Miscellany: Pedagogy, Revolution, and McMansion Removal

I had tentatively planned to head north tonight to fish the hex hatch, which I understand has started now. But exactly one week from today I begin teaching a class on American nature writing, and I am far behind where I had hoped to be in preparing for it. I'm ready for day one (actually, for weeks 1-4 of 6), but I wanted to have everything in the can by now. Besides developing plans to teach each book, I still have a lot of tweaks to make to the website. It's an online class, actually.

We are reading:

* Selections from William Bradford (Pilgrim leader), William Bartram (18th C. naturalist whose narrative of his journeys across the American south became the first international bestseller by an American writer), and Thoreau

*Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac

*Gary Snyder's Turtle Island

*Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge

*Jim Harrison's novella "The Beige Dolorosa"

I'm looking forward to this. I love to teach this kind of stuff, but get few opportunities.



Over the last week I've been following the developments in Iran closely. If the protesters succeed in forcing new elections or even, dare one hope, toppling the theocracy, it could have a major impact on the political future of people across the Muslim world. Besides, it's hard not to cheer people organizing, acting, and literally putting their lives on the line to throw off tyranny. The level of courage and determination shown by the people in the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and elsewhere in the country is truly humbling.

The uprising has been a media event in more than one sense. It has dominated news coverage over the last week (though it did take the cable networks a few days to register more than a dim awareness of the events), but it has also highlighted the significance of social media and personal communications technologies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube have allowed people on the street to report events as they unfold, and to share their passions, triumphs, and terrors directly with readers and viewers around the world. These technologies have also helped the activists to communicate and organize.

Of course, this new media reporting also makes the event a time suck for me, and probably others. With new tweets, blog posts, and youtubes being posted continuously, it's tempting to check in every couple of minutes to see the latest developments. (I'm mainly following this through Andrew Sullivan's always excellent blog as well as the Iranian-American Council blog.) I probably would be further along with my class planning if those rabble-rousers had just sucked up the dodgy election results...



Finally, The Atlantic's Idea of the Day from Saturday was this:

How’s about a stimulus-started plan to buy up the nation’s foreclosed and empty McMansions and hire out-of-work construction workers to deconstruct them? It’s an idea that could keep giving and giving. Aside from the obvious benefits of employment as the deconstruction took place, de-developers could offset costs by selling used housing materials (recycle!) or donating usable building materials to low-income- housing renovation projects (help the poor!).

Read the rest. It sounds freakin' brilliant to me.