Author's posts
Oct 08 2007
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
[Inside: Part III of America the Ugly]
Oct 06 2007
Bomb Threat?
Tuesday night I had a quiz scheduled for my Java I class. At least I call them quizzes. Everyone knows they are exams, but calling it a quiz is an attemtpt to lessen the pressure. I count the overall grade on the quizzes as 25% of the total grade and count their best 5 out of 6, so each quiz is really 5% of the total grade, with one mulligan.
Projects (aka homework: programs they have to create) counts 50% of the grade. The final projects, which are individually created to be different for each student, counts 20% and the catch-all “classroom participation” is the other 5%.
Anyway, after letting them ask any question they wanted for the first 15 minutes, we started the quiz at 6:15pm. At around 6:35 one of my students finished (she’s good!), asked when she should return and went to her car “to chill.”
At 6:40pm the alarms went off.
Oct 06 2007
Friday Philosophy: I am a Lesbian
My partner and I spent an hour on Wednesday with the college’s chaplain, getting a start on the design of our civil union ceremony. We live in New Jersey and have been domestic partners since this state provided that acknowledgment of our relationship and on October 20th will upgrade that designation to civil union. Some day, we hope to have that designation changed to “married.”
You see, regardless of what people have been saying about transfolks, we do have sexual orientations. Most of us are members of our GLB communities either before or after our transitions…or both.
Oct 05 2007
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
[Inside: Part II of America the Ugly]
Oct 04 2007
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
[Inside: The Prologue and Part I of America the Ugly]
Oct 03 2007
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Oct 02 2007
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Oct 01 2007
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Sep 30 2007
Employment Discrimination: Where do we go from here?
Cross-posted in Orange
Once upon a time…
That’s pretty damn vague. Re-cue the music. On September 30, 1992 a teacher told students in 1 pm CDT abstract algebra class that no matter what they heard about their teacher before the next meeting of the class, they should try to concentrate and study for the exam. The teacher told the students that all Hell was likely to bust loose and there was a good possibility that they would have a new teacher by the next meeting of the class.
But they should try to concentrate and study for the exam.
Then the teacher dropped her books in her office, walked the carefully prepared letter down to the office of the Chair, who was not in at the moment, and laid it on his desk. Then the teacher went to Little Rock for an appointment with a therapist…and the official beginning of hir transition.
It was not lost on her that this was also her deceased father’s birthday. But he wasn’t using it anymore, so it might as well be hers as well.
Sep 29 2007
You say it’s your birthday…
Crossposted in Orange at Teacher’s Lounge
Best laid plans sometimes get derailed. I know I had a topic somewhere I was planning to write about. But stuff has been looming for the past couple of weeks and now it is past the looming stage.
So I’ve decided to start writing about it here. Whenever I write more personal stuff at Teacher’s Lounge, reader participation is low. Maybe that will be a blessing in disguise and I can get the diary I feel obligated to write done so I can post it tomorrow and it can be resoundingly ignored. Or maybe this time I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Given the lesson of yesterday I’ll not count on the latter.
I’ve had this huge meeting (from my perspective) with the academic dean approaching over the past couple of weeks. The purpose was an attempt to solicit some aid in trying to get my words published into book form.
Sep 29 2007
Friday Philosophy: Learning to Count Past Two
If I were not exhausted and didn’t have an afternoon meeting…or if maybe sometime during the week I would have seen this coming and managed to set aside some time to write about it, this is where I would have posted a piece about the talk about the removal of protections for transgendered people from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
But I am tired. Oh, so tired. As Fanny Lou Hamer said,
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired
Since I am having a meeting today to discuss trying to get my stuff published in book form, I have no time.
So I went back in the stacks. Way back. This was presented first to a Psychology class at the University of Central Arkansas in the mid-90s. The professor who invited me to give this and several other lectures did not earn tenure at UCA. I’m sure there was no connection.