Hugh Nicoll’s Weblog

Followed a link from ReadySteadyBook to an essay on Nancy Armstrong’s How Novels Think by Miriam Burstein. Ms. Burstein’s study of the history of the novel, specifically in relation to identity, consciousness, and literacy, resonates in a thousand directions and can serve as a touchstone for at least hundreds of potential studies encompassing the teaching [...]

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Not that I’m feeling glum, but 2005 was a very exhausting year, so I’m hoping I can increase the intelligence of my game plan and do better in the coming twelve months. I’ve been enjoying, with the exception of a rather sore back, some extreme New Year’s cleaning, helping my youngest daughter move into what [...]

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I’ve been waiting to read what Ron Silliman would have to say about Katrina for a week. And, sure enough, sharp as usual, and calling on the citizenry as a whole to look at the long-term consequences of an underfunded government, and of our shared responsibility for it — the consequence of the erosion over [...]

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Alwin’s latest post is a call to work and a source of hope. He’s relaying field reports and reflections from Dr. Ken Maddox. Dr. Maddox’s closing paragraph includes this beautiful blast: Please join me and others throughout this country in providing leadership in your community to now rebuild America. Reading that I was wishing I [...]

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Paul Krugman on September 2 At a fundamental level, I’d argue, our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice. Yesterday Mr. Bush [...]

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Steve Ersinghaus has posted a link to a 2001 Scientific American on what was known.

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Frank Rich turns up the heat in Fallujah Floods the Superdome.

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Here in Kyushu we’ll have an exciting couple of days with the arrival of Typhoon Nabi. The bigger picture is available from the Japan Meteorlogical Agency site. The satellite image of the northwest quadrant of the Pacific is pretty scary, too. Fortunately, Miyazaki is in no real danger of flooding, though the rains are likely [...]

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Mark Bernstein’s “What Ended” is one of the best responses to the horrors of Katrina’s aftermath I’ve read so far, and a great example of writing with power. What ended this week is the illusion that words can substitute for real work and real knowledge. This was the last, spectacular failure of the internet bubble, [...]

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Pierre Joris has posted an email from Dahr Jamail’s Dispatches list. There are moving reflections by Iraq war veterans on the situations they found themselves in, and on the reasons they are now so passionately opposed to Bush’s policies.

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Late last year, at the same time my former Moveable Type blog went down in a hail of comment spam, Elin’s blog went down, too; or at least was somewhat unreliable, with posts failing to show up on the home page, and all sorts of other weirdness. Now, she’s publishing a lot again, and proving [...]

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Mark posted a link to a testimonial from William Cole the other day on Tinderbox support. Doug now has a link on his blog, so I just have to jump in with my own story. The preface is that I met Mark, Doug, Alwin and bunch of other wonderful Tinderbox folk last fall in San [...]

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I didn’t read of Creeley’s death until the early morning hours of 1 April in my hotel room in Cardiff, where I am to attend the IATEFL festivities starting tomorrrow evening. I first read Creeley as a high school student, “I Know a Man” the first poem of Creeley’s I remember distinctly, no doubt because [...]

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A little less conversation, the latest post from Rob Weissman on the corp-focus list, is a call to action for difficult times. The issues are on a bigger scale than the problems we face in educational settings, where we have oodles of data and bundles of experience but apparently very little power as teacher/researchers to [...]

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Somehow in all the busy-ness over the last three weeks I missed the release of WordPress 1.5. I’ve just upgraded, using the Podz Upgrade Guide in addition to the suggestions on the WordPress site. I like the default theme so much I might just leave it for a while. Update: Nope, the loss of my [...]

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Welcome to my newly updated WordPress blog. My former “MovableType” blog went down in a swirl of comment spam a week or so ago, and I’ve finally gotten around to re-installing WordPress. I’ve got all my old posts in Tinderbox, so I will play a bit at re-posting.

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Spent a couple of delightful, quiet hours this afternoon with Nakayama-sensei and Uchijima-sensei, the former president of MMU, talking about education, writing, and the future of the planet. Uchijima-sensei, who studies climate change, has just another day or two of writing to do to finish his latest book manuscript. He was looking for an article, [...]

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I’ve been an Anthony Braxton fan for a long time, and for many years one of my favorite CDs has been the two-disc Leo Records set, Knitting Factory (piano/quartet) Vols 1 & 2 I found in London in 1996. Braxton’s collected works are challenging, his discography long, and his pioneering sensibility is matched only by [...]

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Gabe is practitioner of Vipassana meditation, and is presently on a ten-day meditation retreat. Check out the code of conduct for the ten-day course.

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This is an excerpt from Gabe Gudding’s interview at the Chicago PostModern Poetry site: I woke up from my Fargo youth and realized there are people whose job it is to wait and wait and then lock people up when they get the chance to. Not saying rioting is good. But this realization shocked me [...]

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