Month: August 2007

In honor of Pippa’s recent triumphant appearance on the Theater Project stage, I point to Bibliodyssey’s Wizard of Oz first-edition illustrations page (via Boing Boing).

I’ve linked to Fred Clark’s scathing analysis of what he plausibly identifies as “The Worst Books Ever Written” before (digressive additional link (stop smirking, students of mine): Fred’s post yesterday on despair and suicide. I’d want to argue with him on several points, but only in the friendly, appreciative “Don’t you want to say. . .” way); now, it seems, Cross Currents editor Charles Henderson joins the chorus.

I wish I had room in my teaching schedule to lead a group through the Book of Revelation. As I read responses to Left Behind, I can’t help thinking that the most effective counterargument to LaHaye and Jenkins’ weirdly anti-literal interpretation would simply involve reading the texts carefully. As Fred’s most recent post shows in painful detail, there’s nothing “obvious” or “literal” about the prophetic fulfillments that LaHaye et al. purport to discover. But if you’ve been reading Revelation attentively all along, it’s hard to imagine that you find any of L&J’s snake oil convincing anyway.

I’ve loved reading Terry Eagleton since I first encountered his book on Literary Theory; I don’t agree with him all the time, but he writes brilliantly, and even when I’m dissenting from his arguments I relish his prose.

So I wish I’d had a squint at his response to Richard Dawkins before I went on Open Source Radio to talk about Christopher Hitchens (and I wish I had a link to an Eagletonian response to Hitchens). Eagleton’s characterizations of Judaism show him to have blind spots almost as great as those he attributes to Dawkins, but in the cage match between the two, it looks to me as though Eagleton scores a solid take-down.
Continue reading “Favorite Polemics”

A handful of provocations — Biella’s note about F/OSS projects as educational institutions, Scott McLemee’s column on the Open Library, continual reading at Stephen Downes’s place, and as something of a counterexample, IHE’s article about summer online courses at American University — amplify my confidence that competence-based evaluation in an open (non-“course”-based, non-credit-based) system best fits the circumstances of online learning (especially for institutions with straitened resources).

From CatandGirl:

Witness Protection Program Name = “Andrew Camera”

Punk Rock Name = “Andrew Lecturing” (?) (or “Intertwingling”?)

Prime Minister of India Name = “Andrew Gandhi” (Like Cat, I prefer the slant-rhyming “Nehru”)

Singer-Songwriter Name = “Mehershalalhashbaz Boston”

Science Fiction Name = “B. V. D. L. L. Bean”

Trust Fund Name = “Margaret Lloyd–Appleton” (sadly, no Roman numerals) (I wish Shirley Chisholm had been a senator, and Paul Wellstone would have been more gender-appropriate)

But everyone calls me “AKMA.” (But “Basil” would be my favorite seasoning, and would call to mind the hero of Fawlty Towers.)

Boing Boing pointed to a NASA article about the coming lunar eclipse, which will transform the moon to a deep reddish color. I wonder whether there’s any way of checking to see whether there was such an eclipse thirty or so years back; I remember driving eastward along the Pennsylvania Turnpike one night, when I emerged from one of the famous Turnpike Tunnels (perhaps the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel?), and as the horizon opened before me I saw a deep red full moon. It spooked me; surely a blood red moon made an ominous harbinger for a long solo drive — but the drive was otherwise uneventful. Just unnerving.

Today I just puttered around my office-study, got my library cards at the seminary library and the public library, picked up a cheap printer, and bumped into four people I know from when we lived here before (and three other members of the Center). I spotted a few people I suspect I recall from the past, but of whom I’m not sure enough to have introduced myself.

Let me say this: I love Princeton. I walked across the seminary campus today for the first time since we left, and I was swept away by memories of those years. And I haven’t even stepped into Trinity Church.

I did some good work here; every footstep reminds me of that. I know the tiny township, and by some peculiar logic it fits me — the improbable outfit that’s snug in the right places, slack in the right places, in a color you’d ordinarily never wear, but it fits just right and you wear it anyway. This should be a wonderful year.
Continue reading “New Beginning”

Bea and I are home, safe in Princeton.

Express trip from Maine to Princeton with Beatrice. Looks like good weather, anyway.

Today, family day with Jeanne and Gail and Margaret’s mother and father, and we picked Pippa up; tomorrow, Pip and Margaret go to Nantucket to visit my mom, and Bea and I make our way back to Princeton, where I’ll finally put down some temporary roots.

As one who has just done significant decluttering, with more crying out on the horizon when we move back to Evanston, I hail Paul Graham’s essay on stuff.

Last night’s performance at the Teen Theater Camp of the Theater Project in Brunswick, Maine — properly entitled Oz: Revisiting the Wizard — went very smoothly, and Pippa shone in her various roles as the Good Witch of the North,

a Winkie Munchkin,

the Wizard’s Guard,

Glinda the Good Witch,

and Auntie Em.

This afternoon Pippa plays the ensemble roles; I probably won’t take many more pictures (at either of the two shows we’ll see today). She was terrific, and added a great deal of vigor, character, and audibility to the production.