Some sights while walking

In Baltimore I often walk between downtown and Charles Village or Mt. Vernon Square along Charles Street. One reason is to see the current quote at the First Unitarian Church at Charles and Franklin Streets. I don't remember ever reading anything by Joseph Joubert. This quote is 261 in his Pensées. Maybe I should look more through these kinds of books for discussion topics to assign my students.

For the unit on media in my Contemporary American Society class, I assign a poem by Emily Dickinson and some quotes.

"I'm Nobody! Who Are you?' (260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

One of the quotes:
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut Mother Night page vi

Below is a picture I took late last summer in DC along the Mall near the Smithsonian Castle. There were a lot more butterflies, but I couldn't get a good picture of a large group of them. One of my favorite walks anywhere is along that side of the Mall at sunset, so I wish I could find one of my pictures of red skies while looking toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

This was recently on a sidewalk in Madison along Midvale Boulevard, the route I often walk between my Madison apartment and the Sequoya Library. 

Climate Change and Child Sexual Abuse

In recent years I've been focusing more on the environment and child sexual abuse. This week while reading Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, a book by the Boston Globe about its Spotlight investigation on child sexual abuse, I've been reminded more strongly that central to both problems are outrageous failures to act on obvious evidence that simple steps must be taken. Not acting as soon as possible made matters much worse. This past December I felt similar shock and even anger about this while reading a good summary of climate change published by Oxford University Press--Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Joseph Romm. It was the 2014 first edition, so his discussion about how climate change increases the likelihood of wildfires in California exasperated me.

Climate change and my own health have combined to motivate me since I was an undergrad to walk to reach places. I've nearly always lived within less than a twenty-minute walk of at least one grocery store. In this century, in places like Gettysburg, Madison, and Baltimore, it's usually been at least two grocery stores, which is great for taking advantage of sales.

My concern about child sexual abuse has increased while thinking about what to cover in criminology and intro sociology classes I teach, after learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences research, and when people have confided to me about this happening to them. Many of my students have told me that they'd learned nothing or very little about this before. I wish that I'd known years earlier about the extent and harms of child sexual abuse. Another thing I have been doing is contacting legislators and the news media to get more done. A couple of examples are to enact Erin's Law to teach about sex abuse prevention K though 12 and for public radio talk programs to do shows on the topic. I'd thought that sending letters glued into greeting cards would more likely get attention and action, but I'm very disappointed that I got almost no response. Because of the renewed attention to child sexual abuse in recent months, I'm trying again. I suppose people who were abused would feel a lot worse if they got no response.

Labor Day Weekends

This Labor Day weekend, it's been raining a lot. Ever since I was a kid I've associated this weekend in the year with watching the muscular dystrophy telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis while it's raining. I've rarely watched television during this century. The main times were when visiting my grandmother since she often watched it. I liked watching with her some of the telethon because it was similar to the variety shows common on broadcast television before the spread of cable.

Another thing I associate with Labor Day is the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie after I saw it again while I was visiting home during my first semester in college. I especially think of when Gene Wilder sings "Pure Imagination" and the meaning of the lyrics. Writing this has given me the idea to play in my sociology classes a clip of Wilder singing the song and asking my students for their thoughts. The song is maybe too personal for me, so I have to think about whether to try.

Below is "Round Falls"--Dam on Jones Falls river in Baltimore, near the Jones Falls Trail where it follows Falls Road. Location is 2948 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211. The small trail down to this spot should be improved to make it safer and more accessible. I took this picture in July and include it here because I like the effect of the light rays into this spot.

The Book Thing in Baltimore--Free Books

One of the more interesting places in Baltimore is this warehouse--The Book Thing--stocked with over 100 thousand donated books in the Abell neighborhood, which can also be considered part of the Charles Village neighborhood, and about a 15-minute walk east of the main Johns Hopkins University campus.

According a Baltimore Sun story, the Book Thing gives away 400,000 to 500,000 books per year. It is open on Saturdays and Sundays, 9 am to 5 pm.

1. The Book Thing website: http://bookthing.org/
2. "Up from the ashes: The Book Thing returns," Baltimore Sun, October 13, 2017: http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bs-fe-the-book-thing-reopens-20171012-story.html
3. "The Book Thing Bounces Back--A Baltimore literary institution gets reborn, thanks to the community," Baltimore Magazine, September 2017: https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/2017/9/19/the-book-thing-bounces-back

Green Room, at front entrance.

The rooms are painted green, red, and blue. The green room in the photo contains sociology, psychology, economics, women's studies, history, etc. (Because I wanted to avoid violating someone's privacy, I rushed before getting this into focus.)



Whenever I go there, I mainly concentrate on getting books that I can use in my teaching or research but can't easily find elsewhere. I suppose that many people would worry that some would abuse this by trying to haul away thousands of books at one time, but I have never seen anyone take more than a reasonable number. As can be seen in this photo, the books are stamped with a Not for Resale, usually on a title page, which I hope that used book stores will see and adhere to. [Varieties of Police Behavior is a classic by the criminologist/political scientist James Q. Wilson. I sometimes teach criminology but have only read parts of it.]

The Book Thing is run by volunteers and donations. I've volunteered a little by stamping, boxing, and sorting books. I think that usually the equivalent of over 100 boxes of books are donated each week.

Map of The Book Thing

Sociology Research Methods Syllabus

Here's a syllabus for one of the semesters, Spring 2006, that I taught Methods of Sociological Inquiry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I used to post teaching and research materials on UW's website but didn't move those after I left. In the future, I'll re-create it, but I will post this syllabus for now in case someone is searching for some teaching ideas. Many of the links are no longer OK. (Not all of this is aligning correctly, so I'll try to fix it later.)

My version seems to be more hands-on with a variety of research activities and includes lots more historical examples, such as from The Philadelphia Negro by Du Bois because of his use of systematic observation and interviews in the study of race. Many of the readings in my sections of research methods ended up examining the topics of race and order using different methods. In addition to Du Bois on race, Duneier used mainly participant observation but also interviews, conversation analysis, a simple field experiment, and historical research. LaPiere ran a famous field experiment in the 1920s followed by a questionnaire, and there are the field experiments by Pager (black and white men, with and without criminal records, applying for jobs) and by Massey and Lundy (undergrads at Penn calling landlords about apartments).This Spring 2006 syllabus has less on order than what I assigned in previous semesters. That topic pops up in Du Bois, Duneier, as well as Zimbardo on street vandalism.

Sociology 357—Methods of Sociological Inquiry

Spring 2006, the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Lecturer: Chuck Ditzler

Office 7105 Social Science Building             Office Hours: Tuesday 11am-noon,

Office Phone:   262-7458                               Thursday 11am-noon, or by appointment

Email: cditzler@ssc.wisc.edu

Class Scheduled: TR   9:30am-10:45am        Class Location: 6232 Social Science Bldg.

Course Description

This is a hands-on course that introduces methods of sociological research. Two themes thread throughout much of this version of the course: recognizing facts inconvenient for one’s position and developing one’s imagination or ways of perception in research. 

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize “inconvenient” facts—I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression “moral achievement,” though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something that should go without saying.  Max Weber “Science as a Vocation”

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truth, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.  Henry David Thoreau “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” Walden

From the Undergraduate Catalog, 2003-2005:

357 Methods of Sociological Inquiry. (Crosslisted with Rur Soc) I or II or SS; 3-4 cr (I). Scientific methods and their application in the analysis of society; procedures in testing sociological theory: problem definition, hypothesis construction, collection and evaluation of data. P: So st; not open to stdts who have taken Soc 358.

Seen or Heard?: Art and Stopping Human Trafficking (Outdoor Display at UW-Madison in April 2016)

To what extent do people look at and are influenced by such displays? At least the creators and those directly affected might feel from these some kind of accomplishment, some kind of psychological help. But would those not already on board notice and take concrete steps? I suppose the accumulative effects of such efforts help the messages sink in. I wonder if a lingering student thought through this and decided to become an activist or an intern at the capitol was motivated to mention human trafficking to a legislator.

"...intentionally being shown outdoors so that it mimics the fact that trafficking exists all around us, hidden in plain sight."

Last April, from the 4th through the 25th, a photographic display on human trafficking--"Bought and Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking" by Kay Chernush--was placed in the mall that runs between the two halves of the Chazen Art Museum. It's a busy zone for students to walk between bus stops/dorms and the libraries/Memorial Union, so I hope many at least glanced at these to consider the problem. This coming week is a unit in my online classes on art, music, and animals in society, and I'm including these photos to help illustrate this use of art.

The photos with short captions are at the ArtWorks for Freedom website: 

http://artworksforfreedom.org/portfolio-item/bought-sold/

Isthmus article: http://isthmus.com/events/kay-chernush/

To the left and right are the two halves of the Chazen; above and behind is the bridge connecting the two.

This one particularly drew my attention because of the idea of using a mask to survive. I'd add that those who kidnap, rape, and abuse wear "masks" to instigate these crimes and to fool themselves about their cruelty towards others.

The following display of paper cranes was placed in the Madison Public Library's Central Branch last April to observe Sexual Assault Awareness Month. One of my concerns is that these efforts risk being magical thought, which might serve some purposes, such as stress-reduction, but has little, if any, impact. I suppose this type of display is much more than magical thought and can work to convey the message. This is near where children with their parents might walk by to reach the children's books area, so maybe some asked about these and parents possibly discussed the topic of sexual assault and abuse.

Transparent homes and the Web

Walking through this Do Ho Suh exhibit that replicates his former New York City apartment at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art reminds me of what I'm doing to myself on the Web. 

translucent colored fabric replica of apartment at 348 West 22nd Street, New York NY

During the weekend of February 11, I decided to stay in Madison to catch the opening of the exhibit before returning to Baltimore. I think he's one of the most interesting artists these days. I wish I could see in person one of these: Floor, Karma (two giant feet walking over little people), and another statue called Karma that's 98 men stacked onto each other curving up 28 feet. In an interview [1 min 16 sec] for a public television program, "Art in the Twenty-First Century" (2003), he focuses on space when talking about Floor, but my first thought about Floor and the two giant feet is more about power and impact on other's/our lives. 

Taken on Saturday, Feb. 11--later they had to rope off these areas because
someone risked damaging the toilet by posing over it for a picture.

T

The exhibit also reminds me about the role of places in my life, of how they connect to my memories, other people, and dreams. Do Ho Suh describes similar thoughts in the video "Rubbing"/"Loving" [6 min 16 sec]. Maybe I shouldn't go into detail here about the places I think of and their relevance to me.

Life-size rubbing of his apartment

In a darkened room were appliances and similar objects on their own.

Akan proverb at the Baltimore Museum of Art/Guerrilla Girls exhibit

Akan Gold-Dust Weight (Abrammuo)

While visiting the Baltimore Museum of Art this week to look again at a temporary exhibit of the Guerrilla Girls and take some photos to use in my classes, I stopped by a case of small ornaments used as weights by Akan gold merchants of Africa. (The Akan are an ethnic group that makes up much of the populations of Ghana and the Ivory Coast.)  This bird symbolizes an Akan proverb: "When it lies behind you, take it." According to the sign, this is about learning from the past. Because I wondered why a bird looking behind itself was chosen to represent this idea, I did some searching and found that a name for the symbol is sankofa.

from the Spiritual Project of the University of Denver:
"Sankofa is an Akan term that literally means, 'to go back and get it.' One of the Adinkra symbols for Sankofa...depicts a mythical bird flying forward with its head turned backward. The egg in its mouth represents the 'gems' or knowledge of the past upon which wisdom is based; it also signifies the generation to come that would benefit from that wisdom. This symbol often is associated with the proverb, 'Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,' which translates to, 'It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.' The Akan believe that the past illuminates the present and that the search for knowledge is a life-long process. The pictograph illustrates the quest for knowledge, while the proverb suggests the rightness of such a quest as long as it is based on knowledge of the past. (san = 'to return') + (ko = 'to go') + (fa = 'to look, to seek and take')"

But the bird in the BMA collection doesn't seem to have an egg in its mouth.

One of the ways I try to follow this idea is through listening to music, especially songs that bring back the emotions of painful moments or that puncture into me that some thoughts were dreams that weren't coming true. This gets into topics that are too personal for me to post on here. Maybe my tendency is to ruminate too much on my past mistakes.

The BMA's Guerrilla Girls exhibit (September 25, 2016 — March 12, 2017) filled the walls with posters like this one:

2012 version of this poster (See the Guerrilla Girls "Naked through the Ages" page)

I'm amazed at how many great artists who are women fail to get much attention in our museums. I was once again reminded of this when I was looking into abstract expressionism recently and came across articles inspired by an exhibit that started at the Denver Art Museum in 2016: Women of Abstract Expressionism. (I was thinking about abstract expressionism because I'm using Pinterest to create my own imaginary art museum as a fun way to learn more about art.) I've not been a big fan of abstract expressionism, but I really like paintings by some of the artists described in the following articles, such as Mary Abbott and Janet Sobel:

1. "11 Female Abstract Expressionists You Should Know, from Joan Mitchell to Alma Thomas" by Alexxa Gotthardt, June 29, 2016 http://bit.ly/293kDVI

1985 to 1987; 1987 to 1989

2. "12 Women of Abstract Expressionism to Know Now" by Sarah Cascone, September 17, 2016 http://artnt.cm/2cxVu74

Neither article mentions Janet Sobel, who influenced Pollock. See "The Forgotten Female Artist: Janet Sobel’s Struggle within the Abstract Expressionist Movement": http://the-artifice.com/janet-sobel-abstract-expressionist-movement/

1989 to 1992; 1992 to 1999

1999 to 2012

Madison's Art on the Square Fair: "Art is a form of communication"

[I wrote most of this in July 2015 but didn't post it.]

Last weekend was the annual Art on the Square in Madison, with booths lining both sides of the streets that form the capitol square. If I'm in Madison during the fair, I nearly always go but nearly always leave feeling somewhat unfulfilled. The main exception and what's almost always my favorite stop is the high school ceramics booth, which is part of the Wisconsin-focused Art Fair Off the Square along Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, the street extending from the square to the Monona Terrace.

 “Art is a form of communication and when you have customers responding to your art, that’s what it’s all about,” said Phi Lyons, ceramics teacher at West, quoted in "Students' Clay Coalition Get Supportive Audience" Wisconsin State Journal July 20, 2015

Many of the students were there to talk with customers. At least a couple of them described to me the psychological benefits of pottery, that it could have a relaxing, meditative effect to help them deal with, for example, trauma or depression. One of the units in my intro sociology and contemporary American society classes includes the sociology of art because of those two reasons along with others. See the "Art in Cyberspace" website for links to various kinds of resources on the sociology of art.

Bumper sticker philosophy observed

While riding the bus yesterday morning, I saw this bumper sticker:

"It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."

In-house training/Stuff on my garden plot: Cincinnati Market Radishes
Since my last posting on here, I've been busy wrapping up the end of the semester and then taking training classes through Madison Area Technical College. At the Tech Academy, I learned how to run the Telepresence classroom that I'll use for one section this fall, and at the week-long Learning Academy, I took a class on educational evaluation as part of the certification requirements for WI technical college instructors. At these classes, I especially like meeting teachers from other departments/programs and picking up teaching ideas from them.

Cincinnati Market Radishes

In my plot at the Sheboygan Community Garden, I'm trying a less common radish called Cincinnati Market, which is dark red and long like a typical carrot. According to the Seed Savers Exchange catalog description, the length can be about 6 inches; however, mine tend to be shorter--about three to five inches. Mine also taste a little hotter or spicier than typical radishes rather than mild. That could be because of our warm spell earlier this month. I actually don't like radishes that much unless they're really mild. [In the future I'll say more about other less common things I'm growing.]

Last Saturday at the Dane County Farmers' Market, I came across a vendor selling radishes that looked similar, but she called them by a Japanese name. So I decided to do some research and found that old seed catalogs scanned into Google books often listed Cincinnati Market radish along with many other long radishes.



Diameter about one cm and under, but some

are around one inch (2.5 cm) in the top part. 

Some sources say that another name for Cincinnati Market radish was Glass Radish because of brittleness. Mine aren't anywhere near brittle--in fact,I don't understand how a radish could be brittle like glass. [See this entry in Maule's Seed Catalog (1902), which says that they're hard to distinguish from Long Scarlet radishes.]

One of the best sources of info on this I've found so far are books on gardening by Adolph Kruhm published around WW I.  In his Home Vegetable Gardening from A to Z, Kruhm (1918) discusses in relatively great detail when to grow various kinds of radishes. According to him, the White Icicle radish could "be considered the greatest all-around general purpose radish in cultivation"(p. 194), so I might try them. [Kruhm's introduction starts with this claim: "April 15, 1917, will go down as one of the most momentous days in American history. quite apart from the fact that it marked our entrance into the World War" (p. v). His Home Vegetable Gardening (1914), maybe an earlier version of the A to Z book, gives less detailed advice but has a table of contents with links.]
Added on June 18:

Attending a talk on primates while worrying about the WI governor's attack on state employee unions
Friday evening I was torn between watching a Cinematheque showing of a documentary on the Nuremberg trials and attending a talk by a primate researcher. The film was a restoration of a US government documentary made in the 1940s that wasn't allowed to be shown in the US. I figured that I could see it in the future on DVD, so I chose the talk by Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State.[For more info see this article:http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-04/chimps-with-spears/roach-text.html]

The chimpanzees she studies in the savanna-woodlands of Senegal face an environment very different from the chimps in more heavily forested central Africa, such as in the Congo. She got in the news for discovering that the Senegal chimps sometimes sharpen with their teeth the ends of branches to use as spears to kill small monkeys. The chimps poke the spears into the holes of tree trunks where monkeys hide. Before this it was thought that only humans make such a tool.

For my intro soc classes, I sometimes show a Nova documentary on the first day called "The Last Great Ape," which is on bonobos but includes an interesting comparison to chimps. The main point is that bonobos are more empathetic and much less violent than chimps. Some of the proposed causes are genetics, the male dominance in chimp culture versus female dominance of bonobos, the use of sex among bonobos as a calming mechanism, and the competition over resources that chimps face with gorillas north of the Congo River. In the past comparisons of humans with primates would mainly be with chimps, but maybe we can better understand ourselves by also learning more about bonobos.

Bumper Stickers/Eating Jiaozi for Chinese New Year/Music at the Union
"Imagine Whirled Peas"--seen on bumper sticker on car parked near Madison's State Street while I was walking from local library to Memorial Library. [Chinese might want to email me if they can't figure out the message. It's a pun on another bumper sticker.]

I've probably seen this one before, but today it reminds me of a teaching idea of Jack Bowen, a high school teacher in the SF Bay area--asking students to record bumper stickers to discuss the philosophy of the message. Maybe I'll try that with my students. [I first heard of his book, If You Can Read This: The Philosophy of Bumper Stickers, from WPR--http://www.wpr.org/book/100530a.cfm He's interviewed for the third segment.]

Monday is the fifth day of the Chinese new year. Because I'll be busy tomorrow, I made some jiaozi for lunch using pre-made jiaozi wrappers and then finely chopped for the filling Chinese cabbage, green onion, and spinach along with some shredded carrot and one scrambled egg. The typical filling uses ground pork often mixed with Chinese cabbage and maybe some other vegetable. The custom is to eat jiaozi on new year's eve around midnight, the first day, and the fifth day (often leading to people eating jiaozi during the days in between). Another big day for eating jiaozi was the first day of winter. On the 15th day of the new year--called the Lantern Festival in English but yuanxiao jie [ 元宵节] in most of China--the custom is to eat glutinous rice balls--called yuanxiao--that have various kinds of sweet fillings. In about a week, I'll describe how to make them.

Saving students money when assigning textbooks
For the two intro sociology classes that I'm teaching this semester, I've again assigned a reader edited by James Henslin Down to Earth Sociology: Introductory Readings. 14th Edition. The list price is $23 but online sources, such as Amazon, sell it these days for under $17. Most of the readings are abridged research articles and selections from books. It's good for students to read actual research findings rather than very short summaries of them in regular textbooks. Another advantage is that it's an easy-to-carry paperback.

One chapter that I especially like using for teaching is Devah Pager's audit study in Milwaukee on young men--two white and two black--applying for jobs. The men submitted the same information on education and job experience but rotated by week on how they answered criminal record questions. The complete article in the American Journal of Sociology, "The Mark of a Criminal Record," is at her Princeton website. For a quick summary of the findings, see the graph on page 958. [edited on September 18, 2014: Devah now teaches at Harvard, so the new site for the article is  http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pager/files/pager_ajs.pdf ]

This semester I'm experimenting with using as a supplement a free online textbook that was posted on Flat World Knowledge near the end of last semester: Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World, Brief Edition by Steve Barkan. Typical hardback intro soc textbooks cost over $80 or even over $100, so I hope that sites like this one do well.

Breakfast at the Farmers' Market/Only 11% of Americans eat recommended amount of fruits and vegetables
This morning I ate breakfast at the Dane County Farmers' Market. Because the winter market is held indoors at the senior center, which has a kitchen by the lobby, local chefs--assisted by volunteers from local non-profits--are invited to prepare meals using ingredients mainly supplied by vendors. This week the chef, from the Mermaid Café, supervised East High School students taking part in a "Chef in the Classroom" project.

A meal usually costs $7.50--about three cereal boxes on sale--so I hesitate to eat breakfast away from home. But today's menu was an interesting change. Along with fruit juice were "pan-fried trout; country ham with grits and red-eye gravy; corn bread with plum preserves; fresh salad with mixed greens, also including micro greens, pea shoots, and spinach served with a warm bacon dressing and crumbled feta cheese." I try to avoid eating food from animals, except for milk products, fish, and eggs, but the local vendors use more humane methods to raise animals and the thin ham portion was smaller than my palm.

Eating at the winter farmers' market sometimes inspires me to eat greens in the morning. When my grandmother was living in her own home until last year, I sometimes picked greens,such as Swiss chard and beet greens, from the garden I'd planted and cook them together for breakfast.

Thinking about growing vegetables
This summer I missed not being able to grow some of my own food, so I hope that I can get a plot in a community garden next spring. It would be great for growing cheap greens. During one winter break in Gettysburg, I was able to pick from the snow some Swiss chard that was still fresh. And it would be easy to pig out eating peas directly from their pods while still in the garden. [The stereophotos I took of the site/sight in Madison turned out poorly, so maybe I'll return there before the weather gets worse and just take a digital photo.]

My election official training was Thursday afternoon at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and I arrived early to walk around while listening to the news on my mp3 player/radio. It made me think of two things--Zizhuyuan (Purple Bamboo Park, in Beijing) and the vegetable gardens I've grown for my grandmother. Because writing about Zizhuyuan now would take up too much space, I'll I just say something about growing vegetables.

This is my third day in a row posting on here. So, after these two topics, I'll probably wait until I post some 3-D photos that I hope turned out OK of an interesting site/sight in Madison.

Improving knowledge about First Amendment content
In this morning's state news on WPR was a story on how two candidates for the state legislature at a debate couldn't list all of the rights protected by the First Amendment. Because my intro to soc and contemporary American society classes cover political sociology, a couple of years ago I decided to force my students to learn some basic civics information for exams. One question has asked them to list three out of the five freedoms covered by the First Amendment, but this news story has led me to decide that I'll now ask my students to list all of them. For my previous comments on this topic, see the fourth paragraph of my March 8, 2006, entry at Livejournal:  http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/2006/03/08/

More on cheaper or free textbooks
At this morning's opening assembly for my school's convocation (Madison Area Technical College's version of in-house training), two students gave a presentation asking teachers here to sign-up for the rental textbook program, which they also discussed at the August convocation. They ended with an alternative that I had discussed with them in August, free open textbook programs. See, for example,  http://www.opentextbook.org/ and http://www.studentpirgs.org/open-textbooks/catalog

Example WPR story to assign when teaching: David Foster Wallace and running out of batteries for the tape player
My sinus headache from allergies lasted most of last night, so I didn't wake up until around 9am today. I missed being able to watch the triathlon swimming portion at the Monona Terrace, which I've done maybe twice before, but was able to catch this morning's To the Best of Our Knowledge topic on David Foster Wallace.

The last segment includes an interview of his sister that says a lot about life. Thought-provoking stories similar to this would be good for my students to hear, but I'm not sure where to plug it into an intro to sociology syllabus or assignment.
http://www.ttbook.org/book/david-foster-wallace

Maybe I should create a topic that maybe never appears in an intro syllabus--how we deal with crises in our lives. This segment goes beyond that, such as how everyday interactions between people can be so important to us. I feel that when shopping for food, waiting for a bus, etc. as I see others talking to or holding their kids or just being with someone else. The sister's description of a long car trip with her brother is a good example.

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.