Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 25

Bleah.

Today's weather:

Tomorrow's weather:

Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization

In preparation for lectures I'm giving this fall in Vancouver, I've been reading a lot of "death of the written world/Facebook and Twitter will bring and end to Western civilization" screeds. (Here, here, and here, for example.)

I tend to find these deeply unsatisfying, but haven't been able to articulate exactly why. This morning I was reading Lewis Mumford's 1934 classic Technics and Civilization and realized that his approach to analyzing "the machine" (the automated technologies of the...

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-18

Long, long day. #
This morning, writing about writing. And France. #
The Albigensian Crusades: not a good decade for the Church. #
Running this morning: like exercising inside a sponge. #
My very favorite chef at my very favorite restaurant just sent me home w/doggie bag of HEADCHEESE-like Granny Tench used to make but better. #
Investigating the Council of Toulouse in 1229. #

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In hard-slog mode (but at least I have headcheese)

I'm in one of those writing phases where none of my projects are even close to completion; I'd chronicle my daily routine for you, but it mostly consists of spending four hours figuring out where to locate the start of the Inquisition, or five hours tracking one of Philip IV's currency devaluements, or three hours working out what mistakes a middle-grade writer is likely to make on a particular writing assignment.

It's the kind of work that makes you long for a play-by-play commentary to...

Eek.

I was searching for a copy of the SAT essay rubric today (I was asked about it and wanted to check my memory on a couple of points) and found it on eprep.com–along with this introduction.

We've discussed a lot on ePrep in prior posts about the new SAT Writing section it's now mandatory component, the essay. To catch up on the topic, be sure to go back and read and watch our prior posts.

And that's on a major SAT prep site.

One I won't be recommending.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-11

Doing routine revisions of will & legal stuff. Lawyer's opening remark: "In case of your potential decease…" Ah, THAT'S what it's called. #Last time it was this hot: summer of 1977. Remember people kept asking if heat was a sign of approaching apocalypse. Turned out it wasn't. #Have spent all morning trying to think like a fifth-grader. I think I broke my brain. #One part of my brain: Reading The Capetian Kings of France this morning. Rest of my brain: Hoping for rain. #Heading into my...

What I've been reading (mostly for fun)

I've been on a random fiction jag for the last few weeks; I'm reading so much Renaissance history that I feel the need to balance out my mental diet with a side dish of stories. I can't say there's been any real plan in my novel-grabbing; I did a pass through the Williamsburg library, grabbing titles that looked intriguing, and another through the bookstore to pick up a few new novels by authors I've liked in the past.

Overall, this method was a disappointment. Either that, or I'm becoming c...

Breakfast cookies

Yes, you're all right; it was terribly unfair of me to mention breakfast cookies without giving you the recipe.

Cream together: 1/2 cup shortening, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 egg.

Add dry ingredients: 3/4 cup flour,

1 cup Raisin Bran,

1/2 cup oatmeal,

1/2 tsp soda,

1/2 tsp salt,

1 tsp cinnamon.

Mix well.

Stir in 1/2 cup raisins.

Bake 350 degrees until light brown; let them cool & get crispy before you eat them.

The recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks, Marion Cunningham's Breakfast Book. I...

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-04

DH is beating me at Settlers. #78 degrees at 6 AM. Blech. #Last leg of DS18's flight home bumped from 11 PM arrival to 12:42 AM arrival. Smacking myself on head to stay awake. #He's home, he's home, he's home! #Celebrating DS18's arrival home with bacon, eggs, and biscuits for lunch (which is when he woke up). #Have said, "Hey, don't do that in the house WATCH OUT!" approximately forty-five times since 11 AM. #Went for six-mile run in Chantilly. Got lost. Six-mile run turned into 12-mile...

A practice session at The Teaching Company (or, The camera really does add ten pounds)

You may have heard me mention that I'll be taping a course for The Teaching Company's Great Courses catalog. This week, I went up to Chantilly for my first practice session. (Incidentally, I've been asked not to talk publicly about the content of a course that's still very much in development; fine with me, as I expect the course will be mutating as I write it. So I'm not going to tell you what the course is about. Yet.)

I've used Teaching Company lectures for the kids. In fact, right...