Thursday, April 03, 2008

Live at the C’s: Physical Place

As I have mentioned, I am writing more personally than normal. 

I have been quite drained and wired during my time at the C’s, and I have been trying to figure out why.  I think a lot of it has to do with the actual physical space where my body is located.  I have not really left “home” for several years—and even then, when I did, it was never for more than a few days.  Thus, I have become extremely insulated in my physical patterns.

My mental patterns are mirrored by this physical space as well.  During Wednesday’s workshop, several times people disagreed with points or parts of points I made.  This was great because I love learning new things.  What I found fascinating, though, was that on queer issues, most of my thinking/exchange had been done electronically via e-mail or Web pages.  Here, there were bodies and faces and each of them had opinions.  These voices were not disembodied ideas—they were visceral, and they spoke with body language.  This made me respond in a different way.  I had to treat these ideas with more purpose because there was an actual person there—one with a physical presence.

Being in a large city—to me, at least—is always a bit nerve racking.  I rarely like places with more than 20,000 people.  …

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Live at the C’s: Thursday, April 3, 2008

This morning was the WPA breakfast on board the Creole Queen.  It was nice to go and see folks, but I can’t say I saw hardly anyone I knew.  I hung out with a co-panelist from yesterday, ate some good food, and was stunned that the meeting ended right on time.  The only bummer was they kept on running out of real coffee.  That hurt.

Thanks to the generosity of a staker, I was able to attend the breakfast.  In many ways, simply attending the meeting has taken away the mystery that was there before.  For some reason, I thought that there was special business that went on, but it was essentially—from what I could tell—mostly an excuse to get all of those people who knew each other together in one place.

There are tons of panels today, the display room is open, and there is the Bedford/St. Martin’s party at the aquarium to go to.  On top of that, there is sleep to catch up on, coffee to drink, and the French Quarter to explore.  There really is not enough time to do all of these things.

On a side note, the iron work on the balconies surrounding Jackson Square is incredible.  Similarly, the cool fog that lingers in the morning makes it worth getting up around 6:30 …

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Live at the C’s: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Yesterday was an intense day—it was my first presentation at a national conference.  Fortunately, all of the folks working with me on “What’s Queer Got To Do With It” were great over the past year.  Far less formal than most panels, we sat with the attendees and presented/discussed ideas around being queer and composition.  Lesbian sex, queer as appropriation, the presence or lack of bodies, professional identity, being “out,” dealing with borders—or the lack of them—in personal and private spaces, other people inhabiting our bodies, and composition were some of the threads raised.  Overall, I felt it was very productive.

It was so productive, in fact, that my head still feels slammed.  When I dialogue with folks, I treat it seriously and intensely, but I cannot do that all day long.  Learning to find some sort of balance between my desire to see New Orleans with my professional development has been rather challenging.  Yesterday, I needed a brief time of no-thinking, so I blew twenty bucks in Harrah’s.  I just needed to not be present for a bit.  As a non-gambler, it was a bit surreal.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Giving Positive Feedback

Happy thoughts are in the air lately!  Two great links about praising students for effort over intelligence were recently posted to the WPA-list.  Given that most handbooks are filled with dozens of ways to tell our students how they messed up and few to zero on what they did well, our profession could use a review of these ideas.  The first article, from Scientific American, is here.  The second article, from Educational Leadership, is here.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Live at the C’s: Tuesday, April 1, 2008

This is the first in a series of blog entries posted live from New Orleans and the CCCC.  Rather than go back over raw data and impressions, I figure this would be a more interesting and useful way to document a first-timer’s experience at the C’s.  As such, these entries will be more personal and less centered on the usual topics.

I arrived in NoLa after an overnight flight from San Francisco through Charlotte, NC.  Along the way, I improved my WiFi skills as well as my familiarity with TSA rules.  If, like me, you have not flown for a while, it is useful to review the rules regarding carry-ons—it did strike me as strange that more and more people had larger and larger carry-ons.

My plane was filled with customer service and sales personnel from Miller.  Suffice it to say they did not leave me with a positive impression of their company—it was like flying with a gang of teenage boys.  My MP3 player rescued me from them.

The humidity and warmth hit me immediately when I stepped off the plane.  “It’s only spring,” my buddy said when I commented on the humidity.  “This isn’t hot, and it isn’t humid.” I’m just glad the conference is now and not in July.

So far I’ve had alligator …

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Live at the C’s: Tuesday, April 1, 2008: If a Home Could Be an Essay

I love this shot; the iron work in the balcony is adorable.  Check out the color and the use of lines—it is so crisp!  If this structure could shapeshift into an essay, I would be in bliss.

Live at the C’s: Tuesday, April 1, 2008: Rain

Yes, it rained!