Geeky Mom

Today, a list of the songs I have played most often. What’s funny is I almost always randomize, though I do skip songs. Still, I don’t think this is entirely representative of my favorite songs.

Torn & Frayed The Rolling Stones
Never Is Enough Barenaked Ladies
Talking To Myself Let’s Active
Theme From Flood They Might Be Giants
How You’ve Grown 10,000 Maniacs
New World David Wilcox
Contact The Police
Find The River R.E.M.
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) Billy Joel
Everyday Buddy Holly & The Crickets

fridayshuffle, random10

I know I’ve gotten lame on the poetry thing. I have been exhausted and well, preoccupied with work stuff (in a good way) and I think I’ve got some kind of illness or allergies or the plague (like SBFH, but without the black tongue). So I’m filling in with some kid stories. I think I have some kids around here somewhere?

Geeky Girl was watching NOVA with Mr. Geeky a couple of nights ago. We record it regularly via Tivo (season pass), but he was making a special effort to watch it because an alum was on. The alum, a woman, is a scientist, so Mr. Geeky is trying to explain what’s going on. Here’s the conversation:

Mr. Geeky: So, Geeky Girl, this scientist, she . . .
GG: She?
Mr. Geeky: Yeah, she. You know girls can be scientists.
GG: Yeah, Dad, I know that. But I’ve never seen one before.

—–
Tonight, Mr. Geeky was preparing Geeky Girl’s bath and I was puttering around the house. Geeky Girl is getting something out of her backpack. I’m reading blogs when she comes into my room in tears.

GG: My flowers are dead.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s okay. Let me see them.
We trot downstairs, GG in tears the whole way. Mr. Geeky pokes his head out of the bathroom and asks what’s wrong. I whisper, “Her flowers are dead.” He looks at me funny. GG digs into her backpack. I’m expecting a small bouquet wrapped in a paper towel or something. She pulls something out and puts it in my hand. I look down to see the closed up blossom of a dandelion with hardly a stem at all. GG bursts into tears again.
GG: It was a dandelion. And it was big and yellow.
All I could do was hug her and promise I’d keep it.

—-

Finally, Geeky Boy made me promise to link to his blog. So I did. And if anyone says anything mean or tries to lure him away with candy, I’ll come beat you up. And this link will be gone soon. The blog is cute though.

Which Family Guy character are you?

via Angry Pregnant Lawyer

So I took the blog talk on the road. My head is exploding with ideas. First, I chatted with the person who invited me to give the talk. Did the talk–a little fast, I think. Then lots of conversation afterward. Lunch. Met with science librarian, talked about her blogs, blogging for the library, information, library instruction, all kinds of interesting things. Then met with a chemistry faculty. Talked about blogging, screencasting, podcasting, issues of electronic scholarship, the reward structure and how it precludes developing technology-based teaching, getting scooped, rethinking teaching as a result of incorporating screencasting, and more. Then met with the engineering librarian. Talked about blogging, rss feeds for searches from library databases (very cool), starting a regional group blog for issues surrounding blogging and teaching and the library. Met with the dean. Talked about using blogs to get students interested in subjects, talked about the time factor for both faculty and students, talked about how to make going to class valuable for the students when lectures are podcast/screencast.

So let me dump some of my thoughts here–loosely categorized:

Classes/Students and Blogging

• How do you incorporate student blogs and make it worthwhile while still having some parameters?
• What about privacy issues?
• What about the issue of having the lectures available completely publicly? Does that mean that someone is saving money/shorting the U. money by “taking” the class online?
• If the students have access to the courses online, including complete lectures with audio and powerpoint, will they come to class? Do faculty really want them to come? If so, how to you make the class valuable?
• What about copyright issues–i.e. using diagrams or problem sets from a text which then get screencast publicly?

Scientists blogging their research

• Who will your audience be? Other scientists, the general public, your students?
• How do you protect your intellectual property? Is a Creative Commons license enough?
• What if you get scooped?
• In what way do you blog your research? Do you try to connect it to the “real world”? Do you stick to the science?
• What needs to happen to make sharing of information via blogs possible, and credible?
• Can blogging “count” as research/service/teaching?

Reading blogs

• How do you know when to trust a blog? Links to research? Links to other credible bloggers?
• How do you tell students to deal with reading blogs? Do you vet them all first? Do you let students find them on their own?
• How do you treat a blog in comparison to mainstream media? a scholarly journal?
• Can reading blogs counter “bad” journalism about science?

I think that’s all that’s in my head now. I’m thinking I need to work up some more ideas. One thing that’s hard for me is that I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know how this compares or what real value it might have for scientists. I can see the value for regular folk like me who need more than what Newsweek or NYT gives them, but can’t digest a scholarly article (I’ve tried.). Thoughts greatly appreciated.

Following Rana, I thought I’d list some search strings. Think of this as a poem. I’m too tired to turn it into something and I’m too tired to pull a real poem out.

drinking poem (lots of these)
bored “stay at home wives” (is that me?)
mom poem
seamus heaney mid-term break (lots of variations on this)
florence nightingale play
when mom had laryngitis
geekymom (definitely me)
getting rid of stuff
alvin greenberg breathing
mom blogs
things left undone
going from two incomes to one
mom drinking poem (maybe I should write one)
drinking (poem)
monday thoughts
mom sex (we have sex? who knew?)
thick mom (wtf?)
visiting best friends sexy mom
absent mothers
monday random
music against divorce
pennsylvania + politics
overindulgence
is mom gay (this is my absolute favorite)
celebration of family
what kind of alcohol are you
dali steps
a good mom poem
stress in dads
marvin bell, poetry
mom soccer (like the inversion here; are the moms playing soccer?)

and to top it off, the best one ever:
twinkies banana happy meal “fear factor”

I convinced one person to start her own blog after my presentation. Have a visit.

Have you noticed I’m becoming less and less anonymous? Oh well.

The air is warm without a hint of chill that was here just a few days ago. The flowers on the trees have burst like fireworks and are spreading their petals like confetti on the ground, their pinkish-white turning to brown as they are trampled on and crushed. Others are out now that it’s warm: a famliy pulling a wagon and pushing a stroller, two men jogging, their middles sloshing over the elastic of their shorts. The houses stand bathed in the sinking sun, pink and orange and red; they are full of possibility. From the trees that line the street, the sweet smell of flowers and the near-rotting smell on new growth, like the rotting floor of a forest, waiting for new trees to grow.

I am alive to all the different colors–the yellow of forsythia and daffodils, pale pink, bright reds and purples of tulips, all the different greens of the budding trees and pale red of red maples. All of them set against the background of the pale blue sky. I think I might take my mother on this walk with me and what would she notice? Perhaps the way the houses grow larger as we move west and spread further apart. Perhaps the manicured lawns–smell the fresh-cut grass. Down one street, rows of twins on one side huddled close together with more of the same down each side street. On the opposite side, the expansive lawns and solid brick.

I sometimes long for these houses, it’s true. I always note the tudor style house with the tree house in the back. I note the lovely blue trim on an expansive brick house and the quaint stained glass windows on another. But as I walk past them, turning back toward where I came from, I am comforted by the way the houses once again seem huddled together like a line of defenders on the soccer field. And I wonder what they are defending against.

I’ve always loved Sharon Olds and I especially like this poem.

The One Girl at the Boys Party

When I take my girl to the swimming party
I set her down among the boys. They tower and
bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,
her math scores unfolding in the air around her.
They will strip to their suits, her body hard and
indivisible as a prime number,
they’ll plunge in the deep end, she’ll subtract
her height from ten feet, divide it into
hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers
bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine
in the bright blue pool. When they climb out,
her ponytail will hang its pencil lead
down her back, her narrow silk suit
with hamburgers and french fries printed on it
will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will
see her sweet face, solemn and
sealed, a factor of one, and she will
see their eyes, two each,
their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,
one each, and in her head she’ll be doing her
sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

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Sorry to take up so much blog space today, but one last post–the poem of the day by my former teacher, John Bensko.

Mowing the Lawn

Saturday Morning,
lying on my couch, I think:
a boy like an angel will save me.

He comes up the hill on a ten-speed bike,
dragging his mower. He parks them
and comes up the walk to the door.
Looking through the peephole
I see the small, freckled face . . .

if it were that easy. If the boy,
the angel that he could be,
weren’t just like us, worrying

about the time, the wear and tear, the cost,
we could negotiate our dreams:
one lying on the couch;
the other following a new,
self-propelled mower
into an even greater machine.
A Honda? A Corvette? God knows . . .

Our ways part. From his bright,
perfect lawn my neighbor scowls
at the boy’s leavings, at the shaggy
threat of windblown seeds.

But we’re all just alike.
On the couch we lie secure
in the knowledge. We imagine
the well-manicured lawn
spreads in all directions.

poetrymonth