I didn’t bother unpacking my television when I moved to Platteville at the start of September; on top of not really using it that much in recent months, I also wasn’t sure just how I wanted to position it in my new apartment. After the chaos of my first weeks here, and especially after getting so sick in the middle of the month, my television kind of stayed on the back burner for a long time, especially since I had my streaming television app on…
I’ve blogged before about how a lot of my early love for learning came from the television shows I watched when I was very young. Children’s television staples like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood had a huge influence on me, of course, but even my love of early-1980’s game shows led to me wanting to understand this thing called “math” that was responsible for all the contestants getting happy or sad during those old weekday morning blocks on the major broadcast networks. Contrary to…
The following blog contains mentions of violence, bullying, and child abuse. Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock for Oscars Slap: ‘I Was Out of Line and I Was Wrong’ (msn.com) On page 169 of his memoir No Struggle No Progress, American education “reformer” Howard Fuller writes about taking a flight for the purpose of using corporal punishment on one of his sons, Malcolm, for an alleged act of stealing. By itself, the description of this event wouldn’t have caught my attention so much, had it…
Remembering Betty White (npr.org) I’ve mentioned before that for all my love of books and libraries when I was younger, a lot of what propelled my autodidact tendencies from an early age came from my fandom of early-1980’s game shows, and how I needed to learn things like basic math to help me understand why people got happy or sad on shows like The Price is Right. My appreciation of daytime television shows of this era can be seen in everything from the look of…
In all the chaos of the September 11 attacks — I got the first report of the planes flying into the Twin Towers while I was getting ready to go to the University of Toledo for my classes that morning, my first class actually met like usual before the campus closed for the day, I didn’t get the afternoon off work (but I was able to leave long enough to fill my gas tank before prices spiked), and I spent hours in a “how could…