Author Archives: ghw

insomniac waltz

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Unable to sleep as Monday approaches, the weight of last week’s unfinished business pushing up against the imaginary wall that separates one week from the next like rising water against a dam. Why are Sunday nights always like this? The only night I consistently have trouble sleeping.

So I teach myself some Son Volt songs by using the Online Guitar Archive, a resource that has changed the lives of bedroom guitarists everywhere. And then I improvise a song I’ll call “The Insomniac Waltz.” Am and G for the verses. C, Em, and D for the chorus.

Tomorrow night at 7:00 is my first official lesson. And yes, the first song I ever learned was, in fact, “Stairway to Heaven” back in 1981 or 1982.

On the other side of my life, in one class tomorrow we’ll be discussing late medieval mystery plays, and in the other we continue our discussion of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740).

my new gear

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If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

ghw.telecaster frontman25r.2003-09-27.jpg

Remember my neighbor with the loud television?

Heh heh heh.

new course proposal

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This is the new course that I proposed (successfully) to the department. Haven’t yet found an available course number for it, but it will be a joint undergraduate/graduate course. If it passes the College curriculum committee, I believe I’ll be teaching it in fall 2004:

English 4xx/5xx 442/542 (course number still to be determined): Histories of Writing, Reading, and Publishing

Catalog Description: A study of selected topics concerning the material practices of writing, reading, and publishing within specific cultural and historical contexts. Issues examined may include authorship, education, information technologies, libraries, literacy, periodicals, popular literature, publishers, and communities of readers.

Rationale: This course would draw upon the expertise of any one of several faculty members in the department whose research and teaching already involve many of these issues. How the course would fulfill curricular requirements of a particular student would depend on the individual faculty member’s design of the course. Thus, a version that emphasizes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England would not count for the same category as a version that focuses on turn-of-the-century America. Various permutations of this course will offer students the opportunity to explore the material practices by which writing (literary, political, religious, journalistic, educational, etc.) has historically been created, reproduced, distributed, and consumed. Also under possible consideration will be the imaginative means by which cultures construct such seemingly self-evident categories as ‘author,’ ‘literature,’ ‘copyright,’ ‘literacy,’ and ‘reading.’

ok, let’s review

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I just learned how to play (and kind of sing) “Rockets” by Cat Power/Chan Marshall, the subject of the original dream. Lyrics here. Half-assed music transcription here. Download the (free and legal) mp3 by clicking here.

I’m a happy man.

Now I have papers to grade.

u.s. copyright law

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I am soliciting information from those more knowledgable than I. Is there any legal reason why a library would be unable to put items on reserve more than once for the same class taught in different semesters? Has our copyright law gotten that bad? Does anyone’s university or college library have this policy? Alternately, have you put things on reserve more than once for the same course in different semesters without any objections from your library?

Recommendations for further reading are welcome. Comments do not allow HTML but URL’s are autolinked.