Saturday morning trip with the little guy

My son and I had some time this morning while my wife was teaching in Quincy, and I had seen something about the Granite Railway Incline Plane on Atlas Obscura, so we decided to check it out. 

As they say on the website, the railway ruins are located in a neighborhood near the highway. Google Maps took us right there.

Entrance to the Granite Railway Incline

Sign providing a history of the Granite Railway Incline Plane (Click to enlarge)

Plaque introducing Granite Railway

Looking up the incline from the bottom of the hill

Looking downhill from near the top

When we got to the top, we walked for a while along a pathway for awhile. We came through the woods to a clearing and found out we were in the middle of an old quarry (see this description on Atlas Obscura). 

The scene from the clearing (apologies for the jerky video!)

The little guy, running as usual

View from the top of the quarry

As we were leaving, we ran into a group of men who were headed into the quarry from another direction. They were either going to film something there or play musical instruments (one guy had drumsticks, I think), or maybe they were going to film themselves playing musical instruments. We didn't hang around to see what they were up to, though. (Maybe we should have!) 

We'll have to go back sometime, perhaps before it gets much colder out.

A belated RIP to Gary Blankenburg

My brother sent me Gary Blankenburg's obituary this evening. Dr. Blankenburg, who died last year, was a poet and high school creative writing teacher who could be said to be the reason I'm a college writing teacher. (In my darker moments I'd say he's partly to blame for my career...) I didn't go to Catonsville High School where he taught, but I met him through my brother, who worked for Dr. Blankenburg's wife Jo at a Waldenbooks  (remember those?) in Towson. At the time, I thought I was a poet, or I was trying to be a poet, and I must have run into him at one of the Maryland ArtScape literary festivals--I went one year when a young poet named Millie Bentley (a former student of his), who had just published a chapbook, gave a reading. This article from the Baltimore Sun gives a better review of his career than I could.

When I was a freshman in college, I started out majoring in communications, and a professor in my introductory class assigned us the task of interviewing someone in the career we'd like to have (presumably in communications). I thought I wanted to be a career poet, so I got my brother to ask his boss to ask her husband if I could interview him. We met at an IHOP one evening, where he drank coffee and I drank tea, and he told me that if I wanted to be a writer, I should become a college professor. High school English teachers, he explained, don't have time to write because they're spending all their time grading papers. But college professors, they have time to write. I guess that started me on this track. I've discovered, though, that "having" time to write and "making" time to write are two different things. He seemed to make time, which I haven't been as good at doing.

A few years after that interview (can I call it life-changing without sounding maudlin?), Dr. Blankenburg generously published a couple of my poems in the Catonsville Times (hopefully copies of that issue are lost to history) and invited me to give a reading to his creative writing class at Catonsville. I think my reading was terrible, and I couldn't really answer any of the students' questions about writing poetry. I never thought of it until now, but I guess I can say that was my first time in front of a writing classroom. Not a very auspicious beginning, considering my performance, but I would like to thank Dr. Blankenburg for the opportunity. He took my writing and career aspirations seriously, even though I was probably taking them too seriously at the time, and based on that Sun article, that was typical of him. A generous man. Rest in peace, Dr. Blankenburg.

CFP: 4th World Congress of Taiwan Studies

Trying to decide if I should submit something to this. Due date: Oct. 20:

The University of Washington Taiwan Studies Program (UW-TSP) will host the 4th World Congress of Taiwan Studies from June 27 to 29, 2022.  The quadrennial conference is jointly organized by Academia Sinica and UW-TSP. The WCTS brings together the world’s leading Taiwan Studies scholars to share their research. The 4th Congress will pursue the general theme “Taiwan in the Making,” exploring the processes, forces, and dynamics that made and continue to make Taiwan. 

The 4th Congress will be the first to take place in North America. Previous congresses were held at Academic Sinica in 2012, at the University of London SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies in 2015, and at Academia Sinica in 2018. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 4th Congress has been delayed by one year. 

We are now circulating our Call for Papers. We welcome applicants to propose research papers on Taiwan from the social sciences and humanities. The Congress will highlight a number of sub-themes throughout various panels and roundtables, such as (but not limited to):

• “Worlding” Taiwan: Taiwan in Global Context
• Contested Sovereignty: Taiwan in Comparison
• New Directions in Taiwan Studies
• Consolidating Taiwan’s Democracy
• Gender and Society in Changing Taiwan
• Environment, Ecology, and the Future of Taiwan
• Ethnic Identity and Diversity in Taiwan
• Taiwan History through Primary Sources

These topics are merely examples, and we encourage applicants to submit applications in any field or area of focus broadly under Taiwan Studies.

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: October 20 (Wednesday)

Acceptance notification: November 30 (Tuesday)

Presentation paper (6000 words) due: May 16 (Monday), 2022

Abstract Submission

Please submit a one-page long abstract (no more than 600 words) and include the following information: Author(s) Name, Paper Title, Email, Current Position(s), and Affiliation(s) to: [twstudy@gate.sinica.edu.tw]

Accepted participants will be provided on campus accommodations for up to 3 nights from June 27 to 29. Accepted participants traveling from outside of North America will receive up to 4 nights (June 27 to 30). Breakfast and box lunches are provided, as well as dinners on the first two days of the conference.

For junior scholars (PhD candidates, postdoctoral fellows, adjunct faculty, and independent scholars) who do not have access to institutional funding, the WCTS may be able to offer a modest, partial subsidy toward airfare. Details will be arranged after proposal acceptance.

Please refer to the WCTS webpage for further details.

One Marine's War and the Robert Sheeks-George H. Kerr connection

I got curious about Robert Sheeks because of some correspondence he had with George H. Kerr over some materials he was helping Kerr transfer to the Shikiya Memorial Library at the University of the Ryukyus in 1958. The Asia Foundation, for which Sheeks worked, was in charge of purchasing the collection on behalf of the University. This correspondence is located in the Kerr collection at the Hoover Institute. (My thanks to Dr. Yukari Yoshihara of the University of Tsukuba for sharing these documents with me!)

Also in the Kerr papers is a note from "rbs" (probably also Robert Sheeks) to "Mr. Stewart" regarding a 1955 letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in which Kerr traced a history of US-Taiwan-Chinese relations up to that time and predicted "a violent crisis within Nationalist ranks at Taipei" that the US needed to be prepared for. In his note to Stewart, RBS characterized Kerr's letter as "a wonderful gift to the communists." He continued, 

His bitterness has grown, as much because the Department of State did not take his advice as for [sic] reasons connected with the uprising and its violence. Aside from this increased bitterness, he is back in Formosa of 1947 --- as he happened to view it in those days. He viewed everything for the I.P.R. at that time.

Kerr is supposed to be a scholar; he has the whole Hoover Library setup at his disposal. He omitted mention that Formosa was ceded to Japan as part of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese War.  I am sure that this is intentional, and it helps paint the kind of picture he wants to portray of the Formosan, Mainlander, and Japanese roles.

Incidentally, Art Goul [a reporter who worked in China and Taiwn] phoned me this morning to ask about Kerr's background. I gave him a few items of past history which are fairly well known. 

I am curious about the "items of past history" that RBS told Goul about, of course, so I looked up Sheeks and came across this website about him. (I should note that Dr. Stephen Craft of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told me about Sheeks and the website several years ago, but for some reason I never followed up on that, which will probably be to my eternal regret.) Anyway, the website about Sheets got me interested in the book about him by Gerald Meehl, One Marine's War, and I just finished reading it today after receiving it yesterday. (It's a quick read.)

The book mostly focuses on Sheeks' career as a Japanese Language Officer (JLO) during World War II and his attempts to convince the Marines to let him try to persuade Japanese soldiers and civilians who were holed up in caves on the islands where the Marines had landed to give themselves up rather than fight to the death or commit suicide. It's a fascinating story, but there was only a little in the book about his postwar years, including his time in Taiwan as director of the United States Information Service. That's what I'd like to know more about, as well as his work for the Asia Foundation in the 1950s. Well, I can't criticize a book for not covering what it wasn't intended to cover! Maybe I'll try to contact Sheeks now and see what he can tell me about his experiences in Taiwan (and about his memories of Kerr). 

Monday morning, week four of classes

I'm listening to workmen playing Steely Dan and tearing out some rotten wood from the soffit. ("Soffit" is a word I just learned a couple of weeks ago from my 94-year-old mother.) 

[Update, 9/29: They're now playing the Eagles, interspersed with other music primarily from the '70s. Still some Dan in the mix.

When I was in college in the '80s I was amazed at one administrator's knowledge of the music of the '50s. Now I'm in that administrator's position regarding music that's almost 50 years old rather than "only" 30 years old. Yikes.]

Honest-ish question

How do you write about the cool things you've found in the archives without making your paper sound like it should be titled, "Cool Things I Found in the Archives?"

Scene from pandemic-era teaching

We had a virtual English Department meeting today. After we got off Zoom, we all ran into each other on the way to the restroom.

Something to watch when I get a chance...

The summer is over, so I'm getting ready for the semester that starts next Wednesday. (Yikes!)

I came across this video on YouTube and want to put it here to watch later and share with my reader(s). I thought it looked interesting. It's a debate from 1956 among high school exchange students from the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, and the UK about prejudice.  

What caught me about the beginning of the video (I didn't have a chance to get far into it) is when the moderator asked the students about their own prejudices. When she gets to Raul Contreras, a fifteen-year-old from the Philippines, he directly says he is prejudiced against the Japanese, and glances somewhat furtively at the Japanese girl on his right (Yoriko Konishi) while he explains why. Not surprisingly, his prejudice comes from the Philippine experience under the Japanese during World War Two. He admits he's too young to have really understood it himself, but his feelings come from what older relatives have told him about their experiences. 

Hope I get a chance to watch the whole thing at some point. (Maybe even figure out a way to use it in one of my classes?)

There are some other videos like this, with "debates" from students from different countries. They're from a YouTube channel called ArchiveMC, which has posted a lot of Cold War-era videos.

[Update, 9/4/21: I should add that if you watch the video on YouTube, you'll see in the comments that Raul's daughter has responded to the video and provided more information about his life and subsequent career. It's really interesting! Some information is also given about Yoriko.]

Summer writing project (Week Seventeen): A new distraction for the new year

I finished my grading this week for the summer class just in time to start getting ready for the fall semester that starts September 8. In the meantime, I'm waiting for August 30, when Taiwan's English-language streaming service, TaiwanPlus, starts up. They also have a YouTube channel. It appears that the twelve-part historical drama, SEQALU: Formosa 1867, might be streamed on this channel. If so, I might be persuaded to watch it, despite Brian Hioe's somewhat disappointed review of the first two episodes and despite my own party interested/partly disappointed reaction to the trailer. Here's the trailer:

(After watching the trailer, I asked one of my former Tunghai colleagues if he planned to watch the program. His somewhat abrupt reply: "It is on here, but I don't want to watch it.")

Summer writing project (Week Sixteen): New Year's Resolutions for the 2021-22 Academic Year

The summer is almost at an end (though since I've been teaching for the past seven weeks, it ended a long time ago for me). The soon-to-come beginning of the semester is signaled by two dreams I had last night: the first in which I was back at Tunghai, trying to figure out on the first day of classes where to find a copy machine and whether my FENM (Freshman English for Non-Majors) class was supposed to meet in our regular classroom or the language lab (with a subplot involving the fact that my clothes hadn't yet arrived in Taiwan, so I was teaching without a shirt). The second dream must have been partly inspired by Henri, the tropical storm that is currently in the news: it was the first day of classes, but I slept in and didn't go to school because there was a hurricane and I assumed the university would cancel classes. When I woke up, I found that Northeastern hadn't canceled classes for the hurricane (evidently Harvard hadn't canceled classes, so NU decided they couldn't either). 

Usually at this time of year, I write out my new year's resolutions for the upcoming academic year. If last year taught us anything, it's to not expect the resolutions to mean anything. I think my main resolution for this year is for all of us to stay healthy and avoid getting COVID, which will be enough of a challenge, considering my son and I both have to have on-ground classes (he's starting first grade, I'm in 47th). Other than that, I have those two writing projects to try to resurrect (remember them?) and try to finish before any squirrels run past to distract me. 

I think that will be it. If I get any of these accomplished, you'll be the first to know!

Summer writing grading project (Week Fifteen): More on translingualism

This has been the next-to-last week of class, so I've been reading and commenting on paper drafts, conferencing with students, and doing some grading. It's been busy. I haven't had much time to do anything else, although I do have a few things to finish before the end of the month. (And I need to prepare for the fall semester, when I'll be on campus for the first time since February 2020! Not really looking forward to that, but what can you do?)

One quick addition to what I wrote last week about Bruce Horner and the relationship of translingualism to SRTOL. My colleague Cherice Jones steered me to the CCCC Demand for Black Linguistic Justice, which I had seen before. What I hadn't noticed previously, and what seems relevant to Horner's argument in the chapter I referenced last week, is part of Demand #3 ("We Demand that Political Discussions and Praxis Center Black Language as Teacher-Researcher Activism for Classrooms and Communities!"), where there is a "sub-demand" that:

• "researchers, educators, and policymakers stop using problematic, race-neutral umbrella terms like multilingualism, world Englishes, translingualism, linguistic diversity, or any other race-flattened vocabulary when discussing Black Language and thereby Black Lives."

If I understand correctly, the writers aren't saying that those terms like translingualism, etc., are problematic in other situations, but they specifically point to how these terms ignore race when discussing language--specifically, Black Language. This raises an issue that I hadn't considered before, but now seems very obvious: in arguing that "translingualism sees difference in language—located in time as the ever emerging product of language practices—not simply as the norm but as inevitable, arising even in exact repetitions of conventional usage" (Horner 60), there appears to be a validation of the "inevitable" difference in language and language practice at the expense of the very specific experiences of users of particular languages--specifically, users of Black Language. April Baker-Bell, et al. (the authors of the Demand), tie Black Language to Black Lives in a way that "translingualism" as an ideology doesn't seem (able) to account for. 

I'm still thinking about all this and I'm admittedly no expert, so I'm open to input on this....

[Update, 8/16: And now I realize that Keith Gilyard wrote about these very issues back in 2016! h/t again to Cherice.]

Summer writing project (Week Fourteen): Notes on GHK and translingualism

Not surprisingly, I didn't get anything done this week on my writing project. In fact, on Monday I woke up thinking about George Kerr and that earlier project, and I started getting interested in picking that up again. 

So a question for all of my reader(s): should I put my "main" project aside for a bit and go back to my Kerr paper, with the hope that putting the other project out of my mind for a while will allow me to come to it anew when I do that? These are two very different projects, I need to mention, and for very different audiences. What do you do in this situation? 

I should add that I've been dragging on both projects. You can see from my blog that I've been doing stuff with Kerr for about 10 years or more, and I haven't really achieved much in terms of publications (well, there's that introduction to the Camphor Press edition of Formosa Betrayed, which I enjoyed completing). I think I mentioned that the other project, a more rhetoric-focused project, has also been percolating in my brain for about 15 or so years. I have trouble getting things done, in other words. One of my Syracuse professors once said to me, when I was telling her about my idea for a project, "Everybody has ideas! Some turn into books, and some turn into after-tea chat!" I sometimes think I'm more the after-tea chat kind of idea person... *sigh*

I was also interviewed this week for a project some of my colleagues are working on. One of the questions had to do with what I knew about translingualism, so of course, being who I am (see "academic imposter syndrome"), I prepared for the interview by reading whatever I could about translingualism so I wouldn't sound like I didn't know anything. I even ordered an ebook for the library (which came the next day!) entitled Reconciling Translingualism and Second Language Writing, edited by Tony Silva and Zhaozhe Wang. It's a collection of essays growing out of the tensions between the academic field of second language writing and what I'd probably call the "translingual movement" in composition studies. I read a few chapters of that, including those by 

• Paul Kei Matsuda ("Weathering the Translingual Storm"), 
• Jonathan Hall and Maria Jerskey ("Tear Down the Wall: Institutional Structures vs. Translingual Realities"), 
• Xiaoye You ("The Yin-Yang of Writing Education in Globalization"), 
• Todd Ruecker and Shawna Shapiro ("Critical Pragmatism as a Middle Ground in Discussions of Linguistic Diversity"), 
• Michelle Cox and Missy Watson ("A Translingual Scholar and Second Language Writing Scholar Talk It Out: Steps Toward Reconciliation"), and 
• Bruce Horner ("Language Difference, Translinguality, and L2 Writing: Conflations, Confusions, and the Work of Writing"). 

(I always overprepare for interviews, though it usually doesn't show it in the end!) The chapters gave me a lot to think about. One thing I thought about centers around whether I'd consider my own pedagogy "translingual." I'm hesitant to call it that, particularly after reading Horner's chapter, which disavows the idea that translingualism is exclusively concerned with second language writing (or teaching writing to multilingual students, which is my primary job). In his chapter, Horner claimed that translingualism isn’t primarily about L2 writing, but rather that it’s more closely tied to the Students’ Right to their own language movement and the idea of allowing people with different dialects of English to use their own styles. As he writes,

In other words, while the growing numbers of students and faculty speaking and writing languages other than English may have contributed to galvanizing the development of translingual language ideology, and while that ideology is certainly as applicable to those using multiple named languages as it is to those claiming to use and know only one, that demographic change is not, in fact, the most appropriate conceptual lineage by which to understand the emergence of translingual ideology. (58)

I have to admit that, after I copied that quote in my journal, I said that I found this idea a bit disingenuous, "as though [I wrote] he thinks he owns the term 'translingualism.' (Note that he identifies 'Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach' as sort of the urtext of translingualism in composition studies.) There are a heck of a lot of scholars (as he himself admits) who have used the writings of people using different 'named languages' as part of their research on translingualism." Some of them have collaborated with him on translingual projects, as well.

But, I continued, "if Horner wants to say that translingualism is not primarily related to L2 writing, I’m fine with that. But that leaves us to think about this question of my familiarity with translingualism in my role as a teacher of multilingual students." Along the way in his paper, Horner characterizes translingualism as a "language ideology" that is opposed to the other language ideology (are there only two?) of monolingualism, and that it really applies to both the teaching of "L2"/multilingual writers and everyone else. Whether you teach writing from a translingual perspective becomes, then a political question, or what seems to me to be a moral question. That is, you're either working from a translingual perspective or you're not, and if you're not, you're on the wrong side (of history, of pedagogy, etc.). 

As a lapsed evangelical, I find myself "allergic" to these moral arguments. I'm also resistant because how this ideology is supposed to work in practice is such a murky thing. I found myself more in tune with the "critical pragmatism" discussed by Todd Ruecker and Shawna Shapiro. Critical pragmatism draws on Critical English for Academic Purposes (EAP) "to 'rediscover' the middle ground between the two polarities of pragmatism (which is often framed as assimilationist) and idealism (which is often framed as resistant to linguistic norms)" (141). They show how a writing course (and a writing program) can balance these two motives and avoid the "false dichotomy between conformity and resistance" (147). They even quote Horner and Lu to point out that these translingualists also have a pragmatic perspective at times: Lu and Horner (2013), say Ruecker and Shapiro, "have (re)defined a translingual approach as 'a disposition of openness and inquiry toward language and language differences' (p. 586), including toward standardized English" (147). This sense of translingualism seems closer to critical pragmatism than some of the other stuff I've read about it.

After reading their chapter, I felt a bit more clear about what I'm doing in class--what I'm already doing that could be seen in this light (whether you call it "translingual" or "critical pragmatism") and what I could do to make my course more "open" to language and language differences. 

Well, that was a longer update than I expected to write. And it got way off whatever it was that I thought I was going to write. But that's OK. I recommend looking at Silva and Wang's book, though, if you have access to it and you're interested in the "debate" between SLW and translingualism. 

Summer writing project (Week Thirteen)

Lately, I've been putting more time into writing these notes than I've spent on the paper itself, so that's a sign that I should cut back on my once-daily thoughts and frustrations regarding my summer writing project (which will probably extend into the winter, at the rate I'm going).  

There's not much to say for this week; most of my working hours have been devoted to teaching and reading student work. This past week was a busy one because we're finishing up one project and starting another. The course seems to be going smoothly, though. I haven't talked with many students (I think I chose the wrong time for office hours), but I've met with a couple of students (virtually) outside of office hours and had good conversations with them.

Talk around the academic Twitterverse has been around the various plans (or lack thereof) concerning how universities will open up in the fall. My school plans to require everyone (vaccinated or not) to be tested once a week if they're coming in at least once a week. I think I like that idea, although I am not eager to go back to campus at this point, with the spreading delta variant on the loose and an unvaccinated first-grader at home to worry about. I realize there are people who need to go back to in-person classes for all kinds of reasons. I just hope that my program and school can give instructors flexibility to do what they need to do, too.

Anyway, we'll be in August soon, and I have a couple of things to do in August (in addition to teaching and preparing to teach in the fall). I probably won't have time to work on my paper for a good long while. We'll see...

Summer writing project (Days Fifty-Seven through Sixty)

"Seventeen years I've wanted that little item and I've been trying to get it. If we must spend another year on the quest... well, sir, it will be an additional expenditure in time of only... five and fifteen seventeenths percent." 

(For years I've been wondering what "five and fifteen-seventeenths percent" means; fortunately, someone explained it on one of the two entries on their blog(!).)

The last few days have been filled with commenting on student work, setting up groups for the second project in my class, a doctor visit, all kinds of errands, and not a whole lot of writing. Time away from a project can lead in at least two directions--primarily, the distance can enable you to think anew about it and have new perspectives on what it is that is troubling you (OK, me) about it. That can either make you/me see a new path toward finishing it, or it can lead to despair over ever being able to do it or the feeling that it's an impossible or even wrong-headed task. 

So now I'm rethinking the whole thing (again). This is definitely not going to be writing my journal article in twelve weeks...

Summer writing project (Day Fifty-Six)

I'm back to doing some primary research--close reading of a text I'm using as an "exhibit" (in BEAM terms) to see if I can use it as evidence for what I'm arguing (or part of what I'm arguing, anyway). Also had a good email exchange with my "virtual writing partner" or "writing accountability partner" (I think I'm going to have to acknowledge him in my paper if I ever get it published!)

Tomorrow is going to be devoted to reading student drafts of their first assignment. Might not get to my own paper. (Not that I'm complaining. Reading their drafts is a major part of my job, after all!)

Summer writing stalling project (Days Fifty-Four and Fifty-Five)

Not much to report here. Yesterday's work grading had to be put off to today because my internet was out all day yesterday.  Also found myself looking wistfully at a different paper I haven't worked on for over a year but is now looking more attractive to me than my current paper. [Insert meme of that guy... you know who I mean...]

Summer writing walking project (Day Fifty-Three)

I did some grading today and then had a little time to work on my paper. So my son and I drove out to Medfield to check out the old Medfield State Hospital, which we've driven by a lot but never visited. Turns out it's a pretty big place! We walked all around the grounds and I took a few pictures. (Unfortunately, I only know one of the buildings: the chapel.)

Here are some of the pictures. I think you can click on them to make them larger.

Here's the chapel.

Poem on the side of a wall.

The porch needs some work...

[Update: This was the female nurses' home.]

I took some other pictures, but I want to go back and take some more, I think. (I'm sure there are millions of pictures of the Medfield State Hospital on the web, though.)

So that's how I spent my day! It was a good day for my son and me to run around, considering it has rained every day so far this month.

[Update: I found this old map of the hospital grounds. And some information from the Town of Medfield about what they're thinking of doing with the property.]

Summer writing project (Days Fifty-One and Fifty-Two)

I was too busy deleting mails from my school's in-box yesterday and neglected to catch up on this. (I was just doing that in between approving students' choices of scholarly articles for their first assignment.) It was interesting reading my school's evolving response to COVID--I'm tempted to keep those emails just for historical purposes.

Anyway, today I had some time to look over my paper. I read through most of it slowly, making comments in the margins. It was depressing in some ways because I can see that there are places where I need to do a lot of work; it goes off in all kinds of directions. But I also see some promising spots, if I can corral the rest of it together. Mostly, I got the sense that it is worth working on, which is a good feeling.

Summer writing grading project (Day Fifty)

Fifty days into my summer writing project and I feel like I've basically given up on it. I've got to do something, though, to try to jump-start this thing and force myself to make some progress on it, even if  it's just a few millimeters. (Did I ever tell about how when I was in elementary school, Jimmy Carter was president and wanted to convert the US to the metric system, so we learned the metric system instead of whatever the other system is called [the 'Murkin system?] So we learned centimeters and milliliters and all that sort of thing. Then, of course, Reagan became president, but I don't think we ever learned the other system in school, so I still don't know how many quarts there are in a mile. Anyway...)

[Update: Ah, I see now it was Gerald Ford who signed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975. Well, it was probably expedient to blame the whole thing on Carter anyway.]

Summer writing grading project (Day Forty-Nine)

Today I did some grading and other teaching-related work. It's going to be an intense seven weeks, so I don't know how much writing I'll get done. We'll see...