Ever since iBooks came out with the iPad, I have wanted to publish some of my own content. Yet, as anyone who has ever tried can attest, this is not easy. Creating EPUBs is just awkward and inconvenient. Think of it as writing a web page before WISWYG editors, or composing an essay on a pre-GUI word processor.

The recent release of Pages allows a document to be exported as an EPUB, but then to actually see it, a transfer to the iPad is necessary. In theory, this should be easy, but iTunes is such a piece of junk, that nothing like this is ever easy. (Say, Apple, when are you gonna fix this obsolete piece of bloatware anyway?) So, until the release of iBook Author, writing electronic books was not exactly convenient or easy.

Supposedly, iBooks Author is changing all of that. Roger Rosner’s demo was way cool — the video above gives you a bit of a look. The keynote emphasizes textbooks, but the potential for any kind of electronic publication is there. For example, I’ve started publishing literary content on LitMUSE, but wouldn’t delivery on the iPad be so much better, especially since you can annotate it and take it with you even without a network connection? Yes, maybe this is one more nail in the Web’s coffin. Plus, the ability to add multimedia content — e.g., Eliot reading The Waste Land, excerpts from a documentary on Homer, or photos I recently took in Greece — would boost it to the next level — especially in a Humanities class. I already have a ton of original content.

And speaking of the end of the Web, perhaps LitMUSE’s days as a course Web site are numbered in the light of the new iTunes U. It provides a slick way to deliver all sorts of content in a convenient format. They did not demo the course construction during the keynote, but Apple’s web site makes it look pretty easy. I know I would be perfect for this. Maybe this will be LitMUSE 2.0?

I already have ideas for my next semester’s classes, and I can’t wait to get started. I predict this is the beginning of a whole new chapter in my academic life.

About fifteen years ago, my favorite uncle died. Uncle Elwood was a wiry, jolly man who always had a pocket full of silver dollars. He was also a pharmacist, so one time I remember him giving me soda water after a particularly rich country meal during a Lucas Family reunion in Eastern Kentucky. Uncle Elwood had a way about him, something that my child’s eyes saw as kindness, compassion, and sympathy. The silver dollars he gave became a symbol not of economic generosity, but of a genuine human connection.

At his funeral was another uncle of mine: Harry is my father’s older brother who happens to be a Texas businessman. I have no real memories of Harry, having seen him maybe there times in my life — though I got a general sense that he was a bit overbearing and that children like me should keep to ourselves. At the time of Elwood’s death, the US DOJ was prosecuting the Microsoft Antitrust trial; it was also the last few years of the Clinton presidency. I was a supporter of the DOJ’s actions. After the funeral, a group of Elwood’s friends and family were sitting around chatting with his widow, my Aunt Dee. I forgot how the topic even came up, but I mentioned my support of the DOJ. Harry, in all his overbearing bluster, shut me down: “I can’t believe you’d say something like that. This country was built on innovation and the free market. Microsoft is a great American company and the government should keep its hands off.” (Or something like that.) Since this was an inappropriate time for a political discussion, I remember responding, “OK, Uncle Harry.” Later, Dad told me that’s the only way to respond to Harry sometimes. Apparently George W. Bush agreed with my Uncle Harry, since the antitrust suit against Microsoft was quietly resolved after his 2000 “election.”

Fast forward almost fifteen years, it seems the Uncle Harrys of this country have done a pretty good job keeping the rest of us quiescent while they do what they want, particularly when it comes to class. In fact, this country talks a lot about race, gender, and sexuality, but we never seem to have discussions of class — as if it has nothing to do with contemporary America, only Victorian England. Is that a part of the agenda? Is this a tacit understanding: we know there’s inequality, but that’s just the way it is. And, if you get uppity about it, we — you know those that control the government, the jobs, and the media — the 1% — might be forced to do something you won’t like. Even things like facts don’t get in these guys’ way. Just ask the scientists.

I, for one, am glad to see discussions finally being had about class. In a nation that loves its money, class might be the most important issue that we face.

Big business wants to make everything about business. The bottom line of business is the bottom line: money. I don’t want to over simplify, but I’m increasingly seeing a country that is preoccupied with accruing this metaphor of wealth. Money isn’t even a thing — it’s a representation of value. It is a mythological measure of success, influence, power, and respect. A country whose main goal is the accumulation of this ideological construct will tend to look at everything through this green millionaire’s monocle.

I’m not even talking about materialism here, though the relation should have relevance. Yes, ultimately money buys the material, so the story goes. The issue is with abstracts: those who make so much money that it can (1) never be transferred to the material, and (2) relieves others of their life, liberty, and private property. This is what seems to be happening now. Let me amend that: it has been happening for decades, but the world is finally feeling the radical effects of this sort of American corporate greedthink that has penetrated all aspects of our lives.

Where does this greedthink come from? I think it’s a lack of education.

About a year ago, I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. My friend is a lawyer, so there were other lawyers there celebrating. I got to chatting with one of them, and he asked me what I do. I responded that I was an English professor — and that day I just happened to have taught Homer. “Oh, yeah?” he said raising his eyebrows in an act of feigned enthusiasm. “Yes,” I replied. “There are few literary expressions that I would put above the significance of Homer’s epics.” This was a pretty mundane conversation, one that I have had at cocktail parties many times. My last statement is usually a verbal tranquilizer, but he was feeling contentious, and it had the opposite effect: “I don’t have to read Homer. That’s absurd! Homer has nothing to do with my life as a lawyer, and I wasted a lot of time and money in college taking nonsense courses that had nothing to do with life.” (Or something like that.) At this, the rest of the jovial conversations at the table stopped, and they were looking at this guy. I decided this was another Uncle Harry moment. We were at a birthday party after all.

Yet this guy’s attitude is exactly what I’m talking about. What is the most popular undergraduate major? You already know. That’s right: it’s business! Out of the top ten majors listed by The Princeton Review, over half of them would not be considered as liberal arts. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, business trumps the second most conferred major by double.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the skills one learns in business courses are great for doing business, but what do they teach a student about being human? About compassion? Empathy? In other words, when the most popular college major in the US is business, we are training a world that is increasingly populated by Uncle Harrys, and we’re surprised at its current state? Is business inherently bad? No. However, when budgets are cut in education, which programs suffer? Take a guess. When we look at the education of our children and young adults as a business, we need to be prepared for what we’ll get.

I think we still need Homer and his scions. I think Elwood would agree.

Elwood and Dee

The latter is the oldest and clearly shows my writing acumen from an early age. I scanned it and include it below for your reading pleasure.

Ian Fleming and James Bond

It’s not exactly MLA — the margins are way off. This was obviously a copy of the original essay because it contains not one mark of praise from Mrs. Meek. I have to say, too, that her name was likely very appropriate, as I have no distinct memory of her or her class. She might have been jealous of my obvious scholarly potential evident by this first-rate work of research; she must have sensed that my academic achievements in literary studies would soon dwarf hers. Who wouldn’t recognize the rhetorical savvy of phrases like “his popularity status”; “a chap by the name of ‘Q’ produces many technological gimmicks which assist 007 in his defense of the free world”; “Bond was made a widower through funfire” (?); and “Bond had a number of cars ranging from a gray Abstom-Martian” (I wonder if that’s anything like an Aston-Martin?).

Now that I think about it, I don’t really remember anything from the eighth grade other than perhaps awkwardly passing a note to Lucy Langlois, reading Dynamite magazine, working as Ms. Farmer’s aide, and hating to “dress out” for gym class. It’s a treat to get an artifact from my life in 1983. I can’t help but see Dad’s influence in this, too. There’s quite a bit of information on guns and cars, though surely he knows that “Abstom-Martian” is incorrect. Dad, did you even proofread this for me?

I think the most impressive part of this research paper is that it really says nothing. There doesn’t seem to be an explicit thesis — unless “James Bond is cool” is an acceptable one. I’d expect, in all seriousness, that this is pretty lame for the eighth grade. Still, I was a pretty lame eighth grader, and I continued that trend throughout high school. What grade would you give me?

That’s the first installment of “Old Miscellany.” Maybe I’ll post more.

Apparently, the Georgia legislature feels, almost unanimously, that we citizens need to be armed. The right to bear arms is not enough: we have a compulsion to bear arms. In a gun bill that passed yesterday, 43-10, our wise legislators decided that guns are necessary in churches, bars, and airports. We must protect physically ourselves from errant ministers, other saloon patrons that might be trying to cheat us at cards, and, well, foreigners getting off the plane. Right?

I kept waiting to read about colleges and universities entering the new old west, and I was not disappointed. In a paragraph near the end of the article, we get:

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Like parishioners, students should pack heat. I know that my lectures are often physically threatening. I know that there’s a lot of racial and gender diversity in my classes, and we also get the occasional Muslim. Who knows when someone different looking and scary will just snap and start running amok. Or worse, when they snap and start saying something that is disagreeable and even controversial, politically challenging, or emotionally hurtful.

Well, we know these days that no one is capable of talking — of compromising in the least. We’re fighting an ideological war here, so we must arm ourselves in the places where that war is most likely to rear its frightening head. Maybe the legislature is wiser than I thought.

I mean, I should probably watch my mouth a bit more than I do. I know I got tenure — a system thought up by the academic elite in order to protect academic freedoms of faculty from politics — but that doesn’t mean I should be able to say what I want with impunity. Some things are just beyond reproach. I need to watch it.

And now, with the increasing likelihood that some of my students might be exercising their right to bear arms in my class, I have even more incentive to watch what I say. There’s nothing like the threat of being shot to keep me in my place. To keep all of us elitists in line, under control, and — you know — silent.

Can this be what all the hoopla is about? Is this part of a political agenda to impose an authoritarian oppression on those who challenge the status quo? The country does seem to be going down the shitter, you know, since that socialist Barack Hussein Obama took office. Don’t we need to protect ’Merica from those who want to steal it from us, including our own government? Indeed, that socialist medical bill just shows that they’re trying to take away our right to be controlled in the way we’re used to: by capitalism and patriarchy. The southern types and teabaggers seem to be the most offended, as they showed their outrage on Capital Hill on Sunday. Maybe someone would have brought a gun? That would show those uppity homosexuals and civil rights activists just what true fear looks like.

What happens when the second amendment trumps the first? Here’s the first amendment of the Bill of Rights:

And the second:

Laws like the one just passed in Georgia nuance the second and therefore threaten the first. If I know a student is legally carrying a gun in my classroom, what does that say to me? Seriously. Yes, I have a right as a tenured professor and a citizen of the US to say what I want, but those ideological freedoms cannot stand up to the physical reality of a gun in my classroom. Period.

The language from the AJC I quoted above seems to suggest that colleges and universities will be able to institute their own gun policies. But I ask: for how long? The current climate of the university system in just the last year has been one of paranoid liability. Can’t we just see some gun zealot hiring an eager young attorney to sue Macon State or the entire university system because we instituted a policy of no handguns on campus? We can’t afford it. Therefore, I’m sorry to say, I don’t see a policy coming from the BOR or the college outlawing guns. I hope I’m wrong.

So, are we ready for the new old west? I better oil up my ol’ six-shooter.

One of the first things I learned is that owning and shooting a gun is not inexpensive. His gun, an HK 9mm, would cost around $1200 new, he said. No, I’m not considering buying a gun, and, come to think of it, I never really considered handgun prices. Doesn’t $1200 seem a bit high? I was thinking, maybe, a couple of hundred bucks for a gun. Bullets, too, were pricey. I bought 50 rounds and a paper target for over $20. Yikes.

I made this purchase at Arvin’s, a pawn shop in downtown Macon. When I arrived, Nathan had already gotten what we needed. Arvin’s highlights their gun sales, as that’s the first thing anyone would notice upon entering. The first thing I saw was a dude in cammo holding — no, stroking — an assault rifle. This was not the last stereotype we were to encounter that day. I’ve always wondered why anyone would need an assault rifle, unless he plans to become a terminator, a disgruntled ex-employee, or a member of a religious fringe group. This guy was interested. Very interested. We got our bullets and left, so I never did see whether cammo man’s hard-on led to a sale. Just as well.

We drove east of town on I-16. It was a beautiful day: I would even go so far as to say it was our first Spring day of the year. The sun shone through the Mini’s open moonroof, and the cool air was punctuated by rifle fire as we approached the range. Since we were there mid-day on a Monday, the range was remarkably free of shooters, according to Nathan. I smiled at this fact, thinking that I wanted my first time to be as free of distractions as possible. As we got out of the car, I watched the three riflemen shoot in succession. The shots were too loud, making my insides start and my nerves tighten. I didn’t think I’d get used to that.

We signed in and headed to the range. A Macon Police car was parked just off to the side of the range; the cop — an older, tattooed guy with a handlebar mustache — greeted us: “We’ll make some room for you guys.” Rifles lined the carpeted tables. The guy to the left looked like he had a sniper’s setup: his rifle had a stand — a tripod of death at the ready. The guy in the right looked like he had a shotgun. Both rifles were loud. Maybe I mentioned that already? Nathan had brought ear protection for me; these big blue mouse ears became a permanent part of my head for the next hour.

These gun enthusiasts are a garrulous, gregarious sort. The rifleman on the left seemed to really want to talk. He left his wife and two children in the minivan to the side of the range while he practiced his killshot. His rifle waited patiently while we heard this guy’s life story. I’d repeat it here, but I don’t want to lose you, my one reader. Suffice it to say, Nathan’s handgun did nothing, until we lost our company. Finally.

Nathan explained the workings of the handgun to me. Treat the gun as if it’s always loaded. Aim it down and away, even from your feet. Here’s the safety: engaged and disengaged. Here’s your clip; you push and twist the bullets into it, up to ten. Once the clip is in place, you cock the gun by quickly pulling the top of the body back and letting go. Hold the gun in your right hand and brace it with your left. Stand with your left foot forward, so you give anyone shooting at you a smaller target. Arms should be rigid, but bent slightly. Release the safety, take aim, and pull the trigger.

"G" Marks the Spot

We took turns shooting at the same target, set up about 25 feet distant. In between, we’d take a Sharpie and mark our successes: his bullet holes were labeled “N,” and mine “G.”

“Always be wary of what’s around you,” he explained, “and consider what’s behind your target.” His advice was appropriate for both the range and at home. If an intruder comes into the house, and you shoot at him, what will you hit if you miss? A school, a house, a tree?

We finished our ammo in about an hour. I enjoyed the experience, and I would like to repeat it. While I can’t say that I’m any less nervous about handguns, at least I feel better educating myself on how to properly use one.

If I ever had to.

I responded: “No, it’s not. There might be business done in the college, but it is an institution of higher education.”

I know that many in this state — and perhaps around the country — are trying to sell this idea. Our current chancellor is from the private sector, for example. The University System of Georgia currently has a “customer service” initiative going on, and we occasionally get emails about how to make the university experience more friendly to our “customers.”

This is dangerous and, frankly, nauseating.

Business — at least how I see it practiced in the US — is all about closing off possibilities; it’s about drawing lines, securing boundaries. It’s about closed systems, elite hegemonies, keeping things status quo; business de-emphasizes the human in favor of the machine. Education is the opposite: it wants to open up possibilities. It’s about teaching students that they have choice and using their critical capacities in exercising that choice. It’s about being the best human beings that we can. These seem to be opposite goals.

The business folks wear the ties and get things done. Their main goal is money and the power that comes along with it. This is not the same for educators. If these were our goals, none of us would have chosen education as a career path.

Higher education is not a business. It is not. I will not fall for this myth, neither should anyone else.

As I’ve learned during the past eight years: democracy cannot be fruitful without an educated, engaged citizenry. Perhaps we can finally put the time of anti-intellectualism behind us.

Since I have been teaching critical thinking implicitly all semester, and now explicitly with Barnet and Badau’s book, Standpedia has great potential for me as an educator. I have come up with an initial assignment that my students are beginning today. We’ll see how they do soon enough.

The blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more. When we publish on our blog, people from the entire world can respond by using the comments link. This way, they can ask questions or simply tell us what they like. We can then know if people like what we write and this indicate[s to] us what to do better. By reading these comments, we can know our weaknesses and our talents. Blogging is an opportunity to exchange our point of view with the rest of the world not just people in our immediate environment.

Ah, this attitude is in such stark contrast to that offered by Ted Nelson. Here, it seems, we can catch the child before traditional forms of education sap away her creativity and his imagination, like a vampire drains his victim of blood. As the article goes on to point out, these fifth graders will enter their secondary education with a new set of skills and attitudes about composition. Perhaps blogs can offer students an access to writing that revitalizes the art, rather than resigns it to the punitive measure it was for most of my education.

Now the real question is: how do we revitalize writing for the many college students who tell me “I’ve always been bad at English”?