Here's what Zoë does when you stick a camera in her face.
I don't know whether to be pleased or frightened. Zoë sees the camera as "thing that creates Zoës," which is a fairly apt observation, since my aesthetics (at least as far as the camera is concerned) are almost 100% attuned to something Zoë has whipped up to amuse herself.
Last night Alisa and Zoë and I headed down to Springdale, Utah, which is right at the gateway to Zion National Park. I was invited to give a fiction reading sponsored by a local arts organization.
It was a fun adventure, a free room, a little paid gig, a new audience. So, we packed up the Jeep and headed out of town. Just as we did, the sky opened up and we were almost immediately driving in blizzard conditions.
The drive went well (everything turned to rain), and the reading went well. I slept really well—woke up two hours later than normal. But when we pulled open the drapes in the motel window, we saw that it had snowed overnight, and that it was still falling.
Official climate data for Zion National Park goes back to 1928, and the average snowfall for that part of the world in February is 1.8 inches with no real accumulation to speak of (remember summer temperatures average about 100 degrees). Well, it accumulated today.
Take a look.
It was simply spellbinding. Once again Alisa and I found ourselves asking ourselves how we got so lucky.
It appears that Baby wasn't dead, and Zoë had to finish her off so she would start "singing."
Sadly, it looks like Flatbush the rabbit was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So much violence, I feel like I should blame it on the television. Zoë sits in front of CSI and Law and Order reruns all day long. It must feed her fantasies. But, alas, I must accept some measure of responsibility for this tragic turn of events.
It's frightening that someone who looks like this could have such a dark side.
I have noticed a pattern of behavior in my child. I think she's bumping off all of her "little friends."
The other day I was dusting (come on, I'm a modern guy), and I found Zoë's baby (we're trying to get Zoë to name her Lena -- but "Baby" it is) dumped behind the television. I'm no forensic pathologist, but Baby looks like she got herself clipped.
So, I've decided to launch an investigation. I think I see a pattern developing: first Elmo, now Baby. I'm afraid she's going to send Big Bear to sleep with the fishes next, or maybe it'll be Flatbush the Rabbit or Dolly.
I only hope I can stop this madness before anyone else gets hurt.
I did not take this picture, but I really wish I had. I am, in fact, deathly envious of whoever did. The woman in the photo is my old friend Alison Wimmer, who is dancing at her wedding with Top Dog, her father's company mascot.
I know lots of intense young artists think that a work of surreal art has to have melting clocks and elephants on stilts and fur and stuff. Not so, this is perhaps one of the strangest things I have ever seen.
But for Alison, it was completely normal. So who am I to blow against the wind.
I finally made it into the New Yorker. Actually, the whole family made it. Check us out!
I can tell you one thing: He did not remember. And now I will hunt him down and kill him, with my lawyers.
Sadly, this is what it seems to mean to live in the American West these days. I shot this photograph this morning in front of my mother's new house in Lehi, Utah.
It shouldn't come as any real surprise, though. Turner announced the close of the frontier in 1893 at the World Exposition in Chicago. We've had 110 years to get used to it.
After some false starts, Alisa and I have settled on a palette for our very cool "Dwell Home."
Here's the final combination.
So I come out of my office and see this and sort of freak out.
The students in my upcoming visual literacy composition course will never believe it. They'll think I staged it, but I didn't. As soon as I showed my wife (it's she who is reading on the couch, not Hussein) the photo, she said, "so you're going to put up another blog entry tonight, aren't you?"
I sighed and said, "Yes, sorry."
P.S. If you think about it too long, that Raggedy Ann in the background is also very scary, but in a Poltergeist "don't-look-under-the-bed" kind of way.
Please don't look at that doll. I'm not responsible.
Our neighborhood here in Southern Utah is very into its Christmas lights. Most of the town isn't really as gung ho as our neighbors are, because this is a college town and most of the students have headed home for the holidays.
I have photographs coming of the more "elaborate" displays within walking distance.
The other day I passed this little nativity scene and wondered if Max Von Sydow wasn't right in the Woody Allen film, Hanna and Her Sisters when he said "If Jesus came back today, he'd never stop throwing up."
I guess that's sort of a cruel way of asking the question: Does Jesus like kitsch of himself and his parents and his birthday? Does he feel any nostalgia for those grand days of the Renaissance when images of him were actually good?
Or does he think that displays like this one are more democratic and less classist than a Titian or Giotto? Better that everyone have an illuminated, plastic Wal-Mart display of his birth than none at all.
Or does he think, "I told them about graven images. I've told them and told them and told them and told them"?
Portfolios mean something entirely different for teachers and students.
Portfolios are a teacher's way of emphasizing revision, and they are a student's way of fixing a bad grade.
Portfolios are really going to mean very little for me until I can figure out how to overcome this problem. No wonder my grades are so highóI let students fix their mistakes. Is this a problem? Do other professors allow for this?
Also this: I think the knowledge that they have a "second chance" keeps students from being as deliberate and careful as they ought to be. It's like nothing matters until the last week of the semester.
And this is, of course, just human nature. But it's probably incumbent upon me as a college professor to help people overcome human nature, even if it's just a little bit.
I've been experimenting with sort of not teaching my composition students how to write. For some reason, I decided that I wanted to test out the assumption that I was actually doing something.
I was scared, a little, that I might discover that they might not need me. Or worse, I was slightly nervous that my students' customer service upbringing might cause them to demand that I "teach them" something, meaning that I would talk for a while and they would take notes and then they would write a paper the way I said to write a paper and then they would get a good grade. Voila, teaching.
Well, hmmmm.
I have, over the last few years, taken some classes for fun or enrichment: pottery, breadmaking, photography, photopolymer letterpress plate making. And you know what? I didn't learn in this traditional "be told what to do and then do it" way. Instead these teachers sort of said, "Here's what you need to look out for. Here's where people go wrong. You need to just dive in and do this for a while and make mistakes and critique your own performances and experiment and play a little."
Then, you know what happened? I dove in (sometimes waded) and after a little time, I got okay.
I got okay. Not great, just okay, which causes me to realize that maybe getting okay is all that's going to happen at this point for those people who take two semesters of writing classes. How long did it take me to become a good writer?
Well, until today. And that's been a long time. But it might also take until tomorrow.
So what I've done with my own teaching is this: I've backed off. I've given assignments and deadlines. I've answered questions and made them read things they wouldn't have chosen to read on their own. I make them write and I don't let them revise things I've already graded (how is that a professional writing practice?).
Instead I make them take their time and work methodically. I don't talk about rhetoric or any of it. I just let them write. And you know what? I can't sense that they are any worse for my not teaching. In fact, I think they're a little better, which is to say, "I think it's working."
What am I supposed to do with that information?
