spent a weekend in Philly one afternoon...
William Labov, Univ. of Pennsylvania- found his homepage when straightening out an old static page that has been sitting there looking cut off at the knees, for almost a year, while I've been off galivanting with the hot logs. I'm getting tired of "managing" the over-300 cesl pages, almost doubled by an accident, but not made any better-looking or more efficient, and am hankering to make life simpler. Ditto with my file cabinets & stacks in the office; my overflowing plants; my overflowing garage; the stuff under the seat of my '68 truck. Time for a ruthless cleaning & pitching. It's already underway.Back to Labov- if I'm going into socio- or historical- with whatever I write, I"m going to have to deal with him. That's ok; I like him, unlike Chomsky, whose politics I like, but whose linguistics I got sick of before I was halfway through graduate school. And I'm glad to see, about halfway down the page, that he figures out, and actually measures, the extent to which people keep track of what they hear. I'm glad he measured it- now I don't have to. I have always maintained that 1) people keep careful track; 2) they know when a certain critical density is reached; they consciously or subconsciously cave & go with the majority when that becomes the easiest option.
More to read here- I'm hoping to hang onto it, by moving it over here to the 24-hr. diner.
Problem with the static pages is, I wince every time I go there. Also, it's harder to fix them, since you have to squint at old html, and use Fetch, which keeps threatening to cut itself off & deny access, like I'm some kind of child-support slacker. I'm now using BBEdit (which I recommend) and borrowing Fetch, which is ok, allows me to fix a few at home, but basically I still am looking at upgrading, simplifying, pitching hundreds of pages. Time's a-wastin'...and the truly good stuff is still there, untouched, collecting a little dust, a few spiders have been having their way with it, I guess. My new strategy is to list every page in the template of my web home, where it will at least be on the table where I can see it. I know there's too much for one template, but I've got a place to keep the list going when I fill this one up. At least this is a place I go once in a while. In the process of teaching eighteen hours, supervising, keeping the main weblogs in order (even these are embarrassing), taking care of young children, getting exercise, combing my hair on the way back from the pool, and doing some writing and music, life gets a little busy. The other day I lost a key to a filing cabinet (actually lost in the process of moving) and got really mad- for a while- until I found the key on my own keychain, among dozens of keys that I don't even know where they go, exactly (sorry about the tortured sentence...after teaching clauses I'm saying things the way the students say them, even imagining why one would start adding that randomly and variously to sentences...)...am I going nuts? Dragging these stupid keys around. But you throw them away, turns out you'll need them tomorrow, for some other stupid filing cabinet. Time to slow down, get a big cup of coffee, give some big tests, clear the deck, go home, and do grammar & rock-n-roll....just like the old days.
posted by tom @ 9:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home