Maybe, as the nagging, doubtful critic in my mind says, someone else (anyone else!) could read the same primary and secondary texts I'm reading and write a better dissertation. Maybe this someone would make more incisive critical moves, find a more innovative way to frame the whole thing, etc.

But no one else is reading my primary and secondary texts. I'm the only one writing this particular dissertation. It's long tail work, as Collin has described academic work before (and I tried to find the post, but I couldn't do a domain-specific Google search for some reason). It's one small piece of something.

And it's really not so bad! Ah, revision. I think it's coming together.

Really, I'd like your honest opinion.

Anyafan didn't like the fact that Lost doesn't have any opening credits, so he made some himself.

For a long time now, I've considered the effect great art has on me ("great art" meaning art that I think is great). Most of the time, I walk around with a lot of noise in my mind: reminders of things I need to do and remember, random memories of people, places, and things, pangs of guilt over imagined slights, surges of rage about various things, what have you. If you could represent it on an Etch-a-Sketch, it would look something like this:

But when I experience great art -- writing, visual art, music, etc. -- the effect is as though someone turned that knob that clears the whole screen:

And I feel at once recentered, calmed, and tranquilized. Also, that's how I know the art is great. I can understand how great art might make some other people feel energized and stimulated, and I guess it does that for me to, but in a subtle way. What effect does great art have on you?

Should I shell out the $80?

Limited Edition Poster
This gorgeous, limited edition poster celebrates the 150 year anniversay at the St. Paul Farmers' Market. You can purchase one of these limited edition prints directly online via PayPal, or by printing out the order form available at right for offline ordering. Designed by Lowertown artist, Chad Nestor, in the agri-lithography style.

I'm going to start taking this eat local thing more seriously.

Also, Chris Clarke writes:

I myself have unwittingly bought tomatoes that were picked in California, shipped to Massachusetts for packaging, and then brought back to California for sale. Figuring a diesel semi gets around 5 miles per gallon, that's about 1200 gallons of fuel for one truckload's round trip. The US burns millions of gallons of fuel each year just moving food cross-country, and the notion of eating seasonal produce seems to be dying out with the local family farm. And produce picked early eanough that it can travel cross country before it ripens just tastes bad. Compare the best supermarket tomato you can find with an ordinary one from a backyard garden. The difference is astonishing.

No doubt. No tomatoes are better than the ones my mom and grandmother grow. Although Clarke doesn't provide a source for that California/Massachusetts claim, it does sound plausible.

As you can probably tell, I'm really enjoying Heilbrun's book. I'll likely post more about it in the coming weeks. I find myself wondering if Nels and Prof. B. have read it, and if so, what they think of it. I also wonder what Heilbrun would have thought about all these women who are writing about their lives every day on their weblogs.

As an aside, I created this comic of sorts before I saw that Collin just put up a much better one. Do read it.

What follows are my notes on the Next/Text meeting for Rhetoric and Composition. At first I was really vigilant about preceding people's comments with their names or initials, you know, so they'd get credit for what they said. But then things got so rapid-fire that I got lazy about it. These notes represent what we, as a group, said, and each of us made contributions: myself, Cheryl Ball, Cindy Selfe, Daniel Andersen, David Blakesley, David Goodwin, Geoffrey Sirc, Janice Walker, Jeff Rice, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Karl Stolley, Kim White, Michael Day, Victor Vitanza, and Virginia Kuhn. To give a little background, Next/Text is one of the projects of the Institute for the Future of the Book, which is part of the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California. Next/Text is focused on classroom textbooks in particular. Our meeting was devoted to imagining how we in rhetoric and composition would go about creating a completely new electronic textbook -- new, as opposed to CD-ROM companions to print textbooks: your basic linear, text-with-images, PDF-esque, "take a book from the tradition of print, digitize it, and smack it up on the Web."

As we started out, we briefly discussed institutional constraints and realities -- the old hiring, promotion, and tenure. In any discussion of online/technological work, we can't put those aside or dismiss them. Although this part was kind of bracketed after the initial comment, I suppose it was always in the background. For a while, we talked about generalities: basic needs, realities of textbook publishing, realities of online projects which someone starts (a faculty member) and others work on and contribute to (e.g., graduate students/T.A.s, non-tenure-track instructors, etc.). There was a stated need for what we, for lack of a better term, called a datacloud with portals and axes that help to organize content (which I'm going to call tags here, because that's basically how they'd function). I kept smiling and thinking of a conversation I had once with (the brilliant) Geoffrey Sauer, who emphasized the need for me really to connect scholarship with what it is I do online. I was trying to offer ideas of what I thought he was driving at, and he kept saying, "no, it can't be just another archive!" I relayed Sauer's call for some new online endeavor that wasn't just another archive to the Next/Text group, who agreed vigorously.

I took copious notes at the Next/Text Rhetoric meeting of the Institute for the Future of the Book, but I still need to work on massaging them into blog-post suitability, and I have an imminent deadline for an article for S&F Online. Plus, I'll be out of town with spotty internet access until May 7, so posting will be pretty much nonexistent until then. For the time being, check out Jeff's notes from the meeting, Dan's notes, and the pictures I took during my stay in L.A. By the way, the folks at the Institute are terrific hosts. Great food and accommodations -- my first-ever stay at a bed and breakfast.