June 17, 2008
yep. it's official.
Ye olde acadeee now lives in a new space:
http://academom.wordpress.com
I'll be posting there from now on. I still have some sprucing to do, but it'll do for now.
Posted by mryonker at 02:11 PM | Comments (3)
June 12, 2008
on the move
So, I spent a lot of today thinking and messing with this blog, wondering where to put it and exporting and importing experimentally, etc.
I was pretty sure I was planning on moving things over to Wordpress, whose free service has been my favorite for hosting course blogs and for setting other people up with their own spaces.
The deal breaker is that I cannot put my twitter feed into a free Wordpress blog; I must host it myself to run the scripts. Wah. So I'm kind of now wondering if I'll scrape up the money for server space and domain registration...but then I'd be unsure if I would want to continue with Movable Type, or what... I like Movable Type, although I find it to be just past what my regular intuition can mess with every six months. That is, every time I want to do something, I have to kind of relearn it all, and then because it took me so long to figure things out, I rarely go back in, which of course makes it even harder when I *must* go in and do some futzing. In other words: I'm lazy, gimmee some good ol' wysiwyg GUI, gimmee some drag 'n drop. So.
So, I've still done nothing. But in the next few days, as I continue to procrastinate with the revisioning, I expect to have a snazzy new space.
Posted by mryonker at 10:05 PM | Comments (1)
June 11, 2008
shit! I missed it
I totally missed my blogiversary.
Two days ago, this here blog turned FOUR. Four whole years I've been writing in this here space.
Holy crap, guys. Four years.
Posted by mryonker at 11:04 PM | Comments (4)
December 07, 2006
kindred spirit
Via Mommy, PhD., I introduce the newest academic mom blogger: AcadeMama.
And no, there's no relation. :)
Posted by mryonker at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2006
it's that time of year again
when half of my blogroll bloggers are making reports from the BlogHer conference in (San Jose?) California.
Geeky Mom
Dooce
Suburban Bliss
Fussy
I read through the BlogHer reports each year with a combination of envy/longing and indignation. And while my indignation, to be sure, is borne completely out of the envy, I still give it a little consideration as a valid reaction.
The exclusionary nature of the gathering peeves me. One must have certain resources (green paper resources, mostly) to be able to participate--especially when one lives in the east and the conference is always on the west coast.
Of course, if I could convince my family that this conference was a necessary trip for me to take for my research, I would be able to scrape up the money and babysitters necessary for me to be gone for a long weekend in the summer (read: rack up the credit cards and desposit the children with my mom). But because my research--the stuff that is fast evolving into a disseration project--is about blogging, somehow I find very few people (outside of my scholarly peops) who take what I'm doing seriously. However, when on the surface (from many reports), the conference simply looks like one big trip to CA for Starbucks, sushi, and lipstick, this makes it hard to convince anyone (myself included) that I should indeed be participating in the gathering.
There is something important, to be sure, in the BlogHer phenomenon: that even with the networks and communities that emerge in such online spaces, we still seek out (and envy) "real" interaction? A similar physical congregation of running bloggers in Chicago has recently emerged as well; while it is not of the proportions of BlogHer, it is similar: once a month a group of running bloggers meet for dinner to somehow "solidify" their online connections.
It makes those of us who participate in online communities because of the ease of access and lack of logistic constraints (we can participate regardless of where we are, or what time of the day it is, or whether our kids are with us or not, etc) somehow second-rate, that once the communities move past simply the blogging networks and into something "real," those of us stuck in our houses are less-than.
Well. I didn't mean for this post to turn into a whine fest. And really, if I had the $$ to go to BlogHer, I'd be there--but NOT without a second thought about the long tail (of which I am a part) of bloggers who must read about the sessions from afar, and how Andrew O'Baoill is right: the technology of social software does not afford users that ideal public sphere where stratifications are flattened.
Posted by mryonker at 11:04 AM | Comments (5)
October 24, 2005
blograce
What do you do when you accidentally blacklist one of your favorite people?
First, you admit it to her that you're the one who accidentally checked her off as spam.
And then you quickly remove her from the list.
And then you post about it before she does, so you're (possibly) further redeemed in her eyes.
Please don't tell BP!!
Posted by mryonker at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
I let it happen again
I let the white space creep up again.
Sorry. I am on a mini-hiatus right now. I'll post when I can, but things are just too busy for me--all free moments are used prepping, grading, or reading for exams.
Be back full-on in a few months.
Posted by mryonker at 10:06 PM | Comments (3)
September 07, 2005
still at it
Matt Kirschenbaum explains Why I Blog Under My Own Name (and a Modest Proposal) (via).
The overall message: blogging can have great benefits if done properly.
My fingers itched to put scare quotes around the word properly. But really, I'm not being disrespectful.
Here's what I'm chewing on. Properly, I think for MGK, means professionally. It means talking about your research, research that is in various stages of progress. Other stuff: politics, current events, and "midnight anxieties"--off limits.
And I respect this. I have enormous respect for this, esp in light of his blog living on his public U's server.
(Pick your comparative transition), this to me feels patriarchal. Or masculinist. Forgive me while I spew out some terms I'm literally wrestling with. All of those things that have been traditionally marked (indicted) as feminine: the emotion, the daily living, the embodiment of the writer and hir experience is rendered useless. None if it has a place in/on the medium, or genre.
The line between public and private is a gendered one? I don't think I'm that far afield. In fact, that's somewhere in what I'm reading for exams. Somewhere.
Posted by mryonker at 01:10 PM | Comments (3)
September 05, 2005
insight in strange places
OK, a quick confession: I'm reading a book,Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Just a small defense: only reading it in bed at night, when I would be worthless to read anything for exams.
So, I'm reading this book, which I picked up at our library because I liked the cover and because Wally Lamb wrote a glowing blurb for the back cover, and it catalogues a midwestern girl's 4 years through an elite prep school in New England. It has been OK. I'm still reading, anyway. I'm not getting as much gritty social commentary as I am kind of liking the characters and etc.
But the real reason I'm blogging this book is the nearly obvious insight it offered me (why hadn't I really thought of this before, smack-yourself-on-the-forehead kind of duh) in this scene:
The protagonist sits in English class, and the popular rich girls pass her a rubric for her to rate the teacher's dress, makeup, and shoes.
I let the piece of paper sit untouched on my lap, like a napkin. But the truth was, I felt cornered by it. Yes there were things I didn't like about Ms. Moray, but they had little to do with her clothes. And besides, didn't Aspeth and Dede understand that written words trapped you? A piece of paper could slip from a notebook, flutter out a window, be lifted from the trash and uncrumpled, whereas an incriminating remark made in conversation was weightless and invisible, deniable in a later moment. (147)
I think Lee (protagonist) feels trapped in other ways; for instance, she feels required to contribute to the rubric in order to be accepted. But this is a theme of the book: the tension between shaping one's identity to fit in and preserving oneself at the cost of being in with the community. For Lee to NOT write in the rubric would have been just as damning as if she were to write in it and were to get caught.
It's this kind of choice, the choice between the person and the people, that writers make. Delicately. Writers write because it's in them to do so. But so much of what is in us is hurtfully honest, or jarring, or scary, or something that people might not want to look at. A thin line. A kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.
Gah. I could go on, I suppose, about the implications between the spoken and written word (just from this quote). Like, the spoken word is "deniable," and somehow more prone to things like deceit, while the written word, though "incriminating," is unflinching, concrete, static, and therefore closer to truth. A reach, I know.
Right. Whatever, I'll stop my Lit 101 essay now. But the cool thing, then, is that blogs are both written and not-written. It can exist and then disappear. It can grow and change. ?
Here's where, while writing that Lit 101 essay, I'd get up and get some Doritos, 'cause now I'm not sure what I'm saying anymore.
Posted by mryonker at 11:51 PM | Comments (6)
making some sense
iBeth points to an interview with Heather Armstrong, where she advises would-be bloggers to suppose that the one person you wouldn't want reading your blog, reads it. And that this should provide some sort of beacon concerning what you should write and what you shouldn't.
Add this to the stuff swirling around Ivan Tribble at the Chronicle of Higher Ed telling academes to RUN! RUN away from the blog! if they ever want to get hired, and I'm listening.
Not because I care, particularly, whether Ivan will be on the hiring committee that doesn't hire me because I have a blog.
What strikes me, or why I care, is that this advice from both Ivan and Heather is pretty standard by now. I mean, we've been hearing about people getting fired about what they've said on their blogs for a year or more. Yet people keep publishing stuff that will make, obviously, someone angry.
Why?
Why do many (not all, of course) bloggers insist on talking about the people that surround them? iBeth's greenhouse saga is the perfect example. She is working in real life to communicate with people, f2f, and is not really getting anywhere. The written, publicked communication, however, creates action, re-action.
There's somewhere in here an argument about people who have lost jobs *wanted* to lose them, but that's not really where I'm going with this, because I don't believe that. What I do believe, though, is that it is easy to slam a door in someone's face without anyone to witness it, and harder to slam a door in someone's face when the neighbors are looking on. And it's easier to fire someone than it is to deal with what that someone has to say about drunk people at office parties, etc.
My hope for the blog and similar social software is that it will pave the way for a communication revolution, one in which people must be held accountable for their sometimes unseen actions and their sometimes unheard words. Instead of "What would Jesus do?" people would ask themselves "What would a blogger report if I say/do this?"
Posted by mryonker at 12:30 PM | Comments (2)
July 13, 2005
don't eat over your notes (or, blogs are not a weapon)
Your notes will be a sticky mess of strawberry syrup from the desert.
Last night I had an opportunity to attend a networking banquet for a regional chapter of a national professional association. The banquet's speaker was a local business woman who is a jane-of-many trades: publishing on demand, web developer, women's marketing consultant. She also runs workshops for businesses who would like to implement blogs to ramp up profits and visibility. Her presentation was a kind of primer for "how blogs can help your business."
To be fair, her presentation was directed at entrepeneurs who have little or no experience with blogging, so the discussion was a little "thin." But it was certainly thought-provoking for me, on several levels:
The first: a good deal of time was spent making the distinction between a regular web site and a blog. The speaker's claim was that it was the commenting function that made a blog what it was, and I don't think I completely disagree; although, I don't think it's the simple function in and of itself that makes a blog. It's what results *from* a series of connected comments. It's the fact that a blog doesn't exist as a single entity in one place: coments result in posts elsewhere, result in trackbacks, result in comments, etc etc. It's almost as though the blog isn't the "place" itself (ie, the URL where the blog lives), but instead the blog is the network, IS the many connected comments and posts. She described the blog as a "thin" web site, which I do think I disagree with. I would actually call a blog "thick," simply because the ways that the posts become archives, the way content is updated fairly frequently. the ways author(s) are present and accountable. It could be, however, that I don't understand what she meant by "thin."
The second: This presentation made clear to me an issue that I've been grappling with ever since I picked up Hugh Hewitt's book. Blogs for business?? Wha? The idea had never been quite right to me, and last night I started to realize why. So many of the values that blogging embodies: sharing, honesty, full disclosure, unabashed subjectivity, etc do not mix with commercialism. Marketing is about creating a well-crafted, engineered lack that people will want to fill. Marketing is about phrases like "virtually spotless" and "helps treat jock itch." Networking with and linking to competitors? Allowing open comments so consumers can offer feedback, good and ugly? Will blogs change the business model, or will businesses simply change blogs to fit the traditional, competitve model?
The third: Maybe I'm slow. OK, I am slow. But Derek mentioned to me last year, as I naively offered him some quotes from Rebecca Blood's book _You've Got Blog_, that writing and publishing codex ABOUT blogs was not quite right to him. Last night's speaker was adamant that people still want to "have that thing they can hold in their hand," that books will still sell (and her being a publisher, I can understand her push for that claim to be true). You can't learn to blog by reading a book about it. And a blog is not a thing you can hold in your hand, really. A blog is really nothing like a book at all. They both use text, the written word, and that, I think, is the only real similarity.
In all, the presentation was slightly uncomfortable for me. It was quite like looking at someone from an older generation, your grandmother, maybe (though this woman was by no means "old"), trying to fit into some waist-hugging jeans and sporting a belly-button ring, and trying to convince others of that same generation that she really did look cool and that they would look cool, too, if they would just adopt this happenin' fashion.
But you can't fake a blog. Small steps in the beginning, you know? Self-awareness. Asking for help, admitting to mistakes or when you really don't know what you're talking about. Saying "I don't know" when you field a question that you DON'T KNOW the answer to. Then getting better, more savvy, messing with your templates, a new banner, whatever, but never losing sight of the fact that there are always people who know a little more, can take it a little farther, can be a little better--and being cool with that.
Business doesn't tip its hat. It doesn't admit mistakes unless ordered by court; it isn't gracious. It's cutthroat. The speaker said last night that blogs generate a datamine of/about potentinal customers--that blogs could be "the biggest tool in the coroporate arsenal." Look. My blog is not a weapon, and I especially don't want it used as a weapon AGAINST me.
Of course, what I hope for is that blogs will change business--make them more accountable for claims and actions. And I think that the relationship between blogs and business will shape up as a unit in my WRT 302 Digital Writing course in the fall, where one of the underlying research questions will be "Do (and if so how) writing technologies transform cultural values and practices?"
A similar inquiry could probably serve a WRT 307 Professional Writing as well.
Posted by mryonker at 10:34 AM | Comments (3)
comments fixed!
A week or so ago, I was getting crazy bombarded with Trackback spam, and when I would de-spam with Blacklist, I would get an error message that I didn't understand, and so I assumed the de-spam wasn't taking. So I went into IP banning and pasted the IP address from which the spam came.
The spam stopped.
Nothing I tried to fix the comments was working, so I went in and deleted the banned IP address. Now comments work again.
Comment away!
Posted by mryonker at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2005
MT Problem
Hi everyone.
My luverly mom just emailed me to let me know she was blocked from commenting here. Lo and behold, somehow ALL commenting is being blocked, even though I have them open for individual entries and the weblog is configured for comments to be unmoderated (except for older entries).
Any ideas?
Posted by mryonker at 09:56 AM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2005
he's probably some poor grad student, and this is part of his dissertation
Posted by mryonker at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2005
progress ... slow, inching
I have undertaken a project that I never should have: to download and install Movable Type onto a server.
Yah. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I offer a helpful metaphor: For the last two days, I've been trying to prepare a gigantic meal for ______ (insert scary important person here: boss, president, etc) , a very important meal, and I am only given the recipes IN CHINESE.
Because, you know, I speak Chinese.
Just a little stressful. HOWEVER, I have emerged victorious. With a little help from cgb (who, by the way, has one a cool blog award--yeah, collin!!) and A LOT of help from the SureSupport people for ICDsoft, a blog is now existing where it didn't before.
And here now, is the J-baby, awake in the middle of the night for your interrupting pleasure. More later.
>>updated: one? You know, I meant, won. He won a cool award for his cool blog. Jeez.
Posted by mryonker at 11:04 PM | Comments (1)
May 08, 2005
the roll...
...is up, amidst discussion that blogrolls should go down (and should stay up).
I have put this one together through blogrolling.com, so that I may easily update and NOT STAGNATE, as this bird person accuses blogrolls of doing.
However, blogrolling.com=difficulty (for me, anyway) getting the 'roll to look decent, so right now it's a horrible clump of unordered links.
More messing tomorrow. I am awake tonight to see System of a Down on SNL. Which sucks, but I dig SoaD.
Posted by mryonker at 12:19 AM | Comments (2)
February 16, 2005
time. blogs. disconnects.
So, this is what happens when you've spent what you think is a good amount of time working on domestic stuff, and then you move to some online stuff:
I worked this morning, making a delicious Three Sisters Stew out of Moosewood (squash, corn, beans). I made a brownie since it is Tucker's birthday. I did up a little of the dishes. I threw a load of laundry in.
But I knew I had some email I needed to return, and I wanted to do a little reading for class, and I wanted to blog!! The big kids had a half day of school, so I set them about doing some chores (you know a 5-year-old can empty the dishwasher, it just takes for damn ever because she has to drag a stool back and forth between the cabinets).
I sneak out of the kitchen to my room, put my feet up on my bed, open the laptop. Commence reading.
I surface from Weinberger for a moment to notice that the baby is quiet. Hm. A quiet baby means: 1) he's playing in the toilet, 2) he's eating catfood, 3) he's digging in the catbox, 4) he's climbed onto the counter and is taking knives out of the block, or 5) he's sleeping, which I knew for sure he wasn't doing.
I reluctantly close the laptop. And I find him, thankfully NOT eating cat poop, but instead digging happily into the warm brownie I'd set on the table to cool (click the pic for a bigger one):
Posted by mryonker at 04:11 PM | Comments (5)
January 27, 2005
the title of her blog is worth it
OK, I have a confession: the blogroll you see at the left? It's not mine. It's from about 4 months ago. I'm a bad blogger; I need to update it horribly.
But it's gotten so far behind that I couldn't possibly introduce all the new people that live in my bloglines account. But one does deserve a bit of talking-up: Bad Mother. The title is, to me, brave and ironic in one: if she really were a *bad* mom, she wouldn't be admitting it. But she, like all moms who try soooo hard (warning: horribly sweeping generalization to follow!!), always feels as though she's falling a bit short.
I link to her here mainly for my own self; in this particular post she talks about how her daughter normally receives the brunt of her wrath. My daughter, indeed, becomes the one I shriek and swing at. H, who is 8, is soo like me. She is snippy and rude and self-important. She argues and backtalks and thinks she's got all the answers. She gets in trouble at dance for telling other kids that they're doing it wrong.
She is just like me, and I don't want her to be. I want her to be gentle and mindful and generous.
But I snip at her and tell her she does things wrong and tell her to quit arguing and yelling as I'm arguing and yelling at her.
Hm.
Posted by mryonker at 11:16 PM | Comments (3)
January 04, 2005
blogs and audiences
Ok, time for a post that does some work. Luckily, my thoughts right now are highly in line with the aim of this blog (as a larger pieces of writing, but that calls for another entry in the future--they way the blog can exist as/from? several gestalts [all entries together, single entries, particular categories taken separately, entries+comments, etc]) which is making connections between "real life" and "work."
An issue I encounter lately, ever since blogging has punctured my periphery and moved to center, is the ways my interest in and composition of blog(s) is taken up by those of my family. I am forever defending it as a worthwhile venture; I face scorn, criticism, disdain, and near-ridicule from several adults who otherwise love me. The motif of said near-ridicule? Time. What a time-waster. I don't have time to read your blog. Don't you have something more important to do with your time? Where do you find the time? What's the point?
Ok, so that last one doesn't really fit. But still. The issue that I'd like to pull into relief is this: the point is community (I think). Community is WORTH time(/effort). But how to nurture one community (blogs), without abandoning another (home? family?).
Case: RIGHT NOW, I'm trying to think through this. Trying to make some sense. Trying to post. Jack plays Pac Man while Josh continually pushes the power button on the TV. I say "no!" to Josh. Jack hollers, turns the TV back on, eats some pellets; I write three words. Josh turns the TV off. I say "no!" Jack hollers, turns the TV back on, eats some pellets; I write two words.
I begin to RESENT them. God, I just want to do a little thinking!
And now, this post ends so I can keep them from breaking the TV. With no thought accomplished.
Posted by mryonker at 01:52 PM | Comments (6)
December 04, 2004
winter blues and anxieties
Normally, I sit down and hack out just about anything. You know, what I'm feeling, what I did yesterday, who threw up where, which truck Brian bought, etc.
This morning, I'm feeling the ol' winter blah set in (yes, I get it pre-holiday).
I get it mostly because my family still doesn't have the tree up, or any lights up, or any decoration at all. Because WHY would anyone (me) want to add ANY MORE CRAP to all the crap that is in this house already?
So I have this tenstion: the kids want a tree, but the moment I put the dang thing up, they'll be yanking the ornaments down, climbing behind it to plug/unplug the lights, putting the stockings on their OWN feet and sliding around the house in them, etc.
Once I put presents under the tree, Jack will open them when no ones looking. Well, not OPEN them, but start picking away at the tape until a small hole reveals whether or not he's interested in the contents.
It is, indeed, simply more work for me. Another project o maintain, if you will.
When the kids were younger (and when we lived in the strawbale), I did no decorating at all. I could get away with it because we never stay home for Christmas; we ALWAYS stay at Brian's parent's house at this huge strange family sleepover (to make it easier on Santa, allegedly), so we're never at home for Christmas morning.
Now the kids are big. "Mom, ELIZA has HER tree up." "Mom, Virginia has HER tree up!!"
How can I get out of the tree? I'm starting to itch and tick already.
Posted by mryonker at 08:05 AM | Comments (6)
November 29, 2004
cheap entry--or useful link?
Via Rana, a quiz about blogger types..
This is particularly compelling to me because I was just thinking about the intersection of time spent blogging and blogging *for* an audience. Who do I blog for? Do I know who my audience is? How does who I think my audience is change what I blog about, or how I blog? Do I want to get out of my warm bed to come downstairs to post some silly list about how staying in a strawbale cabin for Thanksgiving is a) good for the soul, b) really bad for the back because the futon in it is thinner and squashy-er than a slice of fresh sandwich white, and c) scary when you have a fire in the stovepipe AND a tree come down not 20 yards away from said cabin in a windstorm?
My thoughts these days are on the act of writing and the blog as a genre in which the writer's and reader's roles are so transformed by the medium that (and here will be my refrain) things like "reader-based" and "writer-based" conflate, that the term "responsibility" reacquaints itself with (or reimagines itself as) "the ability to respond" [in the sense of writer responsbility AND reader responsibility], and that I will develop a sudden and irksome self-conscious paranoia that I have misspelled responsibility 20 times in this really long, discombobulated sentence.
Posted by mryonker at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
let's try this again: in the comments, TAKE TWO
my blog has been living in the comments.
Collin posts today (or rather, late last night) something that I identify with on several levels, the most important level being the one in which I link here to him for the sake of posting and linking but not for the sake of really being able to add anything thoughtful or to engage with it.
IN OTHER BORING NEWS:
From yesterday: Hannah thinks I cannot help her with her math homework because "[I] grew up in the old days. [I] did take second grade, but they didn't know then what they are teaching kids now."
Jack says to me, after I demonstrate that I CAN count to 85: "Mom, you did that as fast as a pig could do it!!" I still am not certain whether that was a compliment or a cut down.
A final NOTE TO SELF:
You cannot think a 307 class full of management students will be moved to think by either of the following:
The New Work Order: Behind the Language of New Capitalism
In fact, the comments in class will be things like:
"You only live once."
"It's not what's RIGHT, it's what's RIGHT NOW."
"I simply don't think about it [the ingredients in bologna, someone being paid 3c to make her shirt, etc]."
"Ignorance IS bliss. What's wrong with that?"
Posted by mryonker at 03:22 PM | Comments (2)
crappy crapping crap
just to let everyone know:
I'm leaving that previous post up for posterity. Typepad has "improved" our word processing features by ripping the rug out from under those of us who hand code. Now, it appears, I CANNOT create links etc without using the crapping toolbar crap.
I don't even care about spell checking. Crappers.
Posted by mryonker at 03:04 PM | Comments (3)
in the comments
my blog has been living <a title="earthwide" href="http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/000498.html">in </a> <a title="stepaside" href="http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/stepaside/archives/2004/11/molto_grazies.html"> the </a> <a title="iBeth" href"http://bethyoung.typepad.com/ibeth/2004/11/quality_varies_.html"> comments</a> of several other bloggers this week.
<a title="Collin" href="http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2004/11/appearing_much.html">Today, or this morning, rather, Collin </a> posts something that deserves a link.
Even as I link him, I perform what he bemoans: links without engagement, links for the sake of posting, links for the sake of linking.
Posted by mryonker at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
hi, mom! and an exciting announcement
A funny thing is happening: my mom's reading my blog. Now, I know this isn't unheard of. Derek's dad comments frequently over at EWM.
But my mom's not like a normal parent. (This, by the way, is not a comment on Derek's dad being normal or not normal. He seems like a cool guy at EWM.)
Mom's thrilled and fascinated by any and all things cerebral, and we tend toward long-distance phone calls that cover topics like audience responsibility, politics, theories of organized religion, institutional ideology.
She's fascinated by the blog, but she has some issues with it. Why do I write it? Why do I choose to write about the things I write about? Who am I writing to? How is this helping me be a better writer? Why don't I just keep a diary? [She's actually very good for me; she knows how to ask a question.]
She was particularly worked up about this post from yesterday, where I discussed things like snot, dogs, and running misery.
Her confusion and indignation about my blog slowly swirled into her incomprehension concerning my running.
Mom: Who wants to read about your snot? Why would you take the time to write an entire post on how much your legs hurt and how miserable running can be? Why do you do it?
Me: Uh. Why do I run? or why do I blog?
Mom: Both!?!
Me: Un. Um. I like to? I like it?
Mom: But you hate it! At least, you present it that way. You bitch about hurting and you USE the blog to bitch.
Me [hackles rising, as I always get defensive when she starts grilling me in this way]: Look. Running and blogging are about ME. I run because I like to, but I need something to motivate me to do it, like a goal. I run right now because Deb is training for the marathon, and I'm training with her, and we have something to look forward to; we have a responsibility to get ready, a responsibility in the future. Running is hard. Running hurts. It feels good when you're done, but it's harder than hell to get started. Blogging is the same in that it involves writing, something I both love and hate. I love it when I'm able to make connections, understand new ideas, come up with some funny dialogue, whatever. I hate it because it's hard. It's hard to get started and it's hard to sustain. It hurts when it doesn't work. The blog makes me repsonsible to other people--to readers who read and dialogue, who read and commiserate, who read and lurk, who read and learn, who read and think I'm a jerk, whatever. But it's not about snot, or about times or distances; it's about discipline. It's about some sort of external-to-me thing that tempers my slacker tendancy.
OK, so there's that. Hi, Mom. Welcome to my blog. Please feel free to comment!! (She didn't feel entitled to post comments!)
The Exciting Announcment:
After much badgering by our grad director, I have decided (tentatively) on my exam areas:
Major: Rhetoric and Technology (gag! I'd like to do something that is more REALLY what this exam will be, like "Computers and Rhetoric," but we'll wrangle with this later).
Minor: Activist Pedagogy/Service Learning
Minor: Feminist Research Methodologies
Now I begin stalking possible committee members. Beware SU faculty!
Posted by mryonker at 01:26 PM | Comments (10)
October 19, 2004
the deadening of comp, and its new life as a blog
Diane Greco (Oct 19) echoes a snippet of conversation that a dear friend and I had a few days ago. He was lamenting the way the PhD work, and the coursework specifically, had really turned his writing into drivel. I don't think my writing has changed much--but it has not improved much, either. I have a theory about the academic genre/voice, and how the inclination to appear/sound detached enough be analytical and make critical conclusions effectively strips a writer of human voice.
There are exceptions to this rule. I have a handful of professors whose academic work has personality. Although, and this is just occuring to me now, do I inject personality into their writing simply because I know them? Do I read their work hearing the cadence of their voice in my head, thereby creating the illusion of a voice?
At any rate, Greco posts on finishing an article about diet blogs (which, when I originally read the phrase "diet blogs," I had images of people, like me, who need to quit blogging so much, as in go on a blog diet--but I think its about people who use blogs to support/track diets):
Even after all that dull, dispiriting comp theory, I'm writing stronger, faster, better. I still get tired, and my ideas sometimes don't connect on the page, but ... well, it just feels better. Plus, by practicing what I preach, I feel more comfortable about, you know, preaching it.
This encourages me. I think that blogging helps me to do a couple of things that I haven't *ever* done before: 1) write daily 2) write about things *I* want to write about [as in, not assignments, or writing that is not externally prompted], and 3) use/create a genre that allows me to incorporate other authors' work AND wax personal/ philosophical.
Plus, when I sit down to blog, it isn't only writing. I spend a few hours a day (wow. but I do) reading all kinds of other blogs before/during my own posting.
I don't know that Greco was making her claims about the rejuvenation of her writing as an effect of her blogging; she doesn't make the connection explicit at all. She's feeling like she's getting her groove back as a writer AFTER comp and rhet and teaching have all bled her dry. It might have been a coincidence that the article in which she found new life as a writer was about blogs.
My new life as a writer is because of this crazy thing.
And that prof asked AGAIN today (actually, it was more of a statement): "You ARE doing your diss on blogs...(?)"
I assigned my students the task of setting up a blog with blogger to serve as their site journals (I have a service learning class). They moaned and groaned, but I got up to the teacher machine and in less than 1 minute I had a blog set up, right in front of them. They quit groaning.
I also set up that prof's class with a blog the other day.
Lots of students blogging. There's got to be some questions I can ask and try to answer...
Posted by mryonker at 10:39 PM | Comments (3)
September 08, 2004
the problem of categories
Each time I post, the little category pull-down menu glares at me: No Category Selected (!). When I began (keeping/)making track(s), I thought: one thing at a time. We'll just get some posts going first! How on earth will I know what category a post belongs in/with until there are other posts that it can be different from and similar to?
Today, I add categories! (How corny is it that this excites me?)
Tonight: the dreaded Sunny Days Board meeting!! Apparently, some grandmother is working to sue us because her grandson fell and bruised himself last year. Should be an interesting meeting.
In other news, I have been working on a list of 100 things, but I'm still in the 30s. Nothing ever gets done in one sitting around here!!
Posted by mryonker at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)