October 26

I have strayed from my daily routine, but I am not sure I care.

1984

Why does a day like this fill me with trepidation? I don’t have any appointments, except for lunch with a friend. I plan to spend the morning at the library and the afternoon at home. It’s an easy situation to goof off in.

I’ve written two proposals, one talk, and one paper since the end of August. That’s two items a month. The paper is almost done, the rewrite of the Se Roles article. Oh yes, and the “eagles” paper. So that’s two proposals, one talk and two papers! At that rate, I could write 10 papers this year or 5 to 6 papers in a book chapter. Plus a proposal or two. Now part of what made this possible is a lighter load in teaching.

What are the next best bets in writing?

	⁃	Content analysis article for the Journal of Consumer Research
	⁃	Retailing history
	⁃	Perhaps for Journal of Home Economics 
	⁃	Clothing and Textiles history for Home Economics Research Journal
	⁃	Fauntleroy chapter for maybe a book?
	⁃	Fauntleroy article for Dress.

Comment 2024

	⁃	Nope
	⁃	Nope
	⁃	Yep
	⁃	Nope
	⁃	Nope
	⁃	Yep, but for a different journal.

1998

Long expanse of time between entries again, which is probably OK. I have been happily busy, the weather has been gorgeous and I have achieved a lot.

Last week I actually wrote an article, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It really felt wonderful - almost as good as sewing, though not as tactile. Excuse me, the CD player is skipping.

Habits of doing.
Habits of brooding.
Habits of being.

I have strayed from my daily routine, but I am not sure I care. For a while, I needed that change. I suppose I was finding a new routine, after all the talks were over. And I had purchased a membership at the Greenbelt fitness center.

I am fidgety to get to work today. My web pages beckon!

2016 (Blog)

The flight from Washington, D.C. To Denver was as pleasant as air travel in 2016 can be for a 5' 9" human. The skies over most of Nebraska were clear enough that I could follow the Platte River westward from Omaha, but not quite to North Platte. Rather than do the whole trip in one day, I opted to pick up my rental car, stay overnight at an airport hotel, and drive the 3 1/2 hours this morning.

Last night I had dinner with a former student, Wayne Watts (aka DK). Wayne was one of my star pupils in a service learning course I team-taught about a decade ago. It was, by far the riskiest, more challenging, scariest course I ever taught--and the most rewarding. The title was Popular Culture and Literacy in America, and I will confess right now that I put "popular culture" in the title as a ploy to recruit unsuspecting students into a service learning course where they would tutor students at a large, minority-majority high school. If I had given it a more straightforward title, I would have been preaching to the choir. We let them know the first day of class what we would be doing, so they had the chance to find another course if they wanted.

When I say "team-taught", I am not kidding. The course was planned, steered and assessed by myself, a PhD student, and a team of undergraduate teaching assistants who met at my house every week for debriefing and planning. Wayne took the class as a student once, and then served as a teaching assistant for several more semesters.

Since graduation, he has pursued two passions: his musical career and mentoring. For him, they are deeply connected; he takes them both equally seriously and uses one to enhance the other. Right now, in addition to his performing gigs, he is running an after school tutoring and mentoring program very much like the one in our course, but much bigger, with multiple locations, and a cadre of mentors who are not students, but older adults who need training and support to connect with their young students. He is also developing a program of online mentoring podcasts and interviews that is simply brilliant. 

This has nothing to do with my Nebraska trip, at first glance. But I found myself wondering, as we spoke and laughed last night, what life would have been like for me without the many direct experiences I have had with people of other races. More to come, as I think of it.

2016 (Journal)

The drive from Denver was beautiful. I know that people who live elsewhere think of this part of the country as flat, empty, and boring. I disagree.

2016 (Journal)

The drive from Denver was beautiful. I know that people who live elsewhere think of this part of the country as flat, empty, and boring. I disagree.

Vanishing Point

Behind me, the cloudlike skyline of the Front Range, receding from view.
Through my windshield, an exercise in one point perspective.
A prairie dog town with a lone sentinel
Harvested fields brown in the early morning sun.
The road rises and dips like ocean swells,
Then, cresting a long hill,
The prairie, a breathtaking sea of gold.

I moseyed along my way, stopping to visit the church in Brush, Colorado, where my grandfather served as pastor eighty or so years ago. The current pastor and church secretary were warm and welcoming, and shared some of the parish's history with me.

Finally, I made it to North Platte. The road into town was unrecognizable; lots of chain restaurants, a WalMart, a shopping mall. But soon I was driving through the old part of town, and over the viaduct that carries the Main Street across the railroad tracks. Within minutes, I was driving into Cody Park, past the swimming pool and the kiddie rides (closed for the season) and reaching the banks of the North Platte River. The familiar sights and smells, the grasshoppers leaping away from my footsteps, all brought tears to my eyes. A fellow about my age stopped to talk -- the first of many conversations I have had in my few hours here. And therein hangs a tale.

I think of myself as an introvert, someone who is usually reluctant to chat with strangers. But the genial neighborliness I have encountered here has triggered a memory of learning to look away from strangers instead of smiling at them, to nod instead of saying hi. I remember walking down the street in Westwood, New Jersey shortly after we moved there, and saying hello to a woman only to have her look at me with a startled expression that clicked quickly to annoyance and then to a mask, averted away from me.

So far today, I have had short conversations with:

the man at the river
the manager at my hotel (more about her, later!)
the plumber who came to install a new shower head in my bathroom
the clerk at WalMart
I am falling back into a long-forgotten old habit, and it is so much fun!

Comment 2023

For the next few weeks, we (you and I) will be immersed in my 2016 trip to Nebraska from various angles. Some entries are from social media; some from a blog, some from my written journals. I’ll be curious to see what I shared with each audience.

2024

My plan for the next few weeks: less political news, more Indian movies. Lots more.