Baton Rouge Week 23

Hi all

Well, this was an eventful week.

My conference in San Antonio was to continue through Tuesday. Tuesday morning Dana called. I had a little bit of stomach grumbling on Saturday and Sunday. Dana wasn’t feeling well (she had severe gas pains) and called to see if mine were similar. She thought I had given it to her or she had appendicitis. I finally convinced her to go to the doctor. That was an event all by itself.

My original flight back was 6:30 getting back at 10:00. I hurried to the airport to change to a 4:30 flight. I got to the airport at 2:50 and was able to get a 3:30 flight to Houston with an earlier connecting flight to Baton Rouge. I almost missed the Houston flight. I talked with Dana briefly before the San Antonio flight. I only had time between the San Antonio flight and the Houston flight to briefly call her visiting teaching companion. The flight attendant was forcing me to turn off the phone. I was able to say “Yorka, Dana has appendicitis. She is Lady of the Lake hospital.” Yorka was surprised that the call was so short, but she was able to find Dana at the hospital before the surgery.

I arrived in Baton Rouge at 6:45. I was able to talk briefly before the operation at 7:00 and Yorka picked me up at the airport. I was at the hospital before the operation was done and talked to the doctor when he came out. Dana did fine. She was able to check out of the hospital by about 3:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday.

We had a very quiet day on Thanksgiving. We had plenty of food in the house (Thanksgiving afternoon one of my graduate student and her mother fixed us a couple of plates that we ate off of for two days) and I went and bought a few more things on Wednesday afternoon. We were able to see a movie early Friday afternoon and again early Saturday. Dana took naps in the afternoon. We have been watching tv (we are making good sense of our dvr).

I have been reading some of the Young Adult novels I got as a participant in the ALAN conference. I brought back 53 books. I will be reading even more YA novels over the next five years. Don’t worry; I am attaching a membership form to this email. That way you can all open it and join up.

I made a small Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Dana hasn’t felt much like eating for the last few days. Dinner was nice and now we have leftovers for the next few days.

Dana has one more class to teach tomorrow before finals. I think I will take her up for that and then bring her home. My students are working on final projects. The work here is winding down for the semester.

It was a rough week for football. LSU lost to Ole Miss and Georgia lost to Georgia Tech for the first time in seven years. That left Utah at 12-0, BYU at 10-2, UGA at 9-3, and LSU at a lowly 7-5. LSU really suffered at the quarterback position.

Dana really appreciated all of the phone calls. I should have called more people, but I was busy taking care of Dana. I feel like I can catch up now.

My students are working on final projects for the rest of the semester. Hopefully, I can do the final grading for everything except the final project this week. I then will get back to writing, planning for the ALAN review, and preparing courses for next semester.

We are also carefully watching for the bowl announcements next week. There is a good chance that Utah might get a placement at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. If so we might come back early and try to go.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Dad and Dana

This is Dana. I might say that the last week was less than stellar for me. Dad forgot to tell you I have been worried about my new calling and choosing advisors. On Friday, my birthday, I wrecked the car. I backed up into the pillars of the car port, tore off the passenger side rearview mirror, and scraped the heck out of the door. The lovely painful appendicitis just topped off the whole week. What I learned from all this is that people love you even when you are an idiot, people who hardly know you are kind and generous, and how much I love all of you for thinking of me. I don’t know if it is the medication or just feeling pretty darn humble, but I have been exceptionally emotional the last four days. Besides crying at an ATT commercial, I feel so fortunate to have married and been born into a family that is so wonderful. I love you all and thank you so much for thinking of me.

Dana

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

House Slide Show

The Music is by The Carter Family--My Native Home

Baton Rouge Week 21

Another week, another dollar. We are sitting here in our house after church and we are truly suffering. The house temperature is 65 and we can’t get the heat to go on. Every time we have some work done in the attic someone touches a wire and then the air conditioner or the heater doesn’t go on when we hit the switch. This house has a security system that was old and needed to be slightly rewired. That all happened Friday afternoon. I crawled around in the attic but I don’t know what I am looking at. We will have the contractor look at it again. We need to get a new thermostat.

We struggled along with work this week. I have been getting a lot done for the interview next week. This is the week I go to San Antonio for the NCTE conference. Our interview for the editorship of the ALAN Review is next Saturday morning at 10:00. We have done a lot of preparation and we hope it goes well. We have good support from our Universities.

Today we add a “linger longer” after church. Basically, people bring a variety of food and desserts. Then after church they sit around and eat and talk. It is nice for all of the people to get to know each other.

Saturday we went up to Jackson, Louisiana. It is about 20 miles north of Baton Rouge. They have a weekend once a year that sponsors Highland Games. They have piping, drums, dancing, dancing lessons and highland games. There are athletic games where big guys throw logs, giant stuffed bags of hey with a pitch fork over a tall bar, a modified hammer through, and a big rock. They also have a bunch of activities for kids—scaled down tools of the athletic games for them to practice with. They also bring in some musical groups from around the country. It is a pretty big deal. They bring in a judge for the pipes, the drums, pipe bands, and dancing. They also had some demonstrations with border collies moving sheep around. It was pretty cool. There was also a bunch of booths with Scottish stuff. One lady will measure you for a kilt and then they bring in the fabric from Scotland and make it here. They also have set up a bunch of clan booths. Dana asked about the history of Scots in the area. Apparently, one of the big migrations was between 1830-1845. One of the big settling points was in North Carolina. They seemed to migrate to a variety of places in the south. Quite a few moved to the New Orleans area, even before the Revolution, and got along better with the French than the English.

The biggest bonus was that the Baton Rouge Model Railroad club has a building up there. They have trains in every scale, including a garden railroad. It was fun. It was even a little windy and wet, so it even felt a bit like Scotland. One of the entertainment fiddlers said that usually he has to have people imagine the wind and the cold of Scotland, but today was pretty close. We should have taken some chairs, a blanket, and a cooler with food. Most people kind of set up a picnic area. I think next we will go more prepared for the whole deal. We might even dance. Dana is a Highland Lassie from way back.

There was also a small four day bluegrass festival in a small RV park about 4 miles out of Jackson. We stopped by to check it out. It looked like there were a bunch of old people, yes older than us. There was a small building and the bands rotate about every hour. There seemed to be about five bands. We might go next year and stay overnight. It was a fun day. We are trying to spend some time getting to know the area around Baton Rouge. We haven’t been to the Tabasco plant yet, but it is close in New Iberia.

Amelia set us up with a blog a few weeks ago. I have been experimenting with it for a bit. Here is the web address: http://louisianabicks.blogspot.com/

I have posted a few house pictures and some pictures of the highland games, including two fine shoots of some Highland Coos.

Mitch was upset that I haven’t mentioned the Jazz. Go Jazz. They sit at 6-4. They seem to be having a little trouble on the road.

Go Utes! They a have done great. BYU managed to win against Air Force. LSU had to have their superior athletes score 30 points in the last quarter to beat a lower division Troy. I think that it just showed that bigger, stronger, and faster, especially in skill positions paid off. I know you are all dying to hear about the dawgs. They managed to hold off Auburn. Auburn has had a horrible year and Georgia should be able to take them apart. Georgia is starting several freshman on the offensive line. And the defensive secondary is young. They really are hoping to just get through the year. Florida, unfortunately, looks like the real deal.

We love you take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana

Hungry for Your Love--Wavelength

Louisiana Highland Games

We went to the highland games in Jackson, Louisiana. It is about 20 miles away from Baton Rouge. Pipes, fiddles, drums, highland coo's, border collies, dancing, and men throwing stuff. Oh, yes, there were kilts galore. The bonus of the day was a model railroad display inside and out.

Van the Man

If you don't own a Van Morrison album, you are missing out. Start with Moondance, Wavelength, or Avalon Sunset.

Finally, Ute Defense

Now, that's what I am talking about.

Go Dawgs!

This is not just a block!
It was an interception that stole Kentucky's final opportunity to score.

Baton Rouge Week 20

Baton Rouge Week 20 Nov. 9
Things seemed much the same this week. For some reason I felt like I had a lot to do at the university this week. My committee work in the English department seemed to kick up. In addition, I had a teaching coordination for the Geaux Teach program. I had a luncheon for new faculty to talk about mentoring.
We did have the missionaries over Thursday for dinner and a message. They wanted to talk to us about the ward mission plan. The ward has a mission plan which is basically that every family should have a plan. We are still thinking about what we should do. We need to be good examples of course, but we are thinking about pass along cards, and inviting people to ward activities.
I was able to finish the same paper I was working on. I sent it off on Tuesday. Now I am dedicating writing time to finishing the paper that Dana and I have going. The biggest part to finish is mine and I am having some structural problems with the whole thing.
The people I am working with on the editorship and I have a lot of work to do before the NCTE conference in two weeks. I have been talking with people who know the history of the journal. I hope that this will give me a better idea of how our ideas will move the journal along.
We spent some time yesterday doing some final cleaning from the construction. The goop and glue on the windows of the new French doors was very difficult to scrap off. Dana finally solved the problem by using mineral spirits on the tough spots. It still took time to scrap around the edges with a razor blade.
Georgia won, it was ugly but I’ll take it. LSU lost in overtime to Alabama. BYU won again. Go Utes. They won a close one against TCU. On the radio, it sounded like they started in a hole and just kept working away at the win. I think they will have to credit the defense.
There is a town near here that has some Scottish games, Jackson, Louisiana. I think we are going to try and go see them for a bit next week.
Love Dad and Dana

 

Baton Rouge Week 19 November 2

We have had a good week. Earlier in the week or maybe last Sunday we invited some families to go to the wards trunk or treat activity. The ward had at least 20 families set up cars with decorated trunks. We decorated ours as a sleeping bag by spreading out an old sleeping bag over everything else in the trunk. The high priest brought chili and Dana volunteered to bring a cake for the cake walk activity.
Our next door neighbor showed up with his two oldest kids-five and four. They walked around the trunk and treat set up and then went inside with us for the food and the cake walk. Paul had a lot of questions about Mormons. He is a native from the area and a Catholic with very little exposure to Mormons. We were happy that they came by. It was a testimony to me that doing missionary work is really a basic task of being a member of the LDS church. But it is a task. I think the thing he found most surprising was that one of the buildings (remember the temple is right next to our chapel) has a full size basketball court. What do those Mormons really believe in? Paul had a few questions about the church organization and beliefs. We felt blessed that they felt comfortable enough to come and socialize with us. We hope that we will have other opportunities to invite them and that we have the courage to do it. Oh! He was also interested that we used cool music to help with the cake walk. It should be noted that his oldest-Sierra help me win a cake in the cake walk. We had them take it home for the rest of their family. Don’t worry I took a cake tax.
I received the opportunity this week to submit a small article to a large regional English Journal sponsored by the New England Council of Teacher of English. The journal is called the Leaflet and has been published for 100 years by English teachers in the New England area. It is a small paper about providing your own professional development by reading professional books. I review 5 current books. When I say small, I mean about 2000 words or 8 typed pages. It is not research but it gets my name out there. As a result it slows down other work. I planned to finish the edits on the paper Dana and I are working on. Instead, I will be doing that this week.
My teaching is coming along just fine. Unfortunately, my students are just now getting to the hard work of producing a teaching unit. Most of what they have done is reading and reporting. Now they have to produce. We are also trying to pick a time to have them over to the house. I might have them over for class and then a barbeque. I need to look at the schedule. The students are busy and seem to go in a variety of directions with classes, work, and social life.
Friday night, as we were passing out trick or treat candy, I had some great news. I had applied to be an editor of The ALAN Review with two other colleagues. One colleague is here at LSU (Jackie) and one is at Vanderbilt (Melanie). Melanie and I shared an office at UGA. The journal focuses on Young Adult Literature. We have been picked as one of the teams to go through the interview process at the NCTE conference in a couple of weeks. This is a great opportunity. We feel very lucky to be included. We now need to do a few things to prepare. We don’t know who the competition is, but a professor I know at BYU was the chair of the last selection committee. He did apply and he told me he would answer some questions and provide advice and direction.
It looks like another busy week or two. We are finding that it is very important to set aside consistent writing time. It seems that some project, some meeting, some conversation, or something always can take you away from slowly working toward finished projects. So far, they project I still want to work on. Even though a professor can control much of their own time and activity, everyone expects productivity. Almost everyone we know, who seems to do this successfully, has a writing schedule. I know that the biggest progress for me come with the projects that are fixed. For example, I have a project with a graduate student and we work every Tuesday and Thursday from 9-11 in the morning. That project is moving right along. The two papers that we have out were important so I thought about the week and planned out the writing. It seems to be hardest for me when I finish a project and have to start another. I need to think of some trick to force me into a transition. I just heard a story about Trollope a prolific Victorian novelist (more than sixty). When he finished a novel he would turn over the last page and right a title for the next book.
We bought some green towels and mats for the blue bathroom. Who knew that there would be so many different greens that just wouldn’t work with that particular blue? I will try to take a picture. We also bought a toaster. It is shining silver so; when you visit don’t touch it. It is amazing that so many of the new styles seem difficult to maintain.
Walker seems to be doing so well on his mission. I send him this letter every week, but I also try to send him a small personal letter each week. I am probably hit about three out of four. I’ll bet that I am doing better than most of you. This is 19 weeks in a row of writing a letter and I actually look forward to doing each Sunday.
Amelia set me up with a blog that I could not quite use for about a week. I thought it was a cruel joke. I am not quite sure how I feel about the whole blog thing. I’ll try it out for awhile.
Football. I am sorry to say that Georgia was destroyed by Florida. The worst part of the loss was that Georgia handed them five touchdowns (at least) due to turnovers and penalties. It was painful to watch. The agony was heightened by the fact that Dana thought she had lost some new reading glasses. Fortunately, they turned up in the car. LSU played Tulane, which really shouldn’t count as a game at this point. They need to beat someone so that they can find the courage to face Alabama who should visit Baton Rouge next Saturday as the new number one this week. BYU was apparently in a shootout with Colorado State. They better figure the weak showing they have had over the last few weeks if they expect to face Utah without embarrassment. Utah is now 9 wins and no losses after beating New Mexico 13-10. I need better reports about those Utah games. They do not get much national play on the television. I think the TCU game get national coverage next week and should be one of the real big games next week.
I just finished reading a book about a doctor who works to provide health care to third world populations. It is Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer A Man Who Would Cure the World. This was a very interest book about an American doctor who established a clinic for the poor in rural Haiti. His influence was important as he worked there while maintaining a position at Harvard and Brighams Woman and Children in the Boston area.
This is Dana. Other than what your dad talked about, my class and watching student teachers takes a lot of time. I am trying to write consistently in the morning, but the other work seems to get in the way. I have an article from my dissertation I am trying to write. I am also working with a group of professors on a research project that just doesn’t seem to get off the ground. I am hoping that we get started fairly soon so I will have information to write about once this article is done. I have applied for a professor position at Southeastern Louisiana University in Educational Leadership for next year. There will be an opening at LSU next year in educational leadership, but I am not guaranteed the position, so I am not putting all my eggs in one basket. I will be applying to local school districts as well. I will keep you all posted.
We missed all of you during Halloween. We missed seeing Deacon, Miriam, and Evie in person in costume (and maybe even wee little Will). We also missed the pumpkins brains at Dad and Mary’s. We are trying to be “Grandparent types” here, but it is not the same as being around family. Y’all take care and know we pray for each of you and love all of you.
Love and take care of each other
Dad and Dana