Good Morning!

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He loves his country best
who strives to make it best.
– Robert Ingersoll, humanist

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The secret of happiness is freedom,
and the secret of freedom, courage.
– Thucydides

How is writing research like story? Last post I wrote about Kurt Vonnegut’s man in hole structure and how that might help you think at a very macro level about how to organise your material. This post is also about structure – this time a four part structure I’ve called C3REC.

The C3REC structure is an academic writing version of the creative writing ERCR.

Well who doesn’t love an impossible acroynym… C3REC is no easier to say than ERCR. But let’s go back to the original ERCR. Put simply ERCR means Exposition, Rising action, Climax and Resolution.

ERCR goes like this: Exposition is all the stuff you, the reader, needs to know before you start the story proper. Next the Rising Action – that’s where the writer offers you a series of events – this then this then this. And all of the this then this then this builds up…

Memorial Day is a day to remember and pay tribute to the men and women who gave their lives to defend our democracy. Because of their sacrifice, we enjoy our freedoms. We are called upon not only to respect them and their sacrifices, but to be alert to today’s threats to the freedoms and rights we treasure. Voting rights are under attack. Censorship and book banning are on the rise. Red state legislatures are trying to control the blue cities in their midst. Red state legislatures are passing cookie-cutter laws to fund private and religious schools despite the opposition of the public. A woman’s right to control her body has been eliminated by red states. In a sad irony, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has long been the ultimate defender of our rights—is eroding democracy, under the control of rightwing ideologues, three of whom were appointed by Trump after being chosen…

“The Canterbury scene (or Canterbury sound) was a musical scene centred on the city of Canterbury, Kent, England during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Associated with progressive rock, the term describes a loosely-defined, improvisational style that blended elements of jazz, rock, and psychedelia. These musicians played together in numerous bands, with ever-changing and overlapping personnel, creating some similarities in their musical output. Many prominent British avant-garde or fusion musicians began their career in Canterbury bands, including Hugh Hopper, Steve Hillage, Dave Stewart (the keyboardist), Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen, and Mike Ratledge. The Canterbury scene is largely defined by a set of musicians and bands with intertwined members. These are not tied by very strong musical similarities, but a certain whimsicality, touches of psychedelia, rather abstruse lyrics, and a use of improvisation derived from jazz

“The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band remains the most iconic album cover of all time. From Paul McCartney’s original concept to the final design, staged by British pop artist Peter Blake and his then-wife, Jann Haworth, it’s not just an album cover, but a dazzling display of modern art that defines its era. Not only a groundbreaking design for the time, the artwork also broke the bank, costing almost £3,000 to create – well over £50,000 in today’s money and more than any other pop album sleeve at that time. The concept was for the four Beatles themselves to appear in costume as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, surrounded by a gathering of influential people as if they had just performed a concert. A total of 58 different people are depicted on the final artwork, which was photographed by ​Michael Cooper. As Peter Blake…

May 23 2023: “TA SOUS, Cambodia — At the end of a dusty path snaking through rice paddies lives a woman who survived multiple U.S. airstrikes as a child. Round-faced and just over 5 feet tall in plastic sandals, Meas Lorn lost an older brother to a helicopter gunship attack and an uncle and cousins to artillery fire. For decades, one question haunted her: ‘I still wonder why those aircraft always attacked in this area. Why did they drop bombs here?’ The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 has been well documented, but its architect, former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who will turn 100 on Saturday, bears responsibility for more violence than has been previously reported. An investigation by The Intercept provides evidence of previously unreported attacks that killed or wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians during Kissinger’s tenure in the…

Three literacy experts—David Reinking, Peter Smagorinsky, and David B. Yaden—wrote in opposition to the current “science of reading” frenzy. Unfortunately, their article does not mention the journalist Emily Hanford, who has zealously promoted the idea that American students don’t learn to read because their teachers do not utilize the “science of reading.” Google her name and you will find numerous articles repeating this claim. I wish I had been as successful in alerting the public and the media to the dangers of privatization as she has been in building a public campaign for phonics-as-silver-bullet. She is truly the Rudolf Flesch of our day (he published the best-selling Why Johnny Can’t Read in 1955.)

As I have often written here, I strongly support phonics. I was persuaded long ago by Jeanne Chall in her book Learning to Read: The Great Debate that students need to learn…

Jan. 2014:  “The Alexandria villa that inspired one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed works of literature could soon be demolished, according to its new owner. Villa Ambron was once the home of Lawrence Durrell, the British author twice shortlisted for the Nobel prize for literature, whose experiences while living at the villa inspired his most famous work, The Alexandria Quartet. But the businessman who owns it says it may soon make way for a high-rise apartment block. If bulldozed, Durrell’s crumbling former home would become the 36th listed building from Alexandria’s fin-de-siècle heyday to be demolished in five years, according to campaigners. Up to 25 of the buildings were destroyed illegally by developers, prompting Alexandria’s historians and architects to fear for the legacy of a city that was once one of the grandest in the region. Many of the 1,135 buildings nominally protected by a 2006 preservation order…

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, brings us up to date on the latest twists in the bizarro world of Oklahoma politics, where the most bizarro of all is the State Superintendent Ryan Walters (I think I could use that headline again and again, just changing the name of the state). John talks to Republicans in the legislature, and he finds that there are moderates who don’t agree with their leadership but keep a low profile and rein them in whenever they get too whacky.

He writes:

The 2023 Oklahoma legislative session, combined with the rightwing extremism of Gov. Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent Ryan Walters, began as possibly the worst threat to public education in our state’s history. Following more than a decade of teach-to-test mandates and increased segregation by choice, the Covid pandemic, and a history of underfunding schools, education faced a combination of existential threats.

But, rightly…

“Stan VanDerBeek (January 6, 1927 – September 19, 1984) was an American experimental filmmaker known for his collage works. VanDerBeek studied art and architecture at Manhattan‘s Cooper Union before transferring to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met polymath Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Beginning in 1949, he took two terms of photography courses from Hazel Larsen Archer at the institution. In the 1950s, he directed independent art films while learning animation techniques and painting scenery and set designs for Winky Dink and You. His earliest films, made between 1955 and 1965, mostly consist of animated paintings and collage films, combined in a form of organic development. VanDerBeek’s ironic compositions were created very much in the spirit of the surreal and Dadaist collages of Max Ernst, but with a wild, rough informality more akin…