in my pjs, not out on the town

Because the times have been gloomy for me lately, I want to post a few good things. I gave my first real "lecture" to 80 or so students today (it's supposed to be around 120, but absences abound!). And it was on Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning which was a super fun text to teach. Then, on my way home, I actually caught a glimpse of sun after days and days of wintry mix. Earlier in the day I distilled the lessons of composition into a few easy steps to help dear education majors who don't have a clue about crafting a thesis (it distresses me how frequently I encounter young female students with an inability to make an argument). And I was reminded how much I appreciate those crazy capitalist subverting kids who man the IMU Starbucks when my money was waved away - not for the first time. Now I'm working my way through Michael Denning's interesting, if at times, overly didactic Culture in the Age of Three Worlds - the first unit gives a really nice synopsis of the problematic of culture, cultural productions and cultural studies post-collapse of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd world schematic - aka the era of globalization theory. And soon I will be trying to craft some sort of abstract that argues something interesting about Nikki Giovanni's poetry. Speaking of which, reading Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment made me realize how much of my early understanding of "contemporary" or "free verse" poetry, for better or worse, was shaped by pulling her stuff off my mom's shelf. I want to link to one of her poems but I'm not thrilled with what's available online. Here's one, nonetheless: Nikki-Rosa.