Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Presentation

My presentation tonight went well, except I spent too much time talking about Amodio, and did not apply his work to my project. Dr. Whithaus was telling me ways to approach integrating Amodio, but Beth and (I think) Andrea suggested that I drop him, for the most part, other than just mentioning that his research supports the idea that primary orality can survive in a literate society.

Overall, I think it went well. (Well, except when the computer hung up on me, in the midst of Dr. Whithaus's comments). I didn't realize that it was supposed to be an outline, rather than a summary of findings. Or maybe it just turned out that mine was more that way since I have been working on it so much. The last revision made it more of a whole.

There is a horrible delay from the video conferencing system. I move, then I see my self move. Like I take a drink and set down my cup, then I see myself move. That is odd. It makes it REALLY hard to participate.

The best part is, we got done in time for me to take the kids trick or treating. We went to Craig's, but no one was home. Craig was probably at work. But, still. Then we went to NaDean & Joe's, then the kids just went around to our nearest neighbors. The had fun, and had PLENTY of sugar, so all is good.

I need to grade some papers, so I'm off.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Orality Continuum...

So I promised academics in my description, and here they appear...

Mark Amodio comes lately to the discussion of orality. Walter Ong and Eric Havelock are the fathers of orality as we understand it today, but Amodio is making in-roads in the field (but he does not have a wiki, yet).

I am reading New Directions in Oral Theory, which he edited. His essay, "Introduction: Unbinding Proteus" has some important implications for my study.

He first discusses how "profitably" orality can be applied to a "wide range of verbal art, but they have also begun to free oral tradition itself from the bonds oral-formulaic theory's formalist emphasis unintentionally placed upon it" (2).

"Orality and literacy, we are coming to understand with ever increasing clarity, exist not in conflict with each other but as constituents of a continuum whose termini, what we might label 'pure orality' and 'pure literacy,' exist only as theoretical constructs. These termini are useful heuristics in that they provide us with touchstones against which to situate various cultures
and their practices along the oral-literate continuum, but they do not reflect real world states" (4).

I love the quote above. He articulates a problem I have had with Ong. That is, how Ong can contend that Primary Orality could have disappeared with the printing press. My thesis is that Primary Orality survived in the Ozarks up through the middle of the 2oth century and continues to have a great deal of influence in the rural areas there. While better education is creating more of a literate culture, it has been slow to come. And possibly, Primary Orality has simply been replaced by Secondary Orality rather than Primary Literacy.

Now I just have to write the paper...

Misc.

Firefox 2.0 is *fixed* which makes me happy. Not only did all the old bookmarks appear, but I was able to import my bookmarks from my laptop *and* 2.0 has spellcheck which makes me incredibly happy! (You might say "well, that doesn't take much" but spelling is really a struggle for me, and I am really self-conscious about it. So there.)

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Today

Todd is watching a dog show, which inspires me to blog. Heaven knows I don't want to watch the dog show.

Today, we wrote in class. It was nasty wet outside, so I decided it would be a good writing day. So we wrote (I only wrote in one class...) about a place that was important to us.

It never ceases to amaze me that students will come up and THANK me for giving writing days. Of course, there are a few who treat it as punishment...

A student came in today with a jacket and tie on. I commented on it, even though it didn't fit all that well, it was "dressed up" for first year comp. Turns out, that was a Clark Kent costume and he had a Superman suit underneath. I've never had a student come to class as superman before.

Becky cleaned out her closet and brought us a huge garbage bag full of clothes. Part of me feels bad for taking them. I really don't want to be her charity case. But part of me just can't turn them down... She had *nice* clothes.

I lost my bookmarks when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 on the living room computer. I am so vexed. I had found Todd a bunch of Social Studies teaching links and now they are just gone.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Fun at Silver Dollar City

We LOVE Silver Dollar City. It is a little hokey, but not all that much more than any other theme park. Fall is my favorite time of year to go, too, as long as the weather is not too cold. We like it a lot better when it is cooler. We probably are not getting season passes, though, next year. We've discovered that we have too much going on to get up there as often as we like. And the World Fest was not what it used to be. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but it is more geared toward Central and South America, rather than Europe (which we are more interested in). And what they had from Asia was only China, not Viet Nam. And they had nothing from Nigeria. (And they should, just because Fumni is from Nigeria, and he is way cool.)

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Oops...

If I wrote any less often, I'd be Craig. Two months.

Not that anything really has changed. We are living in our unfinished house. I did get the hardwood floors refinished, after Todd had to rebuild about 15% of the living room floor.

With my overload money, I bought a new computer to do graphics. Now all I have to do is buy the software. The software I want may cost more than the computer did...