Dear class,

I hope the powerpoint we went over in class helped to clarify Walter Ong’s essay a bit.  You can access a copy of the powerpoint under the General Resources tab in the header above. I’m also archiving a copy of the Wendell Berry letter we discussed there, if you’d ever like to pull it up again.

Your homework assignment (Reading Response 1, also found in General Resources) is meant to give you an exercise in close reading; to hone your skills in pulling meaning out of the texts we read. More to the point, it is meant to give you a space to write about something that you personally find interesting about what we have read and discussed. I think this is useful considering we all come from different backgrounds and interests. Keep in mind that you are free to discuss any of our other readings in conjunction with the Ong text, if you’d like.

As I said in class, I have decided to give you another couple days to write the response: it is due next Thursday, the 13th, rather than on the 11th as the syllabus originally stated. Please bring a printed copy of the response with you to class that day. If you have any questions in general about the assignment, just let me know.

For next Tuesday, please read chps. 1 & 3 of the Schivelbusch (under Readings). In general, what we are exploring in this text are the ways in which the technological development of the railroad has come to affect our perceptions of space and time–in other words, how speed and new forms of transportation alter our sense of space and distance around us and the ways in which we understand the passage of time. I hope it will be a fun topic for us to explore, and gets you thinking a bit differently about modern transportation.

Have a great weekend, and see you all soon.