Baton Rouge Week 34

Hi there!

Well it is Mardi Gras time in Baton Rouge. There are tons of family friendly parades in the Baton Rouge area. Friday a couple organized a small party and we went to the local parade sponsored by the Atremis krewe of Baton Rouge. The Mardi Gras parades are held at night. They are composed of huge tractor trailers all decorated with lights with different organizations (all the same krewe) throwing beads, stuffed animals, and other trinkets. I will post some pictures on our blog. In attendance were the temple president and his wife and a member of the Stake Presidency and his wife. So, it is possible to have some family friendly introduction to the Mardi Gras traditions. It was fun. Saturday night we had dinner with a couple in the ward and then went to another parade. This time is was the Orion krewe. We haven’t quite figure out where the krewes come from. I guess we will have to be here a little longer to figure out all of the cultural ins and outs.
I hope to get some pictures on the blog.
Monday I found out that I had a paper accepted and it will be out soon. It is going to be published in Leaflet a publication of the New England Teacher Council of Teachers of English. The editor asked me if I had anything else to send. That’s good news but I need to get published in bigger journals as much as possible. I also had an abstract for a paper accepted. Now, I have to have the paper finished by March 5th. That is good news but a lot of work. It feels like lots of work that happened early in the school year is paying off.
I also gave a lunchtime roundtable talk for faculty and graduate students this Friday. Three of the full professors came and listened in. It was a good opportunity to share some of my work with them. I also think it is useful for graduate students to see a model of how to go about structuring their work.
Dana wasn’t able to attend because she attended a meeting for the dean. She has been traveling more because she is working with people who are training to be administrators. She has to visit the schools where prospective administrators are doing internships. She has seen a lot more of the areas around the greater Baton Rouge area than I do.
We are going to Boston this week to see Abbey. We look forward to having some time out. We are really looking forward to seeing Abbey and all of her work setting. It looks like we will be able to see Diane and Lant for awhile. There are some cool things to see in Boston. Abbey says that Lant might give us a tour of the Harvard library. That might be very interesting.
The weather is still very good. It seems like something is blooming all of the time. We have had more rain, but it hasn’t been very cold. The rain has also been cooperative; it seems to want to rain only when we are sleeping or when we are in a building. We will keep knocking on wood.
We love you all. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana