Rowan « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Rowan

cycling / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Feb 25

Didn’t even realize this was the last Wednesday of February

On campus today, remembering some great advice I once reserved from a former news director, and some equally good advice I received from a faculty colleague, I talked scheduling. It was one of those things you plan ahead about what things you should highlight and discuss, and then suddenly it all disappears when you sit down to do it. Oh well, main points shared. Camaraderie achieved. No one’s lunch was interrupted. Also, I set up another meeting for next week, because I want to be the appointment guy, not the walk in and interrupt your flow guy. That’s how you develop real camaraderie, I’m sure of it.

Anyway, my fall classes look set. A conversation I had last week was fruitful in making some changes. I am not accustomed to having this sort of say in things. Three interesting classes, including one I am designing, but all of them are new to me. New ones take a little more work. I’m going to be proposing and hopefully designing a lot of new classes in the next few years. That’s the plan. Fortunately, I have a notebook devoted exclusively to just these ideas. I wonder how long it will take me to fill that one up.

In class today, we discussed television. Monday we did the same, mostly formats and history. But today it was Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, India. No one saw that coming before I gave the class a reading list.

Did you know the differences between how television works in all of those places? It starts with culture, is heavily influenced by the local languages, or regional historical politics, and, also, topography. Kyrgyzstan, for example, is incredibly mountainous, which limits what we think of as cable and over-the-air television. Also, their past with, and proximity to, Russia figures into what goes on television there, primarily cities versus rural, and you can probably guess the breakdown from there. For Ghanaian television, it’s a balance of history, cultural mores, and importing other products. India is similar, but not at all the same. There are so many languages, so many places where different parts of the country’s people overlap that television is a curious mix. And when the outsiders came, in the early 1990s, there was a lot of pushback. India knew something about invasions, and imported television was seen as a cultural invasion, and not at all welcome. Apparently that has subsided, but I bet there’s some older folks who remember that feeling well. Culture, it keeps coming back to culture. What you’ve got, what you’ll accept from other places, and what other places (the U.S. and Europe in these case, primarily) are offering.

Happily, a bunch of young people who don’t watch a lot of television themselves are going along for the conversation. And next week we’ll talk journalism. It’s a survey of a variety of media forms around the world, and it’s a lot of fun.

The view on the drive home.

This is how I know the days are getting longer. I don’t arrive in the driveway in darkness. I am pleased with this progression.

I haven’t been on my bike in four days, and it showed. Also, today’s route had two climbs in it, so I took my time, enjoying the two-hour effort, and covering 34 miles.

Just one Strava PR today, and it was a climb. It might have been the one pictured here, but they all look the same to me. I do wonder, though, why the avatars don’t get cold. If you pulled off and stopped pedaling, he’d just stand there waiting for you. But, way up there, he should be shivering. Instead, he is immune to the weather, the higher altitude, all of it. He just keeps pedaling, so long as I do.

I have to stop making excuses to not ride. “Schedules” and “work” and “dinner.” Whatever. I should probably ride uphill more. It’s not like my avatar will mind.

Friday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
21
Feb 25

I need a new notebook

Last Friday, when I wasn’t writing here, I was writing on my work machine. I was also tempted to tear my hair out. The project was the contracting packet, which you must do every so often. It’s a windy narrative of the things you’ve done since the last packet. This is my first one at the new job. They’ve also changed their process. And universities, of course, love their process.

This is where I was in the process. The draft packet was due. My department has a committee that gives helpful feedback of the draft. Next month, I must turn in the real thing. So the draft is due. It’s a new process for me, and a new procedure for them. So I had to write all of this stuff. Simultaneously, at one point last week, I was listening in to a webinar explaining the new submission system. It still has some kinks to work out.

So I just concerned myself with the narrative. This shouldn’t be difficult. If there’s one thing I can do, is write. And if there’s another thing I can do, it’s write about me. And if there’s a third thing I can do, it’s do that at length.

There’s actually a page count. And if you maxed it out, the packet can be up to 39 pages. I finished my draft at 26 pages. To be fair, the packet is meant to be a narrative exploration of the last two or three years (depending on where you are). But mine is only an exploration of the past four months or so.

The hair-tearing part wasn’t about the content, but the formatting. And good grief, if someone could either make a word processing program that can just do straightforward work or just teach me how to use the train wreck that Word is intent on becoming, that’d be great. (This document I was working on has two different sets of table of contents for some reason, for example, with active links and so on. It’s just a series of things to deal with, format wise.

My lovely bride, who has already completed her packet because she has a different deadline for some reason, was exceedingly helpful with this whole week long exercise. She did three things that I probably could have done, but much more slowly. One of those things was to help with the PDF links.

It was due on Friday and in the 23rd hour of the day, after three days solid of working on it, not a sleep because of it, and two days behind in my grading because of it, and entirely over tabs and fonts and bullet points in Word, I sent it in.

And then I noticed the email that said the deadline was Sunday, and not Friday.

Even better. I’d finished early and it didn’t dominate the rest of the weekend.

The grading did. Because I was two days behind.

This week I had a meeting with a colleague who heads the committee that oversees this whole process. He said I did too much. The packet is laid out in steps. He had given me another colleague’s completed packet as an example, though it is now outdated. And in our talks he’d told me about this and that, explaining what each item was and should look like. And I guess I heard that as “Do this, and then do that, and do these things … ” He needed me to go through step 4, but I worked all the way through step 7.

So I’d done too much. But, he said, he wished everyone had to go through step 7. Because that’s where it has to go eventually. So I’m ahead of the game. And now I can pretend like it didn’t happen until I get feedback from the committee a week or two from now.

We also talked, this week, about what my classes would be next fall. So I am now in the know seven months ahead of the term. And we also discussed problems with the schedule. And he’s fixing the problems. It was lovely. And then we discussed how I can schedule classes for future terms.

For instance, one of my classes next fall will be a new one I’m offering, Criticism in Sports Media. I’ve already started assembling source material and laying out course objectives.

Starting one brand new course a term is possible. Getting a new class up and running takes a lot of time and attention and so it might not be wise to start a bunch of brand new courses in one semester. That gives me something to shoot for in the next several years. Fortunately, I have pages and pages of ideas. Also, I have a line in my job ad that asked for me to design new courses. And, after that meeting this week, I suddenly have a great deal of agency in my work.

That’s so exciting, I want to go right a bunch of notes.

And so, this week, I have written five posts here which discusses two weeks. And it was still incomplete, as recountings go. Next week, the normal pace returns. I am excited for that, too.

But, now, those notes.

photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
20
Feb 25

Type type type all day long

Let me tell you about last Thursday. I went to campus with my lovely bride. She had to teach. I had lunch with the provost. He does these occasional sit downs with various groups of faculty and you get invited once every three or four years. So you take advantage of it, for the delicious sandwich wraps, and some chit chat.

We went around the room, introducing ourselves, which is no less painful than when you did it on the first day of school, no matter how old you are. The provost said a few things, and then opened the floor to questions. One of our colleagues asked about the NIH cuts on grants and what effect that would have on the university. The provost answered that question, a long, thoughtful, encouraging answer. He and his office had put a lot of thought into this, which is great, since it is so new and, as he said, there’s still a lot we don’t know. (Which is one of the points.)

Then someone else asked a similar kind of question, getting into the nuts and bolts of that. What precisely the grants mean, how this overhead concept works, and so on. Not everyone is involved in this process on a daily basis, and so it was a good question, and he answered it well.

Then I asked a question about addressing students in the face of all of this uncertainty.

That took up most of the rest of the lunch hour, because there is a lot of that answer to still work on.

The provost is a sharp man, an engineer by training and trade. He believes in the university’s vitality in an easy, contagious, kind of way. We had a pleasant talk, and then he and I talked again after the lunch was over.

And then I went home and got back on this writing project. There was a draft of it due by Friday night. The draft of a project meant to describe my first year. It’ll be about 30 pages. To be fair to me, I’m really writing about four months, and not a whole year. But I’ll drag that out for tomorrow’s post.

Here are some geese I saw last Thursday during a work break.

Today, it was more grading, grinding my way through that Hogan reading I mentioned the other day. Bernie Hogan’s The Presentation of Self, that is. The abstract:

Presentation of self (via Goffman) is becoming increasingly popular as a means for explaining differences in meaning and activity of online participation. This article argues that self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous “situations,” and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous “exhibitions.” Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (including the notions of front and back stage) focuses on situations. Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual “curator” that manages and redistributes this digital content. This article introduces the exhibitional approach and the curator and suggests ways in which this approach can extend present work concerning online presentation of self. It introduces a theory of “lowest common denominator” culture employing the exhibitional approach.

It is an interesting paper, and an interesting thing is happening with the students. When I taught it last semester I saved a file with all of my notes thinking I might recycle them in some future class. I write to the students about specific questions they think up while reading the paper. This crop of students, however, have asked entirely different kinds of questions. So I have about eight pages of notes that are no good. Meaning I have to write all new answers.

It’s a hard life.

I haven’t been able to ride my bike enough lately. Too many real world intrusions. But I got in a quick hour this evening. And I included a few miles in the quantum realm.

Zwift put in these extra features a year or two ago. They call them climbing portals, where the point is just going up, which I did. I assume, or I read and I’ve forgotten it, that the idea was to give additional climbs without spending all the development time of building the background decoration of the surrounding world. This also means they could alter these relatively easily or quickly. I don’t know if they will, or maybe they have. But I doubt both. Everything you perceive in the quantum realm is weird.

For example, in that photo, I’m actually headed back out and on the descent, bot that you can tell. But, believe me, the legs notice all these differences. Everything in the quantum realm is weird.

Except the one thing. I was going slowly.

photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Feb 25

Over the snow and over the river

About last Wednesday … since I’m catching up from missing out on the week, and writing two weeks at one time …

It snowed Tuesday night, and well into the night. We woke up Wednesday morning to about four inches of snow in the great wide world. I set out to shovel it, so I could make my way to campus, but it was the thick heavy wet snow. Back straining work.

We have this snowblower. Last winter, we came back from a trip to find about eight inches of snow on the driveway. And it was a cold, cold evening. So as we shoveled all of that out of the way, there was no hope the exercise would mean body heat. A few days later, my lovely bride came home with a snowblower.

I assembled it, sorta, but never filled it with oil and gas. It didn’t snow again. So I put the blower in the shed and let it stay there until winter came back around. When the first big storm was forecast, I fetched the thing, went to the hardware store to get a few bolts and nuts to make the handles work as intended … and then watched two small snows, which< i estimated, weren't worth dealing with. But last Wednesday was the day. I've never run a snowblower and had no idea what to expect. I was a bit disappointed by the thrown.

But, snow blowed. Probably, walking up and down the driveway a few times was better than walking up and down the driveway and shoveling.

What’s great is that the roads were clear. So I went to campus and taught a class. We talked about books and printing.

By the time I got home that night, there was no snow in the way of anything. So I’m not sure if we needed that snowblower, but snow blowed, it works. (Now let me stow it away for the year once again … )

And then I started writing, which I did Thursday and Friday of last week, and will talk more about in subsequent posts. For now, we have to talk about today.

In today’s class, we talked about film making in various parts of the world. When it dragged, I turned the entire conversation to stereotypes, reinvigorating the class. But the problem is, you can really only use that one once or twice a term. But it did let me ask them what they thought when I told them where I was from. After a respectful pause, they got into it, and we all had a nice laugh.

One guy said, Country white. I asked him what that meant, and he thought I drove great big tractors. I said, no, I’m from the suburbs. And he said Lexus, then.

“Wrong suburbs.”

Then I told them about the Birmingham Bowl of 2010, when UConn was one of the teams and so the advertisements enticing fans of the Huskies to come on down. There, in the newspaper was an ad for the Wynfrey Hotel, a legitimate four-star establishment, proudly advertising their cable television and fitted sheets. My lovely bride’s old friends saw that ad and had a great time making fun of that.

“See,” I said, “stereotypes.”

For the record, we had running water, silverware, electrified crossing lights and everything.

This evening we set out to go over the river.

And if you go over the river, you have to cross a bridge. And wouldn’t you know it, we timed it just right for a dramatic sky, once again.

We had dinner at the James Beard nominated Kampar. We’ve been there three times in the last four months or so, and that’s apparently enough to make us regulars. People recognize us, which is funny because it’s a hopping little place, but they’ve set themselves up with a cheery, Malaysian corner store vibe. We came back with leftovers, and I am going to eat them soon.

I wonder when we’ll go back. It might not be long.

We went to the Miller Theater, the go-to place for traveling Broadway shows. Built in 1918, it’s only been the Miller for a few years. Originally it was the Sam S. Shubert Theatre and starting in 1991, the Merriam Theater. It’s only been the Miller since 2022. Names mean a lot. I wonder how many people use the old names.

Here’s the ceiling in the theater, which may or may not have been updated in a 1980s renovation. About it are six floors of offices and classrooms.

Here was the show we saw, the main players from Queer Eye are starting a tour. This was the first show, and it was a noisy, happy, loud, all over the place conversation. At least one of them needs to be taught that you don’t have to yell into a microphone.

It wasn’t my show, but it was a good experience, and a good fact finding effort. It was easy to get to the theater. We parked just a few blocks away. Getting inside was no harder than going up a long flight of stairs. We were able to exit the theater with ease. And they offer a Broadway bundle pack: here are the 16 shows this season, you pick four. We’ll probably try that next year.

Tomorrow, I will continue grading, and continue to catch us up on next week.

books / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
18
Feb 25

Now, finally, a card carrying member of the local library

Last Tuesday, since I’m touching on two weeks in one, the winter weather rolled in. We were on campus, because I rode in with my lovely bride. This was the before.

She had her two classes to teach. I sat in the office for a while and tried to get in some work.

My students were reading and writing about Tarleton Gillespie’s Politics of Platforms. The abstract, if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.

It’s a 2010 piece, and it reads like it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but those 15 years are about 40 in social media years, I think. Despite it feeling far away from the students, in perhaps more ways than one, it remains an excellent foundational piece for what is to come in the class. And I have to read 71 students reactions to the piece. And also comment on what they say. It’s fun. Sometimes it is challenging in the best kind of way. But it is time consuming.

In the afternoon I visited another class that I’m not teaching, but I am working with a bit this semester. Students are making videos and I guess I am acting as a client-consultant. Two weeks ago, I gave them their first briefing. Last Tuesday, they came back with proposals. And they had to get that in quickly, because of that weather that was rolling in during the early evening.

We left campus at 4:45, as campus closed and the snow was starting. There are a lot of commuters on our campus, and so they wanted to get everyone back to where they needed to be, just in case some real weather hit the roads. Sensible. We made it safely. It looked like this.

And the snow, in the end, wasn’t that bad. But I’ll right about last Wednesday tomorrow. Today, I must turn to today.

While last week was so busy, I am returning to my normal pace this week. Just a few days on campus, and much of my work done in the home office. While those students were reading Gillespise then, I am now looking at the work they’ve put into the next reading assignment, Bernie Hogan’s The Presentation of Self. The abstract:

Presentation of self (via Goffman) is becoming increasingly popular as a means for explaining differences in meaning and activity of online participation. This article argues that self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous “situations,” and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous “exhibitions.” Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (including the notions of front and back stage) focuses on situations. Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual “curator” that manages and redistributes this digital content. This article introduces the exhibitional approach and the curator and suggests ways in which this approach can extend present work concerning online presentation of self. It introduces a theory of “lowest common denominator” culture employing the exhibitional approach.

I find this to be a challenging piece, because Hogan brings in several really important concepts and weaves them together. He does a nice job with it, but there’s Goffman, there’s the ancient (to modern students, anyway) German critic and theorist Walter Benjamin, environmental psychology with Roger Barker, some computer science with danah boyd (who not everyone understands), electronic media with the impressive Joshua Meyrowitz and on and on. There’s a lot going on.

Everytime I read this one, I pull apart something new. And I find it is a good litmus to see where students are. One part of this assignment asks them to ask a question about the reading. I answer the questions. Some of them ask about elements that are very practical, or otherwise operational, and that’s great. Some of them ask about the conceptual or theoretical elements of the reading, and that’s terrific. And, for whatever reason, what they ask about here is a self-sorter for the rest of the term. Neither is bad, and both are necessary, but you can get a real sense of most of the people based on how they approach that particular reading. It’s interesting, and I’d like to know more of why that is.

Anyway, last week, and last Tuesday were busy. Today, I’ve just begun reading about this Hogan paper. And then I took the recycling to the inconvenience center across town.

On the way back, I finally stopped at the local library for the first time. I got a card. Paid two bucks for the privilege. Listened to two old volunteers struggle through the new library member process and, then, bicker about world events. One couldn’t believe this was going on, and surely it won’t get worse. The other could not stand to talk about it, saying it made them ill. They were discussing Medicare and Medicaid at the moment, and if that’s the prism through which they see everything, that’ll tell them enough. And it will get worse.

I found this inside one book, which I did not check out.

It’s a small enough library that, even though there’s only one fiction series I read — Craig Johnson’s Longmire is a guilty pleasure. I generally read history and biography, but I have stacks of those, floor to ceiling, here at home already.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get to that library for what seems like ages, and today was that day. I got the three most recent books from that series the library holds, but I’ve already read two of them. I’ll read the third next weekend. After that, I suppose I’ll be taking advantages of the wonderful interlibrary loan system. I too, could benefit from reading a tiny bit less news. Where I’ll cram it in, I don’t know, but I’ll start with weekends, I think.