blog doldrums

Well, this is just silly. I haven’t posted in over two months. Why have a blog? Eh? I haven’t written because I don’t think I have the time. I don’t have the time. Doesn’t matter. I still need to write. I’ve had blog-thought moments. You know the ones: “Wow, I gotta put that on my blog.” Then I go grade papers, or prep for class, or worry about health insurance. So, let’s see if I can short-circuit that direct path to not-blogging. Let’s see.

new dashboard

haven’t checked it out fully, but first glance at WordPress’s new dashboard makes me happy…it’s larger, less cluttered…and then there’s the quick fix…fast access to posting…gotta go read the WordPress announcement. this isn’t what i was planning on posting right now…but it keeps me busy, eh? hmmm….where’s my categories list…down below…and looks like it offers a default view with “Most Used” categories…i thought the list looked a bit short…but there’s a link directly below that allows me to see “All Categories.”

Leroy Sievers’ cancer blog

I’ve written before about Leroy Sievers’ cancer blog at NPR, but I visited it today after hearing about a teacher’s recent death from lung cancer. Once again I’m struck with the immensely deep community that has sprung up through Leroy Sievers’ honesty and writing. I’m grateful to NPR for supporting such a caring and helpful resource.

if you want to learn how to live…

listen to those who speak with death every day. I’m reading Leroy Sievers’ My Cancer blog, which is hosted on the NPR website. Sievers was interviewed on Morning Edition this morning (“Leroy Sievers’ Cancer Conversations“) and he’ll be the subject of a documentary with Ted Koppel airing Sunday on the Discovery channel (“Living with Cancer“). The documentary was supposed to air after Sievers died, but he’s still here — after a 4-5-year remission from colorectal cancer, and after having his brain tumors blasted away with radiation this past January.

On Morning Edition, people who have posted to Sievers’ blog read some of their entries. One ballet teacher/dancer talked about looking in the mirror on Valentine’s Day and seeing an alien: no hair on her head, no eyelashes or eyebrows, no breasts, lots of scars. She then talked about getting into bed that night and her husband telling her how beautiful she was.

Sievers’ blog post today talks about “What if?” What if he didn’t have the cancer? Several people with cancer who commented on today’s post say they don’t ask “What if?” but they do ask “What now?” Living in the moment, learning how to inhabit that now with love and compassion.

I’m going back to reading the blog and the comments.

protesting war

About 400 protestors marched on downtown Denver yesterday. I’m planning on being at a candlelight vigil tomorrow night in Huntsville AL. We’re entering the fifth year of the Iraq War, the fifth anniversary of the war. “Anniversary” seems such an unfit word with all its trappings of celebration. There’s nothing to celebrate here. The front page of The Sunday Denver Post announces a lead article by Kevin Simpson called “Revived protests seek firm footing” and the top quarter of the paper is devoted to  news on Iraq and on protests. There’s a picture of a scarf-clad woman protestor with a white band around her forehead and tucked under her aqua scarf: the band has the word “PEACE” in capital letters black-inked in. Two-thirds of the visual space of the front page, however, is taken up by an article with the title “A world of charm & contradiction,” and tells us that “In Oklahoma, the pageant circuit is queen — and an industry.” The picture of five competing teens in the Miss Broken Arrow Outstanding Teen contest is three times the size of the head shot of sixteen-year-old Amina Khan, the anti-war protestor.

Kevin Simpson’s article raises some excellent points (it’s also well written). And I want to talk about those points later, but I’ve got to get to my WAT meeting where we talk about how to set up a writing retreat that builds a community of teacher-writer-scholars who use technology in teaching writing. So the quotation from Colorado state senator Mike Kopp, who presented a pro-war position at the downtown rally yesterday, is particularly appropriate: “My sense is that (the anti-war movement) is small pockets inflamed by the blog world.” Hmmm. I’ll talk about this later, because it’s part of a central point Simpson makes in his article.

a cool thing about blogging in class

a really cool thing about blogging with classes is i get more comments on my postings…course all the comments i found in my email this morning were from mepz (a.ka. Jared), which was fine, cuz the comments were interesting. check out Jared’s poetry at his wordpress blog. on one of his comments, mepz warns me not to correct his spelling or grammar or he’ll never post again…i would NEVER do that…blogs belong to each writer and whatever you put on your blog or however you write comments on my blog is up to you. that’s one of the reasons i like using blogs in class, because they’re your space on the web, your writing corner in the blogosphere.  my hope: blogs encourage you to develop your own voice, practice your writing, read others’ writing.

blogging in class

I hope blogging works out for most folks. Riley says he hates computers. Matt and Dustin keep stealing the wiki lock. Lawrence says he’s having fun. Lori has a cool picture of Uniqua on her blog. Madeline has the awesomest (awesomest = really not a word) blog title ever. Dave’s research is inspiring.