Free at Last

Sorry for not posting a lot lately. I know, it has been continuous excuses this fall. I took on a rather visible project at work: the Book Bridge Project. It involves the college and community coming together to discuss a book for the academic year. While directing the project is not difficult, negotiating the administrative morass can be very frustrating. I'm not one known for diplomacy, particularly when inaneness seems to impede my moving forward. But I am learning.

The maiden voyage of the Book Bridge Project, a panel discussion and question and answer, went well thanks to some dear and committed colleagues: Ahati N. N. Toure, Ph.D., E. Ethelbert Miller, and Nelson Kofie, Ph.D. I owe them tremendously. My students responded to all of the presenters very enthusiastically, and I am happy for this because the forum was at 10:00 a.m. Normally the students are still dozing at this hour or often are missing in action.

I have been messing around with podcasting primarily for my online students. Some of them are auditory learners; well most of them are. The majority of them are not readers. Therefore, it is become increasingly imperative that I include audio in my course design if I want certain students to be successful.

Nothing else is going on. The weather is fantastic here. My son loves Howard, University; he's studying hard and even reading an unassigned text: Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. Saw the Jacob Lawrence exhibit thanks to Jim Miller who prodded me to go along with him and his students to the Phillips Gallery to see the exhibit. All 60 panels of the "Migration Series" were exhibited, and I am happy that I accompanied Jim to the exhibit because I had never viewed all 60 panels hung at once.

It's the Duke Ellington Jazz festival this weekend in metro DC. I might catch one or two shows if I can get from under this pile of work.

The House of Representatives signed the bailout bill. How will the government absorb this bad paper without the consumer taking a hit? And to whom will this bad paper be sold back to when it is all said and done? Will it be sold below par? I suppose I should go and read the bill and stop speculating. The text of the H.R. bill is posted on C-Span if anyone is interested. Go to http://www.cspan.org/

J.P. Morgan acquired the assets of Washington Mutual, you know the bank that fell in California. Something seems so damn fishy to me. I can recall from history that the big boys like Morgan once threatened to collapse our economy by pulling their hard cash out of circulation. Now I know that the U.S. Mint can just print more money, but what will its value be on the currency market? Further, in the days of deregulation, do the Morgans and Chases still have control over our economy? Hum, just a thought.