It’s going to be pretty quiet here until I get all the grades in (I think of that old country song “When The Work’s All Done This Fall”), but in the meantime, I want to record this bit of wisdom from Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, wisdom quoted by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her fascinating study of Lincoln and his Cabinet, Team of Rivals:

“Having hope,” writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, “means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks.” Hope is “more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right”; it is “believing you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals.”

It’s been very good to read Goodwin’s book. I see I will need to read Goleman’s next.

Pull quote from the Technology Review article: “The dog becomes a kind of online avatar.”

Okeh. It’s interesting to think about the general unintelligibility of that statement before, say, 1990. It’s also interesting to think about happy dog owners meeting some enchanted evening when the SNIF tracks down their most-wanted other.

Okeh.

The Washington Post reports on two Supreme Court decisions that are widely viewed as making it harder to obtain and protect patents. The article quotes John R. Thomas, a Georgetown University professor specializing in intellectual property, calling the decision “the most detailed technical discussion that’s come out of the Supreme Court since the 19th century.”

My immediate thoughts turn to the current Blackboard patent review, of course.

You’ll find the relevant Supreme Court opinions here and here.

Monday I was honored to deliver the keynote address for the 2007 Kemp Symposium here at the University of Mary Washington. The event is named for Bill Kemp, a Shakespearean who taught at UMW for over 30 years, and it showcases work done by students in English, Linguistics, and Speech courses.

A few notes about the talk. I wanted to do something unusual. I wanted to honor Bill, a colleague with whom I’ve had many fruitful collaborations over the years. I wanted to thank my department for their support. I wanted to speak some word of hope to us all at the end of a difficult few weeks. And I wanted to do all of that by exploring the connections between lyric poetry and popular music.

I structured the talk around six audio events, the last of which included video. Four of these are recordings under copyright, so for the podcast I’ve included only beginnings and endings, and hereby claim fair use. One of the recordings is my beloved English teacher Dr. Elizabeth Phillips reciting “What Are Years,” and I’ve included that in full. I hope that the snippets convey the flavor of the talk. I also hope they send you out to buy Tommy (The Who), Rain Dogs (Tom Waits), Hejira (Joni Mitchell), Welcome Interstate Managers (Fountains of Wayne), and The Last Waltz right away, if you don’t have these albums already.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (18.9MB)

Grading papers, and trying to finish up one of my own to be given tomorrow, I take a short break and dip into a recent New Yorker. Here I read John Updike’s review of a new biography of Edith Wharton, and find this delectable bit from both authors:

Asked about the role of the unconscious in creating fiction, she sounds somewhat French, somewhat starchy, and quite sensible:

“I do not think I can get any nearer than this to the sources of my story-telling; I can only say that the process, though it takes place in some secret region on the sheer edge of consciousness, is always illuminated by the full light of my critical attention.”

End quote.

Perfect.

From the article in Fredericksburg.com:

At noon Friday, the University of Mary Washington will observe the statewide day of mourning declared by Gov. Timothy Kaine for the victims of the tragedy at Virginia Tech by creating a human “Chain of Hope” along Campus Walk starting at the bell tower. A moment of silence will be observed.

I just came back from this memorial. I need to say something.

At 11:55, I arrived at the site along with a colleague and a student. There was no chain of hope on the horizon that I could see. A sign pointed to an “admissions event.” A snackmobile was parked on the far sidewalk. People were walking back and forth, chatting under a bright warm sun.

I wondered if I had gotten the time or location wrong. To my left, I saw some women wearing orange clothing and orange ribbons. I asked one if I had come to the right place and time for the chain of hope. She said she thought so.

At 11:57, nothing had changed. People stood and milled about.

At 11:58, everything began to change.

At 11:59, a line had formed, stretching from the new bell tower as far as I could see down campus walk.

Then a woman said, “it’s noon, everyone.” Silence emerged from the sound of a second ago.

We stood holding hands in that silence. Photographers and videographers walked up and down, documenting the moment. We stood a long time. I sensed that none of us wanted to let go.

After what might have been five minutes, applause sounded all up and down the line, so that the chain need never break.

Something got to the core of me as I watched individual agency form itself into community in that minute between 11:58 and 11:59. I wish we could find and enact this affirmation every day, just because it is another day, and we are together.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

Many years ago my dear friend Robin told me about Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. He quoted a particular passage he loved and thought I would too. He was right. I set it down here to share it with you and to save it for myself:

What about the student who is not good? Who will never write much? It is possible for a good teacher to get from that student one poem or one story that far exceeds whatever hopes the student had. It may be of no importance to the world of high culture, but it may be very important to the student. It is a small thing, but it is also small and wrong to forget or ignore lives that can use a single microscopic moment of personal triumph. Just once the kid with bad eyes hits a home run in an obscure sandlot game. You may ridicule the affectionate way he takes that day through a life drab enough to need it, but please stay the hell away from me.

Shannon over at Loaded Learning asked for a copy for her iPod, so here it is: a hi-res newly mastered mp3 of my one brief shining moment of low-level metro pop radio accomplishment: “My Favorite Town.”

Hard to believe it’s been two years since I first posted the tune. A lifetime ago in many respects.

For the truly insomniac:
I’m doing everything here except playing the drums. As Pete Townshend once put it, in a far more awesome context, a gynormous ego trip. I wrote and recorded the tune in 1990 on a Portastudio 244 in a spare bedroom in St. Johns Wood, Richmond. Drum machine: Alesis HR-16. Bass: 1972 Fender Jazz. Guitar: mid-80’s Fender Strat through various effects boxes. All instruments recorded directly through the mixing board (sounds that way, too). Vocals recorded through a Shure SM-57. Primary effects box: an Alesis Quadraverb. Also used: Alesis Microlimiter. 2007 Remastering in Sound Forge 8.

One day I should go back to the original multitracks to remaster the thing properly instead of continuing to tweak the version that came off the radio–that is, if the original 4-track cassette and the machine I recorded it on haven’t turned to dust.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.8MB)

InfoWorld has an interesting piece on the communications feeding into and out of yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech. I’m not quite so optimistic about the good stuff always rising to the top, but the article makes several points worth considering–including the fact that everyone knows SMS is the best channel for mass communication to students in a time of emergency, though schools are regrettably slow to act on that knowledge. It wouldn’t be hard to set up an emergency cell phone registry. And it would be well worthwhile, in my view.