Farewell and Welcome

The year's ending with the feeling of winter, the wind whipping past with the sharp sting of the cold and snow, the rain having turned to ice overnight. We've got snow on the ground, ice on the windshield, and nothing between us and the start of the new year.

It's been a good year of traveling, writing, teaching, and other sorts of work and play. I hope it was for you, too, dear reader, and hope that in the next year perhaps you'll be more inclined than ever to join me on these pages, readers from Daqing to Sao Paulo, from Hookset to Flandreau.

Maybe you're an old friend who's stumbled onto the blog from afar, maybe someone here in Madison. It would be great to hear from you. May your next year be a great one!

A Cow and The Liquor of the Sacred Heart

It's the journey, they say, not the destination, and driving across Minnesota is an illustration. The big dog Jack and his owners might be at one end of the journey, but if you keep your eyes open and stay on the lookout for cheese, you never know what you might see.
I managed to see my two sons and daughter this weekend, along with C, who knows how to oversee a mean sandwich operation. Younger son and I put together his first stop-motion video, and the daughter and I went for a very nice run around Alimagnet Park with big dog. Elder son keeps on with his own journey; it was good to see him.

Christmas in Madison

Christmas here in Madison has come and gone. Seems like there was more than enough to do over the past few days, finishing up shopping, touching up some home-made projects, going to church, and finally giving and getting gifts. Travel to the Twin Cities is ahead, and I look forward to seeing C and C and A and exchanging gifts and visiting. We took some time on Christmas eve to drive around with the camera and shoot some lights; here's one shot. Today the father-in-law got a new knee for Christmas, which will probably bring some pain for a while and then a new lease on walking and dancing perhaps. This afternoon we laid a good friend from Scotland to rest with a beautiful service and the gathering of many friends and family. It's a good life when so many recognize all the things you've brought to them, the most precious gift being that of your love and attention. Peace.

Icy December--A Good Reason to Stay In

Across the area today ice is forming on roads and houses, cars and trees. It's icy out there! My father in law picked a good day to retire yesterday from the USPS, for whom he delivered rural mail for over 35 years without an accident, logging over 1,200,000 miles. Some people I know, my son in Fargo included, have plans to travel today; my thoughts are with them, hoping they will act wisely.

According to Simon Pulsifer . . .

Many of my students like to cite the online resource Wikipedia for articles on everything from bulimia to obesity, on topics all over the board. A recent article in Time sent to me by TQ points to one kind of writer that contributes heavily to the Wikipedia effort, a man named Simon Pulsifer who's written over 2,000 articles and edited over 90,000 others. Why does he do it? Partly because his work doesn't keep him busy enough.

From now on maybe I'll encourage students who want to use Wikipedia articles to use the signal phrase, "According to Simon Pulsifer, a 25-year old unemployed resident of Ottawa who still lives with his parents, bulimia is . . . " How's THAT for an authoritative source? But maybe that's going too far.

I like the Wiki for some things myself, but I hate to see students lean on it.

Stephanie T. and Her Multimedia Presentation

With the end of the semester, it's good to look back over what has gone well and what needs to be changed. Having had students do excellent work may be my favorite thing to look back on. It's good for them, when they've worked hard and that effort has resulted in outstanding work, and I think they appreciate having someone recognize the efforts and the good results. One of my students in a sophomore-level composition class, a non-traditional student whose family and work also takes up a good chunk of her time, submitted an outstanding work that she has allowed me to recognize here. It's a tribute to her mother and an affirmation of her own goals as a mother herself. I like how the essay at the center is able to draw from a number of resources for its strength, including an appropriate poem by Emily Dickinson.

It's worth noting that students did not have a lot of time for the assignment, and most of them had never used the programs or created a multimedia document at all. Although I point to this as one outstanding effort, the two composition classes I taught this fall had several outstanding submissions, which may find their way here. In the future I plan to post some things I learned from giving the assignment. Here is the link to Stephanie's multimedia essay: http://homepages.dsu.edu/nelsonj/IfYouWereComingInTheFall.wmv. Enjoy!

Northern Lights for Night Owls

A late-night call from TQ got us up from our seats just before midnight and out into the cold night air north of town to see the northern lights that were said to be visible. And LO! There they were, shifting and appearing and disappearing, their dim shapes only barely visible above the horizon. It's not every day you get to see a strange meteorological phenomenon, so we stood and watched what people have marveled at for centuries with no better explanations, or at least far less imaginative ones. Thanks, TQ!

Here's an update from TQ this Friday morning--the lights should be visible again tonight. Interested people should find a dark spot out of town, without carlights constantly passing by, and watch for pale lights, like clouds flickering in the sky. Check out the photos linked to this article about the lights being visible in Wisconsin.

The Party's Over

The title above might refer to a number of things--the end of the semester, the jolt in the celebration of the Democrats taking over the Senate, the last of the 125th anniversary of DSU, or, most importantly, the end of the first 50 years of yours truly.
All that's left of the birthday party now are the hats that the surprise travelers wore when they arrived, one of the arrivals looking oddly like a Dutch queen, with two hats jauntily jutting out at odd angles. Well, the hats and the bulging shirt-front on the birthday guy.
Birthday greetings came in from many sides, and it will end up being a week-long 50-fest, since it began on Saturday, continued through Wednesday, with more good will offered today, and Sunday my last gifts will be arriving. But best of all, no contest, was the festive appearance of the Minneapolis mob with their goofy smiling truck hats and silent blow-party unrolling do-dads (that really should squawk a barbaric yawp). The good will offered makes up partly for all the dumb stuff I did in the last 50 years to make people wonder if it's a good idea to be seen in my vicinity. Let's hope my next decade has me always making good choices. Like ending this entry here.

Surprise Visitors

With a big birthday coming up, I was surprised this weekend by some very welcome visitors, two of my kids and my daughter's number-one man. I had thought it was going to be a party with some friends here in town, but when A and C and C showed up, everything got more sparkly. The friends AND the kids AND the wife made the whole thing a memorable weekend. The wife got things arranged with some stealthy emailing and arranging, and Saturday evening was a fun time, with birthday cake, games, and lots of fun conversation and sharing. Sunday we took a long walk in the park, and then the three travelers returned home and DSU turned its attention to this fall's graduates. Excellent.

Memories of Comic Book Adventures

My son and I were talking this evening and got on the topic of cartoon heroes and comic books, among other things. I was a comic book nut when I was a kid, eating up Spiderman and Daredevil comics, a fan of the sharp and witty sarcasm of Peter Parker's alter-ego. Daredevil was an earnest and anxious do-gooder that I liked, too. Some guys had flaws, like Iron Man with his bad heart, Daredevil with his blindness, but those flaws just made them cooler.
I would read anything, and I remembered as we talked that I even read Archie, Richie Rich, Donald Duck, Red Hot, and Casper the Friendly Ghost comics. But the dopeyist comic I remember was Baby Huey, a baby duck that was way bigger than his parents or anyone else. He wore a dopey bonnet, a diaper, and a goofy smile all the time. But, put a comic book in front of me, and I'd read it, whether it was Baby Huey or the Classic Comic version of Silas Marner. What were your 12 cent adventures?

My Multimedia Project

My most recent assignment for the students in my two sections of Composition II has been the creation of a multimedia essay. For this project I encouraged students to use Photo Story 3 for the visuals and Audacity for the audio (both free downloads). I recommended that they write and record the essay in Audacity, add whatever background music was appropriate, and then add the photos and anything else in Photo Story. The idea here is to keep the writing, the essay itself, as the center of the work.

I had considered the use of Windows Movie Maker, but that program applies more to the use of video, so if students are just using still photos for the visuals, that program doesn't seem to fit. Some students appear to be planning to use PowerPoint, which can also serve well enough.

This week I finished a sample for my students, and I recognized that putting something like this together takes some patience and time. I wish mostly that I had spent more time on the essay itself and not as much on the production. If' you have made it reading this far, you must be interested, so I'll give the link to my sample. It's here.

Welcome Guests!

An initiative to invite prospective students and others into the blogosphere at DSU went live today, and humble HorseshoeSeven is one of the chosen sites. Welcome! Look through my archives to check out some of the activities, photos, ideas, and exotic places your humble writer has been involved with over the past few months. Other student, faculty, and staff bloggers at DSU are listed here- -http://www.dsu.edu/prospectivestudents/blogspodcasts.htm- -along with podcasts by a number of people.
And, as always, your comments are welcome!

A Christmas Story--The Games

The 1983 movie "A Christmas Story" keeps building its reputation, an article in the NYTimes shows. Two games that give fans of the movie a chance to play Ralphie are at http://dontshootyoureyeout.com/ (Don't shoot your eye out!) and http://stucktoapole.com/. Be careful with that first one!

Creating Multimedia Presentations

With the technological focus of Dakota State University, and as a professor in the liberal arts there, it's important for me and my colleagues to keep up with innovations that affect how people learn about and make art and communicate. Technology changes these things continuously. Cell phones, mp3 players, computers, radio, and other innovations keep making things new. So, what do we do? We're trying to make good use of technology and teach students to use it effectively, so I'm taking my first leap into a required multimedia presentation in a composition class. It's exciting and a little nerve-wracking at the same time. Will the technology hold up? Will students respond with vigor? I'll try to keep the blog posted.

The Nashville Cast--And Cats

Del McCoury's bluegrass band sings a song called "Nashville Cats" that describes the concept of being one of too many guitar pickers in that music city, and it might also be applied to others, English teachers included. Three of my colleagues and I presented a paper last weekend in Tennessee at the NCTE Conference there, and nearly 200 people were in attendance, many of them interested in what we had to say. Thousands of teachers, from grade school to college, attended the conference, and it was heartening to hear all the good things that teachers across the country are doing to promote good writing and effective reading. We were a dime a dozen those few days, but we left knowing a lot more about how to be good teachers.

But the conference wasn't the only thing on the table, and we got to visit one of my sisters and check out the Grand Old Opry at the Ryman Auditorium (where the lineup included Emmylou Harris, Hal Ketchum, the Del McCoury Band, Jean Shepherd--singing "I'm Tired of Playing Second Fiddle to an Old Guitar"--and the Riders in the Sky, among many others). Others included Pam Tillis, Nanci Griffith, Carolina Rain, Ray Scott, and that guy that sings "Pop a Top Again"--Jim Ed Brown. We spent an evening on music row, where every little hole in the wall had a band just bristling with talent.

It was much the same way looking through the conference schedule, with almost every presentation a home run.

Check out the photos here--note the wife's new boots and my sister's first pair after moving to Nashville a dozen years ago. That's Emmylou in the white hair.

Busy Weeks

This week is the second of short weeks of school, following DSU's Assessment Day and Friday off for Veteran's Day. Tomorrow begins two days of training for the use of InDesign software by Adobe. Then Wednesday is back to school, with a visit from Kent Meyers, author of The Work of Wolves, Light in the Crossing, and The Witness of Combines, and The River Warren. He'll be visiting my class in Mark Twain and then doing a reading and discussion that night to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Madison's public library. That Wednesday night we'll be heading to Omaha, where Thursday morning four of us will present at the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Nashville, TN. We hope to see Emmylou Harris at the Ryman Auditorium, visit with relatives, and see a lot of great presentations and people at the conference. We hope to return full of new ideas and put them into play in our classes.

Flatware in Love: Or, How to Make an Afternoon Disappear

After seeing David Pogue's video on creating stop-motion movies using free software, I got a bee in my bonnet and wanted to make one. So, I bought a cheap webcam (Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000) found the software (Stop Motion Pro v5), downloaded their trial version, and made a little film about silverware at odds with each other. I used Audacity for the sound and Microsoft's Movie Maker to finish it off. I then loaded it onto YouTube. It's silly, and it has the watermark of the trial version, so I'll have to try it again with a bit more preparation. It's here.

The Times Offers its Treasure-Trove for Free (Temporarily)

About a year ago, The New York Times took some of the great content it has online and put some of its premium writers into a subscribers-only category called TimeSelect that kept out those of us who were taking the free ride. This week it's offering this great content gratis, including the writing of David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas L. Friedman, among others. One of the delights I hadn't expected was the sharp and artistic observations and paintings of Maira Kalman, who offers up The Principles of Uncertainty, a blog that displays her sharp eye and keen and roving mind. It's worth a look, so while you have the chance, check it out, and don't miss Kalman's take on Paris. The gate closes on November 12.

Pheasants Falling, Moon Rising

Troops flew in from Alaska last night to try and turn the tide against the invading horde of ring-necked pheasants. We donned our orange uniforms and did our best to sort the soldiers from the civilians as we tromped through corn field and sloughs, blasting away at the roosters and letting rabbits, deer, owls, partridges, quail, and pheasant hens go, along with various little birds and assorted animals.
Then the moon rose on the way home and life was back to normal after the long walk through cluttered hallways of cornstalks and seedy clouds of cattail blossoms.

Trojan Sports Fans

The wife and I were good supporters of DSU sports the past couple of days, attending the men's basketball team last night and the football game this afternoon. It was fun to watch the men, who don't always get a chance to relish the taste of victory, handle a team from North Dakota and send them home with a notch in the "L" column. Women's basketball won last night too, beating one of the top teams in the nation. Both men and women ran in the cross country meet in Sioux Falls, but I haven't heard yet what our top runners managed to accomplish. This afternoon the football team saw victory and the memory of a positive end to the season slip away as their opponents marched down the field and regained the lead to seal the victory.

But it was fun to join our colleagues and watch our students doing the things they enjoy doing.