Fall semester mid-point assessment. Is this book stack out of control?
If it isn't, it should be!
Thanks for reading A Social Work Generalist’s Notebook. I took a bit of time away from this space, but I’m still here! This space is free to read. I’m ust glad you’re here. I talk about my work as a social work professor, some technology, and the arts.
It’s possible that I’ve hit a tipping point: I own more books than I may be able to read. I have a reading plan for the next ten books, but it’s a plan that I can guarantee will change before the end of this month.
Scheduling, work, and life in general…I wish I could say it can be managed, but life finds a way. By “find a way” I just mean “makes things less fun” or “makes me feel out of control”. I have discovered that bringing books into the house brings me a feeling of comfort. It sure seems like reading is going to be less accessible in the short-term. When Amazon is making a play to fill the media distribution void, I confess feel less comforted.
I remember way back in 2018, when an economics professor wrote about how we should just close all the libraries because Amazon exists. I’m no econ prof, but I remember this sounded just plain ridiculous. The Internet agreed, as far as “the Internet” is anything. Well, here we are, libraries are struggling to stay open and of course, of course, Amazon would like to step in to help out your library now that the country’s biggest public supplier is going out of business.
I’m not sharing this thought to be a downer, but rather just to support the acquisition of books any way we can. I reflect on one of my favorite essays, Roger Ebert’s1 Books Do Furnish a Life:
“I cannot throw out these books. Some are protected because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word; they’re like little shrines to my past hours. Perhaps half were new when they came to my life, but most are used, and I remember where I found every one.”
Oh, right. It’s mid-term time. I have a “lighter” week, sort of. A few goals for the week:
Finish an external review letter.
Meet with advisees.
Finish mid-term grading. (This should be bullet #1).
Continue to work on spring semester teaching plans.
Come up with a fantastic idea for a conference abstract, due October 31st. (I’ll get it by October 30th, I am certain.)
I’m preparing to travel to a conference in Denver this week. I’ll write about how that goes.
Some reading:
That peace agreement isn’t looking stable. This is not a gloat about political sides. People are dying. Skilled leadership and diplomacy are required to bring stability to the region. What’s been on offer for years has not met that standard.
J.P. Hill writes about the real reasons why AI gets forced on us.
Steve Schmidt reported on the No Kings rallies from Iowa City.
Mike Langlois has a new podcast episode about how dog training can mirror psychotherapy.
Ebert was blogging back it seemed radical that an established writer (one with a Pulitzer) would blog because he wanted to. When I write anything in a blogging platform like this one, I draw inspiration from his approach. I’ll never forget how he leaned into his support for the Alex Proyas movie Knowing back in 2009. Almost everyone else thought the movie wasn’t any good. I admire how much conviction he had in his point of view (which wasn’t off base) and his frustration, not with the vox populi, but rather the viral nature of uniformed snark. Many of those posts are still available. I would love to see a physical publication of some of these posts someday. In that post about Knowing, Ebert captured the spirit of writing on blogging platforms like this, if perhaps a bit inadvertently:
“This is not the place for theology. Nor for settling the debate between determinism and free will, although there are many expert comments on the blog. (“About the best comments you will find on the Web” — Computer World magazine) Nor, indeed, for deciding if the figures are supernatural or natural. It doesn’t matter. The movie is entertaining and involving. It’s great afterwards to debate the Meaning of It All.”