Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

First Kiss (mostly)  There's curry cooking on the stove, one of my traditional fall meals. It is a simple no-recipe recipe, where you just cut up some chicken (or beef) and brown it in some oil, add onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, red pepper, and then cover with water and simmer until tender, and then break in half a box of Golden Curry bricks, and mix until sufficiently curry-like. Serve over rice. That notebook is 10-15 years old I think. It is one of those meals from my childhood that I can reliably replicate. We don't always realize how rare that is... that replication of memory. Something as simple as fast-food french fries... I think after the bad oils were banned, or maybe when people started worrying about additives, or salt, or what ever it is... they don't seem to compare to the crispy favor of childhood. I feel the same with Kentucky Fried Chicken (sorry Jamie!). It always tastes different than I remember.  I wonder what things remain. Maybe those miniature do

 Watching Windows Go Dark Tonight's soundtrack: The Jim Hall Trio featuring Kenny Barron and Dave Holland, 2009 In the first session we each drew a  patchwork/tile. Tonight I participated with a team of facilitators for a conference presentation for the Community Economies Liviana Conference held over Zoom. My co-presenters were from England, New Zealand, and Argentina. We had attendees from Italy, Australia, Canada, Peru (I think), and the United States. It was marvelous to participate in something so wonderfully global in attendance.  One of the things we did tonight, the second of a two part series, was to use text all the attendees and facilitators generated in the "application" to the session to create an exquisite corpse (cadáver exquisito) poem on Google Docs. All of us worked simultaneously cutting and copying passages from one document that held all our text, and pasting, cutting, altering, and playing with the words in the poem document. People changed font size

Learning to Type Today's Soundtrack: The Ron Carter Quintet, Jazz San Javier, 2009 I used to think of writing like playing an instrument. I suppose that harkened back to when I was working more on typewriters, but even the older computer keyboards were more mechanical, more musical, than the modern flat things I flit over today. I have read about gaming keyboards that are famed for their mechanical qualities, and are often backlit with color changing leds... perhaps I'll look into one of those at some point.  It is funny to think back at how resistant I was at learning typing. Back in my freshman year of high school there was still the remnants of a secretarial program where two faculty taught the rudiments of shorthand, typing, and I do not know what else. I always associated them with the home economics departments, cooking classes and sewing, and maybe even the wood shop and craft courses, but I imagine they would have objected. The short hand instructor I remember (incorrec

Notes from  From Equity Talk to Equity Walk  by Tia Brown-McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux Tonight's soundtrack: The Robert Grasper Experiment, 2015 "What are specific examples of how equity is a value for you and your instiution?" "Educators with an equity talk and  an equity walk critically examine institutional policies, practices, and structures through a lens that questions why inequities exist to change the educational environment to support the success of students--especially students who have been historically and continuously marginalized in our educational systems. These educators don't just talk about equity, but it is evident in their inquiry-process, decision-making, interactions, and reflections." "...having an equity talk that will lead to change calls for a comprehensive understanding of what the term mean in relation to current and past experiences and institutional contexts." (When colleagues lack a shared