The subjective truth of memories for Memoir

This week in the MA we’ve been working on Memoir. There has been useful discussion around the subject of “truth” in the genre: the difference between memoir and biography, the necessity of being entertaining in order to attract a publisher and an audience, and therefore the necessity of holding to a theme, being selective in what one portrays,  which might mean not telling everything, or even embellishing sometimes  in order to hold the attention… what this means for a supposedly “non-fiction” genre, the expectation that the audience understands that a memoir presents subjective rather than objective truth, etc.

For an exercise, we were instructed to run “the film” of our lives, beginning with our earliest memories, fitting in what we could in ten minutes. I took a little longer over it, as the act of remembering in this way is foreign to me and I felt I was exercising nearly-atrophied muscles. I found that I remembered impressions rather than events – and for some reason they are all to do with being outside in the garden. It was difficult to write a quick list, because the act of writing is actually what draws out the memory for me. I start with a fleeting impression and can’t progress to the next one until I’ve dragged it out to coherence word by word. I also checked a few facts with my Mom, with a startling result in one case. This is what came to me (it is unpolished – the exercises that build on this one are better written – see subsequent posts).

————–

I remember cherry trees when I was three years old – how I loved the hugeness of those three trees in our back garden and how exciting the long cherry season was. They were different types of cherry so the fruit kept coming for ten weeks (I have that time detail through checking with my mom now). We only lived in that house in Linden, Johannesburg for a few months. There was also a swimming pool incident – I remembered that my brother (Ian, one year old) nearly drowned in the low water that was left after it had been drained for repair, but my mom tells me now that it wasn’t my brother but our friend Trevor, who was slightly younger than Ian.

We moved from Linden, Johannesburg to Cape Town. The house there had very thick walls – I don’t have a visual memory of these, but they felt solid and cool and the fact that they were thick has stayed with me because there was an earthquake while we were there and much was made of the fact that the house didn’t fall down. I associate our faithful, not-too-beautiful, but very much beloved dog, Juno, a boxer, with the garden of this house – a spacious half-acre with no trees – maybe that’s why it seems spacious in my memory. (In fact, my mother tells me, we acquired Juno from the SPCA when I was two and we were living in Parkview, Johannesburg (before we moved to Linden). Mom says that Dad and I set out to rescue her from imminent euthanasia at the prompting of a dog-finder who had been unable to find our lost Rhodesian Ridgeback who had wandered. As I was only two, I hardly think I was the initiator of this noble mission, but who knows? I don’t remember any of it.)

In another house, in Northcliff, Johannesburg, where we lived for three years (my age – six to eight), I remember a quince tree in a neglected corner of the garden behind the house. It wasn’t an attractive climbing tree (or bush? For some reason, I think of it as a bush) but mysterious because we were unfamiliar with quinces – no one really knew what to do with them. The light yellow fruit was so large, but so inedible! There was also an avocado tree, I think, which didn’t give much fruit so we thought of it as a disappointment. In the large front garden, there was an enormous loquat tree. I could climb into this, with difficulty. I liked the difficulty and the way it made me feel especially agile and clever when I overcame it. The fruit was tasty when ripe, but awfully bitter when not. Although the ripe orange-yellow fruit was smooth to touch, I seem to remember that it was also furry at some stage – maybe in early development or just around the base?

As I think about that loquat tree, more impressions from the outside of the house begin to cluster around it. There was a large swimming pool with a tough blue plastic cover over it. I remember the smell of that plastic, and its yielding support underfoot when we walked on it (which was very exciting as we weren’t allowed to do it). I think there was also a wendy house or a shed or other such hiding place at the bottom of the garden beyond the loquat tree – or if there wasn’t, we children met there as though there were when we pretended to be Peter (me) and Jane (I forget whose role that was) and others from Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven. I also remember games where I was an Indian warrior called Bravery. I presume my brothers were cowboys – oh yes! I remember the cap guns – toy guns that would give a loud report as they were fired – simply a hammer coming down on a strip of tape, and the smell of the tiny curl of smoke that would rise from the gun. I always preferred a bow and arrow – I’d somehow formulated a concept of the noble savage – must have been from something I’d read.

Tia Azulay 13Feb09
Copyright © 2009 Tia Azulay

Seeking the ideal daily routine

Sue Thomas posted this question under Talking Points in our Creative Nonfiction module today:
I came across this very interesting website http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/ which prompted me to ask – what is your daily routine? Do you have one? Do you wish you had? What works for you?

I found this website fascinating. One thing that struck me particularly was how few writers write for more than three or four hours a day. Another was how many of them write in the morning. I am also a morning person. Sometimes, I jump out of bed with a huge sense of urgency at 3, 4, 5 or 6 and head straight to my computer. If I do start writing then and if nothing else actively demands my attention (I am very good at procrastinating about things that should be done but aren’t actually shouting at me), then I can write or design projects easily until 11 or 12 am.

Usually, though, I have a much more disciplined routine which results in far less writing! This is because I’m married. Because I currently work and study from home and my husband has to travel to work, all the housework and catering falls to me. His necessary routine dictates mine. We rise at 7 (if I’m not already up) and I must have a cooked breakfast on the table by 8am at the latest so that he can be at work by 9. I usually fit in some housework and about 45 minutes of exercise between 7 and 9 as well. I am much more regular about exercise if I do it in the morning. If I miss, sometimes I can persuade myself to get on the stepper in front of the TV in the evening, but I have to talk to myself sternly to make myself do this!

From 9 I’m back at the computer and work through until 12 or 12.30, when I break for lunch for an hour (in which time I’ll do some laundry and possibly get onto the stepper in front of the TV if I missed it in the morning). Then at 13:00 or 13:30 back to the computer until 6.30 pm. I often have a concentration slump somewhere between 2 and 4pm, so I might read online news, answer emails, browse websites or even watch TV then. At 6.30 I start preparing dinner to serve at 7pm (I don’t do fancy cooking!). By 8pm I’ll finish clearing up, laying the breakfast table and preparing my husband’s work lunch for the following day. Then it’s time for any collaboration with him on online projects or domestic issues, or if we don’t have anything pressing, we’ll both return to our computers until 10pm (well, we always say 10pm, but inevitably end up only getting into bed by 11 or later because he’s a night owl).

I deal with household admin and finances – property, banking, insurance, investment issues, etc. for at least an hour a day. Most of this is online or call centre work which I dislike intensely, and some letter-writing, and it usually goes better if I do it in the morning, but I often leave it until late in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, I don’t function well on less than 8 hours’ sleep, or if I get to bed any later than 11pm. I would so love to be one who could manage on 6 hours!

Sometimes, when I’m deeply engaged in a project or piece of writing, none of the above applies. I’ve been known to spend 12 to 18 hours solid at my computer, only drinking or eating when my other half realizes that I’m shrivelling up and brings me something.

So, that’s my reality, which doesn’t really work for me. One possible improved schedule would be:

06:00 Yoga, self-care, planning
07:00 Light breakfast; read
07.30 Write, study
11:00 Online chores
12:00 Lunch (main meal); read or walk
13:00 Write, study, work
17:00 Housework, dinner prep with music
18:00 Walk or read
19:00 Light dinner and clearing up with music
20:00 Read, play games, collaborate, dance, singing, drawing or music practice
09:00 Prep for sleep
09:30 Read in bed
10:15 Sleep

Seems so simple…. why is it so hard to make this happen regularly?

One answer: Csikszentmihalyi talks of the “activation energy” needed to transition into activities that produce flow, and of the dangers of the lure of passive activities like TV that require very little activation energy. TV is a big problem for me because it’s easier than all the other things. If I could, I would throw it out, but hubby won’t hear of it. Although, recently, I’m glad to report, I’ve been so interested in what I’m learning and doing on the course that I’ve been watching a lot less.

I’d be happy to hear what routines others have or have tried in the past, and especially what motivates you to stick to them.

Tia Azulay 02Feb09
Copyright © 2009Tia Azulay

Deep Walking (to Park Abbey near Leuven, Belgium)

This week in Creative Nonfiction we’re looking at the Essay form. I’ve glimpsed a world of textual delights through the windows of the few references I’ve had time to follow, such as those in The New Yorker, or The London Review of Books, but I’ve also been introduced to the concept of the Photo Essay. So… make one of your own, they said, they did. So I did. It’s a humble start, being just a little meditation on the journey of life (or one possible path of many in life), but the pics are nice, even if the “story” doesn’t grab you:

Tia Azulay 29Jan09
Copyright © 2009 Tia Azulay

Story and Story of Story

After submitting work to an Online Workshop for the Methods module of the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media (MACWNM) at De Montfort University, students were asked to write a critical commentary describing their creative process in making the work and in responding to feedback on that work. Throughout the Methods module, several models and tools helped us understand the creative process while engaging in it. I was fascinated by the two different kinds of writing, storytelling and commentary, arising from one starting point. I determined to learn to do both well.

This response attempts to showcase this learning.

The Story

The Story of the Story

Fruit and Veggie Stall by Monique Jansen

Saving The Market Way

In a time-pressed world, it’s hard to resist the enormous convenience of supermarkets. It’s two minutes’ walk to my local Marks and Spencer’s. This proximity allows me to indulge my worst habits of laziness, last-minute catering and impulse-buying. I can delay domestic drudgery until five in the afternoon, safe in the knowledge that I can rescue my dinner party by popping in to that purveyor of guilty pleasures such as dressed chickens, prepared vegetables and decorated desserts.

Over the past few years, however, I’ve had an uncomfortable pricking of conscience on two fronts. The global warming crisis has given rise to much speculation over the role of supermarkets in promoting short-cut farming methods and over-packaged products. More recently, the credit crunch has forced me to consider closely how much I spend, not only on luxuries, but also on essentials. This is why, one day, I decided that I must do my bit, for the environment and for my domestic economy, by trying out a local market. After looking up recommendations and directions online, I felt fully equipped to try out the real thing; convinced I’d return feeling more virtuous and richer than I usually do after a shopping trip.

On a warm, spring Saturday, I set off, with curiosity and a sense of adventure, along a road I had often used, but from which I had never spotted anything that looked like a market. Was it a mysterious shopping underworld that manifested only to those in the know? The Google map was easy to follow, though, and I soon found Lodge Lane Car Park. A non-descript lot behind the main street shops, one wouldn’t notice it in the course of daily business unless one needed to park there. This market day, however, it had transformed into a colourful, ant colony of commerce. Hawkers’ cajoling cries soared through my open window over a hubbub of conversation and movement. Pleased at my discovery, I swung into a bay, killed the engine, distributed about my body all necessary shopping accoutrements, and sallied forth to sample market fare under the benevolent sun.

Immediately in front of me was a large stall brilliant with blooms. A mixture of rose and freesia fragrances wafted toward me. At the entrance, two towers of lazy-eyed susans glowed amongst blue and magenta clematis. Behind them, cerise geraniums tumbled over the edges of a turquoise pot, and consorts of cosmos in mauve, white and purple nodded alongside. Enquirers besieged the smiling, silver-haired stallholder while her burly companion broke off to right a fallen cloud of mauve fluff. The insubstantial mist of flowers gave the light breeze sufficient leverage for play, and the pot was dancing. After several attempts, he left it prostrate before its admirers, and went back to selling daisies.

Beyond the floral drama, I squeezed into a narrow passage between blue plastic walls on which were tacked a determined, but tasteless, array of mobile phone covers, thongs and baseball caps. Hurrying toward the light at the end of the tunnel, I burst out into a mêlée of one-pound-T-shirt shoppers, intent, as they ripped the clear plastic packages, on finding the colour or size they simply must have at that price. Greens, yellows and blues, juggled from hand to urgent hand, floated above hasty trestle tables before settling into seething piles of discarded items. Less agile browsers burrowed into these volatile mounds, risking life and limb for the red or the orange. Taking a gulp of air, I plunged in, nimbly rescued three still-cellophaned shirts, deposited three coins into a smuggler’s hand and exited on the same breath.

A kind of optimistic sanity prevailed in the organic area. People were bustling, but grounded by the smell and touch of soil-moist carrots, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflowers and broccoli. They pottered happily between enormous oranges, blushing grapefruit and rows of multicoloured nectarines ripe for eating. Begging a large broccoli box off a stallholder, I filled it quickly. The huge strawberries and fresh black cherries were so cheap! I had to quell the impulse to dive in with both hands, fending off other comers with my elbows like a one-pound-T-shirt veteran. Instead, I hoisted the sagging box onto my hip and enjoyed the market banter as I waited for the scales.

At last it was my turn. The overwhelmed vegetable attendant rechecked her snake of figures; I paid her and returned to the car in high good humour, pleased to have bought so much for so little. The new T-shirts were perfect for our upcoming beach holiday, and we would eat well and guilt-free at dinner that evening and for the coming week.

Still in this happy haze, my attention was caught by a bright yellow square on the windscreen. Startled, I scanned the vicinity and saw that I was, indeed, parked under a large sign listing parking charges, which my rose-tinted spectacles had blanked out completely on arrival. The morning’s savings were wiped out. As I stood there indecisively for a moment, the burly flower-stall man caught my eye. He took in the situation at a glance and pointed to the sky, “At least the sun is still shining!” He had a point. Inside M&S, I wouldn’t have noticed the weather.

Tia Azulay June 2005
Copyright © 2005-2008 Tia Azulay

Listen to the audio version of this story (Market Magic).

See a Feedback Action Plan created from feedback received on this story.

Tia Azulay 13 November 2008
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

Apostrophising the apostrophe

“Oh, great squiggle in the sky, insert yourself into our empty spaces,
Deliver us from plural confusions and possess us with your graces!”

No, I’m not starting a new religion, or being lewd, but I confess that this is a shameless grammar and punctuation plug, as well as a plea for the improvement of our reading environment. While I’m sure that none of us at Master’s level* would ever dream of intentionally inflicting on others a piece of work for reading or review without running it through MS Word’s spelling and grammar checker first, the simple truth is that this less-than-beloved software doesn’t pick up everything, so we simply have to learn a few rules if we want to be writers.

Of all the errors that grate on my reading nerves, the misuse of the apostrophe definitely tops the list.

I love apostrophes, because they’re really useful. However, they’re pointless when used in the wrong places. In fact, they’re worse than pointless then, because they actually interfere with smooth reading. A bad apostrophe is not neutral, it’s negative! In the worst cases, it alters the meaning, but even when the context tells me that it just can’t mean that, just one bad apostrophe in a paragraph, even in an entire page, makes whatever I’m reading seem unprofessional. I immediately find it difficult to focus on the content, even if I’m really interested in it.

I’m very lucky in that I was well-drilled in spelling, grammar and punctuation at my school (we were always a backward lot out there in the colonies, so we didn’t “benefit” from educational fads like the “grammar inhibits creativity” one that has betrayed recent generations of UK children), but I still come up against the occasional grammatical situation where I have to think twice about the apostrophe.

So here are two sites that I’ve found helpful:

A. The Apostrophe Protection Society: http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

This site has a really poncey name, but it’s a useful quick reference because the Home page contains the bare essentials in big text. It gives the traditional explanations of correct usage for missing letters and for possessives (remembering to except the exceptions). The easiest-to-remember advice from this page is:

“Apostrophes are NEVER ever used to denote plurals”,

so if you mean “more than one”, don’t even be tempted! Just remembering this rule will halve your apostrophe problems immediately.

B. The Dreaded Apostrophe:  http://www.dreaded-apostrophe.com/

I like this site much more, because:

1. It reduces all the rules to one: “Use an apostrophe when letters are missing”.The writer explains that the apostrophe ALWAYS signifies one or more missing letters, even in possessives, because the old form of the possessive used to have an ‘es’ ending. Pronunciation has changed and the ‘es’ form has contracted, so that it is now represented as ” ’s “.
2. There are good examples and a great Q & A page giving answers to difficult apostrophe questions. Surprisingly, it makes quite interesting reading!

On the other hand, if you don’t have time to look it up, you can always recite my daily prayer,

“Oh, great squiggle in the sky, insert yourself into our empty spaces,
Deliver us from plural confusions and possess us with your graces!”

and maybe the muse will give you a clue!

Notes

• A note on the title of this post: The word “apostrophe” has two meanings:
  1. A literary device of “calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person or to a place, thing or personified abstraction” kmhs.typepad.com/parrott_ap_english_langua/files/rhetorical_terms.doc
  2. A punctuation mark signifying the omission of letters from a word.
• *I’m doing the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.

Tia Azulay 10Dec08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

Another recent creative writing exercise for our course (the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media) was also based on a popular trAce project, now archived at http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/home/

It asks several questions about the meaning of home … here are the questions and my responses.

Q. What does the word ‘home’ mean to you?

“Home” conjures images of open spaces, blue skies, trees, grass, animals; freedom to walk barefoot when and wherever I wanted to, room and time to run, play, think and read, read, read – this is not my present home, but one of those that I believe I knew and for which I yearn. There was also much, much aloneness, but I did not call it loneliness then.

Q. Please describe the home of your childhood.

I lived in South Africa until I was thirty. There were many homes, but one stands out in my memory, particularly from the period before I went to boarding school at the age of eleven. We moved to Bryanston, Sandton, when I was eight. It was a three-acre property with a lovely farm-style house that my mother had inherited from my grandmother. As a younger child, I had visited her there a few times before her death, and had even stayed with her for a week. Then, I had found the house strange and cool, musty and lonely, because grandmother herself was strange to me. However, once we had moved in, it very quickly became our house.

I remember the whole property as beautiful, and I remember the additional delight that each new beautification brought to all of us, but especially to my mother, who energised each change – the extension to the lounge that brought light in everywhere, the oregon pine floors that I proudly helped my father to lay, the enormous new main bedroom with built-in cupboards lining its entire length on one side, big enough to hide a built-in sewing station and to give access through a cupboard door to a magical en suite bathroom with a huge picture window.

I loved my father’s study. It was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that he had built himself from golden pine. The lines of books were broken with staggered double volume frames that gave space for lamps and objets d’art, so the small room was never oppressive, even with its thousands of books. There were good science fiction from Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and bad science fiction from Andre Norton, good romances from Georgette Heyer and bad romances from Barbara Cartland, good westerns from Zane Grey and bad westerns from Louis L’Amour, good thrillers from Graham Greene and less good thrillers from Ian Fleming; there were adventure stories from Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, encyclopaedias and dictionaries and Greek myths and fantasy novels and children’s stories, including the complete series of Biggles, Just William, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton. All of these, and more, he and I devoured. From that study, I took my heroes out to the garden to become them there. I was Tarzan (my brothers were the apes), I was Lord Greystoke, I was John Carter of Mars, I was Hiawatha, I was Robinson Crusoe, I was Peter Pan… I was never a girl, because they were seldom heroes, although Georgina from the Famous Five was alright, because she was a tomboy and could climb trees, like me.

The garden was not manicured like those of our neighbours, but it was a wonderful wild space for me and my younger brothers. Pretty Jacaranda trees lined the boundary with the busy main road. There were also two huge Acacia Elata trees, with dark brown bark and dark green leaves, that were easy to climb all the way to the top. Unlike our neighbours, we had no wall or fence along that road, although my parents had created inside the line of trees a row of grassy hills from building rubble and soil to act as a sound barrier. I loved to sit at the top of the tallest tree, alternately playing my recorder and singing my heart out, sometimes for hours. Inside the main garden, there were a syringa and a willow and a yellowwood, and many other trees. My favourites were the small Chinese oak that turned brilliant shades of red and orange in Autumn and the huge tree down the slope from the patio which my brother called the helicopter tree because of its winged seeds. From its huge branches hung our car-tyre swing and the birdhouse for the twenty or so white doves that my mother had installed on a determined whim. As they were not caged, the population, inevitably, did not remain pure white, but we loved to see them coming and going about their bird business.

The other animals were our beloved dogs, including Juno the boxer who had been with us ever since I could remember, and a succession of others – Buster, a black pointer, who ran away, a bulldog called Belinda who bit my father, at least two gorgeous Bouviers, Casper and Gigi, from whom my mom bred a few litters. Watchdog duties were performed by the geese. I also always had a cat – Mischief, Peculiar, Malkat (mad cat) and then Afterthought, a pure white, blue-eyed, deaf albino who always came late for everything. For my eleventh Christmas, my best Christmas ever, my parents gave me a cremello-coloured, sweet-tempered gelding called Butterscotch. My younger brother, Ian, received a cheeky cross-Welsh pony called Prince, who was black with a white blaze. We would ride them for hours, bareback, in the garden, or saddled, through the surrounding countryside. They lived in the stables and paddock that my father and my uncle had built and fenced in the acre to the rear of the house. Every so often, we would wash the horses with apple-scented shampoo and set them free in the garden to graze on the greener grass in front of the house as a reward for their good behaviour under the hose.

Q. Please describe the scent, taste or feel of home.

As I look into that word-picture, I smell new-mown grass, wet dog, apple-scented horses, brown bread baking, my mother’s Lanvin perfume, and the fresh air that I took absolutely for granted then.

Q. Which object most evokes home for you?

A purring cat.

Q. Where do you feel you ‘properly belong’ now?

I do not know.

Tia Azulay 04Dec08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

One creative writing exercise we were set for our course (the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media), a few weeks ago, was to experiment with the Noon Quilt idea.

Prof. Sue Thomas, who sets the exercises, told us that this was originally a trAce writing project which assembled 100-word patches from writers around the world to create “a quilt of noon-time impressions”. Apparently, trAce was later commissioned by the British Council to make two similar quilts—The Dawn Quilt for South Asia and The Road Quilt for Russia and Eastern Europe. Our exercise was: “Look out of a window on three occasions during the week, at Dawn, Noon, and Midnight, and describe exactly what you can see. If you find a story there, feel free to tell it. “

Living in London, I’m never usually up at either dawn or midnight, (or I don’t notice when I am because there’s usually not much clue from the sky!) but for the sake of this exercise I made a special effort, even going so far as to get the exact rising and setting times for the Sun from http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=136.

I found that doing it all in one day made for stronger links between the patches;a sense of a continuous narrative.

So this was the day:

Date: 4 Dec 2008
Sunrise: 07:48  Sunset: 15:53
Length of day: 8h 04m 53s  Difference from the day before: − 1m 46s
Solar noon: 11:51  Altitude: 16.2°  Distance (10E6 km): 147.428

07:48

Through rain-spotted glass I see, no, feel, a grey sky. I see the white-rimmed eyes of human habitation staring across grim gardens. Here and there, a few glow with manufactured morning warmth. The sun is a secret. Inexplicably, the cloudy canvas lightens slightly. Stark winter trees stand against the grey, shivering in the meaningless wind. The flesh sags from my cheekbones as I imagine the cold wetness of the bark. I look back to the rows of neighbouring windows, but now all are dark and empty. The people inside have also become secrets.

11:51

The rain-spots have dried into dusty acid traces on the window panes. Beyond them, the dawn-dark trees are now shades of green, an eerie moss climbing high over their bare limbs. The day is undecided. Bemused grey clouds scud eastward in ragged retreat, like an army desperate for refuge. Between their broken ranks, blue sky flashes. Sunlight reaches through to caress our creamy walls, but will not stay to be touched. Cayenne chrysanthemums leap with the wind, but the evergreen jasmine next to them clings to the wall, stubbornly still.

23:59

All is still now. With little light behind it to highlight imperfections, the glass seems clear now. Peering through it, I see a calm sky, its starless blackness softened by the urban glow that horizons our silent mews. Nightlights gently bathe the courtyard’s high cream walls and peaceful plants. Some shadows linger, but they do not dart about or threaten. That invisible city beyond our nestling house seems benevolent tonight. It has vanquished the rain. The secret people have lit some lights again. Their warm windows tell me of throbbing hearts and Christmas hearths. Tonight, I can sleep.

Tia Azulay 04Dec08
Copyright © 2008 Tia Azulay

I haven’t blogged for a month, but it’s not because I haven’t been writing. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone, studying the vast amount of course material for my wonderful new MA and writing bits and pieces for creative and critical exercises. I’m doing the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media from De Montfort University in Leicester.  The experience has been really positive so far, with hugely experienced course leaders (Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger) and a really talented and intelligent bunch of fellow students. The last two weeks have been a bit of a strain, though, because DMU has just announced that they intend to close the course due to the credit crunch. They say (but can we believe them now?) that those of us currently doing the course will be able to complete it.

Even in this dire economy, it’s hard to believe that they would contemplate axing this one – a true flagship programme for educating people for the online world (where there are more and more unconventional opportunities to make money when normal jobs fail).  As an online course, it also must surely be one of the courses with the fewest overheads and therefore the least expensive to run and to promote.

As Course Rep for my year, I’ve spent a lot of what should have been study time collating and representing to the university administration students’ expressions of dismay at their betrayal and questions about our academic future. Of course, I don’t mind doing this, as I really believe in the course, but I hope all the effort will prove fruitful and they’ll decide to revive it. Well, if they don’t, someone else must, because the electronic universe won’t tolerate that vacuum, but boo hoo! then for those of us who were silly enough to give our precious credit crunch cash to DMU!

If you’re interested in the future of new media education,  you might want to see what some experienced voices have to say about this closure at Chris Meade’s bookfutures blog. Chris is a director of The Institute for the Future of the Book in London. In two articles (so far), Chris speaks of his own surprise at the closure announcement, and heavyweights like Howard Rheingold who has taught on the course have joined in to label it incredibly shortsighted.

Sigh… we’ll see. In the mean time, at least I’m writing again, after such a long dry season. See my next posts for a couple of the creative writing exercises that have turned out okay, I think, or at least offer potential for further development.

I’m not (so far) a political campaigner, but a friend has inspired me with her passionate commitment to the Obama campaign. She is an American living in Italy and has the broader perspective that usually comes with living outside one’s home country. She is right that it really is important for the whole world, not just for the USA, who wins the coming election. Like her, I believe that the world is ready for Obama and will respond more positively to him than to McCain. She’s also right that there are many reasons not to take anything for granted. Despite the polls, old attitudes and loyalties are hard to shift and peculiar things happen to people’s consciences in the privacy of the ballot box. And, as we know from 2000, even more peculiar things may happen to ballot boxes even after the individual consciences have left them!

I’m quoting verbatim here from Stephanie’s email to her friends after she received an email from Avaaz. She urges them to support the Avaaz campaign to counter any desperate dirty tricks by McCain in these crucial last few days before the election:

“I send this to all my friends in the US and abroad. We cannot take an Obama win for granted and I think this (see below) is an excellent idea. As an American I am very aware of the fact that many Americans have NO IDEA that the whole world will be affected by the results of this election. I am staying up until the small hours of the night, every night, calling Americans in swing states in support of Obama, and I have donated 50 dollars to this Avaaz campaign because I think it is a great idea. THE WORLD NEEDS TO EXPRESS IT’S VOICE TO AMERICA because we will all be affected by the results of this election. Avaaz is a great organization that takes very concrete action on the most pressing issues we face, and I am so happy that they are taking this initiative. LET’S ALL MAKE AN EFFORT TO GIVE A PUSH TO THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY! THIS IS THE MOMENT! Please dedicate some time to circulate this as widely as possible and if possible make a donation, even a small amount will count. This ad can counteract all the brainwashing “opinion news” in my country and speak directly to the people. It cannot hurt to remind America in this critical moment that we also love the democracy that she stands for and that we hope that she takes the positive leadership that she is capable of. Please express your voice and give a hand! Thank you, Stephanie”

So… I’m passing on her request, after acting on it myself. Please click here to watch the ad, sign its message and make a donation if you can:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/for_all_of_us

It’s quick and easy to do. Each of us is a drop in the ocean, but millions of drops can make a difference.