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Quill & Scroll board meeting in Hall of Fame Room. Executive Director Vanessa Shelton and retired Executve Director Dick Johns.
Quill & Scroll board meeting in Hall of Fame Room. Executive Director Vanessa Shelton and retired Executve Director Dick Johns.
National Punctuation Day In class today, I asked how many had celebrated the big event yesterday. Most looked puzzled as they were trying to decide what they’d missed. But quite a few called out: “National Punctuation Day.” I discovered the event when I developed online grammar resources for the course Web site. The National Punctuation Day Web site includes rules about punctuation use and promotes Sept. 24 as National Punctuation Day. In a recent lecture, I’d shown the class the list of resources and visited several of the grammar sites, including National Punctuation Day. I hope the ones who remembered the event also remember some of those punctuation rules. To get into the spirit of the day, I wore a National Punctuation Day T-shrit yesterday. The National Punctuation Day Web site offers a selection of T-shirts and other products. I went with the sun and the ellipsis rather than the T-shirt with “A semicolon is not a surgical procedure.”
National Punctuation Day In class today, I asked how many had celebrated the big event yesterday. Most looked puzzled as they were trying to decide what they’d missed. But quite a few called out: “National Punctuation Day.” I discovered the event when I developed online grammar resources for the course Web site. The National Punctuation […]
Harry Potter and the Socerer’s Stone — 10th anniversary edition released today
Harry Potter and the Socerer’s Stone — 10th Anniversary edition Today was the release by Scholastic of a new paperback edition of J.K. Rowling’s first in the Harry Potter series. When I read that in the business section, I was surprised to see that this is the 10th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter […]
Mixed views on blogs, limited experience in blogging
I had anticipated that most of the graduate students in Mass Communication Teacher would have done blogging at some point and that most would be reading blogs. But that wasn’t the case. Several were very enthusiastic about blogging. Those were the ones who either had an active blog or have recently had a blog. Most […]
Watching Hurricane Gustav move through the Gulf toward New Orleans, I’ve been thinking about Ariane Wiltse, a former teaching assistant with me who moved back to New Orleans after completing her master’s to help tell the positive stories of New Orleans’ rebuilding. She sent an e-mail to her friends and family today to let us know that she is safely in Mobile, Ala., and will be using her friend’s blog to report on her evacuation experience http://kathyprice.typepad.com/dispatch_from_new_orleans/ In her e-mail, she said that the drive from New Orleans to Mobile normally is three hours. It took four hours to get out of New Orleans and another five to get to Mobile. Certainly the roads didn’t look like this front page photo during the peak of the evacuation.
Watching Hurricane Gustav move through the Gulf toward New Orleans, I’ve been thinking about Ariane Wiltse, a former teaching assistant with me who moved back to New Orleans after completing her master’s to help tell the positive stories of New Orleans’ rebuilding. She sent an e-mail to her friends and family today to let us […]
“There’s no competing with sex, Santa Claus and the yearbook.” That was the advice I received from Ruth Cates Baird, my department chair and mentor, when I was teaching high school English and journalism at Oak Ridge High School. Her message was that there are some times of year or topics of concern to students that trump any educational iniatives that we teachers devise. As yearbook adviser, I was pleased that the yearbook made the top three most-important issues to high school students. I remember those days when the yearbook was distributed and students and teachers spent class time reading and signing yearbooks. At UF, we need to remember that weather and football are some of those major distractors.
“There’s no competing with sex, Santa Claus and the yearbook.” That was the advice I received from Ruth Cates Baird, my department chair and mentor, when I was teaching high school English and journalism at Oak Ridge High School. Her message was that there are some times of year or topics of concern to students […]
Gator spirit for students who are season ticket holders I walked through the football stadium to get to the college so I could walk past the ticket windows. The students were lined up to pick up their tickets to the UF-Hawaii football game. Student season ticket holders also received a special UF football T-shirt — with the Pepsi logo on the back of the shirt, as we are a Pepsi campus. Go Gators!
Gator spirit for students who are season ticket holders I walked through the football stadium to get to the college so I could walk past the ticket windows. The students were lined up to pick up their tickets to the UF-Hawaii football game. Student season ticket holders also received a special UF football T-shirt — […]
The Revenge of the Shopping Carts As Fay blew through Gainesville, we got lots of rain and gusty wind but not enough to create a safety threat. Quite a few of us took to the roads on errands. I wound up in the parking lot of a shopping center. Not as many cars as on a typical day but still quite a few cars. As I was driving down an aisle in quest of a parking space, suddenly a shopping cart sailed by — appearing to be rushing to escape the parking lot. As I stopped my car, gusts of wind-driven rain awakened another stationary cart, which zoomed about 20 yards and crashed into an unsuspecting parked car. The wind gusted again, and the cart zipped off and rammed into another car. I was envisioning the squirrels in the Geico commercials sitting in a tree driving the carts by remote control. So even if cars weren’t damaged by falling limbs or floods, they could be the victims of The Revenge of the Shopping Carts. [Photo from www.cityfood.com, as I didn’t have my camera with me to capture the scene. In Gainesville, less fog, fewer carts, more cars and gusting rain.]
The Revenge of the Shopping Carts As Fay blew through Gainesville, we got lots of rain and gusty wind but not enough to create a safety threat. Quite a few of us took to the roads on errands. I wound up in the parking lot of a shopping center. Not as many cars as on […]
Fay hits Gainesville The current center location on the map is almost exactly at Gainesville. Fortunately, Fay was just heavy rain and strong winds. The storm started yesterday afternoon, and officials announced that UF and the public schools would be closed today. A storm day! Growing up in East Tennessee, we had snow several times every winter. When snow was forecast, we students would eagerly await the word on whether we’d have a snow day. My mom would call these snow days “found time.” Dad was an elementary school principal, so he still had to get to school at some point during the day. Mom was a teacher, and I was in school, so we both had “found time.” With UF starting on Monday, I have plenty to keep me busy during this “found time” today. Too stormy to go into the yard to collect fallen branches.
Fay hits Gainesville The current center location on the map is almost exactly at Gainesville. Fortunately, Fay was just heavy rain and strong winds. The storm started yesterday afternoon, and officials announced that UF and the public schools would be closed today. A storm day! Growing up in East Tennessee, we had snow several times […]
Standing Up for Journalists
At least once a week, I receive an e-mail or hear in the news that a newspaper is downsizing or reorganizing and media employees are losing their jobs. Some receive buy-outs. Some receive farewell parties. Some receive the treatment usually reserved for employees who are fired for unethical conduct — they are told they are […]
Julie Dodd 