Textbook costs
Too many textbooks cost about as much as I pay for food each month. In some fields, teachers have few, if any, alternatives, but I don't think that's the case in the social sciences. A lot of useful outside materials are freely available online. For criminology I can assign, among many things, short DOJ reports and public radio audio clips.

This semester I've assigned two required books: Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman’s Harrowing Quest for Justice and Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Because Cry Rape is about a Madison case written by an area reporter, more than 30 copies are in the local libraries. Last semester, my students talked for around one hour about the book without my saying much, except to choose sometimes who would talk next. Besides the crime of rape, it covers the perspective of victims and police mistakes, such as tunnel-vision and overgeneralization. But I worried that my students got too negative of an angle on the police, so this semester I've also chosen Cop in the Hood, by a sociologist who joined the Baltimore police. Much of the book is his take on illegal drugs, so the book serves more than one purpose. Students must also pick from a list a third book to borrow from the library to learn about a topic that interests them.

When I taught research methods at UW-Madison, I was able to assign an older edition that the bookstore sold for $15-20. The small improvements in the newest edition were definitely not worth the more than $80. I got this idea from a UW professor, and I wish that others would try it so that books are used more while they still are in OK shape and students can save money. Online textbooks might be a relatively inexpensive path, but the main response to outrageous prices is for teachers to force textbook writers to use cheaper publishers or even create their own textbooks. If I'd had access to the Web in China, I could have edited my own casebook for contract law using public domain court opinions. Why more law professors don't do this disappoints me, especially given their enormous salaries.

Recalling an Anne Waldman Reading in Lawrence, Kansas
My LiveJournal entry on Arlene Sardine, March 10, 2006, includes an Amazon criticism of the book--that it is as if someone were to write a book for children on Elmer and the embalming process. http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/ This reminds me of what the poet Anne Waldman said at a reading in Lawrence, Kansas. She had once read a comment by a male critic that women poets are really just writing about their periods. This ticked her off, but then Waldman thought about it and decided that it was actually a good idea, that she would write her own poem on having a period. She read "Crack in the World," which was hilarious.

Burroughs, Ginsburg, Codrescu, and others also gave readings that evening; I think that Waldman was second best to Burroughs. Here's a link to "Crack in the World"--it's the first four minutes of the first file. Hearing the poem live was much, much better, though:
Internet Archive--Naropa University, Waldman reading

For a couple of years, I lived just a few blocks from Burroughs. We even shopped at the same grocery store. But I never tried to talk to him because I wanted to respect his privacy. The free Internet Archive includes some readings, talks, and interviews by Burroughs.

Meteors and Rainbows
Friday began with my seeing about 30 meteors of the Perseid meteor shower between 1:15am and 3:15am. Near the end the day, after 7:30pm, I was able to see two rainbows, one of them rather vivid and arching across from the isthmus to the south side. The other was just a faint leg above the other.

This past week, I had been looking forward to watching meteors, but the lighting around where I live is very bright. So I walked to the edge of a golf course near me where trees blocked some of the light. Maybe I could have seen more if I had not taken a short nap near midnight, but the best thing would have been to drive outside of the city.

I was lucky to see the rainbows from the Union Terrace as I took a short break from being a volunteer for the 25th anniversary show of Whad'Ya Know, which played at the Union Theater from 8 to 10pm. At the time I felt a little down, so the rainbows and a group of toddlers jumping up and down at the sight while shouting "Two rainbows! Two rainbows!" cheered me up. Because rain had poured much of the day, few people were on the Terrace as the rain ended. Some of them were excited to take pictures with their digital cameras, but I had brought just my stereo camera with me to take pictures of the stage. When I develop the film, I hope that I'll have a good enough photo of the rainbows to post on here.

As I walked home, though, I reminded myself that it's best for people to create their own rainbows in their lives, to see them in people and everyday experiences, and not just wait for the few lucky times that real ones appear.

Internet radio and music variety
Over the past year, I've mainly listened to public radio programs, such as on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio, and have only sometimes tried music new to me, mainly through CDs from the library with songs I'd heard in movies.

It had slipped my mind that earlier this century I had tried at least one free internet radio site that claims to match one's taste. http://www.last.fm/seems sort of familiar, but sites like this have probably changed a lot since 2005 or 6. At that time, I was mostly interested in 1960s garage bands so as to learn about songs different from what's usually played on the radio. I've been using last.fm for about one month to listen to alternative/independent music and some jazz. At first I listed some classical composers and classic rock musicians among my favorites, but I quickly got tired of symphonies popping up and rock songs I've heard too often.

I want to listen to more contemporary Chinese music but haven't gotten around to it yet. If you have some suggestions, please email me in case the comments option doesn't work for you. [I think that last.fm can't be used if you are in China.]

Worrying about groceries
I’ve had mixed feelings about posting the following story because it feels like a kind of boasting; however, I think that people who know me would be disappointed if I didn’t tell them about this short encounter.

One evening in fall 1996, while I was living in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, I was carrying a heavy paper bag of groceries and, in my backpack, a gallon of milk and other heavy items as I walked back to the apartment. Along 53rd Street some guy was handing out fliers. He said he was running for the state senate, so I decided to stop and talk with him--in part so as inform myself before voting but also because I felt alone in Chicago. Most people don't pay attention to such candidates, so another reason that I stopped is because I felt sorry for him.

With my arms wrapped around the grocery bag, I skimmed through his flier and noticed that he had been the president of the Harvard Law Review. I began talking with him about my experiences teaching law in China, such as that I used the ideas from Plain English for Lawyers, and about how I was from Kansas and had attended law school there so as not to go into debt. Otherwise, I would have been unable to teach in China while earning less than $300/month and having to pay back loans. He was one of the few people after my return who was interested in talking with me about China. After we had talked about various topics, I said that I'd definitely vote for him and that I was giving back the flier to save him some money. My bag was getting heavy--I didn’t want to risk putting it on the ground out of fear that it would tear--and I had to put some things in the refrigerator.

But, as I was leaving, Obama said, "Wait, I'd like to talk to you about something!" I replied that I had to put some groceries in the refrigerator and that my bag was getting heavy. As I walked further away, he shouted to me that he wanted to talk to me about something, and I repeated what I had said about my groceries. I think that Obama one more time yelled that he wanted to talk to me about something.

I want to emphasize here that it never crossed my mind that Obama was being impolite for pressing me; my impression was that he was a nice guy, but I was puzzled over why he didn’t seem to process what I'd said. Later on, I realized how stupid it was of me not to wait another minute or two.

Before the 2008 Wisconsin primary, over 15 thousand people showed up for the Obama campaign rally in the Kohl Center at UW-Madison. I just managed to get a seat, and as I looked at the crowd, I sometimes laughed to myself about once feeling sorry for how few people were paying attention to Obama. Throughout the campaign, I kept wondering what he so urgently wanted to talk to me about in 1996. It was about a year later that the reason came to me, but I think it's best that I not post anything about it in this blog.