When I don't journal...

ideas get away from me. I know I missed a bunch the last 10 days, but let me try to get a few down.

I heard a wonderful radio show, Speaking of Faith, on Sunday. The host interviewed a surgeon / theologian who has written about the wisdom of the body, dying, and a memoir Lost in America. I heard lots of potential in Sherwin(?) Nuland's words for my course on Writing in the Health Professions, and for the memoirs 110 students are about to write.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/biologyofthespirit/particulars.shtml

I really enjoyed re-reading Klosterman's FRC last week; I saw all sorts of McLUhan traces, some of which I had already noticed, some of which were new to me. The complexity of his media ecology analysis is impressive. I am more certain than ever that there is an article to be written about learning from Klosterman. Although students struggled with the complexity and absence of linear line in his arguments, they also saw humor and insight in his work.

I need to write a proposal about style within the next two weeks. I was telling people about my theory of style as "space management"--informal brings everything close together: writer close to subject, writer close to reader--it is intimate. A duh-pithany, I suppose. Midlevel is about motion, about jazz and action, about being "stylish" and entrancing and enticing, about mesmerizing rather than than me and you. Midlevel is the only style that gets called "stylish"--informal is conversationally real; formal is devoid of style, without stylistic flourish, distant, professional, scientific--all that non-jazz. I think I might have fun with this. Oh yeah, and I want to argue about the importance of putting these styles in front of writers; an analogy might be to a color chart: style as circular, rather than grid-like, as primary, secondary, and tertirary styles, cools and hots, effective and dissonant blends.

Now that is using the journal: the whole color chart thing came to me as I wrote!