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Western Vaction, Part 4: “Talking ’bout the Y-M-C-A”


Let’s see, where did I leave off? Here’s what we’ve been up to lately:

Monday morning, we went on a group hike on the Waterfall Trail, which was a pretty easy hike except for the fact that we are already at 8700 feet and we had to herd a gaggle of elementary school aged hikers. Kind of a funny thing at the end: we hiked and hiked, looking for a waterfall, and we got to this place that was kind of like a waterfall. We took some pictures and everything. Then we looked around the corner of the path and then we saw the real waterfall pictured here.

Monday afternoon, I played golf with a couple brothers-in-laws Sean and Dan (who was a real trooper since this was only the second or third time he played golf in the last five years) and my father at this place called Pole Creek Golf Course. I took some pictures with my cell phone, but I screwed up and didn’t save any of them. It’s too bad because it was a really beautiful course. Play-wise, it was an interesting place because some of the holes were relatively easy– I actually won the par contest with a total of 4– and some of the holes were im-fucking-possible– I ended up with about 120 for the round, and that’s with a fair amount of cheating along the way. Expensive, but well worth it.

Monday night included much roasting of marshmallows and creating of s’mores around the fire. Ah, camp….

Tuesday has featured stuff around the YMCA camp. Will and I made a visit to the craft area where we made a catapult– I’ll have to upload the picture for that later. The craft center was pretty nice. All the kids made tie-dyed t-shirts the previous day, a couple of them made little boats and stuff. I’m sure we could go down there and make those lanyard things out of the plastic strips from camp.

Then it was time for family pictures, some minigolf, some hanging out, etc. The camp is nice– beautiful scenery and nice facilities– but it is a little, well, wholesome for my tastes. It’s not like religion is being shoved down my throat or anything like that, but there are many young people sitting around the lobby where I’m typing this message quite busy studying their bibles.

More later; in the meantime, check out the uploaded photos.

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Western Vacation, Part 3: YMCA of the Rockies

Steve and Annette in Colorado
I’m typing this Sunday night as my son (along with many nieces and nephews) are running around playing various singing games and my siblings and parents are sitting around being entertained by them and I am taking a moment to hide away in our room.

We’re staying at a YMCA camp in Colorado, a huge (5000+ acres) affair near Winter Park that caters to family reunions and church groups and such. The house we’re staying in is built to house 25, certainly comfortable for the 17 or so of us. It includes two stoves, two refrigerators, two microwaves, and two bedrooms that have nothing but bunk beds. Guess where the kiddies are staying?

It took us about four hours to drive up here, up what I thought was a pretty challenging pass. The picture here is of Annette and I at the top, taken by Will (that’s why it is a little crooked). The camp is at about 8700 feet, which means that low-landers like me are spending the first day trying to adjust to the altitude. We hiked around the camp a bit, but mostly, we watched the dramatic thunderstorms that rolled in and out of the valley and tried to see if we could start a camp fire and listened to the kids play.

Interestingly enough, even here in the wilderness, getting away from it all, it’s pretty easy to get online. I am here via a free wireless connection in the coffee shop area of the administrative building. Down the hall, there’s a little store and a grill that has a “cyber cafe� section, $5 for the day or $20 for the week. Try to give up the ‘net (which I’m not trying to do, btw), and there’s someone ready to feed you a connection, even in the middle of nature.

Pictures are here; this is where they will be for a while as I add to it…

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Western Vacation, Part 2: Sterling, CO

I have nothing of substance to report about our trip today. We got up, we drove and drove and drove, through western Iowa and Nebraska and the beginnings of Colorado to here, Sterling. Frankly, the main reason I’m writing now is because I can. The hotel we’re staying at here in Sterling has free wireless as part of the deal, and I’m pretty sure my internet access will be limited or non-existent for the next three or four days. Though I guess we’ll see.

Oh, okay, since I’m here, a few things I recall from the day’s trip:

  • Lotsa rain in the morning.
  • Every little town in Nebraska has some little museum advertised as a means of sucking people in off of the interstate.
  • There were a couple of stretches of drive through Nebraska where the smell from the feed lots was pretty freakin’ awful. And long-lasting, too. I’m not talking about a drive by of a smelly farm that lasts a few seconds; I’m talking about the smell of shit and death together for a good 15 minutes. BTW, how’s the burger?
  • We left Cedar Falls this morning about the same time as my parents, more or less. We had decided that there was no point in following each other and that we’d just meet up on Sunday. So who shows up at our hotel? The Ps, of course. They did their thing for dinner while we did ours, but it’s like we planned it. Pretty funny.

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Western Vacation, part 1: CF and Sturgis Falls days




balloons

Originally uploaded by steven_d_krause.

The first leg of our trip westward is here to my home town of Cedar Falls, Iowa. A few thoughts in some particular order:

  • We got here yesterday evening; this morning, my father and I played golf. I managed to get a birdie on a hole after hitting a 3-wood shot well over 200 yards up a hill and on to the green and then sinking a long long putt. This ultra-lucky shot rolled on to the green while the group ahead of us was still putting. I apologized profusely from the fairway, and my father ran into them in the clubhouse afterwards and told them I got a birdie on the hole. They seemed pleased.
  • It’s too freakin’ hot and humid– like mid-90s.
  • I continue to be impressed with the improved quality of life in Cedar Falls. For example: not only does CF finally have a Starbucks; it also has a drive-thru.
  • The highlight of the day and the source of the photo here is from the children’s costume parade at Sturgis Falls Days, which is the annual big summer celebration here in Cedar Falls. Will participated in his knight costume (as pictured above). Sturgis Falls is a nice small town fest, and if we had more time and weren’t leaving first thing tomorrow morning, I might be there still at the beer tent and listening to dixieland jazz. But we are and so I’m not. Besides, it was really REALLY hot, and then it started to rain, so time to come home.



Here is another picture from the parade:

Will leading the parade
Here’s Will (pictured in the middle) leading the parade. Well, behind the guy who was really leading the parade, a bagpipe player. A nice touch for the children’s parade, we thought.

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Colorado, and I am thinking I won’t have Internet access for a couple of days. Probably a good thing. But stay tuned for details when access is available….

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Where’s my burning flag?/The Dick Durbin apology

This is a sort of “two-fer” deal in terms of posts:

  • Isn’t it interesting, during a news cycle where we are learning that Bush’s war in Iraq is going quite badly and where poll numbers indicate that most Americans now thing this is a bad idea, that the Republicans try a diversion like the whole flag burning thing?
  • My favorite commentary on flag burning came years and years ago from Miss Manners. This had to be at least 15 years ago when I was living in Richmond and regularly reading The Washington Post. Miss Manners pointed out that the issue with burning the flag has nothing to do with it being legal or not. It’s just rude, and, as Miss Manners pointed out, sometimes people do all sorts of things that are rude just to make a point.
  • I don’t think that Dick Durbin has any reason to apologize. What he said was we were behaving like Nazis or old time Soviets with this prison in Git-mo, not that we were Nazis or old time Soviets. Anybody who doesn’t understand this ought to be forced to retake high school English….
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    The longest day/I'm outta here

    I am not quite sure if today or tomorrow is actually the longest day of the year, but today felt like the longest day to me. Without going into any great detail, today was one of those days where it seemed like I dealt with/experienced about three days worth of stuff. Some of it was good (kudos on my CHE piece, some other good news in the sense that I heard some “not bad” news, I finished grading for my spring term class, etc.), some of it bad (hearing about John, unbelievably bad traffic in town, I had to finish grading for my spring term class, etc.).

    Interestingly, one of the things that really frosted my cake (so to speak) today is something I don’t think I should write about in any detail. All I’ll say is this: today, for the first time in 17 years of teaching college, I had a student hand in a final research project/essay that was blatantly plagiarized, meaning just flat-out stolen. I was reading along with this essay, came across a sentence that made me think “wow, that sounds not like a student essay at all,” typed that sentence into Google, and whammo, there was the essay. Or most of it. I felt sorry for and really pissed off at this student all at the same time.

    Anyway, the day is finally over, as is the semester. Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving town until about July 10, give or take. I’m bringing my laptop with me, but I have no idea what sort of Internet access I’ll have, and I’m almost certain I won’t have a lot of “official” things to post. I might post some stuff to the unofficial blog if you’re really curious. If not, I’ll see ya in a couple of weeks.

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    Remembering John Lovas

    I’m shocked and saddened to hear that John passed away yesterday at the age of 65. There is a web space at DeAnza college to remember John, a “Festschrift.”

    I feel like I knew him quite well as a colleague, and yet I met him in person only once at the Computers and Writing conference in Hawaii last year, and I probably only exchanged a dozen words with him then. This is how fellow bloggers are: we talk to each other through our typing.

    John’s posts at “A Writing Teacher’s Blog” were a regular way for me to start my day. I found his writing engaging, inspiring, inviting, and, well, useful. John was a great source of advice and wisdom about the practicalities of teaching writing and it was so obvious that he loved what he did. It’s fitting somehow that the last post he made about a month ago was titled “Beginnings” and is about the challenge, as John wrote, of getting “the student to connect the banalites to real experiences, observations, or recollections. When that happens, there’s a real chance for a paper worth reading.”

    I’ll miss John quite a bit and regret that I didn’t have a chance to speak with him more in person, but I’ll always remember our conversations in writing.

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    Thoughts on "Blogs as a Tool for Teaching"

    I’m guessing that at least some people coming to this blog for the first time are here because of an article I have in the June 24 Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Information Technology Supplement.” It kind of shows up in the back of that section, so I don’t know how many people have (or ever will) read it. But if you’re here because you did read it, thanks.

    This was an interesting writing experience for me in a couple of different ways, so I thought I’d mention a few things about it here:

    • This came about because I was contacted by an editor at the CHE who either read or had heard of an article I had in the online academic journal Kairos called “When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction” and asked me if I wanted to write a piece about teaching with blogs. Considering the fact that the CHE has quite a broad reach and they were going to pay me, I of course agreed.
    • I thought the CHE folks were nice to work with, actually.
    • If I ever teach an undergraduate class at EMU about the “publishing process” as it really happens, I’ll show them the various drafts and the give-and-take with the editors. It’s interesting because where I started this essay months ago is not the same where I ended up. For the most part, that’s a good thing.
    • Regrets? A few, maybe. I (of course!) did not have a lot of space to work with, and there were a few places where the editor was asking me “to explain that more” and I really just couldn’t explain enough. I mean, these things are complicated. As a result, there are a few places where I think the piece reads a bit stiff to me.
    • I have no idea what the deal is with the “drummer boys” graphic on page B34.
    • I still basically agree with the points I think I am trying to make, though one thing I wish I had talked about more in this essay (and in the Kairos piece, for that matter) is the extent to which improving blogging tools make certain aspects of blogging, such as interaction, better than they were. Well, maybe that can be the next essay.

    Oh yeah: there’s other essays in this issue, too.

    I don’t have any use for it in a small writing class (at least I don’t think I do…), but these “clickers” that are surfacing in lecture hall classes are really interesting. It’s kind of a gimmick, sure, but I bet it really does keep students interested. Interestingly though, some of the other articles are talking about using technologies (video, for example) as a “hook” to keep students (the proverbial “MTV generation?”) interested.

    There’s a piece called “Hold a Socratic Chair” that I thought was pretty interesting because I’m going to be teaching an all online class for the first time in the fall. It’s about a guy who teaches at Concord University School of Law, which offers a completely online degree. And then there’s a bunch of stuff I’ll need to read later, a piece by Janet Murray, an interestingly titled essay called “Why Many Faculty Members Aren’t Excited About Technology,” an article about course management tools that might come in handy for a different project, and some other things I’m not going to mention now.

    Anyway, go buy it now. Good reading.

    Update:
    Jeff’s question in his comment prompted me to ask the folks at the CHE if I could reprint/repost my essay here. They said I could republish it anywhere I wanted as long as I acknowledged that it first appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. So there ya go.

    My scan of the article (saved as a PDF file)     is pretty bad, so if anyone has an electronic version of this from the CHE web site, I’d appreciate it if you could send it to me. Thanks in advance.