This last weekend I went to my 20-year high school reunion. That means (for those of you who’d prefer not to do math) that my classmates and I were in high school during the mid- to late-80s, which we all know was the Golden Age of American Pop Music.*

Unfortunately, the DJ who was hired to do music for the reunion seemed not to fully appreciate this fact, and, frankly, he did a terrible job. Presented with the opportunity to explore the nuances and surprises of the GAAPM, he instead spent the evening scraping the bottom of the 80s barrel, serving up such dregs as Tiffany’s mall-rat anthem, “I Think We’re Alone Now,” and even some Milli Vanilli. Seriously. As he launched into each poorly-considered song, people who hadn’t seen each other in 20 years turned to each other and shrugged quizzically, eyebrows set in a “WTF?” arch. Several members of the reunion committee were seen cornering the DJ and wagging their fingers at him. Dancing was more sporadic and less exuberant than one would expect of a room full of drunk 38-year-olds.

To be fair, the DJ looked like he might not have even been born in 1989, though perhaps he simply looked really young compared to the rest of us. So, it’s possible he just doesn’t understand. While it’s too late now to fix the music for our reunion, I thought I’d offer some advice for anyone else planning to DJ an 80s-related event:

• This might seem obvious, but listen to some 80s music. Get yourself Sirius radio and spend some time with the “80s on 8″ station (which employs four of the original five MTV VJs**) and “1st Wave,” especially when Richard Blade is DJing, or during the “Saturday Night Safety Dance.” Our DJ would have been much better off simply hooking his equipment up to satellite radio for the night.
• Rent yourself some John Hughes movies. It also wouldn’t hurt to check out The Wedding Singer.
• Know your audience. Our DJ seemed to think that we had listened exclusively to KIIS-FM in the 80s. Some of us spent much more time with KROQ. (If you weren’t in southern California at the time, the difference is basically between mainstream and alternative.)
• You know that gizmo you use to speed up songs to match tempo? Yeah, don’t use that. We’ve lived with these songs for over 20 years now, and we know what they’re supposed to sound like. If you speed up Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” so that Simon Le Bon sounds like Alvin the Chipmunk, don’t you think we’re going to notice?
• Feel free to range around Michael Jackson’s catalog. Whatever happened to him later, the man was a pop music genius at the height of his powers in the 80s.
• For God’s sake, do NOT play Milli Vanilli or Vanilla Ice. They sucked back then, and they suck now.

* Sorry, boomers. The truth hurts sometimes.
** You know, from when music videos mattered, and MTV actually used to play them?

Fish is at it again, in a third installment of his “What Colleges Should Teach” series. And here is another response:

Once again, Dr. Fish, you ignore the fact that writing — real writing — is always writing *for* and writing *about*. I agreed with your first post’s implication that college writing courses often focus too much on “content”, in the form of literature, or cultural studies, or whatever. I also agree that there were certain excesses associated with the whole “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language” thing, although I would point out that learning a “new language” isn’t a value-neutral exercise. Teaching students to write academically changes them in profound ways.

But I have trouble believing that what you describe here is actually all you do in your writing courses, nor do I believe that if that’s the case, your students are learning anything worthwhile. You have described a setting in which students have no motivation to write, no content to wrestle with, and no audience to persuade or enlighten. You seem to assume that students must first work on *how* to write something, before they can move on to the *what* and *why*. In other words, you have reduced the entire rhetorical situation to stylistic exercises.

I suspect that much of your posturing here is the result of a self-manufactured literacy crisis. That is, I think you have become appalled by what you consider to be student writing that lacks the stylistic niceties you associate with good prose, and you’ve decided that it’s the job of college writing courses to fix the problem. I’m sorry that I can’t oblige you. I’m too busy trying to give my students reasons to write and guiding them toward more and more academic ways of framing their ideas in writing. If you’ll forgive the expression, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

The following is a comment I made on Stanley Fish’s recent New York Times blog posts, which can be found here and here. This won’t make much sense if you haven’t read both his posts first.

Okay, here’s my exercise, Dr. Fish: Neither this sentence nor the next one will be particularly meaningful, because they aren’t situated in any kind of context. See?

But seriously, I thank you for clarifying (or perhaps backpedaling on) your position. I agreed with one of the premises of the first post, which was that writing courses ought not be literature or cultural studies courses in disguise, with a thin veneer of writing instruction layered over the top. I, too, have seen too many courses like that, and I think it comes from the fact that many composition instructors are/were literature grad students who didn’t find jobs teaching literature, so they use comp. courses as a surrogate. I think this does a disservice to students. Actual writing instruction is a good thing.

However, I’m not sure I agree with you about what actual writing instruction involves. Your neither/nor exercise gets at style, but does little in terms of other canons of rhetoric, like invention or arrangement. Students cannot practice discovering the available means of persuasion if they don’t a) have some topic they are treating (we might call this “content”) or b) have some audience they are aiming to persuade. Learning how to write shouldn’t be disconnected from having something to say.

I teach freshman composition as a course in ethnographic writing, not because I think learning how to do fieldwork is all that important (although observing and interviewing are useful skills), but because it provides a definable context for learning how to describe and analyze cultural behaviors and artifacts. That is, it gives students a motive to write. Even a literature-based composition course could use a poem or a novel as an occasion to write. I think it is not a question of either/or — either content or form, literature (or cultural studies) or writing. Instead, it is a matter of foregrounding the appropriate activities, which in the case of a composition course would be the writing.

I often find student course evaluations kind of frustrating, partly because there’s really no way to respond, even to the positive ones. So, out of that frustration, I offer the following responses to some of the comments from the three courses I taught last semester (you’ll have to infer the comments from the responses):

• I’m glad you feel that your writing improved. I think everyone’s writing (almost) always improves in a comp course, but students don’t always recognize the fact.
• Lots of other students say that they find the group work really useful, and I’ve got sound pedagogical reasons for doing them. I’ll try to explain this better next time, but I suspect that some of you just don’t like to play with others.
• Me? Organized? I’m glad you thought so.
• I would rather not have done the once-a-week, three-hour format for our literature class, either. I didn’t have any control over the time the course was offered.
• It’s graduate school; it’s supposed to be challenging.
• You’re right — I should put those due dates on the syllabus next time. Thanks for suggesting it.
• Really? You think you got absolutely nothing from this class? I doubt it, but if that’s true, surely you bear some of the blame for that.
• Yes, Middle English is sexy.
• There is more to becoming a composition teacher than writing syllabi and lesson plans. An effective teacher knows how to engage with the research and scholarship of the field. We did the research paper to help you do that.
• I’m flattered, really, but I’m taken.

We just got back from a weekend trip to Napa Valley during which we took Sunset Magazine’s advice and chose activities that followed a “sparkling wine” theme. That basically means we went to wineries that specialized in the méthode Champenoise, in order to compare different sparkling wines, and hopefully get a better sense of what we like (upshot: we like sparklers made from pinot noir more than chardonnay).

If you’re considering doing something similar, here are a few notes from our trip:

• Mumm Napa: In addition to having a free tour, this winery has a great indoor/outdoor tasting patio where you can order of flight of three or four 3-oz. pours of wine (we did a flight of bruts and a flight of their Devaux line). The view west across the valley is magnificent. Also, there’s an art gallery with both a rotating exhibit and a more permanent Ansel Adams exhibit. It’s a good place to hang out while you’re sobering up from the tasting.
• étoile: This is a restaurant located in the Domaine Chandon winery. Their menu is built to bring out the best in the paired wines, which is the reverse of what usually happens. We did the four-course tasting menu with wines paired with each course (except for the last dessert course). Some of the pairings, like an unfiltered Newton chardonnay with an earthy truffle papardelle, were inspired. We also got to try some of Chandon’s less-available sparklers. This is a great restaurant if you want to foreground the wines.
• Schramsberg: This somewhat smaller winery combines a tour of their wine caves with an above-ground tasting of four of their sparkling wines. The gothic caves are both literally and figuratively cool, and our knowledgeable guide did a terrific job talking us through the various tastings at the end — much better than the typical pay-and-pour tasting experience.
• Candlelight Inn: OK, this doesn’t have much to do with sparkling wine, but this is the bed-and-breakfast where we stayed. We were fortunate enough to upgrade to their detached cottage, where we had breakfast brought to our private balcony. Also, the decor is somewhat less Victorian than many B&Bs in the area (a definite plus for me).
• Bouchon bakery, next to Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Yountville, turns out to be a great place to grab a quick lunch.

I’d recommend any of the things we did. My strongest recommendation for wine country, though, would be to pick a theme around which to build your own visit. Sparkling wine worked out really well for us, but next time we might decide to focus on wines made from a particular grape (pinot noir, maybe?) or maybe dessert wines. I think having a trip theme helped us get a bit off the beaten path.

A number of blogs that I read have been apologizing recently for not posting very often or very regularly. Most say they’ve just been too busy, but at least one blogger has blamed Facebook for “sucking” his blogging energy lately. That’s an interesting idea, and I look forward to scholarly discussions of the generic and performative distinctions among blogging, Facebook, and Twitter. I am also not an especially prolific blogger. I think I’m averaging something like 1.85 posts per month. And I am aware that I’ve slowed down recently. However, I’m not sure this is something that merits an apology.

You see, I blog for me, and not for you. I don’t mean to suggest I don’t care about you. I totally do. But I recently realized that I write blog posts only when something gets under my skin, and the only way to scratch that itch is to write about it (or post pictures about it). Usually I don’t know what I’m going to write until I get into it. Each blog post, for me, is exploratory, an attempt to figure out and refine what I think about something — an “essay” in the original sense. I am not all that interested in persuading readers of something (all three of you tend to hold similar opinions anyway). I think of this blog as more of a sandbox for personal meaning making.

All this puts me in mind of Peter Elbow’s article, “Closing My Eyes as I Speak,” in which Elbow argues that we do composition students a disservice when we insist that they focus their energy on “audience awareness,” instead of having them write for themselves. I’ve got all sorts of problems with this line of argument (as those of you who knew me in grad school know), so I find it somewhat fascinating that this is essentially where I’ve wound up with my blog. Unlike other kinds of (academic) writing I do, this blog is mostly just for me. Is it possible that, for all my commitment to socio-cultural theories of language and literacy, I’m a closet expressivist?

It’d be fun if that were true. But that leaves me with a question: Why not just keep a private journal? If all this is just for me, then why do it publicly on a blog? Well, that’s where things get complicated. In all honesty, I don’t think I’d do any of this writing if it weren’t public, if there weren’t at least the possibility (despite my laughably low blog stats) that somebody else was reading this. When my writing is completely private, as in a journal or in notetaking, I take lots and lots of shortcuts. I don’t feel compelled to spell out everything, because I figure “hey, I know what I mean” (even if I don’t). When I write blog posts, however, I feel compelled to take a stab at making myself understood. I have to connect the dots for you (hypothetical reader) in a way that I am simply too lazy to do with private writing. So while I said that I blog for me, you are nevertheless an integral part of the process. Knowing that you might be reading this forces me to write in a way I find personally rewarding, whether or not it actually connects with you as well.

So, I thank you, dear reader, either real or imaginary, for being there (or not).

There’s an obnoxious piece in today’s LA Times about Jill Biden’s use of the honorific “doctor,” and it’s gotten me thinking about what the term means, and when it can legitimately be applied. The article is obnoxious, in my opinion, because it trades in both misogyny and anti-intellectualism, implying that it’s somehow worthy of ridicule for the nation’s “second lady” to call herself “doctor,” since she’s not a physician. There’s even a quote from an “authority” on the issue:

“My feeling is if you can’t heal the sick, we don’t call you doctor,” said Bill Walsh, copy desk chief for the Washington Post’s A section and the author of two language books.

Wow. A copy desk chief. For a newspaper. (You know, that thing you don’t read any more.) Well, the truth is that Jill Biden isn’t a physician; she has a PhD in Education from the University of Maryland. And in my book, if she wants to be called “doctor,” then that’s what we should call her.

This idea that “doctor” refers only to medical professionals is a relatively new development in the history of our language. The word itself derives from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach,” and therefore “doctor” essentially means “teacher.” Its first applications were to the “church fathers,” such as Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, but also spread in the Middle Ages to refer to scholars more generally. Physicians also came be referred to as “doctor” (Chaucer calls one of his pilgrims a “Doctur of Phesike”), but I would hazard to guess that the use of “doctor” in such cases was meant to index a physician’s advanced learning, and not the practice of healing. You have to get fairly deep into the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition to find this meaning:

6. a. spec. A doctor of medicine; in popular current use, applied to any medical practitioner. Also, a wizard or medicine-man in a primitive tribe.

I have to admit, that second sentence makes me smile. Jill Biden’s use of “doctor,” I imagine, derives from the fourth definition listed in the OED:

4. a. One who, in any faculty or branch of learning, has attained to the highest degree conferred by a University; a title originally implying competency to teach such subject or subjects, but now merely regarded as a certificate of the highest proficiency therein.

That “highest degree” in our educational system is the PhD, and we’ve already established that Dr. Biden has one.

With that all said, I have to admit that I’ve got one, too. A PhD, that is. However, I’m not all that interested in having anybody call me “doctor,” but I consider this a personal choice. For starters, I’m a Quaker, and we’ve historically eschewed honorifics that imply superiority/inferiority in human interaction (the practice of removing hats in certain company has likewise been rejected). I also associate the use of “doctor” for PhDs with certain regions, like the east coast or the south, neither of which is where I’m from.* I used to ask students to just call me “Kory,” but I’ve come to appreciate how uncomfortable some students are with addressing teachers by first name. So now I just ask students to use whatever seems appropriate to them: “Kory” or “Professor Ching” or just “Professor.” (I prefer “professor” to “doctor,” I guess, because that refers to my job, and not to my educational status.)

But Dr. Biden is in a very different situation. She’s married to the VPOTUS, and appears to be the first “second lady” to continue her own career while her spouse is in office. She’s also associated with an administration that promises to undo much of the denigration of knowledge and expertise wrought over the last eight years. As Obama said in his inaugural speech, “we will restore science to its rightful place.” It may be only symbolic, but I think having the spouse of the Vice President admit to being knowledgable and accomplished is a good thing.

* I also don’t want people in restaurants or airplanes looking to me if someone has a heart attack, just because I used the “doctor” title while making my reservation.

I’ve gotten several requests for my grandmother’s chocolate-peanut butter balls, so I thought I’d post the recipe here. I think what sets these apart is the Rice Krispies, which make them much lighter and crunchier than some recipes.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
2 cups chunky peanut butter
1 lb. powdered sugar
3 cups Rice Krispies
12 oz. chocolate chips (preferably dark chocolate)

Process:

1. Cream butter and peanut butter together in a mixer.
   
2. Mix in the Rice Krispies and powdered sugar (or have your sous-chef do it for you). Use your mixer’s slowest speed, or you’ll have sugar all over the kitchen.
   
3. Using an ice-cream scoop (or a melon baller), make uniform balls out of the peanut butter mixture. A dome shape keeps these from rolling away.
   
4. Heat the chocolate chips in a double-boiler until melted. As you see, I don’t own a double-boiler; a bowl set over boiling water in a saucepan does just fine.
   
5. Dip the balls into the chocolate, and avoid making terribly obvious jokes. I find that chopsticks allow you to let excess chocolate drip off.
   
6. Allow the balls to cool on a rack or in the refrigerator, and enjoy!
   

Happy Holidays!

Like many of you, my feelings of euphoria after the Nov. 4 presidential election were mixed with bitter disappointment over California’s passage of Proposition 8. Since then, there’s been plenty of finger-pointing, from the left’s complacency leading up to the election, to the influence of the Mormon church, to supposed attitudes of African-American voters. In a previous blog post, I attributed support of Prop. 8 more abstractly to a mixture of hate and puritanical nosiness.

But since the vote I’ve been mulling it over, and I’m not sure any of that adequately explains what happened. It’s led me to larger questions, like where does hate come from anyway? And why hate homosexuality, when there are so many other things for us to collectively disapprove of?

I don’t pretend to have any real answers. But at the risk of trivializing a serious thing, I’ll admit that, whenever I consider the issue, I can’t help thinking that maybe Yoda was on to something: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” (Of course, “Yoda” is only cribbing various, more-terrestrial spiritual traditions here, but sadly it’s Star Wars that I’ve internalized.) In other words, hate is both a cause and an outcome. We know what “suffering” it’s caused (Prop. 8), but I think we need to consider its own causes.

So. Fear. But fear of what? Why would somebody be afraid of same-sex marriage? I have to admit I’ve still got trouble wrapping my head around this. There’s rhetoric out there about churches fearing litigation if they don’t perform same-sex marriages, or of schools “teaching homosexuality,” whatever the heck that means. But these are just red herrings, bugaboos designed to lend an air of legitimacy to outright discrimination. They mask rather than reveal the root fears.

In a recent Salon interview, Richard Rodriquez argues that what religious conservatives fear is not so much same-sex marriage or homosexuality, but rather perceived changes in the nature of families and gender relations. So, the chief anxiety is not over whether two men or two women marry each other, but instead over what it means to be a man or a woman in a committed relationship. Imagine the confusion same-sex marriage must cause anyone who subscribes to clearly-defined roles for husbands and wives: if two men marry, then who is the husband, and who is the wife? Do they (*gasp*) both wear the pants in the family? Which partner is subject to Paul’s inexplicably popular injunction for “wives, [to] submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5:22)? Maybe same-sex marriage is only the most extreme (or most vulnerable) threat to traditional gender roles. Other perceived threats — like women in the workplace, or even contraception — have too much popular support these days to attack in the open. So same-sex marriage becomes a convenient scapegoat for a whole collection of perceived ills.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s both less complicated and more insidious than that. I recently read about a study suggesting that politically conservative people are inherently more fearful than their liberal counterparts. The authors of the study caution against reading too much into these results, but I have to say that the idea has a certain amount of explanatory power. Surely some people voted for Prop. 8 out of hate, and others out of the fears Rodriguez outlines, but maybe there’s a good portion of the “yes” vote who simply fear change of any kind. For people who are ruled by fear (and I think we’ve all known people like that), something like same-sex marriage represents yet another unwanted change in the status quo, another sure sign that society is going straight to hell in a handbasket. A vote for Prop. 8, then, might have just been a relatively easy way for these folks to temporarily delay the inevitable apocalypse always lurking just around the corner.

Of course, fear also goes hand-in-hand with ignorance. I suspect that a good number of the people who voted for Prop. 8 either don’t personally know any gay people, or they think they don’t. One solution, as Harvey Milk is supposed to have put it, is to “come out, come out, whereever you are.” Still, I think it’s important for us all to disabuse the fearful of their misconceptions. My own wife, who has yet to submit to anything, has written a brilliant post along these lines.