(the new) bgblogging

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Barbara

Although I’ve been blogging with my students on WP for a couple of courses and have bgexperiments for my creative-writing exercises, bgblogging has heretofore lived, and quite happily so, on Movable Type. But in six weeks’ time I will be leaving the faculty of Middlebury College and thus must start now to pack my bags and books and blogs. So here I am. (The new) bgblogging. Welcome!

Come June I plan to push into new kinds of topics (for me) while I explore ways in which collaborative and creative Web practices in concert with a physical lab/gallery/classroom/gathering spot located in our county seat can enhance the connectiveness, life-long learning and deep creative spirit of rural communities. This kind of community-based/Web-centric space for creative expression and lifelong learning practices doesn’t seem to exist in many rural communities in this country–certainly not in this state. Now that my departure from the college is certain, I ‘m ready to share the center’s mission and design — details in a coming post.

In the meantime I will be trying to capture practices emerging in my formal classroom one last time, pulling together the work of the past seven classroom-blogging years into some posts about the process, the students, the outcome, and the reasons for heading out.

It will take a couple of weeks to sort out all of the bugs (tags did not make the export) in this blog, so please let me know if something isn’t working or you can’t find what you came here for.

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Five Things about Me..

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Barbara

I thought I was going to get away without being involved in this one, but since Will tagged me, and since he revealed a love for Tess of the D’Ubervilles, well okay, I’ll play, too, as a way to ease into this new year.

Five Things People Aren’t Likely to Know about Me from my Blog:

1. Between sixth and ninth grades, I was a Thomas Hardy freak. I read and reread all of his novels several times–I still own the tear-stained copies. The heroine of an unfinished novel I wrote in 1997-8 was equally besotted with his work.

2. I was known in high school and college as the best Mick-Jagger-performing/singing-“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”- imitator of all time. Seriously. I was awesome. Shoulda done something with that gift…

3. Until I was 25, I hadn’t given a thought to teaching anything much less English and writing: through high school, I was determined to save the cheetah in Africa (an animal behavior class my first year at Williams College put an effective halt to that dream); during college I thought I’d become a silversmith out in Taos (still haven’t made it to New Mexico); after college for a couple of years, I ran an Asian art gallery in Seattle and thought I would pursue a PhD in art history, specializing in Sung Dynasty Chinese paintings (going to Chinese language summer school changed my mind).

4. To save me from a boy I was interested in and whom they deemed “trouble,” my college roommates dared me to ask out a boy I didn’t like, didn’t want to have anything to do with, and who was about to graduate and spend two years traveling around the world. To prove to my friends how preposterous an idea it was for the two of us to go out, I did ask him out–to my shock (and dismay) he said yes. To my even bigger surprise, I fell in love with him on that first date, and now I’ve been happily married to him for over 25 years!
(I wish I had a picture as fabulous as Terry’s from that era all cued up here–I’ll hunt around for one.)

5. I have an embarrassing childhood nickname that I’m not about to reveal here!

I tag Barbara, Laura, Toril, Helen and Spencer.

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