I had sworn off Stephen King, but bought Under the Dome anyway, kind of as a last chance thing. I'm probably about 1/10th of the way through, and it has been thoroughly enjoyable thus far. Lots o' grisly death, with a fair amount of humor thrown in.

Right on. A buddy of mine is getting piled higher and deeper at Temple. Hard to imagine he is left in charge of a class.

I thought you were at UAB or somewhere? I didn't realize you were truly sucking on the Crimson Teat.

Clearly a sell-out. ;)

I feel the same way. It is hard to imagine that I am in charge of part of the education of people's sons and daughters.

UAB? **** no. I'm in a serious ****ing program. Prestige and shit.

Also, hogs are for eating, not cheering on.

I didn't know you were actually teaching, Reaper. I thought you were just in a MFA program. Or do they let a lot of them actually teach?

Teaching is how we earn our funding. At big state schools there are a lot of freshmen that need to take required Freshmen-level Composition classes. As far as teaching goes, 'Bama allows its MFAs to teach all sorts of classes during their time in the program. I will eventually be able to teach honors comp, intro to creative writing, more advanced creative writing classes, etc.

I bet you're not actually reading it. :sulk:

Yeah, I guess one of the things about going to small--medium sized schools is that you don't get taught by grad students, which is something most people would probably figure is an advantage in default.

Are you still focused more on the travel/food writing?

As an MA, I was always stuck teaching Freshman Composition. It's what got me into teaching, though. I always thought I wanted to be a professor, and I entered graduate school with that goal in mind. Turns out that I enjoyed my hours teaching much more than my hours researching.

This is not true.

Define "small--medium sized schools." I did my undergrad at Northwest Missouri State University (enrollment in the 7,000s) because I wanted an undergrad experience where I wasn't taught by grad students.

As for what I write: I'd say half of what I write about is about culture and foodways. The other half can be wide-ranging. The two pieces I'm working on now that are closest to being ready to send out for publication are about a specific wall & the way high school friends drift apart, and about addiction rehab programs in America.

"Man and His Symbols" edited & introduced by Carl Jung

Jitney is one of my favorite plays. I like the way he moves from different times of day, and how he can get you to sense the lives of the characters outside the stage. When I read it I can see the city outside the stage, which is just so skilled on his part.
I'm also about to start a book called Kaufman & Co., which has plays George Kaufman wrote with Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Ring Lardner, and Morrie Ryskind.
It has a couple of musicals, though, which I'll skip. I don't really like reading musicals. I'm planning to start with June Moon because he wrote it with Ring Lardner, and Lardner's book "You Know Me Al" is a personal favorite of mine.

The girl who played with fire
and
NFL Unplugged