bill degenaro

nso events

2009-12-08T13:22:00.002-05:00

During the past year, I've deepened my relationship with Neighborhood Service Organization, a multi-purpose social service agency in Detroit. Last year, students in my upper-level writing in the public sphere class worked with NSO's walk-in center in the Cass Corridor. Students conducted research on the neighborhood and worked with the center's staff to create various reports and documents that engaged some of the crucial concerns of the center: its relationship with the Corridor's business community, the actions of the unsanctioned volunteers who work and prosyletize outside the center, and so on. This term, my first-year students partnered with the agency's headquarters to generate material for NSO's newsletter. Students have learned a great deal and I hope their written work has helped the organization.

A few months back, I joined with several Gesu colleagues to walk NSO's 5K fundraiser. Last summer, I took a group of students to their annual breakfast event. One of the things that's happening is I'm blurring the line between NSO as a professional (i.e., service learning) contact and a personal contact. I mean "blur" in the best possible sense. Like most people in this particular biz, I often feel the work is disjointed. Monday: grade papers. Tuesday: work on that theoretical article. Friday: three meetings that have little or nothing to do with either of the above. NSO's helped me feel a bit of coherence.

This weekend, I hope to hit the Russel Bazzar downtown, where NSO is hosting local artists and vendors selling locally crafted Christmas gifts. They'll be taking donations too. A cadre from Gesu (my church) and I are finishing our training tomorrow for a project supporting recently housed NSO clients. This is an exciting venture. We're working to provide support services for folks who after years of homelessness have made the transition to apartment life. The kick-off of these support services is a Christmas party for fifty people, featuring full holiday dinner (turkey, ham, etc.). If you know me, then you know that few things make me as happy than cooking for big groups. If you are reading this and have mad kitchen skills, then you might get a call from me regarding the aforementioned party.

Great to connect with people whose work is so essential. I can't overemphasize the satisfaction that comes along with a little bit of coherence, connecting one piece of my life to another. Building those connections between work life and personal life takes work. Sometimes people don't want that type of connectedness, preferring to shut off at 5:00. Not me.

get random

2009-12-07T10:33:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I chaired my last Gesu Church Peace & Justice Committee meeting. With the close of 2009, I finish my two-year term as co-chair of the group. We've done various fundraisers for advocacy projects, organized education programs at our church, brought in speakers to give talks on justice-related topics, and tried to contribute to the spirit of Gesu. I continue to be thankful to have a group like P&J who makes me feel at home within the Catholic Church, which of course can too often persist in its hierarchical ways. Last major function as co-chair: host our annual Christmas party this coming weekend. I'll make tamale pie and hopefully Nicole and I will have made more of our cookies by then. So far, we're finished with the butterscotch chip and that's it. Way behind.

Also yesterday I enjoyed the documentary "One Fast Move Or I'm Gone," a vivid look at a period of Jack Kerouac's life wherein he escaped (from alcoholism, New York, sudden fame, all the trappings he allegedly hated) to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Big Sur and had a nervous breakdown. The film celebrates the melancholy, using Kerouac's words liberally and assembling friends and fans of his to talk about the "novel" that grew out of Kerouac's experiences at the cabin. "One Fast Move" serves as a love letter to the great book _Big Sur_ but also a kind of catharsis for the odd and absurd assemblage of Kerouac devotees--writers, scholars, celebrities, that scruffy guy from Death Cab for Cutie--who know a great deal about this period in Kerouac's life. Essential viewing.

Today, I'm marking student papers, watching the snow fall, and heading to the gym for a much-needed (see: paragraph on cookies above) workout.

three things

2009-12-03T11:49:00.002-05:00

Beyond the everyday tasks like walking the dogs, driving to campus, marking student papers, and teaching, three things this morning are noteworthy.

THE GOOD. I received a "revise and resubmit" for an article about affective dimensions of community service learning. For those outside the biz, an r&r means that peer reviewers like the article and recommend publication with revisions. First post-tenure article. Cool.

THE BAD. This fool. At the risk of drawing undue attention to a hate-monger, let's call him by name: Cardinal Javier Barragan, a semi-retired Catholic church leader who has suggested that gay people can't get into heaven. My students may read this and recognize my use ("fool," "twisted") of the ad hominem fallacy. Damn right. Sometimes the affective response is the best response. Maybe Barragan is sitting in his fancy house, googling himself, and reading this. (Fat chance, but I can humor myself.) If so, here is my message: With these statements you have added nothing to public discourse and you have added nothing to the spiritual life of anybody. You have said things counter to the spirit and the tenets of your own stated faith. You have hurt people. Why, according to both canonical and non-canonical accounts of Jesus's life, did he say not a word about gay people, all the while saying lots of things about loving and not judging our neighbors?

THE LIGHTER NOTE. A student in class today used the phrase "I shit you not" during discussion. What's the etymology of that phrase? Probably inappropriate, but at least the comment indicated a certain amount of community and comfort in the classroom. Cool, part deux. Barragan, you won't ruin my day.

something new

2009-11-22T19:36:00.002-05:00

Today was all about bread. Nicole and I spent the afternoon at my sister Anna's house where a yardful of guests enjoyed the new tandoor oven her family built. My brother-in-law Mazin sawed the bottom off a terra cotta pot and built a brick structure to surround the pot so he could bake a traditional Iraqi bread. You make a fire in the bottom of the oven and the terra cot part of the oven gets extremely hot.

Here the impressive part. You prepare thin pieces of dough in more or less round shapes and spread them on special pillows, moistened to avoid combustion. Then you slap the dough against the side of the oven. When the dough bubbles and starts to brown, you peel it off with tongs. The end product looks and tastes a lot like the naan that Indian restaurants serve. Today, Anna and company made a whole wheat version (next time we're adding some honey to the dough)--my favorite--as well as a white, and one that mixed in ground lamb and onion.

I'm not a big fan of grilling, so often the experience of cooking outside is lost on me. Today, though, the brisk air felt great, and I didn't even mind the accidental eyebrow thinning I got at the hands of the oven (the thing gets damn hot). And the bread is yummy, especially with the lamb biryani and the yogurt Anna makes from their goats. A great cooking day. More accurately: a great eating day, since all I did was contribute dessert.

Halloween

2009-10-29T13:00:00.003-04:00

An entire month without a blog update. In the five years I've been blogging, that must be a record. Two days until Halloween, which means two days until the third annual trick-or-treating meet-up at our house. Nicole and I live in a good neighborhood for treats, so various friends and family members converge on our place.

I'll prepare the fixings for walking tacos. What, you've never had a walking taco? You open up a little bag of Fritos, add your favorite taco ingredients, stir, and eat with a plastic fork. Deliciousness. I'll probably hang back and hand out candy with anybody not inclined to walk the streets.

At some point, I'll visit the Berkley Boneyard, which makes Clark Griswold's holiday decorating look modest. Seriously, click on the link. It's just some guy's house. I think our nephews Ali and Yousef are spending the night. So we'll probably watch something horrifying. Good fun.

I hope to take pictures of Halloween festivities this year and post them to facebook. Stay tuned. And if I have any readers out there who haven't friended me on FB, then what are you waiting for? Not sure I have any readers, period, but such is the facebook world in which we live.

in time and out of time

2009-09-29T10:06:00.002-04:00

When should a good piece of writing be timely and when should a text be timeless? I used to buy into a dichotomy between "rhetorical" writing versus "belletristic" or "aesthetic" writing, a dichotomy informed by faith in genre boundaries. Political speeches and op-ed pieces rely on showing awareness of the current context and siezing the kairotic moment. Literary texts concern themselves with broader themes and abstractions that transcend a particular time.

Of course the dichotomy's bunk.

We appreciate political speeches from two-thousand years ago and study their broad themes and ideas. In fact, we apply methods of literary analysis to "great" speeches. We understand literary texts in their social contexts, sometimes to the chagrin of great books proponents. What of a novel like The Jungle that can only be understood as a piece of rhetoric, a timely and purposeful critique of meatpacking at the turn of the twentieth century.

A great moment from The West Wing, itself a series of its time (comfort food for liberals during the George W. Bush years) and timeless (the capital-t Themes like civic obligation). Communications director Toby Ziegler is resisting hiring Will Bailey to help him write the president's second inaugural address. Toby critiques Will's past work on the grounds that he uses pop culture references, thereby lessening the "shelf lives" of his speeches. I like what this scene suggests about the ambitions of rhetoricians, or the possible ambitions anyway. Work can transcend.

random stuff

2009-09-15T12:52:00.002-04:00

This Saturday is honey-extraction day down at Anna's. Looking forward to helping out, avoiding any stings, and leaving with some delicious honey.
Any Detroiters out there want to go hear some good live music on October 15? The Gossip bring their fusion of r&b and punk rock to the Majestic. If you like Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer, and the Buzzcocks, you'll love the Gossip. Send me a message if you're interested.
Should I watch "Flash Forward"? Do I really need to get hooked on another tv show, especially one that looks so similar to "Lost"?
Like many others, I am hoping against hope for real health care reform. Coverage for the millions who are un- or under-insured. A public option for those who can't access private plans. Don't get belligerent about the cost of Obama's plan unless you've been out there marching against the billions we've spent waging war on Iraq.

a pilot project of sorts

2009-09-15T12:09:00.002-04:00

For some time, I've held to the belief that I do not have the right disposition to do administrative work. The prospect of administering a writing program does little to excite me. I like interacting with students in a traditional, classroom setting. I like writing. With tenure I feel I am in a place where I can decline tasks that don't give me joy.

I agreed to run the Civic Engagement Project (our service learning program) here at UM-Dearborn this year and already the work has allowed me to give administrative work a trial run on a slightly smaller scale. Slightly smaller in that the job is 1/3 reassignment time. Directing CEP involves less tedium. I love having the chance to develop new relationships with community partners and trying to enhance those we already have. Supporting our new faculty fellows is genuinely exciting. And I have a great yearlong Vista who is creative and energetic. Props to CEP. In all honesty, I dig the course release too, which gives me a lovely 2-2 teaching load for the academic year.

What have I learned about administration? You spend a lot of time on e-mail. I had really cut down on hours spent reading and writing the e-mails by switching to facebook for informal communication and unsubscribing from various listservs. Guess what? I'm back. It had been a long time since I spent more than ten minutes crafting the language in an e-mail message. Now that's a regular occurence.

I also have learned that you need to talk up your office. At the American Democracy Project meeting over the summer, one presenter called this your "elevator soundbite." You need to have an accessible, clear, catchy description of the work your office does. P.R. Easy enough. One of the challenges is being ready to pitch to your provost or dean or the new faculty member you just met or the dude at the rec center whose name you never remember.

Here's another thing new to me. Budgets. More specifically, making decisions about budgets. I'm not talking about household budgets, I'm talking about a program budget (albeit a meager one) where you have the prerogative to provide teachers with resources and offer professional development opportunities yet you also need to demonstrate frugality.

Closely connected to the use of monetary resources, another lesson has been that administration gives you chances to travel. Next month, to Boston to observe a very well-established service learning program. Each summer, the American Democracy Project meeeting. In February, the Campus Compact Institute at a resort in Traverse City, where I've never been.

I'm a big proponent of sucking the marrow and so forth and, at the risk of sounding idealistic, I never want to regret missing a chance to learn more and do more as a teacher at UMD. That's true if I retire from here in thirty years or if I find a new job next Spring. I have to admit that the challenges and opportunities of administration mean more chances to learn more and do more. I might even get the chance to work on those aspects of my disposition (on-again-off-again shyness, overly developed sensitivity) I thought might make this kind of work too tough.

Patton Oswalt on the KFC Famous bowls

2009-09-11T14:32:00.001-04:00

The language here is rough, but this makes me laugh.

Patton Oswalt on the KFC Famous bowls

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from the market

2009-08-30T16:24:00.003-04:00

Yesterday my friend Jim had free tickets to the Lions' pre-season game. Though I am fighting off a cold of some sort, I was glad to accept Jim's invitation to join him. Earlier, though, my parents had decided to come to Michigan for a somewhat impromptu garage sale at my sister Anna's. Nicole and I did a quick cleaning of the basement and filled a couple boxes with stuff for the sale and Nicole took Hyatt and Smokey (to hang out with their canine cousin--or possibly niece--Molly, not to sell!) down to Anna's bright and early in the a.m. for the sale. Jim and I joined the sale in progress later in the afternoon. The sale was mostly a bust, though we had fun passing the afternoon outside. For my dad's birthday, Anna made a pretty spectacular boston cream pie, not to mention a post-fast feast of chicken, lentil soup, and fatoush. We non-fasters ate with equal gusto.

Before Jim and I got to Anna's, Nicole and my dad ran to the farmer's market near Anna's that tends to have give-away prices, especially late in the day. Jam as many ears of corn as you can into this big bag for a buck. That kind of thing. N. went a bit overboard, but I have to admit her purchases have resulted in a fun Sunday. After all, what's better than cooking on a Sunday? Nicole likes freezing stuff, so she's made stir-fry kits with onions and various kinds of peppers. She's also done a couple bags of blanched green beans, ready to be steamed and eaten. Nicole also got a peck of banana peppers for one dollar (!), so I'm marinating pepper rings for a version of my dad's pepper salad. Tonight, eggplant parmesan, as soon as Nicole gets back from Costco with the fresh mozzarella. I've got the slices of salted eggplant draining in the colander right now.

A day of cooking comes a day or two after finishing Frank Bruni's Born Round, a memoir that I loved. You might know Bruni as a restaurant critic at the NYTimes and if so you'll probably appreciate the book's later chapters which give insight into the funny and high-stakes relationship between restaurants the elite media that can make or break them. My favorite parts of the memoir came earlier, though, when Bruni describes growing up in a food-obsessed, extended, Italian family. He walks readers through holidays when his grandmother and mom would spend weeks planning, shopping, cooking, and trouble-shooting humongous meals. Every detail had to be perfect. Meals were about quality and quantity, almost in equal measure. Throughout, Bruni describes his struggles with his weight, with body image, and with several eating disorders. His bizarre career trajectory alone makes the narrative interesting, but if you can relate to a familial life centering on food or if you routinely go to more than two or three stores to buy ingredients for a meal, then Born Round is a must read.

Nicole's home. Back to the parmesan.

Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-24T10:06:00.003-04:00

Quentin Tarantino has always had lots of fun writing playful dialogue for bad guys, sadists even. The criminal who tortures the cop in Reservoir Dogs had some charm, to say nothing of a sense of humor and a familiarity with pop culture. Those mobsters in Pulp Fiction who love to talk about the ins and outs of European fast food make their living killing people. Tarantino's never been especially interested in pursuing the morality of his characters or the morality of his own representations of criminal life.

The minutiae of everyday life (long conversation about tipping practices, anyone?). The way a fetish-like obsession (for Tarantino, an obsession with movies) creates an alternative universe. Those things interest him a great deal.

Inglourious Basterds--which let me say I absolutely, positively loved--has mostly gotten very positive reviews for its ambitious scope, playful approach to narrative, and most of all the performance of the actor playing Nazi Colonel Hans Landa. A few reviews, notably the N.Y.Times, New Yorker, and the Orlando Sentinel have pointed out not only the film's violence but also called into question the ethics of representation involved in parallel stories (obviously fiction) about a band of violent American Jews who hunt Nazis in occupied France, as well as the aforementioned Nazi Colonel who--like many Tarantino baddies--has urbane charm.

First, the Landa character. How many sadistic bad guys in fiction and film have been represented as cunning and charming? Of course a *Nazi* bad guy is worlds apart from a "purely fictional" bad guy a la Hannibal Lecter. The ethical dynamics shift when the characters have roots in history, especially THAT moment in history. But in my view Landa is never defined by his charm at the exclusion of brutality. No, this is not a film interested in moralizing (and that in and of itself might be a problem for some viewers), but neither is it a film that fails to balance the urbane with the vicious. That balance creates the film's suspense, in fact.

Second, the band of "basterds." They combine the expected and the unexpected. As viewers, I think we expect the genre tropes they represent: the war movie (the basterds have both a 'gee whiz,' all-American, baseball fan G.I. thing as well as a cigar-chewing, Dirty Dozen thing going on) and the gore movie (not for nothing does Eli Roth of Hostel fame play one of the basterds). We don't necessarily expect the global historical revisions or the over-the-top spectacles the basterds help to orchestrate. In other words, they defy simply categorization. And that helps the representation go beyond something merely pornographic (as in, one intended outcome only) or exploitative (though a bit of the latter is part of what Tarantino mashes up to create his unique vision). As the AV-Club points out, Inglourious Basterds is among other things an antidote to sterile middlebrow representations that teach us that Nazis are bad.

cedarland during ramadan

2009-08-23T22:30:00.002-04:00

Ramadan began yesterday, so shout out to family members, students, UMD colleagues, and friends who are fasting during daylight hours this month. Nicole and I made a last-minute decision to head down to Dearborn tonight to grab a bite. Naturally, we ended up at our favorite place to eat in all of the greater Motor City area: Cedarland.

Detroiters should know that for the rest of Ramadan Cedarland has great specials around dusk to sundown for fast-breakers and non-fast-breakers alike. Each night they have three or four items not found on the menu, served with lentil soup and either fattoush or tabouli. I got kibbeh served in a warm, thick yogurt. Nicole got stuffed squash (basically, dolmas) cooked until the squash was falling apart in a lemony tomato sauce. A lot of familiar flavors in both dishes: lemon, parsley, cumin, and so forth, but definitely a change of pace from usual Cedarlad stuff like shawarma and garlic sauce.

Plus, the breaking of the fast creates a happy and interesting atmosphere, even for non-Muslims like us. We always feel welcome at Cedarland, which feels a bit like an American diner: well-lit (to a fault), lots of families, friendly waitresses.

final hurrahs

2009-08-20T16:10:00.003-04:00

As in "final hurrahs" before the academic year commences.

In place of a full-blown vacation, Nicole and I have enjoyed some small weekend get-aways that have been fabulous. We put our passports to use and made the drive over to Stratford. Mostly we walked the town, browsed bookstores, and ate bruschetta. Also saw a performance of "Three Sisters." That weekend was the semi-official celebration of our tenth anniversary (tomorrow's the "real" day).

We also went down to the Paint Valley Jambroee in southern Ohio. Our friends Jim and Janice joined us for the road trip (highlight of the drive: the obligatory hot dogs at Toledo's world-famous Tony Packo's) down and we met my parents and good family friends Kathy and Bob. PVJ is in Bainbridge. Each Saturday night, world-class musicians gather in a little theater (no drinking, swearing, or smoking allowed) and crank out oldtime Americana. Great, great stuff. The houseband stays on stage and, like an old-fashioned review, a series of singers take the mic for two numbers. Always a unique musical experience. It's like stepping into a time machine. The guy who owns the place said next time we drive down we can stay in one of his cabins. Wild.

Other than that, I've been prepping syllabi for the Fall, planning our Civic Engagement (our campus' service learning center) programming for the year with our new VISTA volunteer, and getting a decent amount of writing done. Wish I blogged more often. Put that on my list.

Brief Review

2009-07-31T22:20:00.002-04:00

The most admirable thing about A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, a book with many admirable qualities, is the fact that Nick Rombes wrote exactly the book he wanted to write. CDoP raises subjectivity and idiosyncrasy to zen artforms. Entries range from a few sentences to a few pages, from critique to short story to top ten list. At one point, Rombes acknowledges that readers looking for oft-repeated facts can consult Wikipedia. Instead, he professes affinity and fascination. He also interprets and contextualizes.

Entries tackle individual punk bands, songs, and/or records without pattern. Elsewhere the book includes entries on films, novels, political figures, and even headlines from key publications; some have tenuous connections to punk and some have obvious links. Rombes crafts narratives (a young boy listening to a Clash record, a first-person account of a chat with Patti Smith) that may or may not be fiction. Though quirky, genre-bending entries sound postmodern, the book as a whole is a personal and genuine statement. Rombes reveals as much about his worldview as he does about his love of punk. Somehow the book is smart, odd, engaging, provocative (see Rombes on punk's relationship to Reagan and Thatcher), and warm all at once.

I like that reading the text is like reading a list. You know, like the ten best records of the year or the novels every English major should read. Like the "list," CDoP makes readers argue about omissions. Personally, I can't believe Rombes didn't include entries on the Chipmunk Punk novelty record, Johnny Thunders (maybe the best guitar player of the punk era), and the whole Akron scene (nothing on The Waitresses forgoodnesssake). Speaking of Ohio, here's my most idiosyncratic critique of all: why no mention that Stiv Bators was born and bred in my hometown, Youngstown, that ground zero of economic troubles? Bators movements from Catholic School life in Youngstown, to Cleveland, to NYC, to L.A., to the great beyond, has always fascinated me. I'm curious as to why there's no entry on Saturday Night Live. On one hand, SNL during punk's heyday probably represented the same version of 'The 60s' that punk was rejecting. On the other, what of Belushi's obsession with the hardcore movement? If you're out there Nick, any thoughts?

I also like that kids can pick up CDoP, maybe drawn by the cool cover art, and discover enough bands, books, and films to keep them busy for years. I've loved punk rock since listening to my brothers' Clash records when I was in about second grade and despite those twenty five years of fandom, CDoP mentioned bands I never heard of (Demics, Shirkers, Skunks), so thanks for that Nick. I've got some homework to do.

Dead Weather in Columbus

2009-07-27T12:35:00.004-04:00

On Saturday I drove down to Westerville, OH., and got a professional-grade tour of Otterbein College from my nephew Tony, a sophomore there. After an excellent dinner at Banana Leaf, a vegetarian Indian joint, Tony and I headed to the LC Pavilion to see the Dead Weather, who put on one of the better shows I've seen. DW revive the concept of the "supergroup" and poach members from bands as original and entertaining as the Kills and the Greenhornes. Of course, even from behind the drums, Jack White's the gonzo leader. DW's music, electric blues, lends itself to live performance, especially with White exciting the crowd by his very presence and singer Alison Mosshart prowling the stage and climbing on amps and generally menacing the crowd. White came out from behinds the drums to rip up a guitar during set-closing "Will There Be Enough Water," but the highlights for me were the up-tempo tracks like "Cut Like A Buffalo" where the foursome transcended "side project" and just rocked out. Hope DW proves to be more than just a one-record/one-tour experiment.

Who opened the show? Glad you asked. New Jersey's own punk outfit, the Screaming Females. I would venture to bet that most of the crowd had never heard the SF before. I would also venture to bet that the crowd was impatient for the Dead Weather when SF took the stage for their too-brief set. But somehow, the Screaming Females won the crowd over. It only took one guitar solo from band leader (the only screaming female in the group) for the audience to want more. Just like Dead Weather does fairly traditional electric blues, the Screaming Females do fairly traditional punk (aside from the solos). It's the level of mastery over the guitar that sets SF above so many others working in the genre. They kicked ass. By the time they blasted out a cover of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer," I knew I had to hear more. Happily the band was selling refreshingly inexpensive records at the door afterward. A great night, capped off by ramen noodles in Tony's dorm, followed by me returning to regularly scheduled adulthood.

scams

2009-07-18T09:55:00.002-04:00

Seeming dishonesty from service providers always irritates me. Part of the irritation stems from the fact that I'm rarely positive about the perceived shadiness. I just don't have the mechanical/automotive/home repair know-how to be sure.

Yesterday a fine representative from a major plumbing/sewage company paid us a visit due to very minor back-up in the basement. Now we did NOT want the minor problem to even approach the realm of a major problem, so we quickly called a pro, who went to work snaking our main line. After an hour or so, he summoned me to the basement, showed me what looked like a moderately sized stick, perhaps a foot in length. "Can you believe this?" he asks.

He goes on to act amazed at the idea that such humongous sticks would ever be in pipes and explains that old houses like mine (the home where I grew up is about four times as old, but whatev) have 3" sewage pipes as opposed to new homes which have 6" pipes which can be fitted with saws to get rid of all roots. His implication seemed to be that newer homes never have problems with sewage, which just isn't true. Anyway, he suggested sending a camera into my main line to see if the roots had damaged my pipes yet and then excavating the yard to install the preferred 6" pipes, all to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Admittedly, I know just about nothing when it comes to pipes, but that seemed sudden, excessive, and--given the price--undoable right now anyway. So I declined. "Can you just get all the roots out today?" I ask. He says he'll try.

I wander back downstairs about twenty minutes later and the guy's outside. Only his very young trainee-assistant is operating the snake at this point. "Lot of roots, eh?" I ask. An awkward attempt at conversation. (What do you say to the guy who's tending to your sewage?) "Actually, the second time through, the snake's working with no problem at all. I think you're good." The trainee shows that the snake feeds in and out with no obstruction and explains that they got the sticks and roots with no problem. Cool.

His boss comes back down and I say something like, "Looks like the second snaking took care of the problem." His sour reply: "More like the fifth snaking took care of the problem." What? Am I supposed to feel guilty that they had to run the snake through five times. I was writing a check for a couple hundred dollars (which admittedly goes to the company he works for). Plus, at the very least, he was exaggerating the gravity of my problems.

Grrrr.

hint fiction

2009-07-16T20:28:00.002-04:00

hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story

_________________________________

Anthology Guidelines

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.

The very best Hint Fiction stories can be read many different ways.

We want stories we can read again and again and never tire of. Stories that don’t pull any punches. Stories that make us think, that evoke some kind of emotional response.

Take a look at the winners and honorable mentions of the Hint Fiction Contest for examples.

Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.

Reprints? Sure, but unless you’re one hundred percent confident in the reprint, why not try to write an original piece?

For formatting purposes, you must include a title (which actually works in your benefit, as the title helps give a better “hint” of the overall story).

Writers can only submit up to two stories, both embedded in the same e-mail. Don’t worry about a cover letter. We don’t care where you’ve been published or what graduate program you’ve attended — all author identification will be stripped by a third party so we will only see the stories and nothing but the stories.

To make everyone’s lives easier, embed the stories like this:

TITLE

Story.

TITLE

Story.

Your name.

Submissions will open August 1 and close at midnight Eastern time August 31. A submissions e-mail address will appear on this page on August 1 — DO NOT SUBMIT TO ANY OTHER ADDRESS BEFORE THEN.

Please note that due to the expected volume of submissions, we will be forced to respond with form letters.

Thank you, and good luck.

***For a limited time, if you link to these guidelines on your blog or Twitter, you can submit a third story. These must be posted between July 1 and August 15. Include the link at the end of your e-mail. If you don’t include a link, the third story will be deleted unread.***

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2009-07-15T17:48:00.002-04:00

Today I biked to the coffeeshop and spent most of the day writing. Pretty normal. But it occurred to me riding home how much will change this year at work. Directing our service learning program means that mentoring is likely to be a big part of week-to-week life. Helping the new class of faculty fellows make plans. Working with our Vista Volunteer and my student fellow (both former students of mine). I hope to hone my listening skills, the best way I can think of to be of service.

Finished today the book review that I kept putting off during the Great Migraine of 09 and emailed it off. Tomorrow, back to the Fulbright Grant, which is almost complete (two more days of work perhaps). Then, back to the two articles that were supposed to be the big summer writing projects. Not too late, I keep saying, but August is going to mean loads of time on campus to plan for the service learning work this Fall. Not to mention planning for class. I have one section of first-year comp (service learning section) and my honors class on working-class cultures and rhetorics--the latter significantly changed since last time I taught it.

On the non-work front, Nicole and I are seeing the new Harry Potter film tonight. This weekend once again there is free live music in downtown Detroit, including Yo La Tengo (maybe the best live act around). Next week Lew comes to Michigan for a visit that's going to include hiking and taking in a Tigers game. Following week, down to Columbus to see the Dead Weather with my nephew. August means to weekend trips too: one to the Stratford Festival in Ontario and one down to Paint Valley Jamboree in southern Ohio. Not many movies I'm excited to see after tonight. Maybe Bruno. Definitely The Fan.

feeling normal

2009-07-03T16:02:00.002-04:00

After six or seven weeks of up-and-down migraine, I've been lucky enough to have a good week. Aside from some mild, residual aches, I have felt pretty good for the past seven days. Feeling like an old man starts to get kind of tiresome, so I've been happy to re-introduce normal, healthy, reasonably youthful things back into my life.

Last Saturday, Nicole and I headed downtown to see the Gories reunion show at the Majestic Theater. The show was billed as "sold out," and approaching the venue, there was a palpable "wow, a Majestic show sold out?!" vibe. Sure enough, we got inside and it was wall-to-wall. A raised area off to the left caught our attention and we staked out some good spots. Opportunity to lean against the wall. Decent view of stage (drum riser somewhat obstructed). Close. We speculated that the area was some kind of pseudo-VIP area.

As expected, the Gories put on a wang dang doodle, unearthing many of the great tracks from their three late-80s/early 90s records (missing was my favorite of theirs, "There But for the Grace of God Go I" but I won't complain). "Nitroglycerine." Show opener "Hey Hey We're the Gories." "Thunderbird ESQ." We stood next to Meg White for much of the show and I almost asked her to take a picture with us but couldn't bring myself to bug her mid-show (she was clearly down with the tunes).

Continuing with the downtown theme, my parents visited my sister and I in the motor city and we all took my nieces and nephews down to ride the people mover, stroll the new Riverwalk (very nice), and eat in Greektown. Nice to do the tourist thing every now and again. Riverwalk...highly recommended. Lovely view of the water and Windsor. Lots of folks out and about. Lunch in Greektown was a chance to re-introduce notorious migraine trigger cheese into my diet. Still taking it easy on all the triggers, but I'm happy to report: no side effects.

Last night, Nicole and I headed down to City Fest, formerly known as Tastefest. Always nice to walk the New Center Area and lots of good, though overpriced food, and listen to free live music. Last summer you couldn't get anywhere near the George Clinton show, so we ended up rocking out to SSM. This year, we listened to part of the Handsome Furs' set. I hadn't heard their stuff before but liked their fuzzy and electronic (yet melodic) sounds. Shout out to Ann Delisi's Essential Music show, who hosted its facebook fans in a swanky tent near the main stage and provided good eats. EM is an outstanding show and what with free shrimp last night, my admiration has only grown.

Oh yeah, and back to work too. I'm on deadline for a book review essay, have a big stack of papers to grade, and need to submit my Summer I grades in a few days. Time to get to it.

Wilco - I'm The Man Who Loves You

2009-06-30T15:27:00.001-04:00

Jay-Z - Roc Boys (Live)

2009-06-30T15:23:00.001-04:00

"The Harder They Come" Jimmy Cliff

2009-06-30T15:22:00.001-04:00

Aretha Franklin with Lauryn Hill - A Rose Is Still A Rose

2009-06-30T15:21:00.001-04:00

Roxy Music - The Thrill of It All (Live 1976)

2009-06-30T15:16:00.001-04:00

The Slits - Typical Girls

2009-06-30T15:14:00.001-04:00