Category: Uncategorized

I’m sure there will be more about the sights and sounds and experiences of Philly later (in brief, the “city center” is pretty cool), but besides the conference, mostly what we’ve done so far has involved food.

Yesterday, Annette and I spent the morning doing a little shopping and then we got a pizza at Lombardi’s Coal Oven Pizza. At first, I thought this was a “local” delicacy, but apparently, it’s a New York City import. In any event, the point of the “coal fired” oven is that it gets super-duper hot, which gets you a pizza with excellent crust: quite crisp, even a bit charred in yummy ways. We had the “original,” which was a simple fresh tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and fresh basil. Good stuff and actually a pretty light lunch, all things considered.

But the big meal was last night at Marrakesh, a place that bills itself as the “East Coast’s Premier Moroccan Restaurant.” Since I have not eaten in a Moroccan restaurant before this, I have no point of comparison. At the same time, I have no reason to disagree with this self-praise.

Annette and I went with our friend Annette S. and some friends of hers. Getting there was the first adventure; the cab dumped us off at the address, and what we came across was a sign and an elaborate door we had to knock on to get in. The inside pretty much looks like the picture on the restaurant’s web site: dark, pillows and couches around low tables, colorful draperies, Arabic writing on the walls, etc. Very, well, Moroccan.

We had some “issues” with the seating arrangements that irritated our waiter, who continued to be pissed at us for the rest of the evening for complaining a bit. Whatever.

The wine choices were limited and kind of bad, but the food was indeed excellent. They started by washing our hands and then giving us a large towel, an important item since all but one of the seven courses were consumed with our own hands. That towel was half dirty mess/half impromptu plate by the end of the evening. Nothing prissy about this meal. There was an assortment of salad items, followed by something called B’Stella, which was a sort of filo encrusted chicken pie with sugar and cinnamon on top– I know that sounds weird, and it kind of was, but it was very good. Then there were many more courses, dessert, and some wonderful mint tea.

I think my favorite moment of the night was during the first main course (there were three “main” courses), which was an excellent chicken dish of some sort– interesting spices, olives, etc. I couldn’t figure out what was in this stuff, so I asked the surly waiter “So, what is the seasoning here?”

“Oh, the ordinary spices,” he said and scurried off.

Anyway, great food and a fun evening. And frankly, if we had had a better table and a more polite waiter, I doubt it would have been as memorable.

Update:

Well, it turns out that this place was kind of like actually going to Morocco and being ripped off by third-world con men.

Our friend Annette S. and one of her friends (and they were the two who were in charge of the bill) thought that we ended up paying too much money, but they couldn’t really tell for sure. For one thing, Marrakesh is cash only, which is of course a recipe for fraud. For another, theyd didn’t bring us an itemized bill– just a total. But hey, we had all had some wine, we enjoyed the food and atmosphere, and it didn’t seem that expensive.

Well, Annette S. called back the next day. I’ll spare the details, but it turns out:

* We were charged $27 apiece instead of the listed price of $22;

* Tip was supposed to be included in that amount; and

* We paid twice as much as wine we were supposed to.

Annette S.’s friend was going to go down there and get a refund, but I don’t know if she ever did. Anyway, just a tip to anyone who comes across this site because of a google search for Marrakesh in Philadelphia: good food, but pay attention, or you will be ripped off.

For perhaps obvious reasons, I won’t be writing here about the various “professional engagements” I have at the MLA conference. I will say that it is nice to come to something like this as someone who is very happy with his current job, but it makes me feel a bit old to see all the freshly minted PhDs in their brand new black or navy suits pacing about or trying too hard to look very very busy while waiting for their interview.

But I will mention two very nice things about the conference so far– or rather, about the location of the conference, the Pennsylvania Convention Center:

* It’s right next to the extremely cool Reading Terminal Market, which has diners, sandwich places, meat markets, book stores, chocolate places, fish markets, produce stands, miscellaneous gift items, etc. Lots of fun.

* I’m online wirelessly in the convention center. Which means I won’t be waiting in line to use one of the five or six computers MLA has available for using email. 10,000 people at this conference, and MLA has fewer than 10 publicly available computers. Pretty sad, if you ask me.

I’ll post a few pictures tonight or tomorrow.

Not much time to write right now, but see this article, “Eggheads Naughty Word Games.” Essentially, it’s the annual “wow, English professors sure are silly” article that appears in the Times and other places.

It’s not that I don’t disagree with the article, because I don’t. I might go to a few panels, but to tell the truth, I kind of feel like what happens at most of the sessions is pretty far removed from what I do as a teacher, scholar, and writer. Comp/rhet folks tend to be in English departments, but this is definiately a “Literature” conference; the “Composition” conference is in March, and this year, it’s in San Francisco.

I doubt I’ll have the same high level of internet connectivity and amount of free time at MLA that I’ve had here at my in-laws house, so probably no posting until the 31st, possibly the 1st. I have a few promising interviews and meetings, I’ll try to hit a couple of those computer sessions, and I certainly will find some way to get to Pat’s Steaks on the south side for the “authentic” Philly Cheese Steak. Details later.

I know it’s Christmas and all of that, but around here, the big celebration night is Christmas eve, so really, this is the night after Christmas (as I indicated on yesterday’s post). I’ve been doing “family fun” all day long, so I don’t feel too bad about doing a bit of work tonight.

Anyway, one of the things I have to do is plan for three different classes for winter 2005, two of which are completely new preps and one of which is kind of a new one. One of the “completely new” is a class called “Writing in the Professional World,” which is a class that focuses on writing things like memos, letters, reports, and the like. One of the many experiments I’m going to attempt in this class is using WebCT. You would think that someone like me– teaching with things like email and web sites for about 10 years now– would have used WebCT or BlackBoard or something like that by this point. But I haven’t had a reason or an opportunity yet. This semester and for this class (just this class), I decided to take the plunge.

So far, the results have been less than, er, excellent.

For starters, the server isn’t responding right now. I don’t want to be too critical about this because it is Christmas day, but there’s no reason why the server should be down at all, in my opinion. And it bugs me because I was going to monkey around on it a bit tonight.

But okay, I’ll let that slide.

The main problem I have with WebCT so far is it doesn’t strike me as all that “user friendly.” It has some features that would be hard for me to pull off on my own (a grade book, a chat feature, the ability for students to log into their own accounts, etc.), but the process of uploading and manipulating files seems to me to be pretty cumbersome and not any easier or more difficult than learning some simple HTML, a bit about an HTML editing software, and the means of uploading it to a server.

The other thing I worry about is some of the technical issues in making the software work for many of my average (less than techno-savvy) students. Long story short, there are some issues with WebCT and javascript that requires students to install MS Windows Service Pack 2 (which is notoriously horrible) and installing some Sun javascript software, and doing all this before they can use WebCT. None of this is particularly difficult, but it is just the kind of complication that might make this a problem for students, and which, in turn, might make it a problem for me.

Well, we’ll see. I’ll give it a chance.

So, what did you get for Christmas? I got one of these:

Actually, I got a number of other things as well, but this was about the most unpredictable item. My in-laws bought this for me on a trip they took this past summer to (duh) Venice.

And I do appreciate it, too. For several years now, I’ve been collecting cheap little snow globes. I tend to pick them up on my travels because a) they are inevitably cheap (I don’t think I ever spent more than $8 or $10 for one– more like $4), and b) they can sometimes represent a bit of a challenge to find in tourist knick-knack stores. Fun stuff.

… I bring you this blog entry of Star Wars music. More specifically, it’s music about Chewbacca. If that doesn’t say Christmas, well, I just don’t know what does.

Say, here’s a question for you:

How do you know that you’re a complete and total writerly/computerly/blogger-ly geekazoid? Easy. You’re watching CSPAN2’s coverage of the panel talk “Literary Blogs and Their Influence.”

Actually, this isn’t as sad/pathetic as it sounds. I mean, it’s not like I said to myself “hey, Christmas Eve– time for CSPAN!” Rather, it was essentially an accident. I am currently visiting my in-laws in Florida, and, per their family tradition, we had a meal highlighted by German foods and Glee Wein, opened presents, and they (that is, my wife, her parents, and my son) all were exhausted and went to bed. So I found myself doing a little light channel surfing, and whammo, here I am.

Frankly, the discussion on the panel was kind of boring. I watched about a half-hour of it and called it a day. But the folks who were talking on the panel all have interesting blogs themselves (links to which appear on the page I link to here), especially in the theme of my talk at the CCCCs.

Here’s a web-cam shot of the construction site of the new EMU student center, which is less than a mile from where we live.

Here’s a picture looking out of the back of the in-laws house in Florida I just took.

Both of these looks have their advantages and disadvantages. I like the idea of a “white Christmas” of course; but it also has never bothered me to be in a warm place in the winter, either.

While sorting through a variety of different things on the web, I came across this fine entry from jill/txt about how “blogging makes writing easier.” I don’t know, maybe. I think I write more as a result of blogging, but at the same time, I think I also procrastinate a whole lot more. I mean, in the time I have spent blogging in the last year, I probably could have written a novel. Or an academic book Or a textbook. Or two.

On the other hand, I didn’t write those things, and there’s no evidence that I would have had I not blogged. So at least I wrote something….

Update:
Via Clancy Radcliff’s blog, I came across this article from the December 15 New York Times, “A New Forum (Blogging) Inspires the Old (Books).” Now the article is in archive form, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for it when I can go to the library and get it for free…. Anyway, the point of the article is about the connection between blog publishing and “real” publishing, which ought to tie into my CCCCs SIG thing too.