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Gully Brook Press |
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Saturday, March 30, 2002 ( 11:05 AM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Saturday. The biggest adjustment of freelancing - well, not the biggest but one of the many - is scheduling. It seems there is either nothing to do, or too much to do. This is true to some degree for a regular job also, but co-worker chatter and assorted other time wasters fill up the nothing to do times, while in all my jobs except one, too much too do didn't mean that you worked 24/7. Right now I am experiencing a too much to do episode. That, plus technical difficulties, explains my lack of journal posts this week. Blogger is great, but the last time I posted, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, after I got finished, the page crashed or refused to publish or something. I didn't bother to re-type it, since I am in a too much to do period, and this is really about writing, and not about posting... For the first time, I got a lot of Easter cards! I'm not sure whether things are different - I mean post 9-11, and that explains it, or if the greeting card industry is gradually making inroads in this holiday, also. Every day I chip away a little at marketing/promotion/visibility, regardless of how busy I am with teaching and consulting. With the donation money from my website ($52, wow!) I joined the National Association of Women Writers. Writer's Digest listed the site as one of the ten best, and I discovered it via the Writer's Lounge newsletter. Originally I thought I'd wait until my book is published, so I could list it for sale, but then I thought, why wait? I am a woman writer now! Now, on a totally different subject - back to the plagiarism subject from earlier this month. A recent Ellen Goodman column really irritated me! She recounts the Ellis, Goodwin, Ambrose controversies - then focuses on Goodwin, whom she admits is a friend. She seems to believe she was treated unfairly, and more harshly than the others for a "mistake." And, somehow, she equates this to the discrepancies in the movie A Beautiful Mind, since the movie omitted some elements of John Nash's life that were in the published biography. She thinks it is wrong, or ironic, how the movie could win Academy Awards, while Goodwin is paying the price for her failure to properly attribute passages in her book. I couldn't believe what I was reading! Now, I know Op-Ed columnists may not be the sharpest tools in the shed - or anyway, that they write to be obnoxious, sell newspapers and generate controversies. But I guess I deluded myself into thinking that all writers know there is a difference between plagiarism - i.e., cheating, and a Hollywood movie that is loosely based on someone's life. For a supposed scholar - even a popular one - it is quite simply unethical. It can mean academic dismissal. I'm not debating the merit, or lack of merit, of the movie. I saw it, I liked it, I knew there were omissions, and that means what exactly? Yes, I was happy when Ron Howard won for best director, because what person my age doesn't have a soft spot for Opie? I don't pretend to know that it was the best directed film, and I don't care. No-one is alleging that the scriptwriter stole hunks of text from some other movie, and that is the issue. I really can't comprehend how Ellen Goodman could try to draw a parallel. But as I have written before, with this sort of logic going around among professionals who should know better, how can I expect the undergraduates I teach to understand that citations are not optional? # Monday, March 25, 2002 ( 3:29 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Monday. I have been opening boxes of books that were in storage for years, and over the weekend I came across a journal I kept from 1983 to 1987. Most of the entries were from early 1983, when I was 21 years old. I wrote that I had read in the newspaper that seven-year-olds were learning to use computers, and since I was computer illiterate, I felt left behind in the dash to the future. Will I keep at this journal for at least four years? Whether I stop or keep it up, will it still be here in 19 years? Or should I print it just in case? Technology is sure to change - a lot, and a lot sooner than that. Here is a passage describing the bathroom at my job, where I was the clerk in a funky plant and gift shop: The Bathroom at 142 Main Street The dingy green door opens into a small room that was a little larger than a telephone booth with an absurdly high ceiling. A filthy white toilet bowl dominates the room. The perimeter of the room was cluttered with dirty plastic pails, empty toilet tissue wrappers, and torn National Graphic magazines. The mess is particularly thick in back of the toilet. Miscellaneous trash is scattered here and there; a disposable razor, an empty shaving cream can and a worn-out toothbrush routinely must be kicked out of the way. A cloudy mirror hangs opposite the door. The walls are streaked with various colors of paint and dotted with graffiti and dirt. A light bulb on a wire dangles at head level, and its wicker shade seems a ridiculous addition to the clutter. # Friday, March 22, 2002 ( 4:30 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Friday. I spent several days working on student evaluations. I still am not finished, as I have essays to grade, but I made enough progress to give students an idea of how they are doing in other course areas. Most students are doing fine, several are outstanding, and a few are struggling. This effort on my part always kicks off the inevitable: "this low grade is not fair," and "I don't understand my grade, I have done all work for class, and it is just as good as the work I've seen by others," when about 95% of the time neither is true. (Occasionally I do make a mistake in calculations, and that accounts for the other 5% - although "unfair" is the wrong brand in that case). Again, I am amazed, as this is something I never would have approached a professor over. So there is that empowerment issue all over again - are things different now or was I simply one of those students who lacked self-confidence and so deferred to the instructor? I believe another cause is grade inflation, and I think I have been guilty of this myself at times. Students cannot accept anything but "A," no matter what their work quality is - and the empowerment of which I write does not mean (unfortunately) that they attempt to achieve that A by asking what they might do to improve their situation - instead they make demands, and insist that my appraisal is unfair, biased, and/or just plain wrong. # Monday, March 18, 2002 ( 3:58 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Monday. Just discovered "ESC" makes everything disappear. Live & Learn. Wow, productive weekend. All the carpets and other upholstery are shampooed. Those machines work like magic, it is like having new rugs. Problem is, all that productivity resulted in disorder elsewhere. Since the treadmill is on the porch, it seems I always have to move a couple of boxes and assorted bric-a-brac when I want to use it. This is not exactly conducive to exercise. Snowing today. Not a major accumulation, just a couple of inches, but in a fairly dry winter, it is significant. It is pretty. Plus we need the water! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. # Friday, March 15, 2002 ( 12:17 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Friday. I am procrastinating; it is midterm week and I have a ton of essays, etc. to grade. I hold myself to a quick turn around time (and if I delay at all it never fails that I get a bunch of emails from students, some in a panic that I didn't get their assignment, others demanding to know when I will have the grading done). I don't remember asking professors anything like that when I was an undergraduate. I don't know if I seem approachable (I am surprised every semester over the number of students who address me by my first name), if the electronic communication mode has made students more comfortable with asking somewhat pushy questions, if times have changed in another way, or if other students were pestering professors during my undergraduate years, it was just me and my friends who were too timid. So, since I have cleared time to focus on student evaluation, I was frantically trying to find something, anything, to justify a delay - I am on the one day off after two treadmilling days cycle, so I can't use that - and there on the right of the screen was Check out: Blogger Pro. Hey, I'll investigate that. So I did, the features are enticing - but I thought, who cares? I like this idea, the online journal thing. But I like journals, whether online or not. The disadvantage of this form is that I always jot down some of my best ideas in a little notebook while waiting somewhere on a bench, observing the world, far from being plugged in. Also, a long time ago I used my journal to vent, really vent, uncensored. Afterwards, I threw out some of the pages, thinking, I can't save this junk. I know there is a strong, perhaps dominant, school of thought that goes, don't censor yourself in your writing, and I understand where that is coming from, but once I achieved adulthood, I thought about the diary as a historical record, and I decided I wouldn't write too many things in my journal that I would mind someone reading. I have kept that structure in the years since, and it has worked out for me. But the transfer of that little spiral bound book to the world of digits means, I think for me anyway, an additional layer of self-censoring, and that is something I am not sure is good. On the other hand, this is more public, not a secret, can one really be a writer without a potential audience?, and it is already typed in case I want to copy/paste - better than transcribing scribbles. And so far, I haven't had any archive loss. Funny item, one of those circulating emails: Subject: Our Diet (A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. (B) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. (C) The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. (D) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. (E) Conclusion: Eat & drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you # Wednesday, March 13, 2002 ( 3:08 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Wednesday. I subscribe to the Inscriptions newsletter (in my opinion, this has become the best writer's newsletter around since Inkling's sad demise), and there was an ad in a recent issue for the website of a freelance writer. I decided to check it out, since that's what I'm attempting. It's called ebooks by Debby Hunt, and the links page is especially wonderful! Bravo! Something scary: an article, Staffing level faulted in transplant death, from Tuesday's Albany Times Union. It is about the findings from a State investigation of a January death of a TU reporter. He died when he had transplant surgery at Mt. Sinai. He was a live liver donor for his brother. Inadequate staffing was found by the State to be to blame (34 transplant patients to one first-year resident). The NYS commissioner of health is quoted in the story: "The transplant technique was perfect,'' Novello said. "It was the aftercare that was sloppy ... I call it a 'Space Odyssey' operation and a Third World follow-up.'' # Tuesday, March 12, 2002 ( 12:39 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Tuesday. More on plagiarism! An article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (it is a subscription site, but this story is "free" and so the link should work) investigates the possible connection between two plagiarism detection sites and term paper mills. # Monday, March 11, 2002 ( 2:52 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Monday. We haven't had much of a winter but it's cold today! Brrrr! Maybe that's fitting for the anniversary of 9-11, although that September day was beautiful. I didn't use the treadmill last night, and with the temperature on the porch, I'm not sure whether I will today, either. # Friday, March 08, 2002 ( 6:13 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Friday. In Huck Finn, Mark Twain writes, "there ain't no harm in a hound, no how." Well - I did it - two 20 minute treadmill sessions so far. I am aiming for two days on, one day off - that will wind up being about four times per week, I think. And I am taking it really easy. Outside, I walk very fast. Most people don't like to walk with me because of my pace. But last time I tried a serious commitment to the treadmill, I hurt myself after only a few days. My thoughts would be, this is easy and boring, let me ratchet up the speed and incline a bit. And, maybe I'll try for five more minutes. It was stupid, as machines can do damage, and my ankle paid the price. This time around, I am going to be a lot more gradual in my approach. I am only doing .6/mile in 20 minutes, no incline, and I am stopping after 20 minutes until I'm really sure I can do more safely. In the past, I always stretched, but thought it was a drag, and I may have skimped. Now I am really spending more time on that part. So, it may not burn off that bag of cookies from last night, but I think I will be able to stick with it. The treadmill is on an enclosed porch in the front of the house, and the door opens right on the sidewalk near the road. A few weeks ago I made some curtains that can be closed for the eight windows, because privacy is vital to the success of this endeavor. You can still see out of the front door, though, and there are two windows in the livingroom that look into the porch. My dogs, a beagle/collie named Rudy, and a basset hound named Sophie, stand on the livingroom furniture, look out those windows, and from there monitor all activity in the village. Now, Rudy is an extremely handsome dog - if I can figure out how I will add a photo of both dogs and the cat here (or you can visit my website) and he is also very good. It is clear that his ancestors were bird dogs whose function it was to call their human hunting partners from great distances. But as a modern American dog, Rudy now alerts all who care to listen (and I'm certain quite a few neighbors who don't) not about the next meal (he knows that comes from the market), but instead that there is a kid on a scooter going by, or that a human/dog combo joined by a leash is outside, or that Reuben, the next-door cat, is sunning himself. Big triggers: any sort of running, helmets, bicycles, adolescent boys, and the mail carrier. Rudy's woooo can be heard for miles, and from the treadmill, even with a Bare Naked Ladies CD blaring, it send shivers up the spine. Sophie, on the other hand, is happy to join in when "called," but she isn't all that concerned about cats or leashed dogs - she loves to patrol for all unknown humans who may be out there, trying to look at her, and (in her mind) probably get her, too. Yesterday, I thought keeping the door open between the livingroom and porch would help. Rudy did seem satisfied, my cat Edna (who is generally quiet anyway) kept her distance from the loud scary machine, but Sophie decided to investigate all the normally off-limits areas near the treadmill. Problem is, she is a hotdog, and a very long one...and she goes places where she can't turn around. She is also very needy. Meaning I had to stop walking, turn it off, fold it up, and rescue her. And then start again. So today I decided to keep the door shut and instead do a little dance to the wooooo....(please hold up ankle). One thing I have to move in order to open the treadmill is my blue recycling bin. I temporarily stuck it in the livingroom, with a trash bag filled with deposit bottles. Sophie believes all plastic bottles are toys, and so naturally what was she doing that I couldn't hear over din of the machine, and the CD, and the wooo? Scattering soda bottles all over the floor. # Thursday, March 07, 2002 ( 5:07 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Thursday. Sometime during the night when I wasn't dreaming I got the idea to add one of my first short stories to my Gully Brook Press website. Today I started to look for it (remember I am only partially organized at this point), which led to a bunch of other non-related straightening up. Finally I located it, and actually I had made an effort to file it a few months ago when I was taking on the paper mess in the room that serves as my home office. But naturally, I didn't remember that, and so I sorted through a few old boxes etc. first. Anyway, I scanned it and added a page to my website for it. Even at seven years old, it is pretty obvious that I really liked animals...more than people. During that straightening up episode, I was looking through a filing cabinet that is near the treadmill. There it was, calling me. Even as a fold-up model, it is big and hard to ignore, especially when the other junk is cleared away. I really don't care for sports of any kind and unfortunately this spills over into exercise. I associate it with unpleasant memories from years ago of phys. ed. class in school. Having hit the big 4-0 in '01, I know I should try to get healthy. My health is generally excellent, I mean, I have no complaints, my diet isn't too bad, and I do like to walk, but I am pretty feeble otherwise, in terms of being in shape. For example, I have had to work out strategies for things like opening a jar, and there are times when I am doing nothing more strenuous than washing my hair and I do some minor injury to my neck. I should take a lesson from my dogs, they always stretch...anyway, I am tired of being so sore in the Spring after I spend a day gardening, and of course, in the 21st Century we'll all supposed to care about such things. So, today I am going to establish a treadmilling routine. I'll pull the plug on this machine right now, and switch that one on. (My goal is only 20 minutes, three times per week, so I should be able to manage...) # Wednesday, March 06, 2002 ( 2:29 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Wednesday. Today, I decided that's it - I can't take it any more. I was not having any problems with the cable, but I thought I would need to go get another haircut before web pages would load, so I decided to "degrade" to AOL 6 & speed returned. Maybe it's not good to be an early adopter? I got my second tip! From my sister, bless her. I was reading an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (but FYI, it is a subscription website) that was kind of scary. The author, Philip Jenkins, generally does research to debunk commonly held myths, for example, things like the belief that there is an epidemic of pedophilia among clergy. This time around he was taking on the idea that there is a lot of pornography on the Internet that features children as the subjects. He was shocked to discover that this is one myth that is true, kiddie porn is rampant and available on the Web. He was apprehensive about his findings because he didn't want to be perceived as a person who was opposed to adult pornography, because he is not. # Tuesday, March 05, 2002 ( 12:55 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Tuesday. My technical problems continue...the cable is out again, but not on the TV, which I could live with much more easily. The modem indicates that the computer connection is fine, and the cable connection is fine, so why isn't it working? As a telecommuter, I do have back-up - a dial-in connection, but it is slow and irritating. And the visual, of dollar bills being sucked into the cable - for nothing! - remains. Perhaps I should research satellite dishes? # Monday, March 04, 2002 ( 11:58 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Please visit my site (by clicking the link) where you can read some of my short works, and view my virtual museum. Monday/early Tuesday. Well, I just wrote quite a bit - and when I posted & published I got an error message - said I was not logged in - and my text vanished. Bummer. Another one of those times when I had to re-learn something I already knew 100 times over (or should have known by now): Save often - except this time that will be "post and publish." I made some updates to my Gully Brook Press website. Why not visit it? Most significant: I added a page for historic documents, both images and PDF files, on one room schools. I have shared some of the material with students, but I am calling this a virtual museum and I'm rather pleased with it. My site has generated some email. Not from anyone who was unknown to me before, and I don't expect to get anything like that yet. Ah, the difficulties of getting a site to appear in a search engine! I am trying to get that to happen, but I have no idea if my efforts will work, or if I will have to pay something...I imagine dollar bills (actually digits, I guess, although the paper makes a better visual) getting sucked into the cable modem, and streaming into the wire and to the pole...so what else is new? Anyway, one of those emails is encouraging me to write an entry about plagiarism. (Does this thing have a spell check? Don't want to take a risk and hunt it down at this point, so who cares?) What with the various scandals, some alleged, some not, in history writing: Ellis, Goodwin, McCullough (as it happens I am reading John Adams now), Ambrose, another scholar (whose name escapes me, he wrote on gun ownership, or the lack of it, in colonial times) and a local case for me, a professor at the university, this is receiving a lot of attention in academe. The Chronicle of Higher Education (it is a subscription website) has had some interesting articles on the subject lately. There is some concern, perhaps overblown, that students regularly plagiarize from the Internet. I do know that students in the class I teach often fail to cite, or use inappropriate citations, but I have assumed this was due to a lack of understanding of the standard, rather than intentional cheating. Perhaps I am mistaken. The email had a link to a site, called www.turnitin.com, which is a service that scans student papers and catches instances of cheating. The tryout is free, but the actual service is a subscription. As an adjunct, I doubt I would get institutional support for www.turnitin.com, so I guess I will have to continue to rely on good old fashioned instincts. There were two cases when I am pretty certain the students downloaded their term papers from one of those mills that charge a fee, because Mr. Do Nada and Ms. Dee Minus do not tranform into Mr. Gene Yus and Ms. A. Plus in one assignment. And, I must admit that the Internet does make it seem easy and maybe tempting too - here it is the middle of a last minute all-nighter and a big paper is due - just click, edit, copy, paste, and claim it. I suppose if popular and scholarly historians think it is OK to plagiarize, how can we expect students to demonstrate better ethics? On the other hand, why blame the web? I figure that students who wanted to plagiarize in the past found a way to do it too - they simply would have typed or handwritten their cheating from "scratch" by copying it from a dusty old library book, right? Maybe that took more time - meaning that then, the all-nighter had to be a day or two in advance of the deadline. But, as a freelance writer who just established a publications website, I suppose it is something to consider. But I really don't like to, or the question that perhaps this power-to-the-people-publishing type of website of which blogger is an example could also be a source for the less than reputable? # Friday, March 01, 2002 ( 2:27 PM ) me Welcome to Gully Brook Press Friday. I have always liked the idea of a journal. I think it is vital for a writer, although it really is a great venting and reflection tool for everyone. When I was a kid, I knew a man who kept a journal on a daily basis - from when he was 12 years old in 1902, almost until his death at age 86 in 1976. He wrote about the weather every day, but he also wrote on the small and large events of his life on a farm, and as a member of a rural community. What a wonderful resource are those diaries! They now reside in the collection of a local library and museum. I have wasted the better part of this week on technical problems. Are we stretching our infrastucture to the limit, is it the ISP or maybe my machine? Or, could it really be one of those infamous "user problems" that were the only answer most support people would ever give, back in the days of 286 PCs and 64k and DOS? Several months ago I took a big risk. I left the (relative) comfort of my administrative job at a flashcube to pursue freelancing: freelance writing, freelance research, freelance consulting, and adjunct teaching. Recently, I caught up on the various jobs I have taken to pay the bills, wished my book proposal good luck as I submitted it (it has been in the works since 1996), and made some progress in getting organized (just progress, I am not actually there yet). So, I decided it was time to focus on establishing a web presence for my freelance writing. My comfort level with computing is fairly high, but I probably should be less impatient with the web page publishing learning curve. I had things set (kind of), and then those technical problems kicked in - all at once. My cable modem started acting up by working only intermittently, the provider's customer service department was not as quick, or as forthright, with their response as the exhorbitant cost should indicate, then AOL suddenly started to have trouble with their FTP space, and in an effort to learn to add frames to my new pages, I managed to destroy them. But, after a few days of irritation, the cable technician showed up, AOL straightened out the homepage problems (mostly), and I decided to add learning frames to a future task list. Well, that's my rant for the day. But you can visit my new and improved space on the web by clicking above, or here, on the Gully Brook Press link, where I have posted PDF files of some of my writing: short essays, articles, and one poem. You see, frames may be frustrating me, but I think I managed to get around some of those tech issues with using AOL as the host (though I admit in a roundabout way). I hope to update my Gully Brook Press site with new samples often, and to make technical improvements both here and there. Pleased to meet you! # |
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