I would like to set one thing straight immediately: archaeology is nothing like what you have seen in the Indiana Jones movies. Though I would revel in the adventure of outmaneuvering an ancient set of booby traps to rescue a priceless artifact from the inevitable destruct of the temple, I would immediately have several Institutional …
Category Archives: Other
The Site of Sanisera: An Overview
As usual with my first posts, I have been struggling to write the introduction post to the class portion of this blog. If I were to jump into all the thoughts and events without a background, I feel as though no one would be able to understand what the heck I am referring to, as …
Idris Goodwin’s Five Absolutes for Writing
After three days of performances in Armstrong Theater, we were all ready to start Spring Break. Idris dropped some wisdom on us before we went on our merry way, to encourage us to keep writing, revising, throw it in the air, and repeat. For those of us who are lucky enough to be in Old …
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Coconut Coated
As I promised in an earlier post, here is a recording of Xander Fehsenfeld’s “Coconut Coated”. Sweet brilliance. When we hit the road and made our class debut at Atlas Prep Middle School, the 7th and 8th graders melted into the chocolatey goodness of Xander’s words, and Sunday night was no different. The crowd of …
Classy Class in Shove Chapel
Today was a revealing day. We’re currently in the process of a major work of collaboration within our groups, and we performed 5-7 minutes of excerpts from what will soon be performed as 25-30 minute plays for our final productions. The public will be invited, so come one, come all! Here is the facebook …
Week two wasn’t too weak
‘Twas a productive week. It was a marathon of scenes, monologues, and choreopoem collaborations. We read many examples and excerpts from plays and poems and then spent the week writing and revising our own. The magic seeps through in the revisions, so we’ve been told. Idris tells us “The performance writer writes in real time. He/she …
Schoolin’ the Middle Schoolers with Poetry
The first week of Idris Goodwin’s class, Writing for Performance – Watch the Clock, was a creative week of performance poetry. This is my second class with good ol’ Goodwin (good young Goodwin, rather), and has already become one of the most bonded groups of students I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending time with …
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Civil Religion in America
Today in class we debated whether or not there is a civil religion in America. Again, we used Durkheim’s definition of a religion: a unifying set of practices. We discussed the rituals we participate in (like voting or saying the pledge of allegiance) that reinforce American’s shared value system rooted in democracy. We talked about …
Tortilla
My host mom, Charo, spends a lot of her day preparing meals for the family. It’s a rare sight to not find a pot of chicken or lentils or sausage slowly stewing away on the stove all morning. We’ve been eating a lot of hearty and warm foods specifically for winter, but also some Spanish …
Balloon Madness
Reviews are in. Pictures are loaded. Results: weather is looking beautiful to put it lightly (if indicative of a changing climate). Weather balloons are a critical to our understanding of the structure and behavior of the atmosphere. Without the twice daily weather balloon launches which take place simultaneously at over 800 sites around the world, we would not …