One night recently I ended up watching the last half of Mississippi Burning on one of the free movie stations. I had seen parts of the movie before but had never seen all of it. It’s easy to say that America has come so far in its acceptance of all people of color since the Civil Rights Movement. Personally, I think that the bigotry and racism depicted in the movie remains a part of this country today, albeit just below the surface. Sure, there are places where people are progressive and willing to embrace diversity, but that open-mindedness can be found in only small areas of the country like Vermont and San Francisco. I’m tempted to include Lawrence, Kansas in that list of places, but I know from having lived in Lawrence years ago how deep-seated the negative attitudes toward Native Americans remain and how much risk the students run when they leave the campus of Haskell.
I think the smear campaign directed toward Barack Obama by Palin and McCain, one in which they label him a terrorist and a traitor, and one in which members of the audience yell out, “Shoot Him,” will end up causing some gun-toting Republican to take that campaign too far. James Howard Kunstler said in one of his columns early in the campaign that Obama could possibly end up losing his life if he were elected President. If Palin and McCain continue to hide their own ineptitude and continue to evade the more important issues facing this country (like the ten trillion dollar national debt) by finding fault with their opponent, it’s possible that the racism and bigotry lurking in this county will resurface in the kind of violence that I lived through in the 1960’s when political figures and cultural leaders were gunned down. If such an event were to occur, I don’t think that McCain and Palin would ever accept the responsibility but would instead delight in ridding the country of someone not like them.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Greasy Rider: A Review
I recently signed as on as an Early Reviewer at LibraryThing. My first review appears below.
Greg Melville’s Greasy Rider describes the author’s effort at converting a 1985 Mercedes wagon to run on used fry grease from restaurants and driving it from Vermont to California. Encouraged by the prospect of locating free energy, Melville opts to operate his car exclusively on fry grease instead of biodiesel, which still contains a percentage of petroleum. As a test of the feasibility of this alternative fuel, Melville decides to emulate the cross-country trip of H. Nelson Jackson, who, as Melville says, was the first person to cross the country in a car running on petroleum. Relatively challenged by auto mechanics, however, Melville enlists the help of Iggy, his former college roommate, to help maintain the engine and to help fill the container in the trunk with waste restaurant grease.
Prompted by Iggy, who gives Melville various challenges or errands to discover more about green energy, the narrative is broken up by six of these errands, most of which occur after the initial trip and are included as addendums or side-trips, so to speak. These errands include research into Al Gore’s own 10,000 foot mansion to determine whether his house is heated and cooled with green energy; how a few Minnesota farmers are in the midst of making wind power profitable; how cellulosic ethanol, the conversion of plants into energy without using corn and without using the expensive distillation process currently employed to create ethanol, could, according to Lee Lynd, a professor at Dartmouth, significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels; a visit to Google’s headquarters where solar energy is generated and could, conceivably, power a portion of the buildings on the Google campus if the energy weren’t sold to the energy grid in that area; the creation of geothermal energy at Fort Knox; and a visit to a green Wal-Mart in Texas. These explorations reveal not only the hypocrisy of Al Gore but also the individual and corporate efforts at adopting green alternatives.
Often humorous because of Melville’s initial attempts at locating restaurant grease at fast food restaurants, the narrative describes the system that Melville and Iggy adopt to fill their fuel container. By the time that these two guys reach California, it is possible as a reader to smell the grease stored and emitted by this Mercedes, a smell which is so strong, Melville says, that every article of clothing he brought along for the trip became permeated with the smell. Coupled with this problem, the narrator finds it difficult to remain in such close quarters with his former college roommate, eventually exploding at what he considers as his friend’s irritating mannerisms.
While this narrative proves that it is possible to make a cross country trip on the grease gathered from restaurants, it also calls into question the viability of such an alternative to gasoline because of the potential run on restaurant grease if enough people converted their own cars to operate on the same alternative fuel. It may be possible to subsist on this fuel when driving locally if the car owner reserves a constant supply of this fuel supply. Should the restaurant close down, or once enough other people start clamoring for the same fuel, the possibility of relying exclusively on this free fuel becomes remote.
Ultimately, I would have liked seeing more exploration into alternative fuels and green energy. If the narrative were widened to include what’s being done elsewhere in the world and how the oil corporations have resisted pumping their billions into green energy, the book would have been more than a trip across the country, one containing the adventure of pumping restaurant grease, the difficulty of maintaining a lengthy car trip with another male, and side trips to consult other mavericks and other sites of green energy.
Greg Melville’s Greasy Rider describes the author’s effort at converting a 1985 Mercedes wagon to run on used fry grease from restaurants and driving it from Vermont to California. Encouraged by the prospect of locating free energy, Melville opts to operate his car exclusively on fry grease instead of biodiesel, which still contains a percentage of petroleum. As a test of the feasibility of this alternative fuel, Melville decides to emulate the cross-country trip of H. Nelson Jackson, who, as Melville says, was the first person to cross the country in a car running on petroleum. Relatively challenged by auto mechanics, however, Melville enlists the help of Iggy, his former college roommate, to help maintain the engine and to help fill the container in the trunk with waste restaurant grease.
Prompted by Iggy, who gives Melville various challenges or errands to discover more about green energy, the narrative is broken up by six of these errands, most of which occur after the initial trip and are included as addendums or side-trips, so to speak. These errands include research into Al Gore’s own 10,000 foot mansion to determine whether his house is heated and cooled with green energy; how a few Minnesota farmers are in the midst of making wind power profitable; how cellulosic ethanol, the conversion of plants into energy without using corn and without using the expensive distillation process currently employed to create ethanol, could, according to Lee Lynd, a professor at Dartmouth, significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels; a visit to Google’s headquarters where solar energy is generated and could, conceivably, power a portion of the buildings on the Google campus if the energy weren’t sold to the energy grid in that area; the creation of geothermal energy at Fort Knox; and a visit to a green Wal-Mart in Texas. These explorations reveal not only the hypocrisy of Al Gore but also the individual and corporate efforts at adopting green alternatives.
Often humorous because of Melville’s initial attempts at locating restaurant grease at fast food restaurants, the narrative describes the system that Melville and Iggy adopt to fill their fuel container. By the time that these two guys reach California, it is possible as a reader to smell the grease stored and emitted by this Mercedes, a smell which is so strong, Melville says, that every article of clothing he brought along for the trip became permeated with the smell. Coupled with this problem, the narrator finds it difficult to remain in such close quarters with his former college roommate, eventually exploding at what he considers as his friend’s irritating mannerisms.
While this narrative proves that it is possible to make a cross country trip on the grease gathered from restaurants, it also calls into question the viability of such an alternative to gasoline because of the potential run on restaurant grease if enough people converted their own cars to operate on the same alternative fuel. It may be possible to subsist on this fuel when driving locally if the car owner reserves a constant supply of this fuel supply. Should the restaurant close down, or once enough other people start clamoring for the same fuel, the possibility of relying exclusively on this free fuel becomes remote.
Ultimately, I would have liked seeing more exploration into alternative fuels and green energy. If the narrative were widened to include what’s being done elsewhere in the world and how the oil corporations have resisted pumping their billions into green energy, the book would have been more than a trip across the country, one containing the adventure of pumping restaurant grease, the difficulty of maintaining a lengthy car trip with another male, and side trips to consult other mavericks and other sites of green energy.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Imagining a Dragon
Exhausted from the summer session while, apparently, still stressed, I was unable to sleep more than four hours at a time during my first week of vacation. Such a warped perspective caused me to imagine that I was looking at a dragon when I was out taking pictures last Friday. Am I wrong to imagine such a sight? (Click on the picture to see it enlarged.)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
End of Summer Teaching
My summer session of teaching finally came to an end. Although I have taught four sections of writing in previous semesters, this one was particularly hard because the number of students remained constant. A large amount of attrition usually occurs in online classes. Two of my classes this time remained large because so many of the students were either transfer students from other schools or students about to start college elsewhere. Some of the students apparently postponed taking my writing class until they approached the end of their sophomore year; it’s possible, too, that some of the students may have taken the equivalent of my course at their home institution but found that class especially challenging. My course was no less challenging. I suspect that the intensity of the class was greater than the students probably imagined would occur in a course offered during the summer.
Two problems for students this summer were documentation and the bibliographic information required for a citation in MLA Style. About a third of the students couldn’t find the editors of the anthology we use in class. The names of the editors appear on the front cover, on the spine, and on the title page. For some reason, the students preferred to ignore that information and listed the acquisition editor or the editor-in-chief at the publishing company as the editor of the textbook. Some of them thought the editors had given their names to the publishing company or that the publishing company had the same name as the place of publication. I continually reminded students of their misinformation and provided citations of an article found in an anthology in the sample student essays. The handbook included examples; the students were quizzed over this information, and the class provided links to the Writing Center at Purdue University. None of that information was sufficient. The students managed to provide parenthetical documentation when working with one to three sources. Once the students began working with more than three sources and began using sources that were not found in the textbook, some of them thought that documentation meant providing the name of the source in which the article appeared. I wish I knew why these things proved so difficult.
One consolation of this online teaching, despite the frustrations and the difficulty I faced in completing the grading in a timely fashion, is having one tankful of gas last about seven weeks. When going to the movies or shopping, we usually took my wife’s car; her Camry is more comfortable and younger than my Corolla. I would have used more gas, of course, if my car had served all of our transportation needs. Typically, I go through a tankful in a month's time.
Two problems for students this summer were documentation and the bibliographic information required for a citation in MLA Style. About a third of the students couldn’t find the editors of the anthology we use in class. The names of the editors appear on the front cover, on the spine, and on the title page. For some reason, the students preferred to ignore that information and listed the acquisition editor or the editor-in-chief at the publishing company as the editor of the textbook. Some of them thought the editors had given their names to the publishing company or that the publishing company had the same name as the place of publication. I continually reminded students of their misinformation and provided citations of an article found in an anthology in the sample student essays. The handbook included examples; the students were quizzed over this information, and the class provided links to the Writing Center at Purdue University. None of that information was sufficient. The students managed to provide parenthetical documentation when working with one to three sources. Once the students began working with more than three sources and began using sources that were not found in the textbook, some of them thought that documentation meant providing the name of the source in which the article appeared. I wish I knew why these things proved so difficult.
One consolation of this online teaching, despite the frustrations and the difficulty I faced in completing the grading in a timely fashion, is having one tankful of gas last about seven weeks. When going to the movies or shopping, we usually took my wife’s car; her Camry is more comfortable and younger than my Corolla. I would have used more gas, of course, if my car had served all of our transportation needs. Typically, I go through a tankful in a month's time.
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