Found myself just now humming that Joan Osborne song with the annoying misuse of the indicative instead of the subjunctive (what if God WAS one of us, indeed) and then thinking, gee, that was the theme song for "Joan of Arcadia," a show I really, really liked, but did I miss it when it disppeared? No: you tape shows (spare me your tivo, folks) and then never watch them, or you get mad when the network idiots cancel a great show, but you don't even notice when it's really gone. How superficial. There's a reason they call it TV wasteland, apparently.
I didn't go to Polish (which has the conditional mood but apparently no subjunctive) tonight because I had one of those really lame days in which a lot of little stupid things go wrong, and at the end of it you just wonder if wouldn't have been better (is that the conditional subjunctive?) to have stayed in bed in the first place.
But I'm better now. And the week can only get better from here out.
I should be writing out Polish exercises but instead I'll post our dinner recipe. It's based on a traditional Italian soup that we used to have at our used-to-be favorite Italian restaurant. (When they started to close whenever they felt like it in the evening, we had to stop going there: it was too frustrating to be at a public hearing all evening dreaming about this soup and then get there and find they'd closed up for the evening because they'd gotten all the customers out and no one new had come in.)
Saute an onion in a big soup pot.
Add about 10 cups of chicken broth (I use 1/2 water and 1/2 canned broth) and bring to boil.
Stir in 1/2 or so C of orzo.
Drop in turkey meatballs (1/4 # ground turkey, 1 egg, salt and pepper, a dash of garlic powder and a dash of nutmeg, with enough breadcrumbs to make it stiff enough for meatballs. Roll by hand; Mrs. David says that's essential for meatballs).
Stir in one head of escarole, thoroughly washed and sliced.
Cook until orzo are soft (meatballs and escarole will be completely cooked in the time it takes the orzo to cook).
If you go to the main page of UThink blogs, you'll find that a lot of the blogs nowadays are course blogs. They're less interesting than the personal blogs, because people are doing asssigned writing, rather than writing about something they want to share. (Plus they are pretty oblivious to spelling, grammar and punctuation conventions, which makes my little distractable brain wish it had an electronic blue pencil...)
But I read something quite interesting yesterday - a person who complained about a recitation section being 3/4 quizzes, logistics junk, and the opinions of ill-informed classmates, all moderated by an indifferent TA. I've been there before - I was in a grad seminar with a prof who'd obviously been to a seminar on "pair-and-share," and it was such a waste of my time to have to hear and respond to my colleagues' poorly-thought-out comments about the readings.
This made me think hard about something I've already been dancing around with lately: I really don't understand the purpose of recitation/discussion in general, as a pedagogical tool. How can I guide students to learn productively, from themselves and from each other? My students say a lot of pretty insightful things, but it doesn't seem that their peers value their comments. And they always seem to be trying to please me, rather than share their unique take on an issue.
How can they engage each other? Should it take super amounts of knowledge and preparation on my part? I don't find a strong correlation between the amount of time I prep and the "success" of the discussion (at least as I perceive success) but then again, my most "successful" sessions are always the ones about material for which I have deep knowledge and enthusiasm, regardless of the artificiality of prep time.
And more, how can I make students really value the recitation time and feel they are really getting something out of it, as opposed to showing up just because participation is some component of their final grade?
Pat Gober, an urban geography professor at ASU, gave a talk here last Friday. Her group models the relationships between human decision-making and climate change, especially with respect to water supply and use, which as you can imagine in Phoenix, is a pretty big deal. For example, if a law was passed limiting turf area to 2% of a person's land area, what would be the effect on water supply and even possibly microclimate (due to changes in evaporation etc).
Also they have a wow-factor theater that superimposes images from seven projectors on a model of the city, so they can show off their work to graphically-savvyless people.
It was a pretty straightforward talk, not much new from a theoretical or even a policy point of view, but her last comment, sort of as a toss off, was along the lines of, "well, without the science to back you up, there's not much point in trying to advocate for policy."
It really caught me up short because in my former policy life, I advocated for things because I thought they were Right according to some implicit Giant Ethical Code, and never thought very much about trying to back up my proposals with scientific facts or other sorts of social science evidence. For example, "landscaping is good, therefore more of it is better and more attractive." Or, "our people can't afford the median home price, therefore we need a law requiring affordable housing on projects of a certain size."
I always have thought that my lack of analysis was driven by lmy perception of legislative inability or lack of desire to understand causal relationships. Elected legislators seemed instead to base policy decisions on that ol' political "gut feeling" or on some narrowly defined idea about constituent demands. Perhaps I didn't ask enough of those people.
Just a few snippets that have been floating through my brain:
Apparently we had the foresight to order our futon with Scotch-gard, because the chocolate came right off. I smile when things work out better than expected. :)
B made a vat of stellar beef stew yesterday (we'll be eating it for DAYS) and I made kale soup the day before. The weather has turned (seasonably) cold - in the teens and 20s - and we are in the mood for hearty fare.
Our top three candidates for a job search I'm involved with have all already found other jobs. I was frustrated in my last job with the hiring bureaucracy - here is no different. It just takes too long to meet, agree on candidates, agree on questions, schedule times for interviews, etc. And this is with far, far better support and turnaround than in my last position.
Sometimes I read the Sunday NYT and there are a dozen or so articles that really grab me and make me think. Other times (like yesterday) there is nothing - just one sea of superficiality and trendy vapidness. E.g.: "is your tapwater damaging your skin?" Puh-lease. We pay a lot for newspapers, and since we are in economy mode lately, I wonder if we should think about dropping our subscriptions. It's one of the few areas of discretionary spending that are available for budget cuts.
Last but certainly not least: B's cousin was in a very serious auto accident in Italy at the end of last week. He is in a medically-induced coma to give his body/brain some time to recover. His mother and kids flew over immediately, but they're only allowed to see him once every 6 hours, and then only through the glass window of the ICU. I can't imagine having to cope with a family member's injury and a foreign language at the same time; they have some help with that, but feel they may not be getting as full a report as they might otherwise. Dear readers, send your good thoughts Foggia-ward!