Michael as a Pirate
May 4, 2009
If you don’t know him, Mike is the better brother. He was the best until Ed died. Then we became comparative, not superlative. We both did. Well I almost lost my comparative last week. Mike had a stroke and brain bleed. I don’t know much about medicine except for what I see on “House.” Those illnesses are always interesting and the doctors are always only interested in them as a complement to their personal stories. I suppose I am as shallow as they are, as I see all of this through my own filter and how it affects me. And it affects me bad. You don’t have to know much medicine, or watch much television medicine to figure that a brain bleed joins two words together that you don’t want sitting next to each other. As for strokes, I knew/know that Anne Bancroft was all messed up for a long time and then everyone said how great she recovered, but you could always tell.
So I drove to see mike and feared the worst. I suppose the worst is drooling incoherence. It was not the worst. It was vastly better than the worst, although I understand he almost died. He is sitting up under his own power in the required hospital wheelchair, with half of him wholly on board using the same gestures, being as sharp as ever and listening with the intelligence for which he is known. The other side is inactive, asleep. You can’t tell of course, but it’s like a dentist’s visit gone awry. He is fully numb on his left and when he speaks you can tell. He feeds himself making a mess for which he would have been mortified last week, and which he disregards this week.
We talk. I try to let him speak at first and nod indicating I hear him. But, truth is I understand precious little right away. Short sentences I get. But anything longer gets lost on me and I still nod. He tells me not to. He understands that he is largely not understandable. When Anna, my niece is there I talk to her mostly so that she can respond and she keeps up his side of the conversation. Mike, neither stupid nor bothered by this, only adds that she should expand on some topics. He tells her to say more. She is a tad timid and is not as verbose as her dad. No one is verbose as her dad. So as she takes the task of being his general respondent he allows that she does voice the family catching up vocabulary. My kids could speak for me on the word streams of family gossip. But mike always shares the long version and Anna not.
He wears out after an hour or two and starts drifting off. He has the stamina of a little old man and looks a bit like a pirate speaking out of one side of his mouth, and sounds like a very drunk pirate. But all of those ungenerous observations aside he is wholly Michael. He is sharp, impatient, completely patient, kind, abrupt, funny, serious, demanding, self effacing, loving and eager to get back to the next thing on his lengthy and demanding personal agenda. While easy to exhaust, and visually frustrated he is clearly not feeling sorry for Michael. He still has an enormous amount to do. He has a job to do, five kids, to get finished with and out of the house, he has that car to work on, those thirty three books to read, and a demanding wife to accommodate. In short he is a busy man who will take this in stride. This may sound foolishly hopeful, as Anne Bancroft was messed up and Mike is messed up. But I know Michael.
He will be that patient on House who defies the doctors, insults the staff and changes their lives. He will. That’s is who he is. Until he finishes he will get no kind words from me. He is my older brother, who has picked on me mercilessly for years. I will call him names and taunt him and tell him I expect him to hold up his end of the deal. He is the better brother. Let’s see him act like it.
Christ said “take up your bed and walk.” Not lie there and be a weenie. So, Mike, let’s see what you made of. Get up, get better, kick my butt.
Writing and Donald Miller
April 22, 2009
Spaghetti Farmers from History
April 1, 2009
For MacKensie: the Pasta Queen.
Valentines Day: Serious Implications
February 13, 2009
it’s viral for a good reason…
Be careful out there.
Early Shepard Fairey
February 12, 2009
…then there’s the truly unfortunate photo op that Thomas Dewey had with life magazine, casting into doubt that his work with the press was as deft as previously thought.
This was forever immortalized by his campaign poster that was subsequently tagged on the governor’s residence in three colored paint.
Primary Resources and MLK
February 5, 2009
A starting place for docs
http://usasearch.gov/search?v%3Aproject=firstgov-web&query=%22martin+luther+King%22
a High School referent to primary resource data
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/
More docs
Yet the GPO had a different set altogether
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html
Video: try and avoid YouTube…
Hulu, Daily Motion, archive.org
audio
http://www.archive.org/details/MLKDream
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbank.htm
Texts on line in whole and part
Google book search
and Google Scholar
USASearch.gov: “martin luther King”
February 5, 2009
Book Report: Bearing the Cross
February 2, 2009
Bearing the Cross: Bio about MLK
Bearing the Cross by David J. Garrow is the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning bio of Martin Luther King. It is a rather amazing text that gives the detailed history of Dr. King that is detailed to the point of each week of his life working toward each hour of his day as we march inexorably toward his final hours.
The themes of the text truthfully reflect the messages that drove this intelligent, burdened man. He stood resolute against a world that preferred order to justice. The book is neither artful nor clever. It is resolute: Each word necessary additions to the paragraphs and pages that all collect to a full and far too short summary of a man.
Throughout the text one can see Dr. King’s penumbra still visible around each person in his life. The voice that this book carries is weighted by the dozens of people the author interviewed about King and the richness of the response that each had about this significant man. His message, his desire, his integrity, his weakness each evident and challenging the reader.
Much of the book is derived from the thousands of documents that the FBI amassed illegally through the near-constant surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s over-reaching, paranoid troops. It is sad and disturbing that the most detailed diarists in his life were the mocking and suited men with earphones recording his conversations to use against him.
Through every chapter one sees a man pulled by a strong cord toward his destiny. A man who was not heroic but who was cast by his God as a hero. A man who had failings and commonnesses apparent to all who knew him, yet still he was molded to become what he had to be. This is the “destiny” part of his life that is hard to deny when reading the text. Interestingly he was not put up on a pedestal by those who knew him best neither before nor after his death. But at the same time it was clear that he was not like you and me. He seemed to follow his call against his wishes and in reading this book one hears the unspoken words “let this cup pass from me.”
I don’t know much more than the average person about Dr. King and the civil rights movement, and was not a giant fan of King, but in reading this book I was wholly moved by his life and convinced that he was cast to be what he came to be. From his unwillingness to amass personal property (much to his family’s dismay); to his becoming one of the youngest recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize (whose honor and cash prize he deflected to his organization, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC); to being Time’s Man of the Year; to his appetites ; to his sense of humor—he was not a carefully packaged commodity, nor a televangelist. This book shows him as an everyman, if everyman had an unswerving call to justice over order; to equity over peace; to what things could be over what things tend to be.
This text gives the reader a three dimensional vision of and three dimensional man. He was not hero but he was heroic.
Blog Jumping
January 29, 2009
Ripping off the fine people at Back Reaction
So I have a few blogs I read every now and then. Reading a lot of blogs is rather like reading other people’s mail. And while I am not opposed to that, per se, it is still necessarily a procrastination technique, and I have far too many of those as is. Not the least of which is good parenting. But more on that later.
Now I know that one is not supposed to just grab all the stuff off of another blog and claim it as the results of their own mining, anymore than one should descend on poor old John Sutter and overrun his mill and take his gold. But claim jumping is tough to resist.
Look at these crazy cool links that Sabine Hossenfelder (theoretical physicist from Canada, really) and Stefan Scherer (from Frankfurt) have on their way cool blog:
This is crazy cool as it tells me artistically that which I fear to be true in my own heart every day.
From chris Jordan dot com Yowee what a great way to show what you are saying…
This is just fun as it is the low-tech way to be high tech…
Look over their Blog and you will see stuff about the Plank phase and entropy and specialization and god. What bright folks who write ever so well.
Thnks S&S,
kevin
Links for the APSA talk
January 27, 2009
Us Gov sites
An important site yet will be known by most. Much primary data.
Through the University of North Texas, but serves as a point to request docs from members of congress
Another source for primary data.
Links to PDF stats that all should know
The US gov meta search tool
The Rest
Serious archive of media. Major tool
Large archive site with primary data
The DC paper, Roll Call sponsors this tool for researching congress votes
Sample of an active, partisan sponsored blog that includes streaming embed files.
GMU Center for History and New Media
The George Mason materials seem the best on line. This site takes some time to discover the many offerings. Note their “copyright explanation section,” that links to copyright.gov.
Google Earth
an important app/site. Imporatnt because of the mix of site and application
While this search tool is limited to many for-pay destinations. It is worth knowing the direction of academic search tools. Also note the full-text possibilities.
Great site with tools and archive and links. Sort of a “secondary-school” flavor.
Worth noting when corporate interests get involved. Example of what’s wrong with advert sites.
What is replacing the print papers. Lost of fluff as time passes.
Not mapquest.
Political Compass-diagnostic (bias)
A biased albeit interesting tool for students to note categorization.
Politico.com
A political (no doubt partisan) site that is clean and easy to use.
The academic version of WordPress.
Slate is Newsy of course, but is an example of a streaming media mix. With great blog use.
Stanford Accessibility Program
Looked and found little on assistive technology
The entry level for research but can be shared and stored etc…
Nice reference site.
Tech should include handhelds
“death of E mail” thoughts.
Social Networking, Blogs, Twitter.
Cut equick demos of al that new and ha not been seen.
Need hip flashy timeline app, and concept map use.
