Author: Steve Krause

I really like grocery shopping, and it isn’t just because I like food and cooking. Though that’s a big part of it. I think I like grocery shopping quite a bit because I like the stores, the way they’re laid out, the lighting, all of that. I have a similar fondness for office supply stores, too.

Anyway, I thought about all this because I went grocery shopping this morning to my favorite store, Whole Foods. For anyone not familiar: Whole Foods is an “upscale” grocery store chain, though not all of it is that more expensive than a “normal” store. The “365” Whole Foods brand is pretty much the same as the prices at any other place, and Whole Foods sells a lot of stuff in bulk. I tend to buy the fish and meat products (which cost more but which are excellent in quality), some produce and cheeses, bulk stuff, and that’s about it. I go to the regular stores for other things, though that tends to be Hillers, which many folks around here also consider to be an “upscale” store.

Some observations about my trip there today:

* I went in this morning because I had stopped by the store last night in order to grab something for a makeshift dinner before my 7 pm Tuesday class. I put the tab on my debit card and asked for $20 back, and even though I got charged for it, I realized later that I didn’t actually get the money. So I was out $20, which of course pissed me off. But one of the things you pay for at Whole Foods is decent customer service. I called them up this morning, told my story, and (in part because I still have the receipt) the customer service rep was able to figure out that my cashier was $20 over in her till the night before. So I wasn’t out $20, which of course made me happy.

* When I went in this morning to shop and claim my $20, there was a cooking class in there taking a tour.

* People in the store in the morning are extra-friendly, I presume because they haven’t been irritated by customers yet. I will have to keep this in mind.

* Whole Foods, while kind of a “lefty-leaning” place (organic, interested in local farming, etc., etc.), also resists unionization and they post the daily stock price at the customer service desk.

* I know several people who used to or still do work for Whole Foods. One of these people says it is commonly referred to by employees as “the food (w)hole.”

The “call for papers/proposals” for the 2005 Computers and Writing Conference has just been posted. C&W is by far my favorite conference because it is most specifically about what it is I do as a scholar and a teacher, and it’s just a really friendly and laid-back group of people. I gave my first conference presentation about 11 years or so ago at one of these things, and I always recommend it as a good “first time” presentation kinda place. It’s an understanding and supportive group, I think.

Having said that, I guess I have two somewhat minor complaints about the 2005 conference:

* There doesn’t really seem to be a theme here this year. To quote from the first paragraph on the conference web site:

When computers first came into the writing classroom, they were used mostly as word processing tools, enhancing the capabilities of typewriters by simplifying editing practices. Today, computers and their associated technologies are tools that strongly influence writing, facilitating substantive changes in writing, and perhaps then leading to new forms of writing.

That passage strikes me as overly general and so… 1994. True, C&W does attract a lot of people new to the idea that “computers” (and technology) have something to do with “writing,” but this passage just seems to me like it was written by someone who hasn’t actually been a part of the conversation that’s been going on in theC&W community for the last 10 or so years.

Of course, conference themes are highly overrated anyway.

* I wish it wasn’t in San Francisco, at least not this year. And as I wrote in an earlier post, I wish it wasn’t going to be held in more or less the same place as the CCCCs because it puts me into a situation where I really have to make a choice. I simply can’t afford to go to both, and, unless something dramatic happens, I’ll be skipping C&W this year.

As little as five years ago, the C&W conference had a hard time finding folks willing to host the conference. So the result was (and has continued to be) that the conference would be held anywhere someone was willing to hold it. In recent years, the conference has been in South Dakota, central Illiniois, and Indiana (at Purdue and at Ball State).

I understand the problem the organizers have– sometimes you gotta have it where people are willing to have it. But as I understand it, there is a growing interest in hosting the conference, and it just seems to me that it would have made more sense to try to get the 2005 version of the conference someplace out east and to get the folks at Stanford to do it in 2006.

But hey, I’m not on the inside of how these things are done, and I’m sure there are factors I’m unaware of, too. The advantages of being an outsider, I suppose.

There’s been some good discussion on some of the comp/rhet-type blogs I routinely read about the way that the Conference for College Composition and Communication organizes itself and selects presentations. Clancy “CultureCat” Ratliff summarizes and links to other folks in this post right here, so no need for me to re-link again and again.

A few thoughts based on what folks have said in these places:

* The CCCCs doesn’t allow for multiple submissions, but in a way, it kind of does. You can only propose one “panel speaking” role, but you can also propose a role on a “special interest group” (SIG) or a workshop. For example, this past year, I was part of proposals for a panel, a workshop, and a SIG, and the only one that got accepted was for the SIG. A minor role for certain, but enough of a role to seek funding from EMU and to justify the expense on my taxes.

* I kind of like Jenny’s and Clancy’s idea about making the confernence on big huge collection of SIGs, which would mean that just about anyone who wanted some speaking role could have one. But at the same time, what I’d like to see at that sort of version of the CCCCs would be several highly select and competitive panels, and I suppose I say that because of my own habits. When I go to the CCCCs, I tend to go to two different kinds of presentations: I go to panels/roundtables/etc. about things I don’t know much about, and I tend to go to the “big-wig” presentations.

I very rarely go to things at the CCCCs about computers and technology (well, with the acception of the panels I’m on) because that’s stuff I already know about. Tell me something new. And I like going to the really crowded “rock star” panels because, hey, they’re rock stars! The last one of these I remember going to featured Wayne Booth and Peter Elbow. A lot of what they said was, er, “problematic,” but hey, it was still pretty cool to see these two guys doing their spiel.

* I have perhaps gotten too old, but conferences in general are not as important to me as they were when I was first starting out. Back in grad school, I went to as many conferences as I could afford (and some I couldn’t afford) and, because it was all new to me then, I did learn a lot. Of course it also gave me something to put on my CV, and frankly, it’s easier to get a conference presentation on your CV than an article or a chapter or something like that.

I still enjoy seeing folks f2f that I interact with electronically during the rest of the year, and I like traveling. There’s a reason I proposed three different things this year to the conference in San Francisco: I haven’t been there in years. But more and more, the presentations I see at conferences– especially things like the CCCCs or MLA– are sort of the same old “confernence stuff” that I’ve seen for years. It ain’t new anymore, which is why the titles and styles of presentations that come up in the comments to Jenny’s post here are so funny.

I’ve reached a point in time in my academic life where I need to spend my time writing things that have a chance of being published some place– I’ve had plenty of conference presentations. And I’ve reached a point in my personal/finanical life where I can’t afford to wrecklessly put $1000 on my credit card just to add another sentence or two to the CV or just to go drink beer with my email pals.

Well, almost zero. I actually have five messages in my inbox, but these won’t be there by the end of the day because they are all things I will be responding to and addressing very soon.

This might not seem like that big of a deal, but considering the fact that I had over 1000 messages in my inbox when I started “thinning out” my email yesterday, I think this is a pretty good accomplishment. I get a lot of email, and one of my bad habits when I get busy with things is to look at the messages in my inbox, answer/deal with the things I absolutely have to deal with, and ignore the rest. This works okay for a couple of days, but if you do it for a couple of months, you get a big mess.

We’ll see how long I can stay at zero. I’ve got some “rules” set up so that mail from two of my classes automatically gets filed away some place, as does all the mail from WPA-L, a mailing list I read off and on. (Lately, I’ve been kind of “off;” I think there are over 1000 messages in that folder that are unread.) But for the time-being, I will bask in the glory of a moment of cleanness.

Now I have to attack my computer desktop– not to mention my “real” desktop, my office, my yard, my…

This morning, there’s this article in the Ann Arbor News,“Eastern Michigan University admits errors and outlines changes.” To quote from the lead in the article in the paper (which is different from what’s available on the web) :

In a marked about-face, Eastern Michigan University apologized for errors it made in the University House project and promised to do better in the future.

In its official response to the state audit of the president’s house, EMU said a number of changes are already in place to make sure errors are not repeated. “We’re ready to move on,” said John Beaghan, vice president for business and finance who prepared the response. “We’re saying ‘this is what happened, these are the changes that have been made, let’s move on.'”

On the one hand, this is obviously a good thing because finally, FINALLY, the administration has admitted that they’ve screwed up. On the other hand, this “let’s just move on” response doesn’t seem enough to me. I mean, don’t people generally lose their jobs for these kinds of mistakes? Arguably, that’s what has already happened with Kirkpatrick (the former president) and Schollaert (soon to be the former provost). But it seems to me there are a couple of other folks who should have to do more than say “sorry” for this mess.

I realized this morning that it’s been days and days since I’ve posted to this unofficial life blog, and I haven’t said anything too terribly interesting over at the official blog, either. So, for the millions of regular readers, thought I’d post a couple highlights from the past week’s adventures:

* This is the first full week of school for me, and I was swamped with a project and classes. Oh wait, that’s something that belongs on the other blog… Oh well, it explains in part why I’m not posting much on this blog.

* My weight continues to head south, though slowly, in a sort of “two step forwards and one step back” fashion. As I noted in a post a week ago, I was down -16 or so pounds. The very next day, we went to a wedding (Annette’s chiropractor, believe it or not) and after that indulgence, I was at -12 pounds. Earlier in the week, I had briefly cracked the -15 pound barrier again; this morning, after being a bit naughty yesterday, I’m back at -13.

* Annette and I watched Bad Santa last night. Freakin’ hilarious movie. And I’m totally sold on the Netflix, by the way. We watch on average one or two movies a week, so I think the $20 a month fee is worth it for us, especially since there are no late fees.

* Later today, Will is going to a “Harry Potter-themed” birthday party, where all of the children are expected to show up in costume as a particular character. Will has been assignd (?) the role of Fang, who is Haggrid’s dog. I looked up some instructions for making a dog costume on the web, and I will be constructing the outfit this morning.

* Steve B. and I made a field trip on Friday to the Apple store in Novi because I was told that they had a combination printer/document-feed scanner/photocopier on sale there for $130 with a $100 rebate. Close. It didn’t have the document feed feature, which is all I really want. Still, it was a pleasant enough trip.

* At some point today, I need to do some more yard work.

Just thought I’d mention two press releases on the EMU web site. First, there’s this item, “Schollaert resigns, Loppnow named interim Provost; legal affairs department reassigned to president.” The article talks about how Schollaert had been thinking about stepping down as Provost for months because he wanted to get back to teaching, etc., etc. Hmmm. A likely story. Somehow, I think the deal with the infamous house, the fact that both the board of regents and the faculty generally had bad things to say about his work, the faculty union wanted him fired outright, and there has been a fair amount of “house cleaning” around here with the new (interim) president and such, somehow, I think that Schollaert was, er, encouraged to find his way out of administration. His resignation is effective next week, and he’ll spend the rest of this academic year on “administrative leave,” whatever that means.

The other piece of news on the EMU web site is that James Knapp has been named as the interim director of honors at EMU. Jim is a colleague of mine in the English department and a good friend– he came into the department at the same time I did, his kids play with my kid, etc. Jim will be good at this gig, though I personally hope he only does it for a year or so because we need him back in the English department. Of course, the thing is he even looks like an honors director, so I’m worried he might end up staying in that job for a while….

I’ve spent most of my day today working on some materials about technological needs in the department I need to pass along to my department head (who in turn needs to pass it along to the dean and so forth). It’s been a committee effort, though I am more or less the lead person on this in the department. I will spare the details here, but I will note two things:

* Every time I make these lists, I realize how perpetually behind my department is in terms of the technological equipment readily available. Judging from what I know from folks out there in the computers and writing community, I’m not so sure that things here at EMU are really all that different than they are at a lot of comparable schools. Still, that doesn’t make it less frustrating.

* As Yogi Berra said, it’s deja vu all over again. Working on this stuff over the last couple of days with colleagues in the department has been satisfying in many ways, but a lot of what we’re asking for in this latest round of technology requests is pretty much the same sort of thing my colleagues and I have been asking for ever since I came to EMU in 1998. Again, probably not that unusual, but still frustrating.

In order to make sure I got into the 2005 Conference on College Composition and Communication, I was part of proposals for a few different things: a pre-conference workshop, a panel presentation, and a “Special Interest Group” (SIG) on creative writing. Well, there’s some confusion on the mailing lists and such about what has or hasn’t been accepted yet, but it looks like the only one of these things that “made it” was the SIG presentation.

This presents a bit of a dilemma for me. Basically, I can afford to go to one “big travel” conference a year, and both the CCCCs and the 2005 Computers and Writing Conference are going to be in San Francisco. On the one hand, I always like the CCCCs, I didn’t go last year, and considering the fact that it is the major conference in my field, it is one of those things I probably should go to as often as I can. On the other hand, because my panel and workshop (probably) didn’t make, I’m not sure it’s worth it to go for my relatively minor speaking role in the SIG, and I am also not sure which friends of mine are going, especially folks around EMU. Oh, I’ll know people if I were to go the CCCCs by myself, but right now, I’m not sure if I know anyone I can split a room with and such, for example.

Now, I went to C&W last summer in Hawaii (ahh… Hawaii…), and as much fun and as important as that conference is to me, I’m not sure that’s a conference I need to go to every year. So, on the one hand, I probably could/should skip C&W this time around, especially if it is a choice between it and the CCCCs, and I should probably go to the CCCCs. On the other hand, I know I’ll know more people (and frankly, have more fun) at C&W, I’ll probably be able to split a room with someone, and I will probably be able to have a more significant speaking role at the conference.

One other issue is timing. The CCCCs is in the middle of March, while C&W is in the middle of June, arguably a more convenient and pleasant weather time for me to go to San Francisco.

What to do? Who out there knows they are going to the CCCCs in March, anyway?

One of the things I can do with the management tools for this this site domain is see what phrases people typed into a search engine to get to the pages on stevendkrause.com. Here’s a list of some of the more odd examples of what words brought readers here:

* advantages and disadvantages of consuming drugs

* sexy women’s beach volleyball pictures

* ‘bad teachers’ (I take that one personally…)

* girly man al franken

* lactose intollerant doughnut

* mcdonalds salad south beach

The web is a very strange thing, isn’t it?