Classroom Prep
It seems to me that one has two choices when it comes to teaching: you can be excited about it, or . . .
Technology
Alfred T. Palmer, “Electronics technician, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio” FSA/OWI, , LOC LC-USW36-194 Railway journeys and tabloid newspapers have not had the dire effects that were predicted. Even the most radically transformative technologies have not had the impact we might have expected. The dramatic electronification of everyday life that has taken place over the last few decades has not fundamentally altered the way we relate to each other. Love, jealousy, kindness, anxiety, hatred, ambition, bitterness, joy etc, still seem to have a remarkable family resemblance to the emotions people had in the 1930s. The low-grade bitchiness of office politics may be conducted more efficiently by email, but its essential character hasn’t changed. Teenagers communicating by mobile phones and texts and chat rooms and webcams still seem more like teenagers than nodes in an electronic network. I have to admit a little concern at what we might call the e-ttenuation of life, whereby people find it increasingly difficulty to be here now rather than dissipating themselves into an endless electronic elsewhere; but inner absence and wool-gathering is not entirely new, even if it is now electronically orchestrated. It just becomes more publicly visible. What’s more, there is something reassuring about electronic technology: because it is widely and cheaply available and because it is so smart, it allows us to be dumb, and so compresses the differences between people.
Ray Tallis, “Enhancing Humanity”
Anna Held
I stumbled into Anna Held this morning, and couldn’t stop thinking about the infamous Dick Cavett blog on obesity (fat people shouldn’t be seen). Some people age more gracefully than others. Mr. Cavett’s pronouncement was simply mean spirited and vacuous (not unlike his shallow defense of the airhead Imus). When I looked at the poster below the fold, I thought, wow—it’s Dick!
Collapse
I was standing at the front desk of Midway books, purchasing an August Sander monograph and a couple of books by William Dean Howells. “The 35w bridge has collapsed,” a worker announced from the back. I drove straight home.
The reporters were comparing the footage to the freeway collapses after the Northridge earthquake; that seems pretty close. It’s a mess down there. I had to go back out to Target #1 to grab a few groceries; there was a pick-up out front with a policeman loading up water and ice-chests. There isn’t much information yet. The local media helicopter left the scene right away to allow the rescue helicopters in, that seemed like a good thing. Another media crash wouldn’t be good.
There are so many stories down there; several hospitals are in close proximity, as are multiple civil agencies. But it’s mostly the people who live here, carrying people out and helping however they can. I had filed a story from Wired about emergency response in Texas being farmed out to corporations a while ago; I’m glad that local government still exists up here and seems to be responding to people in their time of need.
Listening to the national media take off with the story I feel compelled to make a couple of observations: Not everyone in Minneapolis/St. Paul uses that damn bridge. I've been avoiding it for months due to the construction, and there are many, many, alternate routes. It's not the end of the world—it’s the unfortunate collapse of a bridge. People around here will adapt. It hardly merits the Katrina-level reportage that seems to be gearing up.
Watching the crawl on CNN— 35W is the major artery between Minneapolis and St. Paul? Buy a map! I-94 is the freeway connecting the Twin Cities; 35E passes through St. Paul, not 35W. The inaccuracies reported by those "familiar with the area" are more than a little annoying; a ten-year-old with access to Google maps could do better.
