Now, if we just knew what they are were!
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9 years ago
Sunday, 15 February 2009
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
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
Baton Rouge Week 33
Hi there,
Each week seems to get faster and faster. That might be because things at work seem accelerated. Articles that we have been working on are nearing their first stage of completion. Dana and I have one back that we need to revise. I have a small one back from the English journal that needs only minor revisions. The paper that my graduate student and I have been working on is in the first writing stage. I think we will be able to get it out for review by the first of March. I am also giving a faculty lecture based on my dissertation work this Friday. I am using this opportunity to structure my first paper from my dissertation. I will need to put in a lot of thinking work this week.
We went to two movies this week, both were pretty mindless. We saw The Pink Panther 2 and New in Town. They were okay but we had fun going out together and getting away from work. I heard a church today that we missed an early Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. Apparently, many neighborhoods have family friendly parades from now until official Mardi Gras. We hope that we can find one during this week.
The big missionary event, the photo display I wrote about before, starts tonight and then continues for two weeks. We hope to encourage a few of our friends to drop by sometime in the next few weeks.
I tried to get the young men over to our house for mutual. I made Dutch oven chicken and rice and cherry chocolate cake. We had three of the nine attend. The difficulty of the whole activity program is that all of these boys go to a variety of schools and all participate in a wide variety of activities. Sometimes I am not quite sure if they even know what they are doing from week to week. It was fun for those who came and we were able to get to know those boys better.
We did have our second video chat with Amelia’s group. It lasted about ten minutes until one of the computers broke the connection. Evie and Miriam both did some drawing and Miriam was wearing her LSU cheerleading outfit. How appropriate sense LSU was given the recognition of having the number one overall football recruiting class this last week. Maybe there is hope for the LSU football team to have a better year than they had last year. We need to attend more of the athletic events. We haven’t been very good about that yet.
We are thinking about changing our property management people here in Baton Rouge. We interviewed another group and the end of last week. We need someone who communicates more actively. We just don’t feel like we know what they are doing or if they are doing anything. We need to keep them rented.
Sophia, Curtis, and Deacon are coming to visit during the first week of April. We are looking forward to that. It will be great to see them. We will be planning some fun things to do and see. We have extra rooms and visitors might force us to buy and put up some drapes. Hope to see you soon.
We love you. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Each week seems to get faster and faster. That might be because things at work seem accelerated. Articles that we have been working on are nearing their first stage of completion. Dana and I have one back that we need to revise. I have a small one back from the English journal that needs only minor revisions. The paper that my graduate student and I have been working on is in the first writing stage. I think we will be able to get it out for review by the first of March. I am also giving a faculty lecture based on my dissertation work this Friday. I am using this opportunity to structure my first paper from my dissertation. I will need to put in a lot of thinking work this week.
We went to two movies this week, both were pretty mindless. We saw The Pink Panther 2 and New in Town. They were okay but we had fun going out together and getting away from work. I heard a church today that we missed an early Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. Apparently, many neighborhoods have family friendly parades from now until official Mardi Gras. We hope that we can find one during this week.
The big missionary event, the photo display I wrote about before, starts tonight and then continues for two weeks. We hope to encourage a few of our friends to drop by sometime in the next few weeks.
I tried to get the young men over to our house for mutual. I made Dutch oven chicken and rice and cherry chocolate cake. We had three of the nine attend. The difficulty of the whole activity program is that all of these boys go to a variety of schools and all participate in a wide variety of activities. Sometimes I am not quite sure if they even know what they are doing from week to week. It was fun for those who came and we were able to get to know those boys better.
We did have our second video chat with Amelia’s group. It lasted about ten minutes until one of the computers broke the connection. Evie and Miriam both did some drawing and Miriam was wearing her LSU cheerleading outfit. How appropriate sense LSU was given the recognition of having the number one overall football recruiting class this last week. Maybe there is hope for the LSU football team to have a better year than they had last year. We need to attend more of the athletic events. We haven’t been very good about that yet.
We are thinking about changing our property management people here in Baton Rouge. We interviewed another group and the end of last week. We need someone who communicates more actively. We just don’t feel like we know what they are doing or if they are doing anything. We need to keep them rented.
Sophia, Curtis, and Deacon are coming to visit during the first week of April. We are looking forward to that. It will be great to see them. We will be planning some fun things to do and see. We have extra rooms and visitors might force us to buy and put up some drapes. Hope to see you soon.
We love you. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Baton Rouge Week 32
Well, we have started yet another month here in Baton Rouge. We had the two women that are in my writing group over for dinner with their two husbands. We did it on Monday night and then played aggravation for a while. It was a lot of fun. They were all pretty quick studies and picked up the game in a hurry. The Bishop came by to sign some welfare forms just as they were coming by so we got to tell them a little about who he was and what he did.
The big Reflection on Christ program starts next Sunday for two weeks. The Saturday paper had a photo blurb on the front page and then a couple of large pictures on the cover of the Life and Religious section. It was really a nice bit of coverage for the church. Here is the weblink: http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/38725227.html
I hope that this works for you all. The pictures are very nice. The ward also had an activity called a ward blitz. It was a bit like a census. The activity committee put together packets of people on the rolls that we don’t know much about. It was very interesting. Dana and I went around to about 11 addresses in a little over 2hours. We found some people and got some updates on others. Of the folks we found we were able to get some of them to accept more visits from home and visiting teachers. These are the lost sheep that maybe we can reactivate. It was followed up by a luncheon and some members stayed around and played volleyball. It is the kind of activity that a ward like ours ought to do every year. I wonder if it would be good to do a week or two before a ward dinner.
When we got home I then went to help my home teaching companion put some plywood sheeting on a shed that he is building. He has done most of it, but putting sheets of plywood on a roof alone gets to be a little tricky. I was over there for about two hours. I am not too sore all things considered. When I got home we went to the movie. We saw Inkheart. I liked it well enough.
It was a good week at work. I met with my writing group and finished up a small piece that I am sending to English Journal. It is always good to be in the English Journal, so I am hopeful for this article.
The weather has picked up a bit. I don’t think I needed a coat this week. Flowers are out all over the place. I am trying to put a few pictures on our blog.
I will be teaching a graduate class in late June and through July. I just this week posted some fliers in the English department and in the Education department. The good news is that I already have enough students to carry the class. This is great news. It is an 11% boost in pay to teach a summer class. That still gives us a most of May and most of June to take some time off. I think that we might do a couple of writing camps. We might go some place without a television and write for four straight days (8 hours-breakfast 4 hours-lunch -four hours- small dinner-long walk). Anyway that is something that we need to figure out.
We are going up to see Abbey in a couple of weeks. We are looking forward to the visit, but not the weather. I do really like Boston. I haven’t been there in the late winter. I am sure that there are things to do that don’t require people freezing to death. I am sure Abbey will have some ideas.
As you can see we are pretty boring. We do school work, church work, and then we try to see a movie and play games. We have been good about inviting people over. We will keep trying to socialize; it keeps us kind of normal. One of our new colleagues in the education department is having a few people over for the super bowl so we are going over there for a few hours.
We love you all, take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Baton Rouge Week 31
Hi there everybody.
Well, it is official; I am now the new Young Men’s president of the Baton Rouge 2nd ward. We have about 12 young men in the ward. Most of them are active, with active parents. Between the things Dana has to do and the things I have to do we have our Sundays planned out. Dana has her presidency meetings on Sundays after church. She also does most of her home teaching on Sundays as well. I think the young men’s presidency might meet on Sundays as well. Aside from that option, we might meet on Tuesday night after the young men’s activity.
We had some people over last Monday for family night. We invited my graduate student and her husband and her parents (they are about our age). We had a nice dinner and then played aggravation. I also hosted a small gathering for graduate students connected to English Education in some way. Some are in English and some are in Education. We held the activity Friday from 4:00 to 6:00. Most people left by about 6:30. It is a great way for all of them to connect with each other. It also gives us, the professors, a chance to talk about the graduate classes we are offering. For example, I am teaching a graduate class this summer and it needs to have at least five students in order to carry. So, overall it was a nice event.
During the week we were very busy. I finished some proposals for the next fall conference of NCTE. I also had a proposal to submit for a paper connected with a project in India. It is amazing how many projects can seem to show up. It is good, though; all of these projects lead to papers which equals academic work which leads to tenure. Things have been going along pretty well for us right now. We hope Dana gets an interview, but programs and job opportunities are still up in the air. The economic times are tricky. Jobs in education can still be viable, even in a bad economy. People need to retrain and more people seem to want to go into education.
The final inspections for the reconstruction on our apartment will take place tomorrow and Tuesday. Now, we have to get our property management people in gear. They are a little hard to motivate. We will be back in the swing of things with all of our property. Oh, a word to the wise. An afterhour’s locksmith in Salt Lake cost 49 dollars for the visit and 99 dollars to pick open the lock. You should make sure to have an extra key on your property somewhere or an extra in your cars. You should also make sure that your door knobs and deadbolts work. One of our tenants had a door knob that wasn’t working very well and they got in the habit of only locking the deadbolt. They made a mistake and locked both and then couldn’t get in. They want us to pay. Well, we will probably have to because it was a faulty doorknob. I would certainly have preferred to just pay to have the doorknob replaced; which, by the way, the locksmith did not replace for all of that money. Can you believe it?
Dana is working very hard as always. I seem to be able to think about a lot of things all of the time, but Dana is very good at just working very hard on a single project until she finishes.
All of the birthdays are over for the five, only Mitch’s is left next month. Amelia is now 30 years old. It is hard to believe. She is a great person. She has done so much. We are very proud of her. If any of you think we are slighting you and your birthdays, we will make it to you when you turn old as well.
We also managed to do about a ten minute video connection with Amelia’s crew today. We had a few troubling connections near the end. We are moving into the 21st century.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Monday, 19 January 2009
Baton Rouge Week 30
Hi all
We started teaching this week. It basically means meeting your students and telling them that there is more work to do than they want to do. It was also a week of getting our car back from the body shop. Drive carefully, it is expensive to knock off a mirror and scrap the door.
We did manage to see a movie with a good message that will probably be missed by most people. It is called “Not Easily Broken”. It is geared to mainly a black audience. It has a Christian context and a lot of people will probably just let it slide by.
This was also one of those weeks when I had several deadlines to meet. I had to finish a submission proposal for next year’s National Council of Teacher of English conference. The deadline is always right after Christmas and just when classes are starting. I managed to get that off my plate yesterday. Then the Dean wanted a 2 page version of my academic vita. She asked Thursday and needed it by Monday. I finished that as well. So, those two things are done and I finished all the course work planning I need to do. Now I need to finish the first year review. I have to catalogue what I have done since I have been here. They make you start building the file for your tenure review from the very beginning.
I have two more small paper things to do this week, so I will take a deep breath and start again.
Dana and I got a revise and resubmit on an article that we sent out about two months ago. One review hated it, but gave out very good feedback. The second one liked it. The third seem indifferent, but suggested that we needed more international references. If we want to turn it around they gave us three months. We would like to have it done by the end of February. We have some work to do on that project that I hope to start this week.
I have started work on The ALAN Review work. We had to have pictures taken for the next issue and submitted a brief biography that will be in the next issue. I guess that will serve as a formal introduction to the work we will be doing.
It was another cold week here—20 to 30 at night and 40-60 during the day. Nevertheless, several trees are beginning to flower. I will try to add some pictures.
We think the remodeling on the apartment fire will be done this week. We have been fortunate on that account. We have had to front some of the money, but our insurance has been good. It doesn’t look like we will be out any money out of our own pockets after everything is said and done. Speaking about insurance, you should all check and make sure that your house policy covers replacement value of things and not depreciation value.
Our stake will be hosting a displayed called the “Reflections of Christ” www.reflectionsofChrist.org It was at the Mesa temple visitor center for a long time and has just finished up at the Washington D. C. Temple. It will be here for two weeks. The opening night is a fireside with the photographer and the closing night is a musical performance. Apparently some original music was composed to accompany the photographs. Mark Mabry is the photographer and there is a lot more information at the website. This is an exciting opportunity to share the gospel. We hope a lot of our neighbors will be able to attend the fireside or the display during the week. Oh! I forgot the missionaries were over for dinner and then I went with to visit Sister Lamb. She is a woman in the ward whose husband died just a couple of years ago. We worked as an accountant and property manager for years. But is passion was making violin and fiddles. He has made instruments for classical players and for county players as well. Bill Monroe played one of his fiddles and so has Ricky Skaggs and Roy Acuff. She has about a hundred instruments that she is contracting with broker to sale them as a group. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to get to know her a little better.
This is Dana. Yesterday, for the first time, I taught a class in my field, preparing principals. It is a master’s program for teachers who are interested in getting an endorsement as a principal along with their masters. It was fun to finally get to do what I was trained to do in practice and with my PhD. This class will mean a lot more work for me this semester (I have to visit 16 schools where these people are doing an internship), but I think I will like doing it. This new class and my work with the Relief Society means I have to be very structured with time. Your dad and I both thought, however, that it would be best for our physical and mental health to start working out again. We joined the LSU rec center and played racquetball this Friday and Saturday. I am about a 5 out of 10 on the soreness scale, which means being way out of shape. We hope that we will get in a rhythm to regularly workout.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
We started teaching this week. It basically means meeting your students and telling them that there is more work to do than they want to do. It was also a week of getting our car back from the body shop. Drive carefully, it is expensive to knock off a mirror and scrap the door.
We did manage to see a movie with a good message that will probably be missed by most people. It is called “Not Easily Broken”. It is geared to mainly a black audience. It has a Christian context and a lot of people will probably just let it slide by.
This was also one of those weeks when I had several deadlines to meet. I had to finish a submission proposal for next year’s National Council of Teacher of English conference. The deadline is always right after Christmas and just when classes are starting. I managed to get that off my plate yesterday. Then the Dean wanted a 2 page version of my academic vita. She asked Thursday and needed it by Monday. I finished that as well. So, those two things are done and I finished all the course work planning I need to do. Now I need to finish the first year review. I have to catalogue what I have done since I have been here. They make you start building the file for your tenure review from the very beginning.
I have two more small paper things to do this week, so I will take a deep breath and start again.
Dana and I got a revise and resubmit on an article that we sent out about two months ago. One review hated it, but gave out very good feedback. The second one liked it. The third seem indifferent, but suggested that we needed more international references. If we want to turn it around they gave us three months. We would like to have it done by the end of February. We have some work to do on that project that I hope to start this week.
I have started work on The ALAN Review work. We had to have pictures taken for the next issue and submitted a brief biography that will be in the next issue. I guess that will serve as a formal introduction to the work we will be doing.
It was another cold week here—20 to 30 at night and 40-60 during the day. Nevertheless, several trees are beginning to flower. I will try to add some pictures.
We think the remodeling on the apartment fire will be done this week. We have been fortunate on that account. We have had to front some of the money, but our insurance has been good. It doesn’t look like we will be out any money out of our own pockets after everything is said and done. Speaking about insurance, you should all check and make sure that your house policy covers replacement value of things and not depreciation value.
Our stake will be hosting a displayed called the “Reflections of Christ” www.reflectionsofChrist.org It was at the Mesa temple visitor center for a long time and has just finished up at the Washington D. C. Temple. It will be here for two weeks. The opening night is a fireside with the photographer and the closing night is a musical performance. Apparently some original music was composed to accompany the photographs. Mark Mabry is the photographer and there is a lot more information at the website. This is an exciting opportunity to share the gospel. We hope a lot of our neighbors will be able to attend the fireside or the display during the week. Oh! I forgot the missionaries were over for dinner and then I went with to visit Sister Lamb. She is a woman in the ward whose husband died just a couple of years ago. We worked as an accountant and property manager for years. But is passion was making violin and fiddles. He has made instruments for classical players and for county players as well. Bill Monroe played one of his fiddles and so has Ricky Skaggs and Roy Acuff. She has about a hundred instruments that she is contracting with broker to sale them as a group. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to get to know her a little better.
This is Dana. Yesterday, for the first time, I taught a class in my field, preparing principals. It is a master’s program for teachers who are interested in getting an endorsement as a principal along with their masters. It was fun to finally get to do what I was trained to do in practice and with my PhD. This class will mean a lot more work for me this semester (I have to visit 16 schools where these people are doing an internship), but I think I will like doing it. This new class and my work with the Relief Society means I have to be very structured with time. Your dad and I both thought, however, that it would be best for our physical and mental health to start working out again. We joined the LSU rec center and played racquetball this Friday and Saturday. I am about a 5 out of 10 on the soreness scale, which means being way out of shape. We hope that we will get in a rhythm to regularly workout.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
BR Week 29
Hi there!
Well, we have rested in the glow of the Utah defeat of the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Tide is Crimson this week because of the flushed cheeks of embarrassment. There was a lot of positive talk around here about Utah football.
We had a few meeting throughout the week. We were able to do some work for school at home and at the office. We start work schedules again tomorrow in earnest. We also saw a couple of matinee movie, just so we could still be on vacation. The weather here has been great. We had some rainy days but it usually clears up after a few hours.
We had stake conference this week. That meant a leadership meeting in the afternoon and an adult meeting in the evening. On Sunday, the meeting was a broadcast from Salt Lake to 21 Stakes in the gulf coast area. We heard from Elder Walter Gonzalez, Sis Beck, Elder Holland, and Elder Uchtdorf. All of the meetings were very good. Beginning with the leadership meeting the messages focused on the little things. The message is that the little things are the big things--reading the scriptures, saying daily prayers, and doing your best to serve your family, friends, and neighbors. I found the whole message timely and important. For example, Sister Beck said that reading the scriptures doesn’t require a system it requires a habit. Reading something every day is the important thing. Attention to other things will come as you stay in the scriptures. In the leadership meeting someone told a story about how Elder Packer asked Elder S Dilworth Young about how to deal with contention at a conference or a meeting. Elder Young said “read the scriptures.” Elder Packer asked “which ones?” Elder Young said “it doesn’t matter.” I was struck with the simply purity of that. Read the scriptures, have faith, work toward making things in all aspects of your life better.
Dana also finished here first bishop’s store house experience. We figured out when and where the truck with the orders comes in and we met the truck to pick up a couple of food orders. The church and the world needs more people doing more things for each other. We are grateful for the acts of charity and service that you have been involved in. If we all did what you kids did this Christmas season the world would be a better place.
We keep discussing the severe poverty that grips so many people in the south. We don’t understand how it continues so unabated. We are trying to understand the things that we might do related to education. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18. We hope that good people will continue to go into education and work in communities that need help through a variety of careers.
I know that this sounds like a Sunday school lesson, but living the gospel with an eye to service helps everyone. I was also struck by how the speakers mentioned the difficult economic times but still talked about the blessings of tithing and living the gospel. Struggles will come but the gospel helps us make sense of the difficult times.
We love you. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
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