Author Archives: witchyrichy

I am almost finished with Jimmy Carter’s memoir of his childhood in Plains, Georgia, called An Hour Before Daylight. He gives a detailed view of a way of life in our country that is disappearing: small town communities. I am a little bothered by his somewhat cavalier attitude towards the lives of minorities and women, though. He grew up in a segregated world and that’s the way it was. He admits several times that he just didn’t really think about what it must have been like to be a disenfranchised Black in the South during the Depression.

Right now, I’m stumbling over a paragraph where he describes his grandmother’s life:

“On Sundays, everyone went to Sunday school and church, so Grandma had to prepare most of the large dinner in advance, perhaps cooking just the biscuits and fried chicken after the services were over. For one afternoon a wekk, she joined some of the other ladies of the community in a quilting bee, all of them sewing while they discusssed affairs of their families and the community. I can see now that hers was a complete life, not much different from that of most Southern women of her time. She was proud and grateful to serve the other members of her family, who more or less took her for granted” (p. 244).

This description should certainly apply to my own grandmothers. Women had a place, they had a job to do, but was it a complete life? If she had had any choice at all, would she have chosen this life? I keep stumbling over the word “grateful” because she was serving some very ungrateful people, evidently. How does he know she was grateful? Or even proud? Were there days when she would have preferred to sit and read a book or just look out the window without doing anything? Did she feel her life was complete? And did she have anything to compare it with if, as Carter suggests, she led a very typical life.

It has taken me awhile to finish this book and I didn’t really expect much from it at the beginning other than a lot of fond reminisences about life in Georgia (all biscuits and peaches). But I’ve found myself really mulling over some of Carter’s comments. I really respect the man, more than any of our other presidents both living and dead, and I guess I ultimately admire his honesty in this book when he admits that he did not fight against racism or segregation but accepted it as the natural order of the world.

I subscribe to the live frog theory of prioritizing and completing tasks. If you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, then certainly nothing else can be quite so demanding the rest of the day. So, the theory goes, you should pick the most pressing or onerous task that faces you and do that first. For me, today, that task is writing my paper for SITE. I SHOULD do it although part of the problem here is that it isn’t due until next Monday and I’m anticipating that it should take about a half day to finish it. So perhaps it isn’t actually a live frog yet since I have time during the rest of the week. BUT, I also have time today and should just get it done. But, wouldn’t it be more fun to post some video from our birding trip last week?

Meanwhile, I finally managed to finish my first book for 2005: a biography of Stonewall Jackson by Byron Farwell. Considering his legendary status in the south, I was surprised at how incompetent he seemed in many instances, particularly at the battles around Richmond early in the war. And his petty quarrelsome nature was also a surprise. Maybe I should read Lee’s biography next since he must have shown real leadership in order to balance his many prickly subordinates.

My list of books for 2004 sits just at 49 although I may have forgotten to write down a few. Plus, I listened to The Orchid Thief, which I downloaded from audible.com. So, I think I made the 50-book challenge and now I’m starting up again. Here’s the original blog that got me started on this last year.

I’ve been taking advantage of the dark nights to use my telescope. Mostly experimenting and last night after I got tired of trying to get the tracker to work, I just scoped Saturn. Nice view of the planet and rings. I tried to find the Machholz comet (see link) but I certainly can’t pick it out. At the property it was obscured behind trees and light clouds. It’s cloudy right not but if it clears up, we are going to a drive tonight. Meanwhile, I’m heading out to try to get the tracker to work correctly.Yahoo! News – Doorstep Astronomy: New Comet Looking Bright

I have a short proposal to write for a summer workshop (and it’s not due until the 4th and the budget is basically done) and not much else to do. I read Johnny Cash’s biography almost all day today except during the two-hour nap I took. It’s vacation!! I’m looking forward to watching Monday Night Football and playing on my computer, probably adding stuff to my Moodle course. I had a brainstorm: use Moodle to develop my educational technologist leadership course. Plus, I’ve been playing with del.icio.us and want to clean out my bookmarks list. Finally, I want to do some VCOL work so I have it pretty well together when I send out the new newsletter.

When I was awake today and not reading, I planned our trip to North Carolina. We take an annual birding trip usually to the Outer Banks and Lake Mattamuskeet but this year we’re going to go a little further south to Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge. We’ll also take in Cape Lookout and the Croatan National Forest.

I just posted and had three comments almost immediately! So, in the interest of going with the flow, I decided to do something about it and found these directions for getting rid of comment spam. I followed them and we shall see if it helps.

The semester is mercifully over. I had a great time and learned a lot but I also had to put some of my own stuff on hold. The past few days I have been reveling in free time and spent most of it in front of the PowerBook. I installed moodle…not too hard and have been playing with some of its features. I also installed the hot potatoes module today. In addition, I’ve been having a blast downloading music from iTunes and exploring the new world of podcasting. I listened to Dawn and what’s his name and was not impressed. Sorry…I suppose it’s funny in a kitchy kind of way but I was much happier with teach42 and have already set up my del.icio.us account. I’ve had a backflip account for years but haven’t used it recently and wasn’t happy with the folder system because stuff did need to be crossfiled. Can’t wait to get some time to do some experimenting with tags and rss feeds.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that simplykaren needs a homepage. Right now, the index page is just links to my php exercises from the past semester. They could go away or at least be buried someplace else. The rest of the website is devoted to my growing collection of open source applications including this blog, a wiki that I’m going to use with my undergrads next semester, and now moodle. I’ve also installed wikindx but I haven’t used it at all since Noter came together so nicely.

I’m listening to the MacCast podcast right now. I wonder how many other people will listen to this today? And how long will it be before I try my own?? I am feeling a little ADD right now: too much fun playing with software and finding this whole world of interesting STUFF out there and thinking about the paper/keynote/presentations I should be working on for the new year. But for awhile I’m just going to let it flow and be on vacation.

So there they lay in the garage on the burn pile: my stack of gradebooks that have been in a box in the garage. I didn’t even browse through them. At some point, as you move forward, you also have to shed some of the past, and my gradebooks fall into that category as does most of the stuff in the black filing cabinet in the garage. I have three boxes of books: give to the library, give to the church, and take to the second hand paperbook store for exchange credit. Some of these are popular so maybe I’ll get some credit. It is time to begin to focus my library collection on my chosen field. I am even giving away my English textbooks from William and Mary which have made every move with me and collected dusk in the garage for the past year. It’s all on the web! If I get a hankering to read a Romantic poet (and frankly it hasn’t happened lately), I can do it. Byron, Keats, Shelley…they’re all at Project Gutenberg in an easy to store digital format that doesn’t take up any more room than my computer or the 200 gigabyte hard drive attached to it. No, it’s not a book with pages and words and notes from college but when have I looked back at that?

It might be interesting to reread those things like the guy who went back to Columbia did but do I want to spare the time? (His book is somewhere on the shelf in the garage. It was interesting but do I need to keep it? If I give it to the library there is at least a chance that someone else will read and enjoy it. Now, there’s a reason I never thought of…is that selfish of me?) Besides, I find some of it just not that palatable: I reread the Iliad and was horrified at its violence and views of women amidst lofty speeches and heroic feats. I prefer the Odyssey, I suppose, but it’s not much better. And I did enjoy reading Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth (couldn’t put it down in fact) but I think I could give it up.

I did fire up Readerware and enter the hardbacks I am giving to the library. In a minute, I’m going to take the laptop and the bar code scanner out to the garage to enter those as well. That way I can keep track of donations. Finally, I have found a real reason to enter my books in the database and the technology is ready for me. Sometimes you come upon the technology first and then find a practical use.

It’s a strange obsession, this book collecting habit of mine. As I look at the shelf, I wonder why I hang on to the old beat up copy of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth or even the new copy of Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic. In the case of the latter, part of the reason I’m keeping it is because I bought it at a small, private bookstore (the last of a breed) in a little town on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The store is called Twice Told Tales and I was on an outing with a friend of mine. I read Horowitz’s book right away–too appealing to put off–and loved it. I’ve been telling people about it ever since, especially the guy who could “bloat” and look like a dead Rebel along the side of the road. (Speaking of strange obsessions…)

The issue here is simply space. I live in 1200 square feet, most of my books have been in the garage for months and I honestly haven’t really missed them all that much. So, what about Teaching Lolita in Tehran? Or Nickled and Dimed? Or the books by Jasper Forde. I’m NOT going to reread most of them…goodness, I would never get to all the other ones if I started doing that! But to part with them? The paperbacks at least can go to the trade store so I’ll get more books (small paperbacks that hardly take up any space) in return. Although I once, in a similar fit of cleaning out, took a huge load to the trade store and they only wanted one! But lots of the paperbacks I have come from there (I just pay cash) so hopefully they will gladly accept those, and I will make an effort to just run a credit!

Many of the hardbacks are pop fiction that I got accidently from BOMC (getting out of that is also on my list) so I’ll bet the library would happily accept those and I wonder if I can ever think that I will get to them. I seemed to be mired in non-ficton and I can always check them out of the library. That’s it: the new rule is that I don’t buy any fiction! And I’ll get out of BOMC because then I won’t get more books I don’t need. I feel better already!

I am reading ahead for next semester, and for the leadership class, one of the assignments is to read the biography of someone we perceive to be a leader. I started with Mari Sandoz’s biography of Crazy Horse mostly because I had it and had been looking for an excuse to read it. I just finished Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford that I bought at the Island Bookstore in Corolla, NC, over Thanksgiving weekend. Interestingly enough, in his epilogue, Weatherford suggests that Crazy Horse and Genghis Khan share the plight of nomadic cultures when they clash with urban cultures:

“The clash between the nomadic and urban cultures did not end with Genghis Khan, but it would never again reach the level to which he brought it. Civilization pushed the tribal people toward the ever more distant edges of the world. Chiefs such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Lakota Siouz, Red Eagle of the Muskogee, Tecumseh of the Shawnee, and Shaka Zulu of South Africa valiantly but vainly continued the quest of Genghis Khan over the coming centuries. Without knowing anything about the Mongols or the Genghis Khan, these other chiefs faced the same struggles and fought the same battles across Africa and throughout the Americas, but history had moved beyond them. In the end, sedentary cultures won the long world; the future belonged to the civilized children of Cain, who eternally encroached upon th eopen lands of the tribes” (pp. 266-267).

Sandoz’s biography was written from the Native American point of view, which made it an interesting read. She gave enough “white man” details to be able to match it with historical battles but the reader got a much better sense of what was lost by the Native Americans.

The Weatherford book did not just cover Genghis Khan but also the whole Mongol empire. What was interesting was that someone that has been painted as a barbarian really had quite far reaching ideas about freedom of religion and the importance of government and policy. I thought about my policy class a couple times when Weatherford discussed Khan’s use of policy and propaganda to avoid warfare.

Here are the references:

Sandoz, Mari. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1942. (My edition was published in 1992, the 50th anniversary and is still in print.)

Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004.

I am actively using Noter to do research for a paper and making minor cosmetic changes as I go such as sorting authors by lastname and putting the last name first. Here’s what I need in way of major additions pretty quickly: I need one page where the resource information is at top with any related notes and then all the quotes with their related notes are listed. I’ve already got a viewquotes page that shows the resource and the quotes but I need to figure out how to add the Notes. I would also like it if you could also do everything from this master page: edit, delete, view, add, etc. It’s all a matter of writing queries that match the correct ids, I believe. Nesting nested queries…for now I’m going to live with the inadequacy because frankly, the paper needs to get written. But I’m hoping to get to it this weekend.