3,000
Things took a darker turn midway through the summer trip. The odometer clicked over the 3k mark on my way back to Little Rock from Oklahoma to pick up Krista—my mother has been sick and I had to go over alone to begin with. The news that Slim died puts a weird twist on things; the news isn’t really a surprise. I woke up today hearing his voice in my head covering the old Butch Hancock song “Fools Fall in Love”:
A wise man hits the bottom
But a fool just falls on through
I haven’t been in the mood to make pictures; I’d like to say more about Slim, but all the necessary resources such as photographs and songs are at home. Rex mentioned on the phone yesterday that Atlanta was the song that was haunting him. I hadn’t heard it until yesterday. It’s hard to listen to it now. Scott had been writing suicide notes for at least three decades (his first band was in fact, called Teen Suicide). He always wanted to go out leaving a good song. There are some things that it isn’t good to be an overachiever at. Cirrhosis is one of them. Forty-six is too young to die.
Hopefully, I’ll be back on the road soon. I found a new destination thanks to a link at an opportune time. Someone linked a post of mine quoting Ed Ruscha to go with the story of a new exhibit in Bartlesville, OK. I should be able to pass through there on my way back north. I’m looking forward to it. Things have just been too gloomy lately.
Albert Pike Hotel
Albert Pike Hotel (on the right)
When I lived in Little Rock, I always meant to photograph the Albert Pike Hotel. It’s a retirement community now, but in the 1930s it was an elegant place. The leaded glass windows are still mostly intact, and it projects a certain presence even now. A plaque on the corner commemorates the site as the home of Robert Crittenden, a lieutenant in the war of 1812 who was the Governor of Arkansas from 1819-1829.
But that isn’t what interests me about the site. Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White stayed here when they were on the road trip that produced You Have Seen Their Faces. According to multiple sources (that I don’t have with me to cite), their big affair started here at this hotel. Caldwell’s secretary left him in a huff, and the pair soldiered on alone. If I remember correctly, Bourke-White had a trunk full of praying mantis eggs she was wanted to photograph as they hatched as well; it was apparently a traveling zoo in more ways than one.
May 25, 2007 10:34 AM | Comments (1)
Nashville, TN
Please do not give money to the vagrants
2,000
Louisville, KY
We crossed the 2,000 mile mark when we pulled into Nashville tonight.
May 22, 2007 11:49 PM | Comments (2)
Newport, KY
Newport, KY
Ohio
Wapakoneta, OH
Last day in Detroit
The last Ford driven by Henry Ford
The first panel at Computers and Writing that I attended on Saturday was Orality and Literacy: The Next 25 Years. It was rewarding because I got to hear a bit more from Aaron Barlow, who offered some insightful comments after our panel on Friday, meet Michael Day, and shake hands with the man in the know at the Ong archive, John Walter. Doug Eyman connected his work on media ecologies with Ong and made me wonder if any two scholars in rhet/comp use the term “ecology” in the same way. I didn’t know that Ong had, so that makes one more book or article for me to read. Thanks Doug. The other panelists were informative as well, but I can’t really cover them all.
Michael Day impressed me in his generosity/selflessness in that he read a selection form his first book that was self-contradictory, admitting that what we think we know is often confused and in flux. I certainly agree with that. Barlow followed up on a point that Day had raised regarding the vocabulary we use to describe digital literacies, invoking Ulmer critically, which I was glad about because he is often cited haphazardly, shallowly, as if he were somehow infallible. What seems certain to me is that the way that people prefer to talk about new media is in a vocabulary of neologisms that set it apart from the path of history. If you accept that history is discontinuous (as Foucault or Benjamin constantly argued) then this point is a given. But it only takes a moment for us to reconstruct the myth to create the continuity between orality-literacy-neteracy (or whatever). This tends to mitigate the novelty, to rescue the new from the curse of materiality. It becomes a “spirit of the age” instead.
That spirit, in effect, helps us to castrate it. I like what Aaron had to say about the relationship of scholarship to the world in his recent post:
Why, then, do we continue to work through divides, even accepting one by the very fact of our classrooms that are divorced from the life of our cities and towns? Why do we merely look out upon them, stare, and then put our misconceptions into words that we then call “scholarship”? Why don’t we get out there and grapple?
We are in danger of creating a new window, a new barrier between us and our subject matter. Assuming we are in the real world—hah!—we peek into the virtual world, wondering about all that sound and fury and deciding (not you and me, of course—those others) that it all signifies nothing.
Why not indeed. It took me 1200 miles in a Ford to get here. I think I’ll grapple my way on to Cincinnatti and then Nashville. I was listening to a BBC podcast yesterday which suggested that epistolary novels (as exemplified by Richardson) represented a sort of “soap opera” form where readers were drawn into close identification with the characters, while the novels of Fielding were more aligned with road movies. I like that analogy a lot. I’d like to compose missives about the other panels I attended, but the road is really calling now.
Big Boy
I wasn't really thrilled by the food options in Detroit
Lunch
Lunch
The lunch facility for Computers and Writing 2007 wasn’t the best venue for Helen Liggett, but that didn’t stop it from being an interesting presentation. There was no amplification for her voice, and it was disconcerting to sense the mass of people leaving during the first portion of her talk. That said, it was my favorite event of the conference thus far.
Liggett argued for a new perception of street photographs as a performative activity whose worth lies in its “surplus of fact,” rather than their value as a hermetically sealed objects. She also explored the impact of various controls (such as lighting) on the value of photographs. The central organizing question was “what makes a photograph good”. Liggett suggested that both staged and unstaged photographs can be “good” for different reasons, and that the blurring of distinctions between staged/unstaged results in a continuum rather than a binary separation between them.
While I felt that the connection she suggested between urban environments and street photography was tenuous at best, her primary points were well taken. The presentation came at an opportune time, because I will be hitting the road again tomorrow. I really think the essential quality of “street” photography is indeed the street, not the city.
Computers and Writing 2007
Computers and Writing 2007
The major problem with conferences is attempting to divide your attention between the location and the presentations. I was way too rushed in my presentation yesterday and left out most of what I wanted to say. People seemed to enjoy our panel though, so at least that’s something. It was good to hear Jim Ridolfo, Jake McCarthy, and Doug Eyman’s panel on research methods—the interesting thing about their research is its focus on practical aspects of writing in digital environments rather than interpretive strategies for writing. I’m always a bit put-off by the multiplicity of readings that pronounce what a particular type/venue for writing “means.” I can’t really talk about their presentation in a way that does it justice. I’m no good as a conference blogger. Jim’s work on creating a vocabulary for the way that press releases circulate on the web is of particular interest to me; analyses of circulation usually work to interpret what the proliferation of texts does—Jim wants to figure out how to make them circulate. It’s a distinction between techne and hermenutics that I find essential to real growth in theorizing electronic texts.
The photographer/urban studies professor Helen Liggett is going to speak soon; that seems quite promising to me. I wish I could have kind words about the location. Lunch yesterday was not thrilling, causing a severe migraine/problems that made me miss Geoff Sirc’s keynote. I’m sad about that.
St. Ignace
St. Ignace, MI
Marquette, MI
Marquette, MI
Ashland, WI
I love touristing.
Duluth, MN
I love Duluth. Too bad we couldn't stay long.
Still Missing
The Judy Garland Museum is a one of the most well-done birthplace sites I've visited.
It is with great sadness I must report that the ruby slippers are still missing. We will not be able to click our heels any time soon.
At the headwaters
Inside the nature center at the Mississippi headwaters
Bemidji
On Paul Bunyan Drive
On the road again
Traveling in the summer is really habit forming. We’ve started off again, but we didn’t get out of town till about 7p.m. last night. Therefore, no pictures yet. Spent the night in Bemidji, MN. It’s the top of the Mississippi river. It seems strange to cross the river above its headwaters—but it appears that it initially flows north from the headwaters before turning south. It seemed to me that since so much of my research/life seems unavoidably drawn to the Mississippi, this would be the ideal place to begin.
This year, we’re going to Detroit via the upper peninsula of Michigan. There should be a lot of pictures along the way. The rest of the route hasn’t really been finalized yet; but if it’s like last summer, it will probably end up being about 3,000 to 4,000 miles long. This is my favorite time of year up north; but we’ll eventually turn south. Life is good.
Next stop, Itasca State Park. The second oldest state park in the U.S. (the oldest is Niagara). It was founded in 1891.
