"Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hill-top, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris" (Thoreau).
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The news came yesterday in the late afternoon: CUNY is moving its classes online for the remainder of the semester. While this decision probably didn't come as a shock to faculty, staff, and students who were opening doors with paper towels and coughing into their elbows, the abrupt change is certainly a disruption. Some students may feel they are losing the essential support system of the campus community. Many of their professors probably feel the same way. For the next few days, from March 12-18, QCC administration and staff is in the process of getting as many courses online as possible. This means everything from training professors who don't use Blackboard, to introducing new elearning technologies. The semester will resume on March 19, 2020. For me, I will spend the time reorganizing my courses so that they are more accessible in an online environment. This means revising some assignments, deleting others, and adding some new, shorter ones. My personal goal is to ensure that my students finish the semester with a body of work they can be proud of. Yesterday, I anticipated that closure was imminent, so I took my English Composition students for a walk at a nearby green space. The air was chilly, but the sun was out. We gathered around a swan who seemed to be posing for the camera and took pictures of plant life with the Seek app. One student got so close to the edge of the pond that I was afraid she'd fall in, but she was smiling more than I've seen her smile all semester. "Can't we have all our classes outside?" asked another. I wish we could. We spent about an hour at Oakland Lake and during that time, news about the coronavirus seemed further away. We weren't washing our hands and wiping down our phones. We weren't sharing the latest news and asking ourselves what will happen next. For a brief time, we watched Canadian geese peck at the ground and swans glide across the lake as if pulled by an invisible string. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, whose Walden I am reading with one of my classes, "Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? (52). All week, I had been doing just that, hurrying from class to class, and then meeting to meeting. What a pleasure to stop and watch a little stream do its own rushing over roots and rocks. In the coming days as COVID-19 continues to make itself known, please spend some time in a natural green space. If you'd like to share your pictures, or thoughts about the CUNY closure, or how this situation has impacted your life, feel free to share them here by clicking COMMENTS below.
March is such an in between month, somewhere between winter and spring. It's hard to take an March cold snap seriously, not when you know that Spring Break is just around the corner (okay...maybe I'm getting ahead of myself)! The point is is that in between times are the perfect times for checking in with oneself.
As we head into the seventh week of the semester, now is a good time to ask: What goals have I set myself for the semester? What is something new that I've learned? What do I still have questions about? Where do I need to improve? In other words, what do I need to do to accomplish my goals in the time I have left this semester? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! My Twitter feed features a lot of cats. Puppies, too. Interspersed with adorable kitten memes, however, is another Twitter, one that tells dark tales of violence against women, or of whole groups of lost girl children. There are also stories of women who demand the right to be educated or for access to work in the field of their choice. To be safe.
Kilbourne, in her 2009 commentary on her book, So Sexy So Soon, asserted, “Sexualization fosters sexist attitudes and encourages sexual violence.” In an age where a hashtag seems to validate this claim, to what extent do we as consumers of advertised products and images participate in this sexualization? It may be worth it to take a walk through your own social media. What images do you see? How do they conform to, or push against, your understanding of gender norms? Respond to Kilbourne's claim in the comment section below.
Picture this: a desk, a pen, a piece of paper. In the days before smartphones, before texting, even before email, people sat down to write letters. Imagine waiting days or even months for a message to arrive. While a text message may be only a few words, or even a tiny cartoon figure, a handwritten letter could be pages and pages long.
Before the publication of his book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nahisi Coates wrote a letter to his fifteen-year-old son, which was published in The Atlantic. In his letter, Coates writes to his son of his fears for him and for other young men of color. “The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy,” he writes of this particular moment in human history. In the comment box below, imagine you are writing a letter. Who would you write to? What would you say? What is important to the person receiving your message to know? Maybe, after you write your letter, you’ll send it. Wouldn’t that be something. How do you know when a piece of writing is finished? When you type the last word? When your professor puts a grade on it? When it's time for dinner? I’ve read works of mine that have already been published and think, “I could make that image sharper, the prose cleaner. I could fix that and get rid of this.” Maybe then, writing is a process like thinking is a process. We can remain open to possibilities and new ways of looking at an old problem.
For my first-year writing students, the end of the semester is a time for revision and reflection. Although only a few weeks have passed, students have written multiple drafts on a variety of topics. They’ve shared their writing with each other and with me. As they get ready to move on to new challenges, I ask my students to look at their projects one last time. In the comment box below, please describe how you will approach this opportunity. What do you need to improve? How will you accomplish your writing goals? What is something new you’ve learned that you can use to polish your work? What do you still need, or want, to learn? Thank you all for sharing your ideas with me this semester! Shinrin-yoku is Japanese for "forest bathing," a type of therapy where one goes into the forest with healing intention. While not exactly a forest, Oakland Lake in Queens, New York, is a quiet greenspace where one can stop and watch a pair of swans drift through the water lilies, where the further one walks along the path, the sounds of 223rd Street disappear, replaced by those of birds calling to each other in the branches overhead. This is where my English Composition class and I went walking one stormy October afternoon.
We are all so very busy. Time has become a commodity and to take some it for the enjoyment of swans feels like "stealing" or something to apologize for. When in December of 2018, The New Yorker published a short story, "Cat Person," by Kristen Roupenian, the Internet had something to say. For one, she was a relatively unknown writer and here she was, appearing in this venerable magazine, known for publishing only the very best writers. For another, her story went viral on social media. In fact, I first saw it, and clicked on it, when it appeared on my Twitter. Because the fictional story is written in first person, many readers who came across it on their news feeds, took it to be an essay, a literal true account.
Some men, in particular, took offense at Roupenian's characterization of the story's male protagonist. They #notallmen-ed all over the place. Men, and women, it seemed, all had an opinion on the female character's character. This article in AV Club, claimed that "'Cat Person' is not an argument. No short story is." The Guardian, however, makes the point that the story "raises questions about the nature of fiction, and how women writers are often considered as mere recorders of human experience rather than gifted the creative imaginations to invent whole literary worlds, as men so often are – many readers have responded to the story as though it were a personal essay, not a work of fiction." Whether the story was fiction or nonfiction, many readers found an argument, something that resonated with them. Now here it is, this story, in an anthology that claims that it includes the Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2018. After reading it for yourself, what are your thoughts? Is this a story that could only be written in these #MeToo times? Does Rouperian capture a universal experience of being a young woman? How does the fact that the story is fiction impact your reaction to it? Would your feelings be different if the story was true? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. This week, my class and I went to view the "Survivance and Sovereignty on Turtle Island: Engaging with Contemporary Native American Art" at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College. We viewed works of art created by the descendants of the first people to live in the lands we call the United States of America. We've also been reading Joy Harjo's collection of poems, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings and sharing our interpretations and responses to her works. She writes, "You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries— / —Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds." So what are the boundaries between art, politics, commerce, and spirit? Harjo, at least, seems to be saying that they are not subject to the rules of law.
This brings to mind several questions: What's more important: the artist's intention for creating a work of art, or the individual's experience of viewing it? Or what about the curator, the person who chose the works to display and arranges them in the space? Or is it the space itself? Or what about the period of time in which the work was created or the political climate at that time? Does it matter if the subject of the work of art is the same gender or identity as the person who created it? Share your thoughts about the relationship between art and audience in the comments section below. The video above, "A Vision of Students Today," is eleven years old. Back in 2012, I watched it with my community college students and asked them if they recognized themselves in these Kansas State University students. More recently, a New Yorker article asked "What It Takes to Put Your Phone Away" and urged readers to check their Screen Time app. When students in my class checked their devices, some of them were surprised to see that they spent six, seven, or more than eight hours a day on their phones (what does that mean, anyway--to be "on" your phone?).
"Does listening to music count?" one student asked. I don't know. Does it? I think probably yes. Even reading "isn't what it used to be," according to Katy Waldman at Slate. I used to ask students when is the last time they read a book. "Like with pages?" one might ask. Maybe. Does it matter? Is reading somehow "better" for us if we read paper? Like eating broccoli instead of Skittles? In the comments section below, let me know your thoughts about the ways in which our virtual world impacts our physical one. Try not to rely on standard tropes, such is technology=bad, but instead consider your experience of being in the world, technology ever in hand. |
About this blogA blog is an online conversation. This one is for students of writing and is an extension of our face-to-face classroom. Here is where we can continue a discussion started in class, ask questions, and test new ideas. Archives
March 2020
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