Ron Tanner » City Life

Apologies to My Web Host and Its Eastern European Tech Team

rtanner — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:34:39 +0000

The last time I had a problem with my web host, my blog had disappeared. Completely disappeared. That’s 160+ entires that cover my weekly blogging for the last four years. Was I freaking out? Yes, I was freaking out. When I called tech support, I found myself talking to somebody in Eastern Europe. Sarajevo, I imagined. Eastern European tech support is more or less competent. I mean, they get the job done most of the time if the problem isn’t a big one. But this was a big problem and I didn’t have much confidence in this too long-distance help, especially when the tech I was talking to asked me three times for the name of my domain: he couldn’t quite spell it. As I was in no mood to fool around, I said: “I’ll give you one more chance to get it right.” Then he got it.

By law, you are allowed to speak to American tech help on American soil if you request to do so. Just say, “I want to speak to somebody in America,” and they will have to transfer you. No kidding.

But let me say this: I could never learn Croatian or Polish or Russian as well as Eastern European tech support have learned English. No way. Still, when I’m freaking out about my vanished website, I’m not happy about having to talk to somebody who isn’t a native speaker of English. I fear that something really important is NOT going to get through the translation. By the way, this was the third time that my website had disappeared. I was convinced that my web host had fallen on hard times and had resorted to cheap off-shore labor. Such is the diminished quality of life we Americans must suffer etc. etc.

I raised hell with my Eastern European tech help, blaming my web host for incompetence and reminding them that I have seven websites on the web host’s servers. Seven. And, no, I would not buy the file back-up service they tried to sell me because my files are missing. “Don’t you DARE,” I said. “Just find my files!”

They did find my files and, as a courtesy, restored them for free. And I got my blog back. I felt vindicated. I felt like one tough cookie. We Americans know how to get what we want, don’t we? I sent a long email to tech support (that is, the Americans who run the company), asking my web host to take my concerns seriously. I said I didn’t want to talk to Eastern European tech team any more.

Just last night, my blog disappeared again. But this time, the disappearance gave me pause because I had been working on my site — I had been the last one to touch the thing and I saw that the last file I transferred was there but everything else was gone. Then it dawned on me that, oh my god, the file transfer program I had been using was the culprit. Yes, my Filezilla FTP program has a way of erasing my entire site. Maybe yours too. I’m not sure what goes wrong but I think the program stalls and then, if you click some more to get it to respond, it misunderstands the commands and then a request comes up: “Delete current file?” Which the program may read as “Delete current files?” And then because I always move too fast and never read the fine print, I click YES. And then, boom!, everything is gone, even though the program (because it’s slow and buggy) doesn’t show that everything is gone.

So it’s not my web host, it’s me. I’m the problem. I’ve been the problem all along because the problem started just after I started using this file transfer program. So I’ve been sending angry emails to my web host, perhaps causing some tech manager grief, and demanding satisfaction from the Eastern European tech team and all along they weren’t to blame! I feel badly about this. Incidents like this make me realize that sometimes the incompetence we fear is, at bottom, our own.

When I called tech support this time, an American answered. I guess my web host had indeed listened to my emails after all! This made me feel worse because, really, i was expecting the Eastern European tech team again and I was planning on being very nice to them. I was very nice to Phillip, my American tech support. I explained that my blog had “disappeared” and that this wasn’t the first time it had happened. Notice that I didn’t blame them this time . . . but I didn’t blame myself either. You must pay — $75 — to have your mistakenly erased files restored. In fact, Phillip told me this.

I said, “Phillip, can you find my files?”
He said, “You have to pay for that.”
I said, “Just humor me and see if you can find them.”
It took a while but he found them.
Then he said, “You can sign up for the $12.95 per year back-up plan and restore the files yourself.”
I said, “Let’s do it.”

He signed me up. I restored my files. And that’s why you’re reading this blog right now from a much humbler man — with apologies to my web host and its ever-patient Eastern European tech team.

Tags: America, quality of life, web host

Speeding Tickets & The Quality of Our Daily Life

rtanner — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:50:25 +0000

I received another speeding ticket yesterday — my third this month. These are tickets issued by the city’s new robo speed-trap cameras, strategically placed along roads you’d never think would have speed traps. The offending speeds are 38 MPH in a 20 MPH zone or 41 in a 30 MPH zone. Miniscule speeds on roads you’d swear were 35 MPH zones at least.

If I have pulled in 3 tickets in a month — and I’m no drag-racer — you can bet that just about every driver in the city is getting a ticket once a month, if not every week. You’d think everybody would be up in arms but the city is smart about it: the speeding violations cost a flat $40 and don’t go on your record (i.e., you don’t get “points”). As a result, most speeders won’t protest the violation. They’ll pay the fine and shrug it off as a nusiance.

I’m happy the city’s getting rich suddenly, though I’m not convinced any of the money will be put to good use because it seems city governments are doomed by their own bureaucracy and scattered incompetence. Certainly, this doesn’t help relations between citizens and their government. Buying a bunch of robo-radar traps is like buying into slot machines. It’s a dirty business that generates little good will. There are plenty of reported abuses, like the case of the guy who was fined at random because the photo in the ticket was too dark to read so, apparently, somebody took a wild guess about the identity of the speeder. It took the alleged speeder 7 months to get the violation cleared (if you don’t pay your fine, you can’t renew your license). After that ordeal, he said he would register his car in another state.

Incerasingly, our world is monitored by cameras but it’s not because of the new fear of terrorism. The proliferation of automated cameras is the product, mostly, of budget cut-backs. The age-old fear of the robot has come to pass in the most mundane way: state and local governments simply don’t have the money to hire and train people to do the jobs that have been given over to robotic cameras. For example, there are some toll roads you can’t drive without a prepaid toll-pass that automatically feeds your fee to the camera toll-reader. The end result of this automation is that we get fees, fines, and tickets at every turn but there’s no way to get a refund if there’s a mistake. It’s just too much of a hassle. And good luck trying to get anybody on the phone.

Sad to say, this is about the diminishing quality of life in America. As our nation becomes a poorer one, our governments are getting less generous and less tolerant. And, because we don’t have the resources to come up with better solutions, we are resorting to short-cuts and easy answers that sloppily address the questions of the day. How can your township make more money? Up its surveillance of daily traffic! This might make more money for local government but now, when you or I drive a quiet city street, we may do so ill at ease and a little irritated, wary of being watched and worried that tomorrow or the next day we’ll get an unwelcome notice in the mail.

Tags: America, quality of life, robot

My Mistake!

rtanner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:48:20 +0000

Today I made a mistake I’ve never made in my 21 years of teaching. Before I tell you how it went, let me give you some background. These past few years, I’ve been worried about what seems to be a new breed of students. Demographers call them the “millennials.” Generally, they’re characterized as thoroughly pampered, underprepared, and naively over-confident, a combination that guarantees their disappointment in the real world and, more to my point, makes them difficult to teach. They seem to need a lot more care and cultivation than their predecessors. Apparently, they’ve been encouraged to think that they are wonderful no matter what they do or don’t do; and this often comes crashing in on their heads in college, where teachers are less inclined to lie and pamper. The height of irony is that the baby boomers, the most iconoclastic generation, has produced this generation of most conformist and coddled children. Still, I love them and love to teach them.

That’s why, this year I decided to redouble my effort at fine-tuning my teaching to address these students’ needs. Does that mean I want to coddle them? No, I do not. But I can’t teach them if I can’t reach them. So I’m making time for more one-on-one conferences and, like a high school teacher, I review the syllabus every class — something I vowed I’d never do. And I repeat, again and again, the aims and objectives of every class. And I appeal to their self-interest in more pointed ways, viz.: you want power, don’t you? If you write well, you gain power: you influence people, you make things happen. Oh, and one more thing: I ask all of my students to write me a letter about themselves, which they email to me a couple of days before the semester starts. This pulls them in more quickly and perhaps makes them more receptive to teaching.

Generally, it’s more work keeping the fires stoked in the second semester. Our winter break is short and students return already a bit bruised and jaded. But this semester I was readier than ever: I’d done all my prep work and had had all of my material down. I’d spent most of the break writing an online text book for a new class I’m teaching, about publishing and editing. So today, the first day of spring classes, I was doing well. Walking to my last class of the day, in fact, I was congratulating myself on having started this semester with more good will and careful preparation than I had in many years.

My last class of the day, publishing and editing, is a lab class. I’ve been teaching in the university’s media lab for four years. No big deal. But today, as the hour neared, I was puzzled. Nobody was showing up. Then, right at class time, one student did. He introduced himself. i invited him to sit at the computer next to me. After he checked his email, he said, “Oh, no — have I made a mistake? Class was at 3:00.” It was now 4:35. I felt my face burn with the realization that, for the first time ever, I had missed a class. Missed it by a mile. Every department has a professor who does this routinely: the feckless, marginally competent oldster who miraculously has managed to keep his job despite his laughable reputation. But I’m NOT that guy. I’m Mr. Reliable. I’m the guy who gets things done, the guy who follows through. But not today. No, right here, right now, I was, I am, that Mr. Clueless.

Later, Jill tried to make me feel better by reminding me of other lapses I’ve made when overworked, like the time I showed up for a radio interview a day early (that’s more my style). Buy I’m NOT overworked. I’m not distracted. I wasn’t unprepared. And I didn’t forget. I just assumed that this lab class, like the six others I’d taught, was scheduled for 4:30 PM. Was that hubris? Ironically, it appears that my chair was trying to do me a favor by scheduling the class earlier in the day.

Years ago, a mistake like this would have freaked me out; I mean, I’d be due for a week of sleepless nights. I’ve learned that in making mistakes, there’s not much to be learned from dwelling on it or picking at it like a scab. I sent a note to the students. It was a funny note and an authoritative note — you can’t let something like this shake you. It’s like discovering your fly is down while you’re making a speech. Just zip it up and carry on. So I’m carrying on.

But here’s the rub. In order to teach well and exact as much work from students as possible, you can’t make a big mistake like this. Now, the advantage is theirs. Whether consciously or not, they know it and they will use it. In short: I OWE them. So I have to make the best of it and take what comes and hope that I teach so hard and so well that these gentle souls will forget all about this first day, when — unbeknownest to them –I was in my office eagerly prepping for a class I would not get to teach.

Tags: baby boomers, millennials, teaching. students

How to Sell A Book in America: the 66-City Tour

rtanner — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:47:52 +0000

You may recall that last spring I awoke with the realization that I needed to buy a Sprinter van, convert it into a camper, then tour the nation to promote my new book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. The van is nearing completion. And my publisher and I are working feverishly to book a 66-city tour. That’s what you can do if you are barn-storming a book tour in a camper van: go anywhere and stop anywhere. There are limits, of course. I mean, I’ve got to get back home eventually because I do have a wife, a job, and responsibilities. As it is, I’ll be on the road for 4 months straight. It’s kind of daunting. And the set-up for this thing is mind-boggling. The publisher has given me a dedicated media liaison who does all of the groundwork. Her work and mine combined amount to 8 hours a day, every day. This will go on for months.

You might wonder why it’s so time-consuming. Here’s our strategy: 1) we target the best-bet indie book store in a particular town, then we query the local historic and preservaiton socieites in that town to co-sponsor the reading. The historic/preservation socieites have been really enthusiastic about my visit because, as a licensed home-inspector and a hard-core Do-it-yourselfer, I am offering a lot of value for free: workshops, talks, slide-shows about my experience restoring our big old house and other stuff relating to restoration etc. Jill and I have been building our expertise on YouTube through how-to videos. And we run the Houselove website, which has a national readership. In other words, the book represents a convergence of other efforts and interests, which now all come into play.

2) Once we enlist the partnership of the local historic/preservation society in a particular town, we tell the targeted book store that we have local support. You’d be surprised how many book stores don’t think this is enough. Some want to know if I have family or friends in that town and ask for even more guarantees. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to book me — and my general-readership book — in a small store when we’re offering so much (see items that follow). We enlisted the partnership of TWO historic societies for a proposed reading at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, and still Powell’s rejected us. They said we would not draw enough.

I know times are hard. But short of signing an affidavit swearing that we’ll bring a tour-bus load of supporters, what more can we do? And what are the skittish book stores doing on that particular night if they’re not bringing in, say, David Sedaris? All we’re asking is that they give us some space, put the event on their calendar, and send the word around. We’ll do the rest. In the case of Portland, we are going to create an event for the two historic societies and, chances are, we’ll get more press than we would for a book store reading. But my preference is to anchor these in indie book stores because I believe in indie book stores. We writers can help — or try to help — indie book stores, but the indie stores have to be willing to give us a chance.

3) Once we have the historic/preservation societies partnered with the book store, we go to the local press to see if we can get a book review. Then we go to local radio and TV to set up an interview the day-of or the day before. Believe it or not, getting on local morning TV talk shows is not difficult because they’re always scrambling for material, especially if the topic — like old house restoration — has local appeal. Next, we search out the local book clubs and see if we can get them interested.

4) Then we post the event in the local media outlets and calendars. All told, this booking/PR process takes at least a month to work through for each city. And this has to be done at least 3 months in advance for every city. And we’re doing 66 cities. It begs the question: who has time for this? The answer is simple: NOBODY! I certainly couldn’t do it without my dedicated media liaison. And this kind of effort really doesn’t make sense for every book. It will work best for the general-readership book. From Animal House to Our House is a good fit because it has a love story and an HGTV/TOH angle and a David Vs. Goliath inspirational angle and an Animal House angle. I don’t know that I’ll ever have another book that hits as many targets. And, frankly, that’s a relief because it makes my head swim to think of doing this again.

5) Other promotional gambits involve my writing articles for old house magazines like Victorian Homes, present at DIY shows, and give talks at preservation conferences. Further, it helps to get home-town press interestedin the story with interviews and photoshoots. We have a magazine photographer coming over tomorrow for an all-day shoot. Local interest has worked well in my case: look for articles in the Urbanite, Baltimore magazine, and maybe an excerpt in Style. Then an appearance on Dan Roderick’s mid-day talk show on Feb. 2 (from 1-2:00 PM). And more, I hope.

In sum, the idea is to bring all of these forces together so that word-of-mouth carries the name of your book far and wide. Notice that I haven’t mentioned book reviews? Book reviews are the wild card in this game. For an indie-press book, you can never tell who will consider it worth a review. And that’s the primary advantage of having a big-press book: the big magazines and newspapers are much more likey to pick it up.

As for the 66-city tour, mine may be the last of its kind. The world is transitioning to something else when it comes to book promotion, although none of us knows quite that that something might be. I’ve heard people tout the podcast or the video-cast or the guest blog as the way to go, but can any of these virtual efforts truly replace the power and gratification of a face-to-face meeting with readers in a town you’ve traveled to for the express purpose of making something good happen when a writer meeds curious strangers?

If you’re interested in camper van conversions, here’s a video link to my latest installment on that project.

If you want to see the shape of the 66-city tour thus far, click here.

If you still haven’t seen the FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE video trailer, you really must.

Tags: book tour, camper van, from Animal House to Our House, indie book stores

Our Hospice Kitty Cat

rtanner — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:39:26 +0000

Last week, Jill and I adopted a cat that was supposedly seven years old. Abandoned or lost, he had been out-of-doors for as long as a year. He was very underweight, his coat dull and matted. But he was in good spirits and very sociable. We didn’t want a kitten because we didn’t feel like dealing with kitten antics. And kittens are something of a gamble. With an older cat, you can see what you’re getting. Or so it seems.

This cat — we’ve named him Newton — was so calm and affectionate, we took him home that day. He didn’t mind the car ride and calmly watched the traffic. He seemed copasetic with everything — our dogs, our other cat, our routine. He found the litter box right away and later when he couldn’t make it to the basement, where the box is, he did his business in the bath tub. He slept with us from the first night. None of that I’m-in-hiding-for-five-days-in-a-closet-till-the-coast-seems-clear stuff for him. When he’s hungry, he paws at our knees. The minute we pick him up, he purrs.

As soon we got him home, however, we realized that he wasn’t simply underfed. He was, he is, an old cat. Much older than seven. After a couple of days, we realized something else: he’s ailing. So we took him to the vet. And, sure enough, Newton’s kidneys are going. This is common in old cats.

The vet praised us for taking on such an old cat. She estimates that Newton is ten. We grant that he may even be twelve. After she got the test results, the vet said, “You could take him back,” suggesting we’d gotten a bad bargain. True, we did not want an old cat, and especially one that needed hospice care. But, no, we’re not taking Newton back. He’s a great cat. Besides, he’s got nowhere to go.

Every day, Jill and I look at Newton sleeping nearby, then we exchange a sad smile and exclaim, “Poor Newton — he’s so old!” Then we think, Isn’t that just like life, to sneak in a sucker punch when you’re not looking?

Newton still has his appetite and now he’s on a special diet. When he stops eating, we’ll know that his time has come. That could be another month or a another year. We dread the day we’ll have to take Newton in, but we can’t regret giving him a home. Every evening, he sits between Jill and me when we watch TV. To look as us together, you’d think he’s been our cat for all these years. He’s adapted so quickly and easily, tolerating even the dogs’ nosy tail-end sniffs, it’s as though he knows he’s got to make the most of his time. We’re falling in love with him, of course. I tell Jill that this is not an occasion for sadness. We cannot let this break our hearts — because we’re giving Newton a grand time and enjoying his company immensely. And, in showing him all the good that love can do, why shouldn’t we celebrate?

Tags: cat, Jill

Jill’s Victorian Office

rtanner — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:29:24 +0000

We’ve just finished restoring Jill’s office. You may remember that our house was a fraternity for ten notorious years. Jill’s office was one of the less-destroyed rooms. It was notable, though, for its wall-sized painting of a rebel flag. It’s also the only room with a big arch, which was crumbling. We had stabilized the room but weren’t sure what we’d do to make it the showcase room that Jill wanted. I wasn’t eager to work on her room because one of the things she wanted was to rehang the door to the porch so that the door would swing from right to left instead of left to right. Have you ever tried to re-hang an old door? Oh my. Our renovation work on this room took six months — three times longer than we had planned. But that’s the way old-house rehab goes. If we didn’t think we could get such work done quickly, we might not be so quick to start it. So, always we dream of things being fast and easy, even though — deep down — we know it won’t be so.

It’s the same kind of hope that keeps people buying lotto tickets. You might get lucky! If our species didn’t believe in luck, there would be too many things we’d never try. So we moved Jill out of her office and into the TV room way back in March. Then I stripped the woodwork in her office. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again any time the topic comes up: I’d rather do sit ups, hundreds of them, than strip paint from old wood. That said, I’ve gotten really good at it. And we’ve arrived at a method that works well at restoring wood — which you can learn by watching our very popular Youtube video: “How to Strip Paint From Wood.” Stripping wood is like long-distance running. You’ve got to hang in there.

After stripping, then refinishing the woodwork, including the room’s original oak mantel (Jill’s not allowed to do paint-stripping any more for health reasons), we went after the wallpaper. Victorians loved their wallpaper — and they wall-papered everything, including their ceilings. We’ve got the stuff all over the house. We advise that you don’t go after old wall paper until you absolutely have to. Life is complicated enough.

Then there was lots of plastering, then new electricity, including a pair of antique schones over teh fireplace (don’t forget, the Victorians had very little use for electricity). Then refinishing the floor and the radiator, then hanging the porch door so that it opens from left to right instead of right to left (so that Jill can get a breeze at her desk), and then reinishing and installing antique crown molding (a pile of which we found incredibly cheap at a salvage warehouse). And installation of Jill’s cool library ladder (which she found on Craig’s list, of all places). Then, at last, the fun part: building stuff.

I built two window seats, which Jill helped design. Her designs always demand much more time than I want to take. In this instance, she insisted on having faux doors to make the seats look more antique. I built it to her specifications and, as usual, I must admit that she was right. After that, finally, I got to put together the ten-foot-long, eight-foot-high Victorian display cabinet that Jill had found at a local auction. This is something Jill does to make my life more exciting: she finds interesting architectural artifacts at local auctions, then comes home and says, with much excitement: “Guess what I got today!” At which point, I draw a deep breath, grip the nearest solid object, and utter: “What?”

Once, when Jill and I were at a big outdoor auction, I turned my back for a minute and the next thing I knew she had bought a big, iron-frame Victorian fish tank. It now lies in pieces in our basement. She can’t bring herself to sell it and suggests that we could use it as a terrarium. The Victorians loved terrariums.

The display case is cool but, like the acquarium, it was in pieces. I’ve never been a fan of puzzles but, in the case of furniture, I kind of like trying to figure out how the pieces go together. The display case came together nicely. Jill uses it to show off her considerable Steiff toy animal collection. Seems to me you could display anything in a cabinet like that — old socks, say — and it’d look good.

Now, Jill has a showcase office. And she’s feeling a little pressure because she says she’s got to keep it neat to do it justice. This makes me laugh because we’re not neat people and my little cubby hole of an office, on the third floor, demands nothing of me. Which is why it’s always a mess.

To see more of JIll’s way cool office, click here: Jill’s Victorian Office!

Tags: Jill, stripping paint, Victorian

The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student

rtanner — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:27:08 +0000

When I began teaching a course called “Writing for the Web” three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the internet, and even less about what they need to do to become effective communicators online.

The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster. Twitter. Facebook. Given that (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation) the average 18-year-old spends almost eight hours daily immersed in media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren’t kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games?

But video games do not create savvy users of the internet. Video games predate the internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and X-box. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself–who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The internet’s chief similarity to video games is that both are siphoning off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the internet. As a delivery system for TV, film, and games, the internet has proven itself a premier source of entertainment. And that’s all that most young people know about the internet.

Why wouldn’t we educate students in more sophisticated uses of the internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world’s time and attention? I’m not talking about a course on “How to Understand the Internet” or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (though this is useful, obviously). I’m talking of the need for students to understand and produce texts online–essential skills for life beyond college.

Look at the strategic plan of any American college and you will find an emphasis on helping students “meet the demands of the information age.” But walk into many college classrooms and you will see only a single computer at the front of the room. In most cases, that computer functions as an overhead projector. Where are the computers for students?Apparently, many professors believe that students’ ownership of computer notebooks and pads somehow guarantees that students will learn all they need to know about computers. But who is teaching students how to write, say, a marketing report or an historical overview for an online readership? I am surprised at the number of my colleagues who prohibit the use of computers in their classrooms because they fear that students will “surf the web” during a lecture.

The absence of computers in the classroom sends the message that computers are ancillary to learning. This misconception of the computer is due, in part, to the fact that the majority of faculty are Baby Boomers who didn’t need computer technology to succeed as professionals. That’s why most university professors have not integrated computer use into their courses.To most of them, it seems, the computer is a fancy typewriter, a means of sending memos, and, generally, a distraction. Students write papers on their computers, but those papers are handed in as hard copy. Never mind that the world outside of college does very little business with hard copy. In short, there exists a huge divide between the college classroom and the world outside, where work and life thrive on the internet.

Presumably, we want our students to have an impact on the world. But how can that happen if we don’t teach them how to use the primary tool that would make that impact possible? To be fair, there are some important developments taking place in the Digital Humanities movement, which aims to expand the notion of “legitimate” research by including nonlinear sources, such as videos, digital images, and hyperlinks: why not augment texts with digital tools? There are also a number of professors of Composition and Rhetoric who are teaching digital literacy. But such efforts remain marginal. One of my students recently wrote, “The world is moving closer and closer to being a completely technological place, and those who don’t understand it are going to be left behind.”

It seems clear to everyone that our increasingly technological world demands technologically adept citizens. Start with the simplest act of online communication: e-mail. Recent studies have shown a significant decline (59%) in e-mail usage among teenagers (Pew internet & American Life Project, Comscore Media Metrix report, Neilson report).Why? E-mail is for business, not entertainment and socializing. Young people have abandoned e-mail for text messaging. I often hear faculty members complain about the ineptness of student e-mails—whether as queries or as a means of presenting proposals—but very few professors seek to rectify the situation by teaching effective online communication in their classes. They don’t seem to understand that emails are as important as more formal correspondence, even though, ironically, the professors’ own daily use of emails underscores this fact.

How can discipline-specific computer teaching begin? Let’s start with the fact that every academic discipline makes use of databases. Do your students know how to access these databases? Do they know how to write articles of their own that might appear in these databases? Are they aware of the ethical dimensions of placing information online? Those studying social work, for example, should know that all client records and reports can be subpoenaed. Social-work students, therefore, need to be aware of confidentiality laws. These students also need to know that any report submitted online will remain online forever. There is no such thing as expunging a record from the internet. This is just one of countless examples of internet protocol and online constraintsthat impinge upon a student’s understanding of a particular field of study.

Nearly every discipline now has an online journal and may also have blogs and special-interest web sites. Until quite recently, online literary journals were considered inferior to their print counterparts. That’s no longer the case. My students should be reading online journals, but they should also understand how an online journal differs from a traditional print journal. Online journals make use of multimedia—video, audio, photos, chat rooms—that are not available to print journals. The rhetorical package online is very different than in print. My students hope to write for online journals—in addition to or in lieu of print journals. They may also have an opportunity one day to manage or edit an online journal of their own. If they have not studied the medium, if they have not written in the style of online journals, if they have not analyzed how online journals are keyed to rhetorical aims that are specific to the internet, then they will be unprepared for the field they hope to enter after graduation.

American colleges and universities send 1.7 million graduates with bachelor degrees into the world each year (National Center for Education Statistics).Why would we not give them every advantage? As we help students strengthen their knowledge and ability to write, read, and communicate effectively, we must prepare them for the online cultures that will be central to their private and professional lives. Undergraduate writing majors at my university end up in a variety of fields, but they share at least one thing: much of their work finds and defines itself on the internet – that’s where the readers go; that’s where the markets reside. If using the computer to write, read, and produce texts is not yet central to their identity as professionals, it will be soon. It should be central to their education, too.

This essay first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 7, 2011

Tags: computer, internet, technology, writing

Goodbye, Simon

rtanner — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:07:51 +0000

Our big brazen tabby, Simon, got out of the house last week, ran into the street, and got hit by a car. He was 12 and in great health. I love a cat that knows what he wants – the kind that’s wholly comfortable anywhere with anybody and unapologetic about his needs. Simon was all that.

He came to us through a consignment store, left among the furniture an old woman had to surrender when she was committed to a nursing home. He had been thoroughly spoiled and, as a result, he knew no fear. At the consignment store, he lay wherever he pleased – sometimes on the floor in the middle of an aisle during the busiest times. Jill feared somebody would step on him because, who expects to see a cat laid out, napping on his back, where everybody walks?

Jill, who was working at the consignment store then, brought Simon home to meet me because she thought him exceptional. If he liked you (and he liked just about everybody), Simon would — upon being picked up — put one paw on each of your shoulders and then nibble your earlobe. It was as close as any cat might get to hugging. After he spent one night with us, I said, “We’re keeping him.” He was four at the time.

He became my cat and spent much of his time shadowing me. Every morning, he’d stretch with me as I did my yoga. I’d give him a good massage. He’d stay up late into the night while I worked in my office. If he wasn’t on my lap, he was nearby. One of the many things I liked about him was that he wasn’t a needy cat. He wouldn’t stay on my lap long, for instance, but he always came back for more. He wasn’t importuning in any way — never a complainer. But he could be a pushy little shit.

Always his tail was flicking. It seemed he could never relax fully unless he was sound asleep. His flick-flick-flicking tail was a sign of his inner restlessness: there was always something to do. He loved to escape to the out-of-doors. Usually we caught him on his way out, but, one time, he got out and stayed out for three days. We resorted to leaving the front door open (with only the security gate closed) and, finally, he came in, waking us at two in the morning as he padded over our bed.

We installed the iron cresting on our brick garden walls in part to keep Simon in. We discovered that he would leap to the sidewalk from the top of the brick wall – a five-foot jump. Then he’d take off. Usually, he’d sneak through the bushes in front of the row houses on our block and end up in a fenced garden halfway down the block. We never imagined he’d cross the street. We’d get him back by clanging an empty cat food can with the flat of a kitchen knife. It almost always worked. But sometimes we’d have to go out a few times before he’d answer.

We were dismayed to discover, just this year, that — as formidable as the iron cresting may be — it didn’t keep Simon from getting to the top of the garden’s brick wall and then, in an impressive leap, hurling himself over the top of the garden gate. We re-doubled our efforts to watch him. But this last time, he bested us again. Apparently, while I was working on the front doors, he sneaked out, maybe when I turned my back for a moment to grab my paint brush. We noticed him missing within 30 minutes. And we did our usual search of the block. When he didn’t answer after our third round, I worried — as I always worried. I knew that he could tempt fate only so many times. Cats do not belong outside, especially in the city. They are no match for the hard world.

When we got to the vet’s ER, we found Simon in an oxygen tent. He seemed to be doing okay. His hind legs were immobilized. I figured he’d broken his hips. Jill and I were ready to do whatever we had to – it’d probably be a long convalescence, we told each other. When the veterinarian saw us after doing some x-rays, the news was the worst case. Simon was paralyzed, had a broken hip, and ruptured bladder. It was a triple whammy and the best prognosis was that he might be able to drag his legs around with minimal function and feeling.

Our choice was to put him through weeks, even months, of tests and surgery — with little hope that he would be able to go to the bathroom without special help, much less walk again — or we could let him go. Simon was a runner, a restless soul. I wasn’t about to relegate him to the kind of frustration and pain the vet described just to have him by my side for a while longer. So we let him go.

I can’t imagine much that’s harder than holding the animal you love so dearly as the vet is putting him down. We told ourselves the good things: Our neighbor got him out of the street the moment he was hit. He wasn’t in pain at any time because he was immediately paralyzed. He got to see us soon after and we stayed with him during his last minutes.

But, oh, the loss. It took us days to recover our equilibrium. And the emptiness left by his absence echoes loudly. But what is there to say or do afterwards? We go on. We carry his memory close. We try not to flinch when we think we hear his call or see his tail darting in the shadows of our hallways.

Tags: cat, cats, pets, Simon

In Praise of the Ultra-competent

rtanner — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:05:02 +0000

I was trying to extract a plastic produce bag from its dispenser at the grocery store yesterday — and having a hard time of it, since I was holding a basket in one hand and a bag of potatoes in the other. The dispenser pedastal was wobbling like a dizzy stork. And I had three plastic bags unspooling, unable to get leverage to tear one off. But then the wobbling stopped and the pedastal righted itself abruptly, and I was able, at last, to extricate a single bag. That’s when I noticed that another shopper, nearby, had casually but deliberately put her foot on the base of the dispenser’s pedastal. She had seen my trouble and quietly offered assistance while, at the same time, bagging plums for herself. She didn’t even look my way for a nod of thanks. It was an elegant example of inobtrusive, highly effective multi-tasking and the mark, I decided, of the Ultra-competent.

The Ultra-competent (UC) is detail-oriented, thoroughly organized, and good at doing just about everything. She meets her deadlines with such aplomb, she just might have time enough to do your job too. The world could not run without Ultra-competents. About one of every ten people you meet will be a UC. The rest, well, they might try hard and be well-intentioned but you don’t necssarily want them on your team. The UC, on the other hand, is the one you want at your bedside in the ER — she’ll make sure the nurse don’t give you the wrong pill. She’s the one you want looking after your cats while you’re away on holiday. She’s the designated driver. The finder of the house keys. The one who’s got your back.

The UC is not to be confused with the Perfectionist, who often gets little done because he’s overly careful. Nor is the UC to be confused with the know-it-all, who is a wholly different creature and insufferable. What makes the UC so admirable is that he doesn’t flaunt his abilities. He just does what has to be done. On time. And usually better than anyone else. As a teacher, I love to work with a UC — every classroom has one. I look for UCs to run our university’s literary magazine or head the honor society or organize an awards ceremony. UCs make life easier for everybody because they pick up the slack.

It’s not necessarily fair to let the UC work so hard, but that’s their nature. It’s their mission to make things run right, which is amazing considering how many people strive to make things go wrong. Or just don’t care to make much of anything happen one way or the other.

Sometimes I fancy myself a UC becasue I get a lot done. But then I remind myself that being a UC isn’t just about getting lots done. It’s about taking care of business really well all the time. When I get a lot done, I let a lot go too. I’ll forget to pay bills or I’ll forget a doctor’s appointment or I’ll stop going to the gym. Something’s got to give, in other words. That’s not the hallmark of a UC.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many UCs. I have one in my band. She’s amazing: for every rehearsal, you can count on her to have photocopied music for all the band members and put it into binders — including one in B-flat for the horn players. Once, we went to a gig and couldn’t find parking. The only free spaces were in a lot behind a restaurant that announced parking was for patrons only. So she walked into the restaurant’s kitchen and introduced herself to the chef/owner. He happened to be Italian, so she started talking to him in Italian. Then they had a chummy chat. And, yes, we got free parking.

Everywhere I go, I seek out the UCs and am convinced that there are the primary reason we have civilization as we know it. Look around: there’s a UC nearby. You may be relying on one right now to steady a wobble in your life.

Tags: civilization

5 Things You Should Know About Camping

rtanner — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:25:03 +0000

Last weekend, I took Jill camping at Assateague Island, where Maryland’s wild ponies live. Like a surprising number of Marylanders, she had never been to Assateague. It’s a barrier island, just a thin strip of scrub-covered sand. The ponies arrived about 300 years ago (escaped from settlers) and now live there most of the year. They are an irascible bunch and you’re not allowed to approach them (fines start at $100) because they’ll charge or bite. They know they own the island, so they’re often sauntering through the camp sites. And they know every way to get into food containers, so you’d be foolish to leave out your cooler or, esepcially, a box of groceries. I’ve seen these horses yank locked coolers from under picnic tables, then pound them open.

Jill had been camping only one time before — when I took her to the Arizona mountains. She didn’t like it because we slept in a small tent, and it was cold. The worst part of camping for most people is the absence of running water and real bathrooms. Assateague has great bathrooms — they’re latrines, actually, but really well designed, meaning they’re well ventilated and don’t stink. And each facility has spacious, individual toilets (like closets) — you don’t have to share your business with other campers.

But nobody walks to the (unlighted) latrines at night. You find a bush or a thicket of weeds and do your business there (#1 only, of course). This — the need to pee at night — is what turns many people off to camping. When we were in Arizona, Jill hated having to clamber out of our tiny tent, then get her bearings in the freezing dark, hoping that she didn’t trip on a rock or squat over a sprig of poison ivy — well, you get the picture. It’s not fun. And I don’t know many people who can hold it through the night.

Because we had a nearly full moon and the weather was mild and the terrain was flat and this time we had a big tent, our night time necessity was not a hassle. Wherever you camp, you’ll want to scope out your night-time route for relief. Here are five other things to keep in mind:

1) Forget about staying clean and looking pretty. I know of a woman who has never been camping because she refuses to go anywhere overnight if she can’t bring her blow dryer. Never mind that, if she’s that self-conscious about her hair, she could wear a kerchief for a couple of days of camping, couldn’t she? Usually, wherever you’re camping, it’s not worth taking a shower — or there simply won’t be a shower. Or, if there is a shower, it will be cold water only. So you’ll get dirty. You’ll reek of wood smoke from the camp fire. Bring some hand wipes and a small towel for a cold face wash. Bring a cap to hide your dirty hair, if you must.

2) Practice setting up your tent before you go. I brought a huge, 6-person tent I hadn’t used in 15 years. When we arrived late, it was dark and very windy. We aimed the car’s headlights onto the site and then I wrestled with the tent as though it were a parachute in a squall. I had no idea how to set up the thing. At one point, as I pondered the tent’s shape and its many poles, I considered what it would be like for us to sleep in the car with our pile of stuff and our two dogs. Impossible. Thirty minutes later, at last, the tent was up. And, with relief, I felt that I had done what men are supposed to do.

3) Pack the day before. This is easier said than done. But know this: if you pack the day of, you will forget a startling number of things. Since Jill and I live a harried life, we packed the day of. As a result, we forgot: lettuce, grapes, bread, a cooking pot, a charger (for stuff in the car), a wind breaker, batteries (for the camp lantern), an extra flashlight, and playing cards.

4) Load up, charge, and check all of your lights and appliances the day before you go. The reason I set our tent up in the glare of headlights was because a) I had not put the batteries into our only flashlight and so, when we arrived in the dark, I couldn’t locate the batteries; b) I couldn’t locate the candles I had packed for our candle lamp either because I had tossed them thoughtlessly into one of the supply boxes, and c) I hadn’t loaded batteries into our camp lantern, nor had I tested the lamp to see if it was working (it wasn’t). So we did a lot of pawing around in the dark. In the morning, of course, we found everything easily and figured out whey the lantern wasn’t working.

5) Bring fire wood. What is camping without a camp fire? You can buy fire wood at just about any big-box hardware store or gardening center. Do it before you get to your destination, where, chances are, fire wood will be expensive if and when you can find it. Also bring some kind of fire starter — a box of wooden matches and a roll of newspaper will do.

Jill and I had a great time and now, she says, she’s ready to do more camping. The big tent really helped — it gave us enough room for the dogs. It was their first camp outing. They seemed to love it but, then, they seem to love anything as long as the pack is together.

Tags: Assateague, camping, Jill, Maryland

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