost Liberty Hotel?

I’ll mostly skip blogging today.  However:

You might check-out the SCOTUS blog for info on today’s generally unhappy rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States.  A great deal of well-organized info. there [via ambimb]

And you might also take a look at a pleasantly eclectic and mostly apolitical little blog with a habit of posting cartoons from the New Yorker.  I came across it today (it provided the Lincoln link, below).  Pratie Place, it’s called.

In any case, I’d recommend this post, in which the author of Pratie Place assembles a list of 100 self-descriptions she’s culled from blogs around the web.  This should probably engage and amuse you unless you are a bad person.

. . . meet Mr. Lincoln.

So, a friend of mine is back in town.  And so a trip, in celebration.  Up to Chicago, to visit (the original) Powell’s in Hyde Park, Chicago (where I worked for a while, when I took a break from grad school).  Here I picked up a couple interesting books (1014 and 1015). Also picked up a copy of The Tin Drum from the free box–but when will I have time to read that?

Then, visited O’Gara and Wilson’s. (I was hunting for a nice copy of the essays of Charles Lamb).

Then we located and communed with the Hyde Park Parrot colony.

Then, we headed North to check-out Millennium Park, which was lovely–especially the video-spitter fountain pictured above (when not spitting, the fountain rains down water from above).  It was mobbed with screaming kids, on a 90-degree day when the Taste of Chicago was getting under way.  Watch out for the new millennium parking garage, though.  $13 for 20 minutes!

Then, headed to the Fluevog store (the real and true mission of the day), to find some proper boots for my traveling companion.  You’ll have to search for “lucky stud” on the Fluevog website to find them.

Then, we ventured across the street to Myopic books.  No essays of Charles Lamb, but there was a three dollar volume of poems by Leonard Nemoy!  Sadly these turned out to be too terrible to enjoy even in an ironic mode.  What to do now with book 1016?

It was six minutes to four when we hit I-94.  Early enough that we caught only the onset of the serious rush hour.  On the way home, we discovered that Slurpee-type beverages are increasingly hard to come-by in the Moach-Choca-Latte world of today’s gas stations.  But eventually an old Kankakee Marathon station was found with an ancient slushee machine.  Sweet deliverance!

Back home, it was discovered that a certain organizer from Madison was back in town, so after bidding farewell to my Fluevog-owning companion, (and doing a little diss. reading), I made it over to Crane Alley, in Urbana.  Crane Alley has delicious food, but can be a little sedate on a friday night.  We were sitting on the second floor, with some anthropologists, who were playing dominoes. 

I eventually extracted the visiting organizer from the bowels of Crane Alley (why are things always getting stuck in there?).  Before giving him a tour of hip new downtown Champaign, including the new Ultralounge, where they put a guy out front with a velvet rope.

We ended up at Champaign’s de facto most excellent most-non-ultra bar.  Where I chatted with a lady of library-science, and was served by this town’s most strikingly beautiful and coldly hostile bartender (the two go together, yes?).  Rob and I had some interesting conversation, interrupted towards the end of the night by some woman who sat down on my barstool, with her back to mine.    When I eventually turned to sort of take note of this, she informed me that she was on a mission to hook-up tonight, and did I want to go with her and her friends to somewhere else?

While this sort of thing should happen to me more often, I had to decline her generous offer, and instead RH and I returned to Ed’s, where we found Ed half-awake and watching old episodes of SCTV.  I returned home and went to sleep.

A better-than-average day!

On mercenaries, this week.  This episode is not the most enlightening in detail, but the scale of the use of “private contractors” and some of the problems resultant from such use are well indicated here, in a steaming version of this week’s Frontline.

Of the Soviet Gulags.  According to Andre Solzhenitsyn, in the Gulag Archipelago.  Compare/contrast to those of the US?

As you know, Champaign will soon acquire its first real Starbucks.  Well, sweet glory be.

But did you know the rather naughty history of the Starbuck’s Melusine?

[you might also take a longer look at deadprogrammer, an interesting new-to-me photo-blog I came across via one of those websites that I think I’m too chicken to link to.]

So, you may have noticed that the House has voted to ammend the constitution to prohibit flag burning.  Or “desecration” of what is apparently now some kind of religious icon.

Meanwhile, the still too-Liberal PBS broacasting network, having moved insufficently far to the right, is poised to have its public funding almost halved.

Meanwhile, Dick Durbin offers a weeping and terrified apology for having dared to speak up agianst torture.

Meanwhile, the cable-tv brute squad now openly advocates the imprisonment of journalists who speak against the war in Iraq.

Does it seem somehow familiar?

[photo of flag-icon by Heinrich Hoffmann]

It’s almost impossible for me to blog about politics lately.  But I here propose to say a word about Dick Durbin, and this whole absurd Nazi business.  I initially assumed that no sentient being would fall for Matt Drudge and the Republican media’s latest efforts at story manufacture.  That is, when on cue all the Republican media start shouting the same story, and try to make it one.

I could see however by last weekend that this story has successfully made it to the next level–the idiot level–when idiot Chris Matthews spent half his weekend talk show discussing Durbin’s horrid outrageous verybad statement, and then Tim Russert did the same thing.  (Ariana Huffington also noticed this program).

Durbin read a list of human rights abuses observed at Guantanamo by the FBI, and commented:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Various right-wing hacks claim to have nearly swooned on hearing such malicious treachery from the good senator from Illinois.  Here, for example, is an open hive of swarming madness.

There are at least a couple points to be made here:

1) To compare something to something else, is not to equate the two things, or even necessarily to suggest a likeness.  If I say for example that the US has a better human rights record than than that of Nazi Germany, I in so doing make a comparison between the two.  To compare != to equate.

2) Durbin’s remarks might compare the actions of US soldier and those of soldiers of brutal regimes, but this “comparison” is only made in the sense of emphasizing the *difference* between American and German soldiers.  It should be obvious even to the likes of Chris Matthews that Durbin’s remark would be mere nonsense if he believed American and Nazi soldiers to be morally equivalent.  I mean, if Durbin has said that the FBI account made the soldiers sound like Canadians, what point would he have made?  Or if he said that Nazi and Soviet troops were both bad, what point would have been made?  None, of course, because he’d be pointing out a mere equivalence.  The entire force of Durbin’s remarks rests on the assumption of a fundamental *difference* between US troops and those of the regimes he mentions–it’s this assumed difference that’s supposed to make the appearance of similarity disturbing. 

But this point is maybe difficult to explain in a forum like Hardball, where pundits like Matthews gravitate to a story like this, for the very reason that no knowledge or intelligence or effort seem necessary to discuss it.  Nobody on his panel troubled themselves to consider Durbin’s remarks and whether they really implied a moral equivalence between Nazi and American troops.

Even Jon Stewart got in a little Durbin-bashing on the Daily Show, sensibly observing that “Hitler is Hitler!”  Which is true enough.  Or he was Hitler, anyhow.  But the magnitude of Hitler’s crimes shouldn’t put off-limits comparative discussions of human rights, or stop somebody like Durbin from saying that an intentional disregard for the Geneva Conventions and human rights is a stance more appropriate for a Nazi regime than an American liberal democracy.  What’s horribly predictable here, rather than ironic,  is that those seeking to make the US over on a neo-fascist model are the same ones who wail and gnash their teeth most vigorously when someone like Durbin has the courage to point out the progress of their efforts at transformation.

[p.s. I notice that one Champaign activist expatriate has so far failed to repudiate the wicked Mr. Durbin. ]
[p.p.s. There are, it seems, a few Republicans who to their credit are not so willing to stomach this witch-hunt.]

Zwichenzug memed me the other day, with that book meme that’s been making the rounds.  Questions, questions. So, here goes:

Number of books I own: 1012 as of this morning, maybe.  But what counts as a book?

Last book I bought: A few days ago, I picked up The Mysterious West, by Brad Williams and Choral Pepper, along with North American Indians, by George Catiln (Catlin met and described Kennekuk, don’t you know . . .). 

Here then are ten books that mean a lot to me:

The Brothers Karamazov
The Mirror and the Lamp
To the Lighthouse
Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (this is a very clumsy book, but influential)
The Waning of the Middle Ages (The Autumn of the Middle Ages)
Lolita
Emerson’s essays
the journals of Sylvia Plath
Simulacra and Simulation, and Seduction
The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul

I didn’t mention Hamlet and Moby Dick, since my list is uber-canonical already.  But to be fully honest, I’d need to.  Probably Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature should be there, too.  As you might gather, I tend to appreciate intellecutal history that’s accomplished by way of the social history of metaphor(s).  For the sake of my reputation I also didn’t mention my early devotion to Danny Dunn, Carl Sagan, or H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, and the entire Paranormal section of the library. 

You may note however by my recent purchase of The Mysterious West that my enthusiasm for this subject area persists.  An excellent book.  My bedtime reading material for last night was the dreadful story of the shadowy bandit, Joaquin Murrieta.  One Sheriff was on the look-out for one of the mysterious Murrieta’s men at a fandango dance.  But the dance was quiet, except for a scuffle, which the Sheriff easily broke up, grabbing the youthful instigator.

The youth was friendly and apologetic, and the night court judge assigned him a fine of just $12 dollars.  The Sheriff agreed to accompany the youth to his home to get the money for the fine:

The court and the Clark [the Sheriff] were agreeable to the suggestion from such a pleasant and inoffensive young man.  They left the building and strolled along the dark and narrow streets towards the Santa Clara Mission.

“Incidentally, I have a surprise for you,” the Mexican said presently.

The Sheriff paused and smiled towards his companion.

‘I am Joaquin Murrieta,’ the man said in the same cavalier manner, ‘and I have brought you here to kill you.’

The dying Clark’s body was found a short time later, a hand on the butt of his revolver.”

I knew that Sheriff was in for it!

I also learned from The Mysterious West that California was discovered and settled not just by the Chinese, but also by the Romans and–still more remarkably–by the Phoenicians.  Who knew?

It’s fun book, just the sort of thing I’m a sucker for.  It’s dedication:

This book is dedicated to
all those people who believe a little
bit in everything

What more identifiable sentimentality could there be?  And how could one fail to be seduced?

Famous P and anonymous D. ask about the above image.  The original can be found here, at the library of Congress (do take some time to browse around their enormous collection of photographs).

The image itself depicts the Cloudland Hotel, near Eagle’s Nest North Carolina (yes, in the Smokey Mountains).  An 1896 guidebook describes it thus:

[T]he top of this most beautiful mountain is seven miles long, a natural prairie, interspersed with groves, dotted with flowers and shrubbery ; it no longer serves merely as a pasture for the flocks and herds of the farmers below, a nobler destiny has been found for it, and travelers swarm over its broad expanse. It does not boast of hunting or fishing, such sports are not to be looked for above the clouds, but for scenery, the world spread out below, wholesome wine-like air, pure water, zest for food amply provide, comfortable lodging, it challenges the best of our hill country resorts.

On-line info on the resort is a bit scant and contradictory in detail, but this resort was probably built in 1878, and replaced by a larger one in 1885 (you can see from the tent/cabins at lower right that the hotel is here operating at somewhat above capacity).  Here’s another view of the old building.  The later building (boasting 4 baths for its 166 rooms) is, alas, now also only a memory.

Visitors to Cloudland could enjoy cool air, and relief from hay fever.  One web site claims too that, “It is also at Cloudland that locals and visitors claim to hear strange “mountain music,” echoing through the mountains.”  I’m not sure about that, but it seems plausible in the image above.

The Photographer, Herbert Pelton, is too obscure to learn much about from the web.  UIUC’s biographical databases seem not to know him.  But this image he’s composed, of a kind of delicate  and portentious escape, is strikingly odd.  One must imagine that it was taken to convey (for promotional purposes, as in the ad above) the main selling-point of the Clouldland — its scenic natural beauty.  Unlike most old panoramas, this image  includes people, standing motionless, appreciating beauty (or is it strange mountain music?), like actors frozen on-stage as a dark curtain rises, in a evanescent diorama of obscure significance. 

So I just checked-out my design changes using Microsoft Internet Explorer.  What a mess!  I’m not sure quite how to fix TDQ’s appearance in that horrible web browser, but I’ll see what I can do, I suppose.  In the meanwhile, why not consider switching to Firefox?  It’ll make TDQ much prettier, which is what’s really important, after-all.