BR week 22

Hi everyone! How are you doing? I figure if I ask a questions some of you might send a small reply. Well, one can hope can’t he? As long as I am pointing out gaps in your character, I should mention that more of you need to be writing Walker. It doesn’t have to be long (My word, he doesn’t write much sometimes, but he is writing.) just write about what you are thinking, doing, studying, experience, or how great it is that he is doing what he is doing.

I liked hearing, over the last week, some of your plans for Christmas service. One of the best presents I have ever received was the report on the service projects that you all did last year for Christmas. This year, Abbey is helping to organize some sub for Santa work in the area around Cambridge. Good luck. Sophia has plans to help redecorate a room at one of the Charity houses (I think the McDonald house). It is great to hear about all of this. I look forward to the updates as the season goes along.

I have been in San Antonio for the annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference. It is always the weekend before Thanksgiving. I generally miss Dana’s birthdayL! She did get a great gift though. I generally room with Chris Crowe, an English Education professor from BYU, and Nate Phillips, a former teacher and current graduate student at Vanderbilt. It has been a good week so far. I stay until Tuesday. The NCTE conference ends today, but the ALAN workshop continues on Monday and Tuesday.

I AM THE NEW EDITOR OF THE ALAN REVIEW. What does this mean for you? Well, you should all subscribe to the Journal. It is only 20 dollars and it would boost the circulation rate. Hum, maybe I know what people are getting for Christmas. The editorial team will consist of me and two others. The others are Jackie Bach, who is at LSU with me and Melanie Hundley, who is at Vanderbilt and was a student at UGA when I was there. We shared an office for two years. The search committee narrowed the interview pool to five editorial teams. They interviewed all of them Saturday. Saturday, at about 6:00 pm, the chair of the committe called me and asked if I was ready to spend five years working really hard. I will be the lead editor, only for organization purposes. Both women are very smart and extremely organized, I will try to do what they say. We did a very thorough job preparing for the interview. The initial application took some work but once we made the next level we did work to understand the history of the journal and the potential future. We put together a small packet, six pages, with a mock up of a new sample cover. (Every new team of editors puts together a cover and we had another friend from UGA put together a quick black line drawing. I will send it along next week as an attachment when I can get to a scanner.) We felt very comfortable with our preparation and when the interview was over I felt very relaxed. O.K. I had a headache the size of Cincinnati due to some flu symptoms. The day before, I ate something that caused a serious grumbling and frequent trips…. I think I was slightly dehydrated. I had to meet my major professor for lunch after the interview. I sipped a drink and played like I was eating a taco. I went to the hotel and slept and watched TV off and on for about 4 hours. It was a great day, to celebrate I had dinner with Jackie and another colleague. Here I am in the Heart of Texas with Mexican food all around me and I ate a light French soup and a sprite.

Georgia did not play, which was probably good for them. They need to get ready to play a surging Georgia Tech next week. LSU got spanked at home by Ole Miss. It was ugly. I think there is a full suicide watch in Baton Rouge, heck, maybe the whole state of Louisiana. Utah just took apart BYU from the information we have been able to get. I think Dana listened to it through the internet so she might have more to say about it. She is a true red Utah fan while I try to hope for the best for both. I do, however find myself drifting to BYU when they go against each other. Utah has had a great season and should get a great bowl placement. Go Utes!

The Jazz played in San Antonio while I was here and lost again. We will have to check with Mitch, but I think they have lost in San Antonio something like 24 straight times. How many years in a row is that without a win in San Antonio.

By the way, The Alamo is tiny. I can’t imagine what it would fell like to be absolutely outnumbered and surrounded.

We are going to be in St. George for Christmas. We think we will drive up to Salt Lake Christmas afternoon. We look forward to seeing everyone, especially little Wil.

We love you all. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana