It’s raining tonight - a cold, fall rain, slow and heavy, sounding like it is full of slush and could just as well be snow by morning — Nature’s way of reminding me the equinox was today, that I should have stopped to take notice

perhaps

spent a bit more time looking at the sky, or just looking

Wordsworth is having a bit of a belly laugh too — there she goes again, he mocks, getting all caught up in stuff and nonsense
and yet, the weekend was not without its reality checks

pensive words from colleagues on writing

philosophical words from my children on righting

and final words on a friend and colleague 

For now, I cannot find more than what I wrote in the acknowledgements of my dissertation:  

à Dre Joan Boyer, « merci » ne m’a jamais semblé suffisant comme mot en français, d’autant plus vrai dans votre cas – pour votre sagesse et votre dévouement à l’excellence, je demeure, avec admiration;

Language is without sufficient words for the work of mourning.

L.

I’ve been reading more than writing this week, of note, hanging out at Nancy White’s Full Circle Online Blog. She has an interesting post on the fluidity of boundaries in online communities. Three things of particular interest:

1. “the only ‘home’ we have is the experience of place we create in our minds. We have too many online spaces.” I can’t (for now) wrap my head around Facebook. Others seem to be finding flaws, and articulating them better than I. Though unwilling to participate in Facebook itself, I seem to be spending a curious amount of time lurking around other peoples conversations about Facebook — at the office, in the “parent” section of my kids’ activities, even in restaurants, where I would rather NOT hear the man at the table next to me loudly proclaim he doesn’t want to talk to “those people” from highschool because there’s “a reason“ he hasn’t talked to them in 20 years. And yet, this last bit of inadvertent eavesdropping is quite telling… online or on life, people are more and less discriminating (present company included) about different things. I don’t necessarily think ill of Facebook as a concept, I just haven’t found a meaningful application, for me, for now;

2. the genesis of today’s title, there seem to be continually “greater risks that we will find it easier to walk away from dissent and divergence, rather than figuring out what to do, because it is easy to pick up one’s toys and migrate to another sandbox.” Certainly, the lack of material investment in a particular online community might make it seem easier to just “pack up and go.” But maybe the challenge is more along the lines of ”buyer beware” — are we thinking critically about where and when we maintain a presence online? Does it really matter? If so, to whom? As my preservice teacher candidates are beginning to realize, photos of extracurricular drinking activities may garner social capital (in some “communities”), but can be a barrier to economic capital when potential employers do web searches before hiring people to ”touch the future“; and finally,

3. “the creative and destructive tension between control and emergence feels bigger than ever before.” Exactly. Even these quotes are out of order from the way they were originally written. Online and on life, the re:production is producing even as we attempt to produce it.

As ever, many questions, few if any answers,

L.

L’ACPLS fait un projet de balados éducatifs grâce à une subvention du CCA - au bureau ou au pif (et au PIF), ça vaut le coup (et le coût)!

Bonne balade!

L:)

Caught myself doing a f2f promotion today of Stemwedel’s rather clever (imho) post on balancing (and less than balancing) an academic-motherhood-teaching life, when it occured to me that I should just do the nettiquettely polite thing and put up a reference. In addition to being polite, my self-serving motivator is that of thinking any of my first-year keeners who look up my blog would do well to check out her well-crafted juggling metaphor as they are getting to work on their metaphor assignment — hint, hint; this is one possibility of networking, social, electronic, or otherwise.

This ‘tagging’ actually comes on the heels of some interesting conversation I’ve been having (also in my off-line life) about social networks, the pros and cons of tech tools for learning (I’m still fence-sitting on many, but Alec has some great polemics), and about life on and off the blogosphere. Working one’s way back is not as easy (for me) as punching out a few posts (no matter how much I like my new keyboard - ah, the simple joys of the workplace).

In fact, I sort of feel as though I’m back at the beginning of blogging… then again, maybe I’m just back at the beginning of me — discourse in action, reinventing my:selves (Mitchell and Weber are whispering here) still and again.

Come to think of it, the Free Ride post of the day is rather spot on:

“And don’t worry so much. There is life apart from the blogosphere!”

L:)

Heard that Tim McGraw song - never have wanted to go skydiving, still might take up fishing…

Caught up on an old friend’s myspace pics of the Calgary Stampede - wondered about the specificity of rodeo arena dust, the way the olfactory memory stays vivid for 30 years…

Had to look up how to spell weird - re:membered the disjunctures of death, and of living.

It is the eve of the end of two weeks - still (always?) weird.

L.

I’m writing again, which means I’m reading again. Hard to say which comes first… was it a few great pages from an overdue look at Sontag & Kael (Seligman, 2004)? Maybe it was the simple, complex act of writing an abstract? Perhaps it was just finding some words…

Words beget words, and Dean Dad, as usual, had a few gems yesterday: “Career decisions are a funny blend of analysis, gut, and happenstance.” With the syllabi writing season soon upon me, these seem both amusing and spot on, perhaps as much for my students as for my ever shifting selves.

Perhaps, when it comes to reading and writing, it’s an AND NOT OR.

L:)

ps - Perhaps, I’ve been reading a little Derrida (always, still) as well, but it is no task.

Summer is here, les épreuves are finally and for always finies, FINIES, PhD!!!

And still, there are words — summer: time to dwell in the glorious possibilities of words. A friend told me she had been missing my blog. And so to her, and to others who are friends and who have friends, I share an August sunbeam from Davi Walders (2002): “I tell you this now. Make early for yourself a friend who will chew the bones of life with you.”

Here’s to friendship, to summer sleepovers, and, most of all, to words!

L:)

Ce fut une semaine hors paires en immersion française au Canada.

Il y avait, d’abord et avant tout, la grande tristesse du regretté André Obadia, PhD.

Et, malgré cela (ou bien, en raison de celui-là), il y avait aussi de l’espoir…

d’un flambeau à transmettre grâce à Dre Lucille Mandin…

des idées multiples grâce au Symposium sur la formation des enseignant(e)s de français langue seconde dans son ensemble…

et toujours, de l’énergie et de la passion pour la langue française au Canada.

Quoi de pire, ou de mieux? 

L.

Peter Suber has an interesting réplique about Open Access (OA) environments for scholarly research. He also provides an interesting overview of OA, from which my favourite quote is “non-academics are often surprised to learn that most scholarly journals do not pay authors for their articles” (Suber, 2004). (And in Saskatchewan, surprised to learn Assistant professors often make less than grade school teachers, but I digress.)

The potential of OA seems positive and exponential - more readers, (hopefully) less environmental waste, and, when done well, new avenues for thinking.

If Martha were in academia, she might even say “it’s a good thing.”

L:)

If you haven’t already, then grab a copy of Graham Fraser’s Sorry, I Don’t Speak French (2006, Douglas Gibson), and if you would really rather be in the garden, then read the Honourable Claudette Tardif’s keynote, But Can They Laugh in French (Journal de l’immersion / Immersion Journal, printemps, 2007) instead, at least until the weather turns.

L:)