Three Beautiful Things 04/25/08: Teaching Talk, Dan's Retirement, Wobblies

1. Our English department spent time in discussion about different aspects of our teaching life. It's rare. Most of the time when we meet we talk about college business and almost never about classroom teaching and the pleasures of our discipline. It's a shame that institutional life is usually so uncertain that the governing of the institution demands so much attention.

2. We devoted time during our day together to honor the distinguished teaching career of Dan Armstrong. He and I were hired into our full-time positions on the same day in 1990 and started our full-time work in January of 1991. We have had offices next door to each other for many years and have grown close over the years. I'll hate to see him go, but I'm ecstatic for Dan that he will move into his retirement life and live his life at a slower and more relaxed pace.

3. Our Working Class Lit/Research class watched a compelling documentary this morning, "The Wobblies", a series of interview, archival footage, and other forms of film examining the short, but passionate history of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Three Beautiful Things 05/08/07: Wobblies, Shennanigans, Wrath

1. We watched a stirring film on the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, today in American Working Class Lit.

2. I had a whacky chat online with K-Doe and got to be really silly about a range of things.

3. I always enjoy it when my sister's sister-in-law writes me about something she enjoyed on my blog. Today she enjoyed my random habit regarding wrath.